First Indigenous Supreme Court judge Lincoln Crowley appointed

Barrister Lincoln Crowley will become Australia’s first Indigenous Supreme Court judge after being appointed to the Queensland judiciary.

Lincoln Crowley, at his chambers in Petrie Terrace, Brisbane, in 2018. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

Barrister Lincoln Crowley will become Australia’s first Indigenous Supreme Court Judge after being appointed to the Queensland judiciary.

The appointment, announced on Friday, capped off a meteoric rise for Mr Crowley, who came from humble beginnings in Charters Towers to become the state’s first Indigenous silk in 2018 and now its first Indigenous judge.

Mr Crowley has practised law for two decades and has worked as both a defence barrister and as a commonwealth prosecutor in some of the country’s most high-profile cases in recent years.

He previously told The Australian about the challenges he faced as a youth growing up in north Queensland, including his expulsion from high school.

Lincoln Crowley in 2018 as a crown prosecutor. Picture: Dan Peled

He said his misbehaviour had been a reaction to racist treatment by some of his teachers, including one who told him his family was the “type that end up in jail”.

After studying law at James Cook University in Townsville, Mr Crowley was initially hesitant to pursue a legal career because of the rampant elitism in the profession.

“In my family I was the second to finish a degree. It was only later after I had graduated and was working in the public service in a non-legal role that I realised that I was wasting the knowledge and learning I had acquired and that I should trust my own ability,” he said in 2018.

Mr Crowley will join the bench on June 13.

Premier Annastacia congratulated Mr Crowley and fellow Supreme Court appointee Melanie Hindman, a commercial law specialist.

“Mr Crowley, a descendant of the Warramunga peoples from the Northern Territory who grew up in north Queensland, is the state’s first Aboriginal Supreme Court Judge,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

“Mr Crowley has regularly appeared throughout Australia but particularly in Queensland, New South Wales and Victorian courts across a diverse range of matters, especially criminal trials and appeals, since joining the bar in Sydney in 2003.

“Mr Crowley was also awarded the Australian Bar Association’s 2017 Indigenous Barrister Scholarship and is the current Chair of the Bar Association of Queensland’s Indigenous Barristers Committee.

“He has been a Crown Prosecutor for the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions based in Sydney, Principal Crown Prosecutor at the Maroochy Chambers for the Queensland Office of the Director of Public Prosecutors and has specialised in both defence and prosecution at the private bar since 2009.”