Judges branded ‘dumb smart people’ as poll finds only 30 per cent of Australians have faith in court system

Workers in an important system have been blasted as “dumb smart people” as disturbing figures have come to light about life in Australia.

Australian judges and magistrates have been blasted as “dumb smart people” after a disturbing poll revealed the public’s collapsing faith in the court system.

Just 30 per cent of Australians have faith in the courts and justice system, compared with 69 per cent who trust the police, according to the Resolve Political Monitor survey published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday.

Forty-seven per cent said they did not have faith in the judiciary, while 23 per cent were undecided or neutral, according to the survey of 1603 people conducted for Nine Newspapers.

Resolve pollster Jim Reed said the low faith in the justice system was “hardly surprising given the conga line of mistrials, appeals, resignations, scandals and inconsistent results we’re seeing in high-profile cases”.

“We can only operate as a society if we all agree to certain shared values, behaviours, rights and responsibilities, and if those administering the rules lose our collective trust the whole show is at risk,” he told Nine Newspapers.

Reacting to the Resolve findings on Tuesday, 3AW Melbourne host Tom Elliott suggested the loss of trust in the justice system was linked to the ongoing youth crime crisis that has seen scores of violent offenders repeatedly released on bail.

There was outrage last month after a 14-year-old who had been “causing terror” in Melbourne was released on bail again, despite having previously had nearly 400 charges dropped due to his age.

Burwood fatal hit-run victim William Taylor. Picture: Victoria Police

And this week, a 17-year-old driver who allegedly crashed into and killed 28-year-old trainee doctor William Taylor in Melbourne’s Burwood on July 2 was freed on bail again, despite breaching his bail conditions by going missing within 48 hours of his first release, the Herald Sun reported.

Elliott said it was “good” that the poll found the vast majority of Australians trust the police.

“However the question ‘do we have faith in the courts and the justice system’ is basically flipped on its head,” he said.

“Only 30 per cent of us trust the court system. And you know what? I’m part of the 70 per cent that does not trust the court system. Why, you ask? Well I’ve met quite a few judges and magistrates in my time, I’m not going to name any names here, but some of them are the dumbest smart people you will ever meet.”

Elliot said these people were “smart, they got a law degree which is hard to get, they’ve succeeded as barristers, they’ve been appointed as a judge”.

Australia is in the grip of a youth crime wave. Picture: Supplied

“And those sort of jobs only go to people who are academically very clever, who understand the legal system inside and out,” he said.

“However, they’re also very dumb, and they’re dumb because they have very little idea about the society in which they live.”

He suggested that “if you’re a judge or a magistrate or someone who works in the courts, you’ll probably pooh-pooh this survey and say the average person doesn’t understand how difficult it is being a judge or magistrate or working in the courts”.

“Well we do,” he said. “We fail to understand why young criminals get bail, breach the terms of their bail and then get bail again.”

Elliot cited the example of the 17-year-old who allegedly killed Mr Taylor.

“That boy a week ago breached his bail conditions, he went missing for two-and-a-bit days, he was supposed to be at home with his parents with his parents and regularly reporting to police,” he said.

“Well guess what? He’s been given bail again. A Children’s Court magistrate granted the boy bail for a second time, saying even though it was incredibly problematic that he had breached his previous bail so quickly, apparently the boy still doesn’t pose an unacceptable risk of doing so again.”

This was an “example of a smart person, a magistrate, who is dumb”, according to Elliott.

‘They keep giving people bail over and over and over again.’ Picture: Diego Fedele/NCA NewsWire

“Of course he will breach his bail again — why wouldn’t he?” he said.

“There’s no consequences for doing so. You breach your bail, the police say, ‘Oh, naughty boy, we’ve arrested you again.’ You go before the court, the court says, ‘Will you breach bail again?’, ‘No, sir, I won’t’, ‘Alright, well we’ll give you bail again.’ Now I don’t understand that.”

Offenders “should get one chance at bail, you breach your bail terms, that’s it, you get locked up”, Elliott argued.

“And yet the dumb smart people who run our courts see the world differently,” he said.

“They keep giving people bail over and over and over again, because they do not understand human nature. Human nature says if you face no consequences for your actions, you will repeat those actions precisely because there are no consequences. I understand that, most of you listening understand that, but the people who run our court system, the people who administer our justice, do not understand it.”

The Resolve poll, meanwhile, found 82 per cent of Australians felt safe in their own home, 12 per cent said they had witnessed a crime in the last 12 months, and 8 per cent had been a victim of a crime.

But of those who said they had been a victim of a crime, just 51 per cent said they had reported it to police.

Mr Reed told Nine Newspapers that while official statistics suggested Australia was becoming a safer place, the poll findings suggested things were not “perfect”.

“When one-in-12 are telling us they’ve been a victim of crime in the last year, and only around half of them reported it, we are not perfect — and neither are the statistics we rely on to judge that,” he said.

Originally published as Judges branded ‘dumb smart people’ as poll finds only 30 per cent of Australians have faith in court system