Tasmania’s Chief Justice Alan Blow fears judicial talent drain, calling for rise in judge retirement age to 75

Tasmania’s Chief Justice, concerned about an “inevitable” talent drain, has called for an increase in retirement ages for Supreme Court judges.

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CHIEF Justice Alan Blow has recommended Tasmanian judges retire at 75 — rather than 72 — in a bid to alleviate an “inevitable” judicial talent drain.

The Supreme Court of Tasmania’s top judge himself turned 71 on Wednesday.

In the court’s annual report, tabled in Parliament on Thursday, Chief Justice Blow said Tasmania’s judges faced a number of problems including heavy workloads caused by case backlogs and a huge spike in the need to process bail applications.

But he also said the court was the only superior court in the nation whose serving judges weren’t eligible for judicial pensions upon retirement, instead only being entitled to superannuation like other public servants.

Chief Justice Alan Blow. Picture: Matt Thompson

Chief Justice Blow said now was “clearly not the time” for the state government to consider spending more on its judges given the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, but said a step in the right direction would be to increase judicial retirement ages.

“It seems inevitable that recruitment and retention of talented judges will become more and more difficult if nothing is done to alleviate the judges’ workload or to improve the nature of the judicial superannuation arrangements,” he said in the report.

“However, one step that the government could consider is raising the judicial retirement age from 72, perhaps to 75. Such an increase would alleviate recruitment problems, prolong the service of experienced judges, and enable those judges, by working longer, to make better provision for their retirements.”

Chief Justice Blow said the court’s backlog was worsened over 2019-20 with disruptions caused by COVID-19 and a huge increase in bail applications.

According to the report, bail applications skyrocketed to 461 applications in 2019-20, compared to 384 in 2018-19 and 244 during 2015-16.

Chief Justice Blow said the court could make judges more available for criminal trials to plough through the backlog, but the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) lacked resources to bring more matters to trial.

Chief Justice Alan Blow OAM. Picture: Supplied

The judge said there were two possible solutions to the problem — for the state government to provide the DPP with more resources or to decrease the Supreme Court’s workload, while correspondingly increasing the Magistrates Court workload.

The report also revealed that criminal cases lodged for the crime of persistent sexual abuse of a child or young person had more than doubled in the court, from 10 in 2018-19 to 21 in 2019-20.

The crime was previously named “maintaining a sexual relationship with a young person” until it was changed earlier this year.

Aggravated assault cases also jumped from 21 to 31 over the two-year period and rape cases increased from 24 to 28.

However, several other offence categories decreased over the same period, most notably causing grievous bodily harm, which dropped from 17 case lodgements in 2018-19 to eight in 2019-20.

Attorney-General Elise Archer said she noted the Chief Justice’s comments and was “currently considering advice on this matter”.

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