Wednesday, 4 March 2020

Ministers statements: International Women’s Day

Ms HENNESSY (Altona—Attorney-General, Minister for Workplace Safety) (11:16): Just days before International Women’s Day on Sunday, I rise to mark and acknowledge the record number of women serving our community as judicial officers under the Andrews Labor government. I am really delighted to advise the house that the Courts Council, which is the senior leadership group of the judiciary, is now made up of 50 per cent women, with the Honourable Chief Justice Ferguson, who is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; the Honourable Justice Quigley, the president of VCAT; Her Honour Judge Chambers, who is the president of the Children’s Court; and Her Honour Judge Hannan, who is the Chief Magistrate, leading their courts.

This year also importantly marks that for the first time we now have 50 per cent of magistrates that are women in the state of Victoria, and so the Magistrates Court now joins the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, the Children’s Court and the Coroners Court, who now all have 50 per cent women sitting on those benches.

We absolutely acknowledge that we have still got work to do when it comes to the County and Supreme courts, but we are dedicated to working with the heads of those jurisdictions in order to ensure that our courts represent the community. We fundamentally do not see this as some kind of progressive trifling folly, as some have described it; we see this as ensuring that those that seek to judge Victorians also represent the demography of Victorians. We know when we have women equally represented, when we have got diversity sitting on our judiciary, whether that is boards or other organisations, that we get better decisions, that we get greater efficiency, that we get decisions that genuinely reflect the community. We will not exclude half the community when it comes to appointments. We will ensure that we have got the voices of women representing our community at every forum, whether that is government boards or whether that is on the courts of Victoria.