Wednesday, 13 August 2025

Petitions

Honorary justices

Rachel PAYNE (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:07): I move:

That the petition be taken into consideration.

I would like to bring the Parliament’s attention to a petition by the Royal Victorian Association of Honorary Justices about the critical role of justices of the peace in Victoria. Victoria has a chronic shortage of justices of the peace, or JPs, as we affectionately know them. There are less than 4000 registered JPs in Victoria, and it is estimated that fewer than 2000 are actively performing and witnessing certification services. This is compared to 80,000 in Queensland and over 70,000 in New South Wales.

While paperwork is not the most fascinating of topics, it is also true that it is critical to navigating legal, government, insurance and other systems. When it matters, it really matters. Many people need these documents witnessed during times of acute stress. This might include an insurance claim after your house has been broken into, power of attorney when someone is sick, wills and other matters at the death of a loved one, divorce paperwork or trying to reclaim your security after identity theft.

At the moment JPs can be found in some police stations and law courts. However, some vulnerable people do not feel comfortable in these environments, especially in times of distress, and it is also common for people to be turned away due to the workload pressures. Victorians turn to authorised witnesses such as general practitioners, school principals, accountants or pharmacists to perform these volunteer duties. Many of these professionals are time-poor and not at all trained to identify fraudulent documents. Some refuse outright to witness documents, and others charge exorbitant fees. At some pharmacies you can pay anywhere between $5 and $10 per page for witnessing services.

The last thing anyone wants to be doing when they are distressed is finding documents and then having to get them witnessed. If they then make their way to the police station or see the pharmacist and get turned away or cannot afford it, their distress is unnecessarily compounded. It really is not good enough. Dean Beck JP, who is here in the gallery today with us, is the director of the Royal Victorian Association of Honorary Justices, and he provided a recent example where he assisted a client in his mid-30s who had tragically lost his partner to suicide. The client needed 235 documents certified as true copies for the deceased’s superannuation provider. In his time of grief this client was turned away by the local police station and a pharmacy due to their workload. Dean spent 2½ hours with this client. If he had gone to a fee-for-service provider, this could have cost him up to a thousand dollars. I want to thank Dean and I want to thank Rodney Lavin, who is the president of the Royal Victorian Association of Honorary Justices, for their advocacy in this space.

In fact I raised this issue on ABC radio yesterday afternoon, and the talkback lines actually lit up, predominantly with community members who had put their hands up and expressed interest in becoming JPs some months, if not years, ago and have heard nothing since. When we are experiencing a justice of the peace shortage, surely if people are putting their hands up to be contributing their services they should be accepted. This is hard to reconcile. We have community members willing and able to become JPs, ready to do the training, but there is no call back when they express interest. What is going on? Victoria has a population of almost 7 million people. It is clear that 2000 active JPs are simply not enough. Successive governments have neglected to recruit sufficient JPs despite a growing demand for third-party witnessing and document certification. Every Victorian deserves access to these essential services, and they should be provided for free. Our very own institutions require Victorian citizens to provide witnessed documents, yet some are unable to access these services in a timely or affordable manner. I support the petition by the Victorian association of honorary justices, which has been signed by 5739 Victorian citizens and which calls upon the Attorney-General, the Honourable Sonya Kilkenny MP, to recruit 5000 new JPs in Victoria by 2027.

Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:13): I rise to speak on the petition which has been put before the house today, and I acknowledge my colleague in the south-east Ms Rachel Payne for raising what is an important subject. I acknowledge the input of everyone who contributed to this petition, and at the outset I want to acknowledge the very important role that justices of the peace play right across our community. The examples which Ms Payne highlighted really do reflect that so well. It is an important subject, and it is an important thing that when people do need access to these services they are able to receive them. I acknowledge the challenges that were identified by Ms Payne in her contribution, noting of course that members of the public can come to MPs as well for document signing from time to time. In fact we actually do have in this chamber, as well as an MP, a justice of the peace, Mr Tarlamis, one of my other colleagues from the south-east region, who for a long time, as I understand – before, during and in between his service as an MP – has served as a justice of the peace, and he has often spoken with me about the value of that work too.

I do note as well that last year the Department of Justice and Community Safety, DJCS, completed an extensive recruitment campaign for new justices of the peace, with 800 new JPs being appointed as a result. All of these JPs are now able to provide those services across their local communities, which does, I can update the house, bring the total number of JPs in the state to 3714. We would obviously love for that to continue to grow, which is why I am so pleased to talk about this petition today. We know that they offer services in person or remotely, and many also choose to operate out of document-signing stations, which do provide the community with that reliable fixed point of access to these services. There are 129 such stations across Victoria, and they are scattered in locations ranging from police stations to libraries to community centres and the like as well.

These services of JPs are also supplemented by a significant number of authorised witnesses, which include some that I touched on before but also legal practitioners, medical practitioners, police officers, nurses, accountants, teachers, pharmacists, public servants and indeed MPs. Many of these automatically become authorised witnesses because of their, or in this case our, profession. I do note that a full list of those professions of people who can be authorised witnesses or who do become authorised witnesses can be found on the department’s website. The website is justice.vic.gov.au/statdecs.

Recruitment campaigns for justices of the peace are targeted towards LGAs with some of the greatest identified need, considering those existing JP numbers and also the population growth for the area. Once an LGA is identified there is a public recruitment campaign, and successful candidates undertake probity assessments and training and are then considered for appointment by the Governor in Council. The department also, as I understand, regularly engages with JPs to understand the particular demand for services. Any further recruitment is then based on that demand, and any particular focus of that campaign is based on the demand.

With particular interest, or self-interest, in my own region, I was curious to look at the results of last year’s campaign specifically as they pertain to the City of Casey, a very significant LGA in my region and also Victoria’s largest municipality by population. Just this year as a result of that ongoing work there have been 68 new justices of the peace appointed in Casey so far, bringing that number up to 190. I am sure members will agree that that almost 50 per cent increase is a very significant increase there and certainly sets the groundwork for some more work I hope to see continue in Casey and in the rest of the south-east in time to come.

There are also significant amounts of funding provided in this year’s state budget for a number of other measures which do have some correlation, including additional funding for honorary justices as well as the statewide rollout of a remote hearing pilot for bail justices and a number of other initiatives. But with the focus on justices of the peace specifically today, I affirm that I welcome the chance to talk about this petition.

Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (18:18): Victoria’s honorary justice system is on the edge of collapse and requires immediate action. Victoria needs 5000 new JPs now, and we are nowhere close to that number. I just want to take a moment to acknowledge some people in the gallery, through you, President. We have got Rodney Lavin, who is the president of – this is a mouthful – the Royal Victorian Association of Honorary Justices, up here and a lot of his volunteer colleagues, who do amazing work in the community.

The PRESIDENT: I do not know if we actually do that. We do not acknowledge people in the gallery, but you can mention them in your speech without pointing and all that.

Renee HEATH: Sorry, I gestured.

The PRESIDENT: It is not just you, Dr Heath. In recent times everyone has gone open slather.

Renee HEATH: My apologies for being out of order.

The burden of our ageing justice of the peace volunteer workforce is unbearable, and the consequences are far reaching. Successive Labor governments have systematically ignored urgent calls to recruit new JPs even as the need and the population grow. Mr Galea spoke before about the growing number of justices of the peace in Victoria, but it is actually untrue. They stopped recruiting two years ago, and for the past two budgets there has not been a single cent given towards recruiting new JPs. Many Victorian JPs have been volunteering for decades, and undue pressure placed on them is both unethical and unfair. The time for renewal is now. Our JPs are dying off, and they are not being replaced. This treasured, trusted, respected and independent pillar of our legal system has been entirely neglected.

The work JPs do takes pressure off systems that are already under strain, and I am going to talk about two things very quickly in the time that I have. The first one it obviously impacts on is the police force and their ability to respond to the needs of the community. To put all of this into perspective, in Victoria there is a crime committed every 50 seconds, so that means every 50 seconds a police officer has to respond to something in real time – not work on crime prevention, but be there, then and there, every 50 seconds. We have spoken about how Melbourne has become the protest capital. Something like 22,000 police shifts have been diverted in the last two years to protests in the city.

The other system that it impacts is the healthcare system. As we know, there are registered authorisers that can authorise documents. Before I was in here I was in health care, and I was one. I remember that in between patients sometimes I would come out and there would be a stack of documents. I remember the first time I did it I did not even know how to do it. We quickly googled ‘What do you write?’ and saw it was ‘This is a true and authorised copy’, or whatever it was, and signed it. We did not know what we were doing. Health care and pharmacy are affected by this bill. In this chamber just last year we actually expanded the capacity for pharmacists to not just dispense medication but diagnose UTIs and skin conditions and then prescribe the medications that are needed that are prescription only, and also the pill. The reason we had to do this is because, particularly in regional areas, it is almost impossible to get in to see a doctor.

These systems are under pressure, and it is JPs that are taking the pressure off this system. Without immediate action this profession will soon collapse, leaving an already stretched police force and healthcare system to bear the brunt of that burden.

In the last minute I just want to cover off a brief history of the last 150 years of JPs in Victoria. In 1901 Victoria had a population of 1.5 million, and there were 3500 JPs. Skip forward to now and there is a population of 7 million and there are 3500 JPs. To put that into perspective, in New South Wales per 100,000 people there are 893 JPs. In Victoria that number is just 50. I just want to stop by commending Rachel and commending this motion to the house. I hope it is something that this government takes seriously and acts on straightaway.

David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan) (18:23): I thank Dr Heath for her impassioned support of the petition. In this digital age you would think that there would be little need to sign paper documents, but there are still 580 different legal documents that require signatures, all of which must be witnessed by a legal official. That is why we need justices of the peace. Victoria has a scarcity of JPs, as we have heard, and they seem to be basically an endangered species, much like moderates in the Liberal Party. Victoria has just 3500 JPs, while there are more than 70,000 in both New South Wales and Queensland.

Maybe this is because Victoria allows about 20 professions to witness statutory declarations. A range of health and planning professionals can verify a signing. The list of admissible professions includes patent attorneys and chiropractors. Used-car salesmen are not on the list, but optometrists are – although I do not want to make a spectacle of them. I do not know how the government settled on these professionals, but they are deemed trustworthy. Still, they are not justices of the peace. These professionals are not properly trained to recognise fraudulent documents, and many do not want the extra work. As we have heard, some professionals such as pharmacists even charge for the service, and quite handsomely. This is not ideal. Surely we want the justice system to be low cost and accessible. Justices of the peace never charge. They are volunteers, and they are trained to recognise counterfeit documents. They are an integral part of the justice system, and we simply need more of them.

Often people need documents witnessed at the most difficult times of their lives, as we heard from Ms Payne. An affidavit is needed when you are divorcing, and death certificates must be certified if you have lost a spouse and are sorting out their estate. If you are the victim of a scam and your identity is stolen, you will need a raft of documents witnessed to re-establish your identity. And we all know that ID theft is on the rise.

Have you ever tried to find a justice of the peace in Victoria? You can go to a list published online by the Department of Justice and Community Safety, and you get names, phone numbers and emails, and then the run-around really begins. Many people start volunteering as JPs after retiring from paid work, so they are unfortunately an ageing community – and I say that with no disrespect. The Royal Victorian Association of Honorary Justices estimates that about a third of the JPs on the department’s list are no longer active, and the active JPs are not always available on short notice. Too often you end up ringing people who have stopped volunteering as JPs and are even in aged care or hospitals. In Sunshine there are 27 JPs listed; in Footscray, 42; and in Werribee, 53. But how many are still active? Who knows. Your next option is to visit a police station or library in the hope there is a JP available in-house. So we are asking people at the most vulnerable times of their lives, people often experiencing loss, to hawk their financial documents around town in the hope of finding one of these rare justices of the peace.

Approximately 350 JPs, or 10 per cent of the total, stop volunteering every year, and the Department of Justice and Community Safety is failing to replace them. New JPs – often older, retired individuals – are asked to complete a 10-week online training course, which we are told is lengthy and complicated. Additionally, the security vetting of JPs is reportedly very arduous. We call on the minister to commit to recruiting more justices of the peace in Victoria to support people who need this vital service. It would be beneficial if the justice department worked with the Royal Victorian Association of Honorary Justices to streamline the training and security clearances of new JPs. I commend the petition to the government.

Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:27): Victorians desperately need the government to open up training opportunities to increase the number of justices of the peace in Victoria. For over 115 years Victorians have been served by thousands of JPs. They have served the community with dedication and integrity, offering free witnessing and document certification, yet successive Labor governments have ignored urgent pleas to immediately recruit and train a substantial new generation of JPs now and on a regular, ongoing basis.

Volunteer JPs may soon come to an end as numbers plummet to near extinction, according to the Royal Victorian Association of Honorary Justices, the RVAHJ. With only 3715 JPs registered in Victoria, the actual number of active JPs is unclear because many are ageing out, retired or have passed away. By shameful contrast, Queensland boasts 80,000 and New South Wales has 75,000 registered JPs. Meanwhile, in Victoria, serving a state of 7 million residents, the RVAHJ estimates that fewer than 2000 JPs remain active.

In recent years and with a rising population there has been a huge rise in the demand for third-party witnessing and document certification, but under this Labor government the last two state budgets allocated zero funds for JP recruitment – zero. We need immediate action because this trusted keystone of our legal system faces extinction as authorised witnesses from our police, school principals and healthcare professionals, like pharmacists, GPs and the like, are already under even greater stress. In these sectors they are often finding they do not have time and are charging increasing amounts or completely refusing to sign documents for members of the public.

Rodney Lavin JP, president of the RVAHJ, who is with us today in this chamber, has said that many JPs have volunteered for decades and that it is both unjust and unethical to place such undue pressure on the dwindling few. Simply put, JPs are dying and not being replaced. In response to the crisis, the petition we debate today gathered 5739 signatures in just five weeks. The petition calls on Attorney-General Sonya Kilkenny MP to urgently recruit 5000 new JPs by 2027, with a sustained commitment to recruit 500 annually thereafter. The government’s cost-cutting experiment, expanding the pool of those deemed authorised witnesses, has been a clear failure. This move has severely compromised the integrity of our legal framework. Untrained and unaccountable, these professionals are often pulled from other vital work in the community and often charge arbitrary fees for their services, with pharmacists asking up to $12 per signature. Even local Australia Post offices charge $3.50 per page to certify document copies.

Many police stations have discontinued the practice of witnessing or certifying documents due to increased demands on their resources and workloads. Recently, a client sought the services of a JP via the Department of Justice and Community Safety’s Find a Justice of the Peace website. Two phone numbers were not answered. The third said that they were not available. The client then went to her local pharmacy and was told she would be charged $5 per page for certifying copies of her 20-page document. Unable to afford this, she went to a police station, only to be told that they were unable to help her as they were too busy. Exasperated and frustrated, she finally phoned the RVAHJ, who put her in touch with a JP close to her work. This is a prime example of how inefficient the current situation is and how we desperately need to recruit more justices of the peace. I understand how this person feels, as I have personally had to drive around to get signatures for passport name changes and after the death of a family member.

It is important to note that the RVAHJ regularly receives calls from members of the public who are expressing interest in becoming a JP. This week alone, they said, they received over six individual calls of interest. People are keen and willing to volunteer their time, but they cannot get a clear answer as to when more JPs will be trained and sworn in. Some documents are extremely time consuming and require more time than busy professionals in health and other professions are able to provide. Every Victorian deserves access to the essential services offered by a justice of the peace. Achieving this transformation requires immediate investment in training new JPs. I commend this petition to the house.

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (18:31): I rise to contribute to this debate as well. Many people have outlined the dire shortage of justices of the peace in Victoria. I think every member of Parliament would understand that there is a dire shortage, because we all have people coming into our offices asking us if we are justices of the peace and if we can sign their documents, and we are forever trying to help them to locate a justice of the peace. But when you go to the website on how to become a justice of the peace, what do you find? Even though we have such a dire shortage in Victoria, we find this statement from the department or the minister under the heading ‘Ongoing recruitment of honorary justices’:

We are currently not recruiting justices of the peace or bail justices. Recruitment updates will be posted here and on our careers page when available.

This is a ridiculous situation when we do have a shortage. The government must start to recruit more justices of the peace.

I recently had a member of our multicultural community in Shepparton come into my office inquiring about becoming a justice of the peace. In Shepparton we have – as everyone knows, we are the poster child for multiculturalism – nearly every nationality that lives in Australia living in our city. Many of them are new settlers, and many of really are not skilled in English and they are not skilled particularly in our justice system and how to navigate their way through. So it is important that we recruit justices of the peace that can speak to them in their own language and explain to them fully what they need to do and what those forms that they are signing actually mean.

I would encourage the government to immediately open up a recruitment process for justices of the peace and to have a real focus on recruiting people with skills in languages other than English so that they can deal with many of our new settlers in Greater Shepparton and make those people feel very safe and secure in what they are signing because it can be fully explained to them in their own language.

Motion agreed to.