Page 30 - Keeping the Peace

24 Keeping the Peace – A History of Honorary Justices in Victoria
1940s and 1950s: one foot in the grave?
Australia commenced a period of reconstruction following the cash-strapped period of World War II. This was an opportune time for renewal and reinvigoration of the JP selection system. In 1944, the Victorian Parliament passed a bill to amend the Justices of the Peace Act 1935 (Vic). The main purpose of this amendment was to give legislative sanction to the practice that already existed of not appointing JPs who had attained the age of 65. However, the debate at the second reading suggested that there was more at stake than just age. As well as suggesting that the government should relax the rule not to appoint men aged under 35, Mrs Brownbill, Labor member for Geelong, advocated for yet more women to be appointed. In addition, she pointed out that appointments of JPs had been ‘too easy’. ‘She had found people on the list of JPs in her district who did not render public service in any shape or form’. Mr Corrigan, Labor member for Port Melbourne, went even further and said the Crown Law Department would be doing a duty to the community if it cancelled 50% of the appointments which had been made’. Indeed, as a poor man’s court, a person should be assured of courtesy and consideration instead of being a butt for the witticisms of ‘a long, grey-bearded JP with one foot in the grave, whose mentality was nil but who had achieved the distinction of having greatness thrust upon him for a short while’.44
Community standards of justice were changing and the backgrounds of JPs again provoked debate. The Royal Commission on JPs in Britain 1946-48 found that political prominence was the major criteria used for determining local worth of JPs and that vested political interests were behind the selection of some JPs.
In Melbourne’s working class suburb of Braybrook, discussions took place at the local council about the selection of JPs. Councillor Treloar remarked that there were 14 JPs in the Sunshine area and, of them, eight were either too old or suffered some physical infirmity which ‘prevented a satisfactory discharge of duty’. They noted the discussion in parliament about
44 The Argus, 20 July 1944, p. 5.