Page 36 - Keeping the Peace

30 Keeping the Peace – A History of Honorary Justices in Victoria
JPs needed to adapt to Victoria’s changing demographic profile. In 1964, 30 year old Mr John Fautley became Victoria’s youngest JP, suggesting that younger people were developing an interest in justice issues.55 Changing ideas about the family were also impacting on JPs in their roles in the Court of Petty Sessions. New legislation on maintenance of deserted mothers, for example, gave illegitimate children rights which they had not had before. In addition, when a wife sought to issue her maintenance summons, she could go to a JP and ask for an order that the children receive payment independently of up to £2 per child per week. This was based
on the principle that children should not be prejudiced by the rights or wrongs of the case as between their parents and was ‘a great step forward.’56
Despite the demands on JPs, the total number of JPs declined over the early 1960s. The proclamation of the Evidence Act 1958 (Vic), had led to an increase in the number of people who took on the role Commissioner of the Supreme Court for taking Declarations and Affidavits, although these commissioners were then precluded from becoming a JP. The Chief Justice made such appointments and they were usually granted to members of the legal profession. Local members of parliament were closely watching the appointments of new
JPs in their area to determine whether they were suitable for the magistracy.57 It was a time of assessment. The Victorian HJ Association had 3,833 members, of which only 120 were women. As of March 1966, of 136 JP appointments in the past year, only six were women. In 1964, of the 178 appointments, only four were women.58
Across 1965 and 1966, the Liberal Bolte Government took steps to have all JPs centrally registered and temporarily put a hold on the conferring of any new JPs.59 This met with the approval of both sides of parliament.
Mr Floyd, Labor member for Williamstown, thought the government should go even further and print the names of JPs in the local papers or have them displayed in municipal offices and police stations. This would avoid the present situation where, he felt, one or two JP are required to do most of the work in their area while ‘some go into seclusion and bask in the sunshine of the prestige of being a justice without doing much work’.60
55 The Sun, 4 June 1964. 56 ‘The Justice of the Peace’, 1 September 1965, p. 97. 57 ‘The Justice of the Peace’, January 1962, pp 1-2. 58 ‘The Justice of the Peace’, 1 March 1966. The ‘Justice of the Peace’, January-February 1970. 59 ‘The JP’, 1 November 1966, p. 125. 60 Victoria Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Assembly, 27 April 1966, Government Printer, p. 3706.
The content of the training in 1970 included ‘Justices of the Peace and their Role in the Administration of Justice’, ‘Evidence’ and ‘Sentencing’.