Judge #Gender Diversity Threatened By #OneTermTony [#geekgirl]
[From this Sydney Morning Herald article]: ‘A senior NSW judge has warned there are ”worrying signs” the Abbott government is winding back measures to promote greater gender diversity on the bench and called for vigilance to ensure hard-won advancements for female lawyers are not lost.
Ruth McColl, who has served on the Court of Appeal for more than a decade, said changes introduced by the former Labor government to improve the transparency of the appointment process for federal judges appeared to have been scrapped by the Coalition.
”The aim of the process was to ensure the evolution of the federal judiciary into one that better reflected the diversity of the Australian community,” Justice McColl said in a speech in Sydney on Thursday night.
”That position has now changed. According to the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department website as at 22 February, 2014: ‘There are no current judicial appointment processes’ for any of the federal courts. Read what you like into that rather Delphic statement.”’