High Court Chief Justice Robert French asks that the court be exempt from federal budget cuts

Updated

The Chief Justice of the High Court has written to the Prime Minister, warning him that any move to cut the court's funding would significantly affect its ability to carry out its work.

Justice Robert French used the letter to ask that the court be exempt from the so-called efficiency dividend applied to other government agencies, and to reiterate the court's constitutional independence.

"(The High Court) is, as no doubt you well appreciate, not to be treated, for funding or for any other purposes, as analogous to an agency of the Executive Government," Justice French said in the letter.

"In particular, its funding should not be treated as an aspect of the deployment of funds within the executive branch of government."

The letter was also sent to Attorney-General George Brandis and released under freedom of information laws.

In it, Justice French said he assumed the High Court would be exempt from the budget cuts introduced by the previous Labor government and extended by the Coalition government.

However, he says he was advised by the Finance Department that the extra savings measures would apply to the court as well.

"I am writing to request that the Government consider not applying to the High Court a proposed efficiency dividend which would have a significant adverse effect upon the court's ability to provide the services it now does throughout Australia," Justice French wrote.

"Historically, the court's appropriated revenues have not kept pace with unavoidable cost increases, particularly in building-related expenditure.

"Many of the court's administrative costs cannot be reduced.

"This means that increases in the efficiency dividend inevitably cut into core elements of the court's operations, such as registry and library staffing."

It is understood the Prime Minister has responded to the letter, but that correspondence has not been released.

Topics: budget, government-and-politics, federal-government, law-crime-and-justice, courts-and-trials, judges-and-legal-profession, australia, canberra-2600, act

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