The Law Council has denounced Peter Dutton’s suggestion of seeking public feedback before appointing judges as a “quasi-election” model that would politicise the judiciary.

It is the second time the body has criticised the home affairs minister for undermining the independence of the judiciary after it rebuked him for claims that Victorians were “scared to go out to restaurants” due to street violence and that “civil libertarian” judges were to blame for lenient sentences.

On Thursday, Dutton told 2GB Radio there should be “greater scrutiny” around appointments of magistrates and proposed that state governments should publish a list of potential appointments to the courts for public feedback.

The Law Council of Australia president, Morry Bailes, said that was “a perilous path to travel down”.

“Subjecting judges to a quasi-election risks politicising their role,” he said. “We have the separation of powers for very good reason.

“Judges are not appointed to make decisions based on political popularity, they are appointed to make judgments based on the facts in front of them and the law as it is written.”

Bailes said that to ensure a “healthy functioning democracy”, there should never be “any blurring [of the lines] between the political and judicial spheres”.

“If we create an environment where judges are forced to act like politicians, we all lose.”

The shadow attorney-general, Mark Dreyfus, has labelled Dutton’s remarks “simply baffling” and said they were another inappropriate attack on the judiciary.



“If he is talking about the direct election of judges, that proposal is probably unconstitutional,” he said.

Dreyfus repeated a call for the new attorney general, Christian Porter, to stand up to Dutton, after saying he had been “missing in action while his colleagues make shocking attacks on the independence of the judiciary”.

In January, Porter said sentencing decisions and the “terrible elevation in violent gang-related offending in Victoria” meant it was “normal and reasonable” to expect a public debate there about criminal justice policy.

In comments to the Australian Financial Review on Friday, Porter rejected the view that Dutton’s statements constituted an attack on the judiciary.

“The long-standing, accepted practice is that in the exposition of free speech and open public debate, judicial decisions and reasoning and outcomes can be critiqued, and often robustly,” he is reported to have said.

“But what you can’t and shouldn’t do is question the integrity, personal or process, of the courts.

“I don’t see that that line’s been over-stepped at the moment. Temperance and balance on both sides of the fence is warranted.”