The work schedule of Queensland’s chief justice, Tim Carmody, has been removed from an official calendar that showed him to be the least active judge in the supreme court.

Carmody, the former Newman government’s most controversial appointment, was due to hear cases for 12 weeks – only seven of those on his own – between February and July, according to a calendar published in February.

But Carmody’s schedule has since been removed from the calendar. It shows all other judges except senior judge administrator John Byrne sitting at least 15 weeks, and all of them at least 12 weeks on their own.

Meanwhile, the chief justice’s “engagements calendar” – a new initiative of Carmody’s which lists his outside activities, including a Chinese New Year function last month – remains online.

Carmody, who has struggled to match the work rate of his predecessor while paid an annual salary of $461,000, was slated to carry out “non-court duties” for nine-and-a-half weeks in the first half of 2015.

The chief justice, who said in 2014 he did not “aspire to compete with [other judges] for intellectual rigour”, was due to spend five of his 12 sitting weeks alongside two other judges on the court of appeal.

By contrast, Justice Peter Flanagan – who was sworn in the same day as Carmody in a ceremony boycotted by all other judges in protest at the latter’s appointment – was allocated 16 weeks of hearing cases on his own.

Only one of 22 appeal court judgments published this year has involved a contribution from Carmody, which was to say “I agree” in support of a colleague’s judgment.

The appeal court last week found Carmody in the supreme court had forgotten to sentence a small-time drug manufacturer on one of the offences to which he pleaded guilty.

After Guardian Australia reported in January that Carmody had only three judgments published in his first six months as the chief justice, seven more of his judgments for that period were published belatedly.

While most judgments are routinely published within hours of the judge handing them down, Carmody’s judgments were between one and three months old.

Three of those judgments are the subject of appeal, meaning half of all Carmody’s decisions in complex cases as the chief justice have been legally challenged, with two so far overturned.

The calendar in February showed that none of this year’s major scheduled trials – such as the high-profile five-to-nine-week drug trafficking trial of the former multi-millionaire solicitor Nigel Munt – were assigned to the chief justice.

Of Carmody’s allocated seven weeks sitting alone, only five were in the state’s capital and two of these were during the court vacation.

One of Carmody’s meetings this week is with the executive director of Auscript, whose court transcription services he criticised as “often poor” and blamed for delays in appeal judgments in his first annual report as chief justice.

Carmody, sworn in in July 2014, accepted his promotion despite senior appeal court justice John Muir publicly warning he lacked support among other judges.

This was a key criticism of the appointment, along with Carmody’s inexperience as a judge and his perceived closeness with the Newman government through his public support of its bikie crackdown while he was the chief magistrate and his professional and personal ties to Ryan Haddrick, a controversial former Liberal National party staffer.



Haddrick was accused of threatening the Bar Association with withdrawal of its statutory powers unless it supported Carmody’s appointment – a claim rejected by Haddrick’s former boss, the then attorney general Jarrod Bleijie.

Carmody as chief magistrate used court efficiency as the basis for urging the government to strip juveniles of the right to a speedy legal appeal.

The children’s court president, Michael Shanahan, in December condemned Carmody’s advice as “spurious”, saying it was likely to mean children were serving excessive time in detention.

Carmody did not respond to Guardian Australia’s requests for comment.