A man convicted of tax offences, who is also a former Liberal party official, is the Queensland government’s favoured candidate for its next judicial appointment, according to senior barristers.

Brisbane barrister John Miles, who nine months ago came off a good behaviour bond for tax offences, has been flagged for a magistrate’s job at Charleville, Guardian Australia has been told.

Miles’s senior colleagues at the bar have spoken privately of their “serious concerns” that his elevation to the bench would be the latest in a string of partisan and inappropriate appointments by the Newman Liberal National party government.

They claimed Queensland’s attorney general, Jarrod Bleijie, had consulted across the legal profession over the appointment of Miles, who sat as chairman of the Liberal party’s disciplinary committee in Queensland in 2007.

The commercial barrister was found guilty of seven charges of failing to lodge GST returns with the tax office in the Brisbane magistrates court in September 2012.

Queensland Bar Association president Shane Doyle and a Queensland Law Society (QLS) spokeswoman declined to comment.

However, a senior lawyer speaking on condition of anonymity told Guardian Australia: “It’s not merely jobs for the boys.”

“It’s a job for someone who’s been convicted of not paying tax, which is pretty hard to do – you’ve got to repeatedly do it.”

Bleijie said in a statement that no decisions had been made and “any talk of who will be appointed is pure speculation”.

“The government has been consulting with the legal profession on a range of upcoming judicial appointments and numerous candidates are being considered,” he said.

Miles, 49, told Guardian Australia that he had not been approached by anyone regarding a magistrate’s appointment.

“(This is the) first I know of it,” he said.

Miles failed to provide the Australian taxation office with returns on seven occasions between August 2010 and February 2012.

Magistrate Anne Thacker did not record a conviction but ordered Miles to comply with a good behaviour bond of $6,000 for 18 months.

In a reference letter tendered to the court, a former colleague said it seemed that Miles’s “troubles began at about the same time he was lumbered with” dealing with upheavals in the legal chambers that he managed at the time.

“John is a decent man with strong family values and a strong work ethic,” the former colleague said.

“Apart from any punishment rendered here, he runs the embarrassment of reporting the matter to the Bar Council and places his livelihood in jeopardy.”

Another referee, lawyer Michael Kirkitsche, said it was “utterly out of character” for Miles to fail to adhere to his legal responsibilities.

The QLS last month called on both major political parties to look at overhauling the way judicial appointments were made in Queensland, nominating it as a priority issue for the state election.

A major controversy surrounded Bleijie’s appointment of Tim Carmody as chief justice of the supreme court in July, a meteoric rise after eight months as chief magistrate which saw Carmody closely associated with the government’s contentious bikie law reforms.

Carmody’s fellow judges boycotted his swearing in ceremony, one of them, John Muir, likening his appointment to “a suburban GP being selected to lead a team of cardiac surgeons performing open heart surgery”.

Bleijie also faced criticism last year over the appointment of his former adviser’s husband, Aaron Simpson, to a regional magistrate’s job.

Simpson as a barrister worked out of John Jerrard Chambers – dubbed “the magical chambers” in Brisbane legal circles – along with Carmody, future magistrate Stuart Shearer and Bleijie’s former chief of staff Ryan Haddrick.

• This article was amended on 28 September 2016 to remove a detail that had unintended personal consequences. The headline was amended on 31 March 2017 to include a name