Dr. Jennifer Carroll MacNeill:

May I make a point in respect of solicitors? Solicitors only became eligible for direct appointment to the High Court in 2002 and since then, to my recollection, there have been four such direct appointments of solicitors. The others have been promotion from the Circuit Court. I wrote a paper on this in 2007, which I will provide to the Senator, and one of the problems with this is the interpretation of the 2002 amendment Act which states that the solicitors, or anyone, applying should have appropriate knowledge and experience of superior court practice and procedure, but it does not define that. It does not say whether that is required to be an advocate in front of the courts or somebody who routinely, or not routinely, instructs counsel in front of those courts.

When the amendment was made in 2002 there was a huge number of applications for High Court positions in 2003. One could see that by reading the annual reports of the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board, JAAB. There was a spike in applications from solicitors but over the following three years it dropped dramatically. Part of the confusion was the meaning of "appropriate knowledge and experience". There have been two recent direct appointments to the High Court but it is still a very small number from 2002.