NT: Govt criticised as outspoken lawyer misses silk

AAP General News (Australia)
12-12-2000
NT: Govt criticised as outspoken lawyer misses silk

DARWIN, Dec 12 AAP - An outspoken opponent of mandatory sentencing, criminal lawyer
Jon Tippett, has been stymied by the Northern Territory government from becoming a Queens
Counsel.

NT Supreme Court judges had nominated both Mr Tippett, NT Law Society president, and
former president Stephen Southwood for the top honour for legal practitioners.

But only Mr Southwood, an executive of the Law Council of Australia who confines himself
to civil law, was accepted by the NT Cabinet.

NT Chief Minister and Attorney-General Denis Burke would not give reasons for Mr Tippett's
rejection.

"When it comes to the appointment of QCs, the practice is that the administrator and
executive council appoints new QCs," Mr Burke told reporters.

"The deliberations of the executive council, like all of those types of discussions,
are privy to that group and that's the end of it."

Opposition spokesman on the attorney-general portfolio, Syd Stirling, accused the government
of petty and vindictive behaviour in refusing Mr Tippett silk.

By overlooking Mr Tippett, the government had broken a protocol agreed with Chief Justice
Brian Martin in the late 1990s to prevent the politicisation of such appointments.

Soon after, the then chief minister and attorney-general Shane Stone agreed with the
protocol that the government would act on the recommendations of judges, he appointed
himself Queens Counsel in 1997.

Mr Tippett, then the president of the Criminal Lawyers Association, had publicly criticised
Mr Stone for appointing himself without reference to the chief justice. Mr Tippett today
declined to comment.

AAP rmg/cjh/

KEYWORD: TIPPET (WITH MANDATORY)

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