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Magistrate kept out of Children’s Court despite objections
A Perth magistrate has failed to convince a court to overturn a decision that saw her moved out of the Children’s Court to spend the majority of her time in the Magistrates Court.
Naomi Neilson
Despite her strong objections, West Australian Magistrate Catherine Crawford was shifted out of full-time work in the Children’s Court and “made available” to the Magistrates Court from mid-2022 on direction of the former’s president, Judge Hylton Quail.
Crawford brought a constitutional challenge against the decision, but it was dismissed by Federal Court’s Justice Nye Perram last March.
An attempt to appeal Justice Perram’s ruling was knocked back in a decision published on Tuesday (25 February) by Chief Justice Debra Mortimer, Justice Angus Stewart and Justice Michael O’Bryan.
The full bench found two of the three grounds advanced by Crawford were based on a “misunderstanding” of Justice Perram’s decision. The third contained a “logical flaw” in her interpretation of how magistrates dually appointed to both courts can be directed.
The appeal was dismissed, and costs will be decided on the papers.
Relevantly, West Australian magistrates are dually appointed to both the Magistrates Court and the Children’s Court, which allows them to perform judicial functions across each jurisdiction.
In March 2022, Judge Quail circulated a memorandum to all full-time Children’s Court magistrates that flagged it “may be necessary” for a magistrate to be shifted into the Magistrates Court.
Crawford responded to this memorandum to make it clear she “does not agree to transfer, removal or being ‘made available’ to the Magistrates Court” because she was “committed to working with children and their families, rather than adults”.
Nevertheless, Crawford was moved. An agreement modified in July 2023 also further limited her work on Children’s Court matters.
From August 2022, Crawford has sat four days in the Fremantle Magistrates Court and one day in the Children’s Court. Crawford maintained she would prefer to either sit “predominantly or exclusively” as a Children’s Court magistrate.
In the appeal, Crawford alleged Justice Perram erred in finding the Children’s Court Act of Western Australia 1988 (WA) empowered the Chief Magistrate to allocate work to a dually appointed magistrate “in such a way that the basis upon which they work … considered across both courts is not altered, unless the magistrate consents”.
Chief Justice Mortimer and Justices Stewart and O’Bryan said Crawford had “misunderstood” Justice Perram’s findings.
Specifically, they said it was not the constitutional choice Justice Perram arrived which was the foundation for his conclusion.
“Further, the primary judge did not adopt the reasoning ascribed to him – namely treating a magistrate with dual appointments as only holding one ‘theoretical’ office or ‘combining’ the separate appointments held by a magistrate’,” the full bench said.
Crawford also claimed Justice Perram erred by finding the act did not interfere with the judicial independence of a dually appointed magistrate.
The central point was an alteration to the sitting hours of a dual-appointed magistrate can only be made with consent.
The full bench said Crawford’s submissions rested on the “incorrect construction” of a legislative scheme about the need for dually appointed magistrates to consent to the alteration in their duties.
For the allocation to be found to be unreasonable, the matters would have to be clearly proven in a judicial review application.
“The appellant did not suggest that the primary judge’s analysis on this issue was incorrect. It is not,” the Federal Court said.
The case is Crawford v State of Western Australia [2025] FCAFC 18.
Naomi Neilson
Naomi Neilson is a senior journalist with a focus on court reporting for Lawyers Weekly.
You can email Naomi at:
