It has been a while since I’ve heard anything about our Judicial Commission.

When I blogged about it in September of last year I thought the introduction of a new oversight body was inevitable. It was an idea borrowed from NSW that offered a way out from under a number of embarrassing indiscretions involving members of the local judiciary.

When the Bill passed its special majority vote in the lower house I assumed that it was in, and took my eye off the ball. But apparently after being introduced into the Legislative Council it disappeared into committee with further proposed amendments and didn’t come out again before the election. Like the DNA Bill, the previous government did not finalise it before they were out on their ear.

The update on LDMS reads,

The Bill was not considered further before the end of the 56th Parliament and therefore the Bill lapsed.

Other priorities have taken centre stage now, and those indiscretions are no longer fresh in the public memory. It’s likely that the new government’s attention to the issue will be delayed by deciding the details of the new anti-corruption agency, which will probably overlap to some degree.