Parliament of Victoria | Legislative Council | Petitions qualifying for debate
13 August, 2025
David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan):
I thank Dr Heath for her impassioned support of the petition. In this digital age you would think that there would be little need to sign paper documents, but there are still 580 different legal documents that require signatures, all of which must be witnessed by a legal official. That is why we need justices of the peace. Victoria has a scarcity of JPs, as we have heard, and they seem to be basically an endangered species, much like moderates in the Liberal Party. Victoria has just 3500 JPs, while there are more than 70,000 in both New South Wales and Queensland.
Maybe this is because Victoria allows about 20 professions to witness statutory declarations. A range of health and planning professionals can verify a signing. The list of admissible professions includes patent attorneys and chiropractors. Used-car salesmen are not on the list, but optometrists are – although I do not want to make a spectacle of them. I do not know how the government settled on these professionals, but they are deemed trustworthy. Still, they are not justices of the peace. These professionals are not properly trained to recognise fraudulent documents, and many do not want the extra work.
As we have heard, some professionals such as pharmacists even charge for the service, and quite handsomely. This is not ideal. Surely we want the justice system to be low cost and accessible. Justices of the peace never charge. They are volunteers, and they are trained to recognise counterfeit documents. They are an integral part of the justice system, and we simply need more of them.
Often people need documents witnessed at the most difficult times of their lives, as we heard from Ms Payne. An affidavit is needed when you are divorcing, and death certificates must be certified if you have lost a spouse and are sorting out their estate. If you are the victim of a scam and your identity is stolen, you will need a raft of documents witnessed to re-establish your identity. And we all know that ID theft is on the rise.
Have you ever tried to find a justice of the peace in Victoria? You can go to a list published online by the justice department and you get names, phone numbers and emails, and then the run-around really begins. Many people start volunteering as JPs after retiring from paid work, so they are unfortunately an ageing community – and I say that with no disrespect.
The Royal Victorian Association of Honorary Justices estimates that about a third of the JPs on the department’s list are no longer active, and the active JPs are not always available on short notice. Too often you end up ringing people who have stopped volunteering as JPs and are even in aged care or hospitals.
In Sunshine there are 27 JPs listed; in Footscray, 42; and in Werribee, 53. But how many are still active? Who knows. Your next option is to visit a police station or library in the hope there is a JP available in-house. So we are asking people at the most vulnerable times of their lives, people often experiencing loss, to hawk their financial documents around town in the hope of finding one of these rare justices of the peace.
Approximately 350 JPs, or 10 per cent of the total, stop volunteering every year, and the Department of Justice and Community Safety is failing to replace them. New JPs – often older, retired individuals – are asked to complete a 10-week online training course, which we are told is lengthy and complicated. Additionally, the security vetting of JPs is reportedly very arduous.
We call on the minister to commit to recruiting more justices of the peace in Victoria to support people who need this vital service. It would be beneficial if the justice department worked with the Royal Victorian Association of Honorary Justices to streamline the training and security clearances of new JPs. I commend the petition to the government.
[Motion agreed to]
