'Long overdue': Australia's first Indigenous Supreme Court judge appointed

Queensland barrister Lincoln Crowley QC will become the first Indigenous judge appointed to a superior court when he is sworn in as one of 29 judges of the Queensland Supreme Court on June 13.

Lincoln Crowley will be the first Indigenous judge to preside over an Australian superior court. Source: AAP

Queensland Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Minister for Women and Minister for the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence, Shannon Fentiman, announced Mr Crowley’s appointment in late May.

Mr Crowley, who grew up in north Queensland, is a descendant of the Warramunga people from the Northern Territory.

After graduating from James Cook University, Mr Crowley worked as a solicitor-advocate for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service.

He said he was “extremely honoured” to have been appointed as a judge of the Supreme Court of Queensland.

“It is an immense personal and professional achievement for me as well as an historic moment of recognition and long overdue representation for Indigenous Australians,” Mr Crowley said.

I am proud of my Aboriginal ancestry, and I am sure it will enable me to bring unique and valued understandings and perspectives to the work of the Court and to the administration of justice on behalf of the entire community.

Ms Fentiman said Mr Crowley, who was appointed a Queen’s Counsel (QC) in 2018, had regularly appeared throughout Australia but particularly in Queensland, New South Wales and Victorian courts across a diverse range of matters, especially criminal trials and appeals.

Mr Crowley will be officially sworn in as a judge of the Queensland Supreme Court on June 13, 2022. Source: Unsplash

Since being called to the bar in 2003, Mr Crowley has acted in several high-profile cases and was senior counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with a Disability.

“Mr Crowley was also awarded the Australian Bar Association’s 2017 Indigenous Barrister Scholarship and is the current Chair of the Bar Association of Queensland’s Indigenous Barristers Committee,” Ms Fentiman said.

He was also a Crown Prosecutor for the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions based in Sydney, Principal Crown Prosecutor at the Maroochy Chambers for the Queensland Office of the Director of Public Prosecutors and had specialised in both defence and prosecution at the private bar since 2009, Ms Fentiman said.

He will become one of 133 judges appointed to the Queensland Supreme Court in its 163-year history.