Dunedin lawyer Bernadette Farnan has been appointed an acting District Court Judge with a jury warrant and as a Family Court Judge to serve in the Invercargill District Court. Judge Farnan will be sworn in on 16 April in Dunedin.
Dunedin lawyer Tim Black has been appointed an acting District Court Judge with a Family Court warrant to serve in the Palmerston North District Court. Judge Black will be sworn in on 17 April in Dunedin.
Christchurch barrister Garry Collin has been appointed an acting District Court Judge with a Family Court warrant to serve in the Hamilton District Court. Judge Collin will be sworn in on 21 April in Christchurch.
Christchurch barrister Mark Callaghan has been appointed an acting District Court Judge with a jury warrant and as a Family Court Judge to serve in the Invercargill District Court. Judge Callaghan will be sworn in on 29 April in Christchurch.
Deputy Solicitor-General Una Jagose has been appointed Acting Director of the Government Communications Security Bureau from 28 February. Ms Jagose takes over on an interim basis from Ian Fletcher, who finished as Director on 27 February. Ms Jagose has been the Deputy-Solicitor, Crown Legal Risk for the last two years, following a decade in a variety of other roles at Crown Law and working as Chief Legal Advisor at the Ministry of Fisheries.
Wellington lawyer Madeleine Laracy has been appointed Director of the Public Defence Service. She has acted in the role with the Ministry of Justice since April last year and has been on secondment from Crown Law. Madeleine had worked at Crown Law since 1998 and before rising to the Acting Deputy Solicitor-General (Criminal) role, she was manager of the Criminal Team. For a decade, on behalf of the Attorney-General, she also managed New Zealand’s international criminal co-operation requests for mutual assistance. After finishing secondary school Madeline worked as a volunteer teacher for a year at a girls’ secondary school in Samoa. She maintained her links to the region when representing the Solicitor-General on the Pacific Island Law Officers Network.
Alison Douglass has been appointed chair of the Advisory Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology (ACART). ACART was established under the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Act 2004. Its roles include advising the Minister of Health on any matters in regard to assisted human reproduction and human reproductive research, and issuing guidelines to the Ethics Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology (ECART) to enable ECART to decide applications to undertake assisted reproductive procedures, human reproductive research, and extending the storage period of gametes and embryos. A barrister who practises in both Wellington and Dunedin, Ms Douglass is convenor of the New Zealand Law Society’s Health Law Committee.
Owen Paulsen has been appointed Lord Chief Justice of Tonga. Mr Paulsen moves to his new role from being a partner and head of the litigation team at Cavell Leitch. His experience has ranged from commercial litigation for banks, insurance companies and other large corporate clients (to Court of Appeal level) to civil litigation and debt collection for private clients including disputes over contracts, torts, land and boundaries, guarantees, and intellectual property rights among other areas.