JUDGES URGED TO OPPOSE BAD LAWS - WOOD SPEAKS OUT

FORMER Royal Commissioner Justice James Wood has called on his fellow
judges to take a more active role in the State's drug laws.

The Supreme Court judge said judges should follow their conscience and
speak out "against unjust laws and policies".

He said judges who remain silent in the face of laws they believed to be
bad were allowing "injustice to be committed in their names".

Drawing a parallel with the role of the judiciary in Nazi Germany and the
apartheid regime in South Africa, he said judges who did not speak out
became part of the problem.

In a rare apeech Justice Wood told worshippers at the Ashfield Uniting
Church there was a "proper role" for "compassion and conscience" in the
administration of drug laws.

He likened the drug problem to a war but said the "silent plunge" of the
hypodermic needle had replaced the "rattle of rifles".

There was a "proper role" for an approach to the illicit drug problem that
"accommodates conscience and compassion".

"I am convinced that there is a proper role for the law and for the judge
to balance strict law enforcement against those responsible for this evil,
with an approach that accommodates conscience and compassion," Justice Wood
said.

"There are those who say that judges have no business expressing such ideas
as I have - that they should quietly apply the law set by others without
question or protest".

"Illustrations are manifold of those judges who have placed blind obeisance
to the authority of the day, and to its code, and in this way become party
to the perpetuation of terrible injustices."

The former Royal Commissioner into the NSW Police Service and the State's
second most senior judge, Justice Wood warned that by their silence on
matters of conscience, judges were condoning injustice.

"I do not believe that judges can successfully complete their spiritual
journey by silence on an issue such as this," he said.

"It is my hope that there will be judges into the next century who are
prepared to dare to listen to their conscience and their faith and to take
a stand against the unjust laws and policies of the secular state.

"At least let them not allow injustice to be committed in their names."

Justice Wood was delivering a sermon as a guest of the Reverend Bill Crews,
who works with the homeless in Ashfield and is also involved with the
rehabilitation of drug addicts.

Among his congregation yesterday were drug campaigners including former
Labor MP Ann Symonds and Tony Trimmingham who were involved in setting up
the illegal heroin shooting gallery, the "tolerance room" at Kings Cross's
Wayside Chapel.

A delegate to the NSW Drug Summit in May that voted to support Australia's
first legal heroin injecting room, Justice Wood said it was up to the
Government, the Judiciary and the community to explore every possible
option to alleviate the heroin problem.

He said if "all else fails", a trial of the provision of free heroin to
addicts should also be attempted.

"Until we trial the alternatives, not even those who have been there can
really claim to know the answers," Justice Wood said.