Victorian Liberals Plan to Split the Court of Appeal in Two
The Victorian Liberals want to split the state's Court of Appeal into separate criminal and civil divisions if elected, adding new judges with criminal law expertise to the new criminal court as part of a law-and-order pitch heading into the 2026 state election.
Opposition Leader Jess Wilson will announce the overhaul, which would divide the Court of Appeal into a court of criminal appeal and a court of civil appeal, alongside a commitment to appoint specialist criminal judges to the criminal division (The Guardian). The plan builds on bail and sentencing law reforms Wilson first flagged in April, when 7 News reported the Liberals' tougher sentencing commitments (7 News).
The Victorian Coalition says the new court of criminal appeal would have broad oversight across Victoria's courts. Its stated purpose: ensuring sentences for serious crime match community expectations, and giving effect to new bail and sentencing laws the Coalition says it would pass before Christmas if elected (The Guardian).
Wilson frames the specialist bench as a way to get consistency. She says the new criminal court would let specialist criminal law judges ensure sentencing meets community expectations, with each sentence forming part of case law going forward. The Coalition argues that decisions of the new court would flow down through the entire system, pushing up sentences handed out in courts across the state.
The court-split announcement sits within a broader tough-on-crime platform Wilson has been building since at least April, when she and Shadow Minister Cindy McLeish outlined plans including the criminalisation of coercive control as part of a package to reduce crime and restore community safety (Jess Wilson MP, Facebook). The Herald Sun also reported on the court-split proposal earlier this cycle (Herald Sun, Facebook).
Here is what is actually going on under the bonnet. The Victorian Court of Appeal currently works as a single court that hears both criminal and civil appeals — think of it as one bench handling two very different types of cases. Splitting it into two separate courts is not cosmetic. It would need legislation, new judicial appointments, an administrative restructure inside the Supreme Court of Victoria, and careful handling of cases that are partway through when the change happens. The Coalition is offering the architecture of the plan, not a timetable for implementation beyond the Christmas sentencing-law commitment.
The Coalition's claim that a specialist criminal appeal court would 'push up' sentences across the system deserves a closer look. The logic seems to be that a bench made up entirely of criminal law specialists would produce appeal rulings that nudge baseline sentencing upward, with those rulings then binding lower courts. That is a plausible theory of how precedent works in a hierarchical court system. Whether specialist criminal judges would in practice sentence more harshly than the current mixed Court of Appeal, though, is an empirical question the Coalition has not answered with evidence. Judges appointed to a criminal appeal court could just as easily produce guidance that clarifies and narrows sentencing ranges as guidance that inflates them. The direction depends on who gets appointed and how they read the new bail and sentencing legislation the Coalition promises to pass.
The 'community expectations' framing is doing a lot of work in this policy. The phrase has a specific legal history in Victoria. The Sentencing Act already requires courts to consider community expectations in certain contexts, but the phrase is famously stretchy in practice, and appeal courts have traditionally been cautious about treating public sentiment as a sentencing principle. A court explicitly tasked with giving effect to community expectations would be a shift in how that concept works within the system, potentially moving it from a background factor to an active instruction.
The Christmas deadline for bail and sentencing legislation is ambitious. Passing substantive criminal law reform through both houses of Parliament before Christmas would require either a majority in both chambers or negotiation with the crossbench, depending on the make-up of the next Parliament. The Coalition has not detailed the content of the proposed bail and sentencing laws beyond their stated intent.
Wilson's platform now spans the court restructure, the specialist appointments, the bail and sentencing reform package, and the coercive control criminalisation announced with McLeish. It is a comprehensive crime policy pitch, but the court-split element is the most structurally consequential. Redrawing the appeal landscape is the kind of reform that outlasts a single government. Sentencing laws can be amended; a new court, once established and staffed, acquires institutional momentum.
The broader question here is not whether tough sentencing plays politically in Victoria. It plainly does, or Wilson would not be leading with it. The question is whether splitting the Court of Appeal actually delivers the sentencing outcomes the Coalition claims, or whether it simply sets up a new institutional structure that will be shaped by whoever sits on the bench and whatever legislation accompanies it. The policy bundles structural reform together with substantive outcomes in a way that is worth examining closely as the election approaches.
