JPs forced to reduce hours
The Justice of the Peace service in Warragul has been forced to reduce its hours because of insufficient numbers.
The Justice of the Peace service in Warragul has been forced to reduce its hours because of insufficient numbers.
The current service is provided by just 11 JPs who work from the Warragul library. From tomorrow, the hours will be reduced.
The Warragul JPs witnessed 15,000 documents for 4500 people during 2025. In the first five months of this year, more than 2000 people had 7000-plus documents witnessed or certified.
Many of the people using the service had travelled significant distances.
West Gippsland Group of JPs president Bernard Kingsley said more JPs were needed to ensure the Warragul document signing centre could continue to maintain services for the community.
In recent years seven hours of service was provided each day, with 19 JPs on the roster.
Mr Kingsley said the shortage of JPs was a statewide problem across Victoria. But, he said, the Department of Justice and Community Safety had not acknowledged there was an issue. With 3667 registered JPs in Victoria, he said the government had not allocated funding for new appointments.
However, in other states, Mr Kingsley said Queensland had about 80,000 JPs and there were about 75,000 in New South Wales.
Mr Kinglsey said there were fewer JPs in Victoria now than in 1901 when 3700 were available to service a population of 1.2 million.
He called on community members to help send a strong message to local Members of Parliament and candidates in the upcoming election, that Victoria needed to bolster the number of JP volunteers willing to join the rosters at document signing centres.
"In a world that is increasingly requiring the public to provide certified copies of identity documents and statutory declarations for a broad range of purposes, Victorians are being short changed; particularly when all JPs are volunteers and their services are free,"he said.
The new hours of service for JPs at the document signing centre at the Warragul library, starting July 1 are: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 10am to 2pm; and, Wednesday 10am to 4pm.
