In an article published in The Courier on Wednesday, Mr Belcher said he wanted suspended sentences to have immediate punishment conditions attached, penalties to be incurred for lawyers and clients who adjourn too much, and defence lawyers to make submissions on sentence in their opening remarks.

Jeremy Harper, who runs his own practice in Ballarat, acknowledged court time could be better spent, but said the answer was not to limit adjournments.

“A person’s liberty and their rights are too important to be compromised by undue haste or by restricting a defendant’s ability to prepare the best case possible for their plea or contest hearing,” Mr Harper said.

“As for suspended sentences, I believe they are a powerful motivation for a person who has done wrong to get things back on track.

“The government’s recent abolition of suspended sentences for certain offences is another example of the court’s discretion to deal with offenders being inappropriately interfered with.”

Lawyer Dianne Haddon welcomed Mr Belcher’s comments, but disagreed that financial penalties should be imposed on lawyers who adjourn too much.

“I don’t think too many solicitors delay a matter just for the fun of it, if there’s a delay there’s often a good reason for it,” she said.

Ms Haddon said that making a submission on sentence early in a lawyer’s plea should remain up to the individual lawyer.

“Some of us do that, but it’s about weighing up what the offence is and what the court needs to hear first and you’ve got to address the Sentencing Act,” she said.

“If you do it straight off you haven’t dealt with the offending behaviour and the magistrate requires that to be dealt with first.” The Ballarat and District Law Association elected not to comment, as did several other Ballarat-based lawyers.

A Magistrates Court spokesman said the level of pending cases in the Magistrates Court had decreased by 13.8 per cent since 2008-09, after a number of reforms were put in place including the introduction of listing sessions (morning and afternoon), more efficient caseload distribution and increased use of judicial registrars through strategic listing.