FOUR Australian judges, including the High Court Justice Michael Kirby, have been put on a United Nations shortlist of candidates to sit on two unprecedented tribunals to help root out nepotism and corruption among UN staff.

The NSW Supreme Court judge Michael Adams, the fluent French-speaking Federal Court judge Brian Tamberlin and the former District, Supreme Court of ACT, Industrial Relations and Federal court judge Rodney Madgwick are the other three.

All from NSW and law graduates of the University of Sydney, they are among the final 24 candidates - half of them women - who will form part of a new two-tier system for the UN's internal justice administration to resolve employment-related disputes involving discrimination, harassment and abuse of authority.

The final 12 will be chosen by the UN General Assembly next month.

Shortlisting of four of the 12 Australians who applied for either full- or part-time positions on the UN Dispute Tribunal and the UN Appeals Tribunal places Australia at the top of the national representation league table. Britain has three candidates on the shortlist and the United States and France each have two.

Others shortlisted from the 237 judicial applicants from 55 countries experienced in administrative law in their national jurisdictions were from Botswana, Nigeria, Uruguay, Moldova-Romania, Ghana, Ireland, New Zealand, Mauritius, Germany, Lithuania and Argentina.

The final 14 judges chosen will have the power to issue binding tribunal decisions in a new body called the UN Dispute Tribunal on matters including bullying, harassment, child abuse and the protection of whistleblowers. The tribunal will replace the system under which peer review bodies could make only non-binding recommendations.

Overseeing the judges is an independent five-member Internal Justice Council that includes the London barrister Geoffrey Robertson, QC, one of the distinguished external jurist members who first proposed the reforms.