Ceremonial Sitting of the Full Court
for the Swearing in and Welcome of the Honourable Justice Rangiah
Transcript of proceedings
THE HONOURABLE JAMES ALLSOP AO, CHIEF JUSTICE
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE DOWSETT AM
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE GREENWOOD
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE COLLIER
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE LOGAN RFD
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE REEVES
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE RANGIAH
BRISBANE
9.29 AM, TUESDAY, 13 AUGUST 2013
RANGIAH J: Chief Justice, I have the honour to announce that I have received a commission from Her Excellency the Governor-General appointing me a judge of the Federal Court of Australia. I now present my commission.
ALLSOP CJ: Thank you, Justice Rangiah. District Registrar, please read the commission aloud.
DISTRICT REGISTRAR: Commission of appointment of a judge of the Federal Court of Australia. I, Quentin Bryce AC CVO, Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia acting with the advice of the Federal Executive Council and under section 72 of the Constitution and subsection 6(1) of the Federal Court of Australia Act 1976 appoint Mr Darryl Cameron Rangiah, one of her Majesty's counsel to be a judge of the Federal Court of Australia assigned to the Brisbane Registry beginning on 13 August 2013 until he attains the age of 70 years. Signed and sealed with the great seal of Australia on 5 August 2013, Quentin Bryce, Governor-General, by her Excellency's command, Mark Dreyfus QC, Attorney-General.
ALLSOP CJ: Thank you. Justice Rangiah, I now invite you to take the affirmation of office.
RANGIAH J: I, Darryl Cameron Rangiah, do solemnly and sincerely promise and declare that I will bear true allegiance to her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II or heir and successors according to law that I will well and truly serve her in the office of judge of the Federal Court of Australia and that I will do right to all manner of people according to the law without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.
ALLSOP CJ: Thank you. I now invite you to subscribe to the affirmation. District Registrar, I hand you the commission and the affirmation of office and ask you to record them in the records of the court. Congratulations Justice Rangiah. Mr Fredricks.
MR FREDRICKS: May it please the court. First, I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and pay my respects to their elders past and present. It is a privilege for me to welcome you, Justice Rangiah as a judge of the Federal Court of Australia. Other commitments have prevented the Attorney-General, The Honourable Mark Dreyfus from attending a ceremonial sitting but on this special occasion he has asked me to convey to you the heartiest of congratulations and the best wishes of the people of Australia. I also acknowledge the presence here today of the Honourable Chief Justice Allsop, the Honourable Chief Justice de Jersey, the Honourable Justice McMurdo, current and former justices and distinguished guests. It is wonderful to see your Honour's partner, Grace, daughters Priam and Lillian and son Joseph in attendance today.
The presence of so many of your friends and colleagues here today attests to the many strong personal and professional connections you have forged. Indeed, one of your former bar colleagues advises that she has moved a conference in order to attend this special occasion today declaring that she would "not miss this ceremony for the world". Your Honour, prior to studying law you undertook a Bachelor of Economics at the Australian National University which you completed in 1985. Deciding that a career in banking was not your calling your Honour returned to Queensland to commence your Bachelor of Laws graduating from the Queensland University of Technology in 1991 with honours. Your Honour started your legal career at Paul Richards & Associates in 1986 during which time you completed your articles along with Tony McAvoy, now a distinguished native title barrister in New South Wales.
Mr Richards who I understand is here today cites watching you and his other protÉgÉs reaching such eminence in the legal profession as his finest achievement. You continued with Paul Richards & Associates until 1990 when your Honour became an Associate to former Justice Spender of this court who is sitting on the bench today. I understand, your Honour, the Honourable Justice Spender made an indelible impression on your Honour serving as a mentor in your legal career and is a person with whom you share a close and enduring friendship. In 1991 you were admitted as a barrister of the Supreme Court of Queensland. At the Queensland Bar your Honour practised predominantly in administrative law, commercial law, native title, personal injury, industrial cases and appellate matters across Federal and State courts. In 2008 your Honour was appointed Queens Counsel having built a strong reputation across the areas of law in which you specialised.
Among your many achievements at the bar in 2011 your Honour was part of the legal team representing the Kalkadoon people and assisted them to secure recognition of their traditional rights and interests to territory in and around Mt Isa. A momentous native title consent determination was made on 12 December 2011. More than 40 parties agreed to the determination bringing Aboriginal people, pastoralists, mining interests and all three levels of government together to make history in the North West Queensland mining town. As an advocate you have been described as displaying an incredible clarity of mind allowing you to ably navigate the thrust and parry to distil the crux of the argument. Colleagues have also commented on the bravery with which your Honour has displayed in running meritorious or what maybe considered novel arguments, having the courage to persevere and stand behind your convictions, channelling your energies towards the end goal, the delivery of social justice.
Your Honour has extensive tribunal experience having served as a member first of the Queensland Anti-discrimination Tribunal and then the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal. As a member of the Queensland Anti-discrimination Tribunal your Honour adjudicated a range of matters involving alleged unlawful discrimination, harassment, vilification and victimisation claims. The often vexed nature of such matters has consistently required your Honour to adeptly balance fundamental rights and freedoms including those of targeted minority groups and aggrieved individuals. No doubt the careful contemplation and analytical skill you displayed when dealing with those cases will be invaluable to you as you take up your position on the bench. Your Honour also served as chair of the Queensland Fisheries Tribunal from 2000 to 2009. I understand your Honour's well-honed knowledge of Fisheries Law extend beyond the statute books to the ocean itself with your Honour being a 'mad keen' fisherman, the passion which you share with your son, Joseph.
Over many years your Honour has tirelessly committed to providing pro bono advisory and advocacy assistance to individuals and groups in the Queensland community. Your colleagues at the bar while proud of your appointment to the bench will lament the loss it will represent for pro bono services across the Queensland community. Other speakers will expand upon your Honour's considerable contributions in this respect but I should note that it is clear the trajectory of your legal career at the bar has been dictated by a genuine ethos to give to those in need in the community, to be heard and to have their rights determined. Your colleagues at the bar attest that your modus operandi was always if a pro bono case had a shred of merit and you had any capacity to assist you unhesitatingly signed up for the task.
Your Honour has also been a regular and enthusiastic contributor to various legal committees and organisations. This has included membership to the Federal Court's Administrative Law and Native Title Committees, the Federal Court Committee of the Queensland Bar Association and the Migration Law Committee of the Law Council of Australia. Your Honour, despite a bustling practice at the bar and an ever mounting pro bono case load I am told that you have managed to find time for a number of extra-curricular activities. Apart from fishing your great loves include cricket, AFL football and spending quality time with your family. I understand your Honour is a rarity in Innisfail for having formed a passion for AFL football. You supported the Brisbane Bears and then the Lions though the tough years of wooden spoons and was rewarded with the miraculous three-peat, there successive premierships from 2001 to 2003. I understand your Honour also revelled in the fact along with the majority of people in this room that two of those victories were against Collingwood.
Your Honour is recognised as a deeply engaged and loving father to Priam, Lillian and Joseph. Your "retiring, yet talismanic presence" at countless preparation meetings for school debates has afforded all competitors a high degree of tactical nous resulting in no small success with state champions and runners-up among their notable achievements. Your Honour's penetrating analysis of the tactics and skills of netball are I understand owed to the many hours spent courtside at your daughter's games. Your Honour is also well versed in the finer points of the cover drive at cricket because you have assiduously coached your son and the school team in the craft. Your Honour, in a paper entitled, Good Judge, the Honourable John Morden, a former Associate Chief Justice of Ontario defined such a person as one who:
Has a passion to do justice combined with the knowledge and skills necessary to give effect to that passion.
Your Honour's passion is evident not only in 20 years at the bar but particularly in the breadth and depth of your pro bono work. Your Honour is certainly a person possessed of the more intangible qualities of mind and heart, fairness it has been observed by one of your colleagues is writ large in the fibre of your being. Your Honour will be an asset to the bench not simply for your fine intellect but because of your innate character. Your Honour, on behalf of the Commonwealth of Australia and the people of Australia I congratulate you on your appointment and welcome you to the bench of the Federal Court of Australia. May it please the court.
ALLSOP CJ: Before I call on you Mr Traves, I apologise Justice Rangiah of having exalted you to follow the script I didn't do so myself. May I belatedly welcome you on behalf of as warmly as I possibly can on behalf of all the judges of the court, from all the registries and also welcome The Hon Jeffrey Spender here to sit on this very special day for both you and he. Mr Traves.
MR TRAVES QC: May it please the court. It is a privilege to appear here today on behalf of the Bar Association of Queensland and the Australian Bar Association at this special sitting of the court to welcome, your Honour Justice Rangiah to the Federal Court of Australia. It's always a formidable task to address the court after a representative of the Commonwealth Attorney who notwithstanding the times is plainly well resourced. Your Honour's career and interests have been well chronicled. May I make these brief remarks, however, on behalf of your colleagues at the bar? Your Honour, is known among your colleagues for your diligence in industry, for your ability to identify and articulate the important points in a case and for your quiet but skilful and charming advocacy.
Your humanity sets you apart, your decency, your sincere interest in the community, your sense of fairness and respect for all around you. You are deeply conscious of the privilege that we in the legal profession have to represent before the courts those who are in need, whose rights have been challenged by the State, whose fate through chance of circumstance calls for one educated in the law to help. Your Honour's practice has naturally gravitated to cases involving important points of public law and human rights. Your interest and particular expertise in administrative law, native title, and immigration and public interest law will of course serve you and the community well in the discharge of your judicial tasks. So too will your Honour's experience on the Queensland Anti-Discrimination and Queensland Civil and Administrative tribunals.
You've had the good fortune in your formative legal years to be the associate to his Honour, Justice Spender, who sits as a guest on the bench today. Try as I might, I cannot imagine that Justice Spender would have been an easy taskmaster for an associate, although consistent with his Honour's judicial demeanour, if I may respectful say, his Honour would have been demanding but respectful of competence. I have no doubt that you learned a great deal from Justice Spender about the law and advocacy. I'm also informed by the most reliable of sources that during your time as an associate, your Honour took the opportunity to learn from your judge to appreciate other important things in life like fine dining and fine wine and travel, and that in his Honour's opinion, this early broadening of your horizons will serve you well in the future.
Your Honour has been a popular and much respected member of the Queensland Bar. The court will not have failed to notice the support from your colleagues here today. Your Honour's colleagues at North Corner Lane Chambers will miss you as will we all. May I, on behalf of those who stand with me today and behalf of all those whom I represent, congratulate your Honour on your appointment and wish you well in your new position. May it please the court.
ALLSOP CJ: Mr Brown.
MR I. BROWN: May it please the court. I rise to speak on behalf of the solicitors' branch of the profession, the Queensland Law Society and the Law Council of Australia to welcome your Honour's appointment as a judge of the Federal Court of Australia. It's a clear sign of the popularity of your Honour that it's standing room only in the court. The President of the Law Council, Michael Colbran QC, is unfortunately unable to be here today as he is travelling overseas, I would like to convey his best wishes on today's happy occasion. Mr Fredricks and Mr Traves have spoken far more eloquently than I can about your Honour's achievements; however, in keeping with my role as the representative of the solicitors' branch, I've undertaken a suitable degree of legwork in order to appropriately extol your Honour's virtues and to recognise the significance of your elevation to the bench. However, clearly my leg work has been inadequate as I was not aware of your Honour's netball qualifications.
We are all of us, the sum of our beliefs, and those beliefs are largely formed and moulded by our experiences. I've sought the assistance of a number of my colleagues in reflecting upon their experiences and reminiscences of working with your Honour. I think those experiences powerfully and accurately convey the depth of your Honour's commitment to social justice and the rule of law and above all, illustrate the depth of your Honour's humanity. I should add that there were no shortage of suggested anecdotes for today, some more suitable than others in this environment.
It is perhaps not widely known that your Honour grew up just outside of Innisfail. It was here that I understand your Honour developed a love of fishing, albeit in waters heavily populated by crocodiles. Your Honour bravely traversed these creeks and rivers in nothing more substantial than a small canoe, in all likelihood, smaller than the crocodiles lurking close by. These experiences undoubtedly placed you in good stead when dealing with the rigors and challenged of life at the bar. That isn't to suggest that there's any analogy between lawyers and crocodiles.
Your Honour's early experience has served you well in your role as the chair of the Queensland Fisheries Tribunal. I understand your Honour heard over 300 cases and never once was appealed. An impressive record indeed. These experiences, however, equipped your Honour with far more valuable tools, the ability to converse with clients, many of whom were very keen fisherman. This ability to communicate with people whom your Honour was representing and to put those people at ease in the very stressful environment of litigation is counted by those who briefed you as one of your Honour's strongest attributes and in some ways equally as important as your incisive intellect.
Your Honour's commitment to social justice and upholding the rule of law is recognised by all. Your Honour has a long and illustrious history of supporting and undertaking pro bono legal work for various community legal centres, including Caxton Legal Centre, the Tenants' Legal Service and the Environmental Defender's Office. Your Honour has also for a number of years provided assistance to QPILCH, both as counsel and as a member of the committee and executive.
On a somewhat less serious note, your Honour's passion for AFL has been referred to. I somewhat reluctantly add, and I say reluctantly because again this has been revealed by my legwork, that your Honour's career as an underaged AFL footballer has been described as less than illustrious; however, your support for the Brisbane Lions has never once been in doubt. Your Honour has long championed the education and mentoring of young lawyers. In some quarters, this mentoring has become legendary. One firm in particular recalls fondly the eagerly anticipated annual CLE presented by your Honour followed by lunch, which on more than one occasion, became dinner and for the stout-hearted, went well beyond.
On behalf of the solicitors of Queensland, the 9,000 members of the Queensland Law Society and the Law Council of Australia, I would like to wish your Honour every success in your new role. It will have new challenges and new opportunities, but through application of your exceptional intellect, diligence and above all, humanity, I am in doubt that it will be a role at which you will excel. May it please the court.
ALLSOP CJ: Justice Rangiah.
RANGIAH J: Chief Justice, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, President of the Court of Appeal, colleagues, former colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, I am acutely conscious of my obligation and responsibility to our system of justice that comes with appointment as a judge of this court. Perhaps surprisingly to some in view of what has been said today, I take a deeply conservative view of our legal system. Public discussion about our system of justice in Australia usually focuses upon its weaknesses and failures. There is only rarely public discussion about its strengths. There should be because I firmly believe that our system is amongst the fairest in the world and that by and large it does deliver justice.
There are very few places in the world where everyone, regardless of political opinion, or religion, or race, or the tide of public opinion, can obtain a fair trial. In my practice as a barrister, I represented, amongst many others, alleged terrorists, murderers and disgraced politicians. Sometimes I even represented more reputable people. I may not always have agreed with the views robustly expressed by the judge or the decision that was made, but whoever the client, I never once walked away believing that my client had not had a fair trial.
That is not to say there cannot be improvements. There are mistakes, but then there is provision for the correction of mistakes.
There are people who are denied access to our legal system by high filing fees and other legal costs, but that is ameliorated to some extent by organisations such as the Queensland Public Interest Clearing House and the Refugee and Immigration Legal Service and the many barristers and solicitors who provide legal assistance without charge to people who would otherwise be denied equal access to the courts. Those organisations and those individual lawyers epitomise our society's regard for the public good that makes our legal system work.
The quality of any system of justice is the sum of its parts, and in our system, those parts include judges, administrators and lawyers. I have been proud to be a part of the Australian justice system as a lawyer and now I look forward to serving it in a different role as a judge.
My parents brought their children from South Africa to Australia because they didn't want us to grow up under the apartheid regime. We were welcomed by the Australian community and provided with many opportunities we might not otherwise have had. My appointment as a judge of the Federal Court of Australia is another such opportunity. I am both humbled and proud to be given the opportunity to contribute to the Australian community that has given me so much. I now have the chance to make a contribution in a different way to our system of law and perhaps to even help to make it a little better. I am grateful for that opportunity.
I hope also to serve as an example to those groups of people who are not traditionally well represented in the legal profession, particularly men and women of indigenous, African and Asian backgrounds, and to show that if they work long enough and hard enough, the opportunities will come.
One of the many ways in which I have been fortunate in my legal career is that I have always been welcomed into the legal community in Queensland. You've heard I've started my legal career by obtaining five year articles of clerkship with a sole practitioner, Paul Richards. Paul ran the Aboriginal Legal Service and did much of the civil work for the Aboriginal community in Brisbane. He conducted his practice with immense courage intellectual, emotional and even physical courage at times. Among the many lessons I learnt from him is that a lawyer should always be outraged at injustice. I am greatly indebted to Paul for all that he taught me.
I was fortunate to obtain an associateship with Justice Spender in the Federal Court. I have enormous respect for him and even to this day, I'm not sure that I can quite bring myself to call him Jeff rather than judge. He was well known for his razor-sharp intellect, but for me the quality that stood out was his innate sense of justice. I was also taught much by Justice Spender's personal assistant, Lorraine Delacey, about topics ranging from cabinet ministers of the 1970s to how to make conversation with judges when you have little to say. I don't think I ever really got the hang of the latter.
I feel that my appointment to the Federal Court is a sort of homecoming having spent so much time here during my career. I am particularly pleased to see that staff like Peter Robinson and Dorothy White have bridged the gap between when I started as an associate and when I returned as a judge.
After my associateship, I went to Level 20 of the Inns of Court, where I was welcomed by James Crowley, Kate Holmes and Kerry Boulton, amongst others. I shared a room with Sir James Killen and a stuffed moose for several years, and we were all firm friends. I can't imagine that anyone would have enjoyed this occasion more than Sir James.
Most recently I have been in chambers at Level 30 of the Santos building next door, so in one sense, this isn't much of a move. The members of my chambers are a terrific bunch of people, and I have very much appreciated their companionship. I particularly want to mention Richard Lilley. His wise advice, kindness and gentle humour I have very much appreciated. I would also like to acknowledge my wonderful personal assistant of the last 10 years, Leanne Bowles.
I am very happy that my parents are here. They always said that the only thing they would give me was an education and the rest was up to me. The reality is, however, that they given my brothers, my sister and I far more than they will ever know. My sister, Ryanne, and brothers, David and Devyn, and their families are present. As a family, we are all very proud of each other's achievements and I am glad that they are able to share this occasion with me.
I would also like to acknowledge my parents-in-law, John and Lorna Kahlert, and my brother-in-law, Paul Kahlert and his family.
I am inordinately proud of my children, Priam, Lillian and Joseph. Joseph sidled up to me the other day and told me that he had written something he would like me to say today, so here it is. I will give you the abridged version:
"I, Darryl Rangiah, would like to give many thanks to my dearly loved children. I would never have got anywhere without their emotional, physical and financial help. Without them, I would never have amounted to anything. Altogether, I would just like to thank them, especially Joe."
I can't recall the financial help they've given me, but apart from that, I agree.
I think that many if not most of you know my partner, Grace Kahlert. Those of you who know her will know of her kindness, her integrity and strength. Grace has the capacity to give me a healthy dose of reality when I need it, but she has also been my strength when that is what I have needed. I owe her more than I can possibly express.
I am very grateful to all of you for your presence today and your support. Thank you.
ALLSOP CJ: Court will now adjourn.