Ceremonial - Special Sitting at Melbourne - Welcome to The Honourable Justice David Francis Callinan C00/1998 [1998] HCATrans 152 (19 May 1998)

H I G H C O U R T O F A U S T R A L I A

SPECIAL SITTING

WELCOME TO

THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE IAN DAVID FRANCIS CALLINAN

AT

MELBOURNE

ON

TUESDAY, 19 MAY 1998, AT 9.18 AM

Coram:

CALLINAN J

Speakers:

Mr N.J. Young, QC, Chairman of the Bar Council or Victoria

Mr R.A. Scott, President of the Law Institute of Victoria

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

HIS HONOUR: Mr Young.

MR YOUNG: If your Honour please. Today marks the first sitting of the High Court in Melbourne since your Honour's appointment to the Court. It gives me great pleasure to welcome your Honour to Victoria today. Your Honour's professional achievements are well known and have been widely publicised since your appointment was announced in December last year. Your literary achievements and your Honour's distinguished posts in business and the arts are also by now well known.

For those of us who were fortunate enough to be in Sydney last Saturday, we saw a lengthy article concerning your Honour in the Sydney Morning Herald. Judging by that article, your Honour's achievements are a matter of continuing interest to the media but, then again, Sydney has always had a fascination with gossip and speculation. There has also been considerable comment about the supposed unconventionality of your Honour's appointment to the High Court straight from the Queensland Bar rather than the appointment having come from a State Supreme Court or the Federal Court.

What the public comment has failed to note is that, when appointments to the High Court have come straight from the Bar in recent history, the results for the judicial system have been outstanding. In Victoria we remember well the career of Sir Keith Aickin who, like your Honour, was a leader of the Bar on the eve of his appointment. Sir Daryl Dawson, recently retired from this Court, was a member of the Victorian Bar and Victoria's Solicitor-General when he was appointed to this Court, and of course Justice Gaudron was appointed from the office of Solicitor-General of New South Wales. Barristers may be excused for expressing their delight at the appointment of a High Court Judge straight from the independent Bar. We hope that your Honour's appointment indicates that this avenue of advancement to Australia's highest court has not been forsaken by government.

In the history of the Australian High Court, your Honour is the latest in a series of six Queensland Judges. Three have risen to the rank of Chief Justice, namely, the first Chief Justice, Sir Samuel Griffith, Sir Harry Gibbs and Sir Gerard Brennan. Each of them strongly supported the independent Australian Bar. The other Queensland High Court Judges were of course Sir Charles Powers and Sir William Webb.

Your Honour has held high office in the legal profession. You were the President of the Queensland Bar Association between 1984 and 1987. In 1984 and 1985 your Honour was President of the Australian Bar Association and your Honour has served as a councillor of the Law Council of Australia. As a barrister, your Honour appeared in many jurisdictions, including Victoria. It gives us great pleasure to know that your Honour will continue to pay regular visits to our refreshing climate, whether as a member of this Court or whether it is only to compare drafts with that other notable judicial playwright, Chief Justice Phillips of the Victorian Supreme Court.

Members of the Victorian Bar look forward to appearing before you. We look forward to your Honour's contribution to the law of this State and we hope that we will frequently have the opportunity to extend to you our hospitality. On behalf of the Victorian Bar, I congratulate your Honour on your appointment and I wish you a long and rewarding judicial career. If your Honour pleases.

MR SCOTT: Justice Callinan. On behalf of the 8,000 practising solicitors in the State of Victoria, it gives me great pleasure to welcome your Honour to the first sitting of this Court, with your Honour a member of it, in Victoria. When I claim to represent all solicitors in Victoria, I am perhaps taking some small degree of licence. As membership of the Law Institute of Victoria is now voluntary after 140 years of compulsion, I ought only to speak on behalf of those solicitors who are members of this Institute. I am, however, pleased to be able to advise the Court that this figure represents 90 per cent of all solicitors in private practice in the State. Sadly, for those unrepresented 10 per cent, I have no specific instructions, but I am confident they too they would agree with my sentiments.

When Mr McCafferty welcomed your Honour on behalf of the Queensland Law Society several weeks ago, he recounted this story: that your Honour had contributed much to the education and, indeed, edification of the solicitors of your home State, including a highly praised series of lectures on the then new Evidence Act in 1977. Apparently payment for such CLE presentations has usually been a bottle of scotch, but the quality and extent of your Honour's contribution brought forth an entire case of Glenfiddich. This caused me to wonder what the payment might have been had your Honour chosen to discuss something such as the Income Tax Assessment Act.

In recent times this Court has become a target for a host of ill-informed assertions. Its decisions have, in our view, been courageous and far-sighted. Given your Honour's now widely-known background as a figure in the arts, may I recall what his Honour the Chief Justice of the High Court, Sir Gerard Brennan, said at the 30th Australian Legal Convention in Melbourne last September, quoting Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons:

This Country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast.....and if you cut them down.....d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?

The High Court is about making sure that we are all able to stand upright, no matter who we are, no matter what our background, and no matter from where those winds might blow. In this, your Honour's integrity and sense of purpose gives the Law Institute much confidence.

On behalf of the solicitors of Victoria, I wish your Honour a long and successful and enjoyable career on the Bench. May it please the Court.

HIS HONOUR: Mr Young, Mr Scott, and those whom you represent, I thank you very much for the welcome and the support that you have given me today. There is no doubt that the legal profession may only operate efficiently and in such a way as to provide an assurance of satisfaction to those who have to resort to it if each branch gives to the other branches of the profession, much active support and encouragement in an unstinting way.

For the support and encouragement you have offered me today, I am very grateful, particularly when, as now, transition to the High Court from some other branch of the legal profession is perhaps not the same simple and easy process it once was.

I am very pleased to be sitting here as a Judge in Melbourne for the first time. I notice among you, people with whom I have had professional associations in the past, and I thank you for attending today.

The fact that all of you are here serves to emphasise two important matters: the national character of the legal profession of Australia now; and the position of the High Court as an integral part of the justice system of Victoria. The view that I hold, and I believe it to be shared by my colleagues, is that it is of fundamental importance that the Court not confine all of its sitting days to Canberra.

It was fairly obvious to me before my appointment, from reading judgments of the judges of this State - I might say that I acquired a set of the Victorian Reports very early in my professional life - from being briefed by local solicitors and by appearing with and against members of the local Bar, that the Victorian profession set very high standards indeed. Everything that I have seen since I began to sit as a Judge of this Court that has originated from this State has reinforced that impression.

I am conscious that the last person to come to this Bench direct from the ranks of the Bar was Sir Keith Aickin, a highly distinguished lawyer and barrister whose work and career as a Judge were of the finest calibre. I am also aware that I have come to this Bench only very shortly after the retirement from it of another very admirable Victorian jurist, Sir Daryl Dawson, before whom I had the honour and the pleasure to appear on a number of occasions. Both of these eminent Victorians have set the highest of standards to which I would like to be able to aspire.

I thank you all for your presence here today, for the warmth of your greetings and the confidence that you have expressed in me. Thank you.

AT 9.28 AM THE COURT ADJOURNED