Ceremonial - Remarks of Final Sitting of Gaudron J - Sydney S00/2002 [2002] HCATrans 636 (13 December 2002)

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

REMARKS OF THE FINAL SITTING OF

THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE MARY GENEVIEVE GAUDRON

AT

SYDNEY

ON

FRIDAY, 13 DECEMBER 2002, AT 9.34 AM

MR T.E.F. HUGHES, QC: Before your Honours proceed, may I say something about your Honour? I hear on the best authority that this is the last occasion upon which your Honour Justice Gaudron will sit in Sydney, or is sitting in Sydney, before your Honour's retirement from the Court. It is appropriate, I hope, that as the senior practitioner present I should say a few words of farewell and good wishes on behalf of the Bar.

We shall miss your Honour. We shall miss the pungency and the directness of your clearly-expressed contributions to argument. If I may say so, your Honour has demonstrated a great capacity to go straight to the heart of any problem. In that respect, your Honour reminds me of Lord Reid. Like you, he had been a law officer when he took judicial office. We shall also miss your strict adherence to legal principle in the formulation of judgment.

Your Honour came to the Court in February 1987, all but 16 years ago, after establishing a position of pre-eminence in the ranks of law officers of the Crown. In your Honour's distinguished career as a Justice of this Court, you have justified in the fullest possible measure sanguine expectations that people of sound judgment entertained about you when you were appointed. For us it is a pity that your Honour is leaving early. From my perspective, your Honour has the advantage of comparative youngness, but your years of sterling service to the law in this Court entitle you, and well entitle you, to an early release from the unremitting burden - and it is one - of working at the apex of the nation's judicial system.

May I wish your Honour well in your Honour's retirement. If the Court pleases.

GAUDRON J: Thank you, Mr Hughes. Thank you for those very kind words and would you, as the senior practitioner here present, convey my gratitude to the Bar for the assistance they have given me through their argument and through their research in the work that has had to be done. Thank you very much.

Perhaps we will call the first matter now.

AT 9.37 AM THE COURT COMMENCED THE

HEARINGOF SPECIAL LEAVE APPLICATIONS