Ceremonial - Crennan J - Swearing-in [2005] HCATrans 895 (8 November 2005)

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Ceremonial - Crennan J - Swearing-in [2005] HCATrans 895 (8 November 2005)

Last Updated: 24 November 2005

[2005] HCATrans 895

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

CEREMONIAL SITTING

ON THE OCCASION

OF

THE SWEARING-IN

OF

THE HONOURABLE SUSAN MAREE CRENNAN

AS

A JUSTICE OF THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA

AT

CANBERRA

ON

TUESDAY, 8 NOVEMBER 2005, AT 10.17 AM

Coram:

GLEESON CJ
GUMMOW J
KIRBY J
HAYNE J
CALLINAN J
HEYDON J
CRENNAN J

In addition to the members of the Court the following dignitaries were present on the Bench:

The Honourable Sir Anthony Mason, AC, KBE, retired Chief Justice of Australia

The Honourable Sir Gerard Brennan, AC, KBE, retired Chief Justice of Australia

The Honourable Sir Daryl Dawson, AC, KBE, CB retired Justice of the High Court of Australia

The Honourable Michael McHugh, AC, retired Justice of the High Court of Australia

The Honourable David Malcolm, AC , Chief Justice of Western Australia

The Honourable Michael Black, AC, Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia

The Honourable John Doyle, AC, Chief Justice of South Australia

The Honourable Paul de Jersey, AC, Chief Justice of Queensland

The Honourable James Spigelman, AC, Chief Justice of New South Wales

The Honourable Terence Higgins, Chief Justice of the Australian Capital Territory

The Honourable Marilyn Warren, AC, Chief Justice of Victoria

The Honourable Brian Martin, Chief Justice of the Northern Territory

The Honourable Diana Bryant, Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia

The Honourable Peter Underwood, AO, Chief Justice of Tasmania

Members of the Judiciary seated within the Court:

The Honourable Justice M. Wilcox, Federal Court of Australia

The Honourable Justice J. Spender, Federal Court of Australia

The Honourable Justice P. Gray, Federal Court of Australia

The Honourable Justice P. Heerey, Federal Court of Australia

The Honourable Justice S. Kiefel, Federal Court of Australia

The Honourable Justice S. Marshall, Federal Court of Australia

The Honourable Justice R. Merkel, Federal Court of Australia

The Honourable Justice J. Mansfield, Federal Court of Australia

The Honourable Justice R. Finkelstein, Federal Court of Australia

The Honourable Justice M. Weinberg, Federal Court of Australia

The Honourable Justice R. Gyles, AO, Federal Court of Australia

The Honourable Justice R. Conti, Federal Court of Australia

The Honourable Justice J. Allsop, Federal Court of Australia

The Honourable Justice Annabelle Bennett, AO, Federal Court of Australia

The Honourable Deputy Chief Justice J. Faulks, Family Court of Australia

The Honourable Justice S. Brown, Family Court of Australia

The Honourable President K. Mason, Court of Appeal, New South Wales

The Honourable Justice K. Handley, Court of Appeal, New South Wales

The Honourable Justice M. Tobias, Court of Appeal, New South Wales

The Honourable Justice R. McColl, Court of Appeal, New South Wales

The Honourable Justice P. Bergin, Supreme Court, New South Wales

The Honourable President C. Maxwell, Court of Appeal, Victoria

The Honourable Justice S. Charles, Court of Appeal, Victoria

The Honourable Justice A. Chernov, Court of Appeal, Victoria

The Honourable Justice P. Cummins, Supreme Court, Victoria

The Honourable Justice H. Hansen, Supreme Court, Victoria

The Honourable Justice E. Gillard, Supreme Court, Victoria

The Honourable Justice M. Kellam, Supreme Court, Victoria

The Honourable Justice B. Bongiorno, Supreme Court, Victoria

The Honourable Justice J. Byrne, Supreme Court, Queensland (as President of the Australian Institute of Judicial Administration)

The Honourable Justice J. Douglas, Supreme Court, Queensland

His Honour Chief Judge M. Rozenes, County Court, Victoria

His Honour Judge Davey, County Court, Victoria

His Honour Judge Ostrowski, County Court, Victoria

His Honour Judge Hart, County Court, Victoria

His Honour Judge M. McInerney, County Court, Victoria

Chief Federal Magistrate J. Pascoe, AO

Chief Magistrate I. Gray, Magistrates Court, Victoria

Magistrate F. Jones, Magistrates Court, Victoria

Magistrate M. Doogan, Magistrates Court, Australian Capital Territory

Magistrate L. Hannan, Magistrates Court, Victoria

At the Bar Table the following persons were present:

The Honourable Philip Ruddock, MP, Attorney-General for the Commonwealth

Senator the Honourable Chris Ellison, Minister for Justice and Customs

Mr David Bennett, QC, Solicitor-General for the Commonwealth

Mr Michael Sexton, SC, Solicitor-General for New South Wales

Mr Chris Kourakis, QC, Solicitor-General for South Australia

Ms Pamela Tate, SC, Solicitor-General for Victoria

Mr Walter Sofronoff, QC, Solicitor-General for Queensland

Mr John North, President of The Law Council of Australia

Mr Glenn Martin, SC, representing the President of the Australian Bar Association

Ms Kate McMillan, SC, Chairman, The Victorian Bar

Mr Jonathan Wells, QC, President of the South Australian Bar Association

Mr Ian Harrison, SC, President of The New South Wales Bar Association

Ms Gillian Braddock, SC, President of the Bar Association of Western Australia

Mr Bryan Meagher, SC, President of ACT Bar Association

Mr John McIntyre, President of the Law Society of New South Wales

Ms Victoria Strong, President, Law Institute of Victoria

Mr Greg Walker, President, Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory

Ms Leanne Topfer, President, The Law Society of Tasmania

Mr S. Hulme, AC, QC

Mr P. O’Callaghan, QC

Mr J. Merralls, AM, QC

Mr J. Sher, QC

Mr D.F. Jackson, QC

Mr D. Meagher, QC

Mr D. Grieve, QC

Mr R. Kenzie, QC

Mr T. Tobin, QC

Mr J. Fajgenbaum, QC

Dr J.McL. Emmerson, QC

Mr D. Bloom, QC

Mr C. Jessup, QC

Mr R. Gotterson, QC

Mr R. Robson, QC

Mr R. Macaw, QC

Mr J. Garnsey, QC

Mr J. West, QC

Mr J. Karkar, QC

Mr N. Young, QC

Mr R. Tracey, QC

Mr J. Middleton, QC

Mr A. Howard, QC

Mr M. Adams, QC

Mr D. Curtain, QC

Mr E. Magee, QC

Mr D. Shavin, QC

Mr J. Digby, QC

Mr B. Walker, SC

Mr J. Santamaria, QC

Mr P. Coghlan, QC

Mr J. Ruskin, QC

Mr R. Ray, QC

Mr P. Jopling, QC

Mr G. Pagone, QC

Mr H. Burmester, QC

Mr J. McArdle, QC

Mr M. Kimber, SC

Mr P. Elliott, QC

Mr M. Crennan, SC

Mr N. O’Bryan, SC

Mr D. Beach, SC

Mr C. Golvan, SC

Ms M. Sloss, SC

Mr J. Peters, QC

Ms M. Gordon, SC

Ms J. Davies, SC

Mr Philip Crennan

Mr Daniel Crennan

Mr D. O’Connor

Ms M. Brennan

Mr P. Connor

Mr J. Gleeson

Mr N. Pane

Mr S. O’Meara

Mr S. Anderson

Speakers:

The Honourable Philip Ruddock, MP, Attorney-General for the Commonwealth

Mr John North, President of the Law Council of Australia

Mr Glenn Martin, SC, Vice President of the Australian Bar Association (representing the President of the Australian Bar Association)

Ms Kate McMillan, SC, Chairman of The Victorian Bar

Also present:

Senator the Honourable Paul Calvert, President of the Senate

The Honourable David Hawker, Speaker of the House of Representatives

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

CRENNAN J: Your Honour the Chief Justice, I have the honour to announce that I have received a Commission from His Excellency, the Governor-General, appointing me a Justice of the High Court of Australia. I now present the Commission to your Honour.

GLEESON CJ: Mr Principal Registrar, please read aloud the Commission.

PRINCIPAL REGISTRAR:

Commission of Appointment of a Justice of the High Court of Australia

I, PHILIP MICHAEL JEFFERY, Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, acting with the advice of the Federal Executive Council and under section 72 of the Constitution and section 5 of the High Court of Australia Act 1979, appoint the Honourable Susan Maree Crennan, a Judge of the Federal Court of Australia, to be a Justice of the High Court of Australia commencing on 1 November 2005 until she attains the age of 70 years.

Signed and sealed with the Great Seal of Australia on 6 October 2005. P.M. Jeffery, Governor-General, by His Excellency’s command, Philip Ruddock, Attorney-General.

GLEESON CJ: Justice Crennan, I invite you to take the Oath of Allegiance and of Office.

CRENNAN J: I, Susan Maree Crennan, do swear that I will bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Her Heirs and Successors, according to law, that I will well and truly serve Her in the Office of a Justice of the High Court of Australia and that I will do right to all manner of people, according to law without fear or favour, affection or ill-will. So help me God.

GLEESON CJ: Justice Crennan, I now invite you to subscribe the Oath of Allegiance and of Office.

GLEESON CJ: Mr Principal Registrar, will you please place these documents in the records of the Court.

GLEESON CJ: Justice Crennan, I congratulate you and I invite you to take your seat at the Bench and to proceed to the discharge of the duties of the office of a Justice of the High Court of Australia.

GLEESON CJ: Mr Attorney.

MR RUDDOCK: May it please the Court, on behalf of the government and the people of Australia, it is both an honour and a privilege to be present at this special sitting to welcome the Honourable Justice Susan Maree Crennan and I extend to your Honour congratulations and best wishes on your appointment to the Bench of the highest court in our country.

Your Honour becomes the 45th person to be appointed to this Court, the 13th Victorian and the second woman. Your Honour’s appointment is recognition of the intellect, skill, determination and commitment to justice displayed throughout your career.

Born in Melbourne, your Honour attended Our Lady of Mercy Convent at Heidelberg. Your former teachers speak highly of your intellectual, academic and leadership abilities. Your Honour was school vice-captain in your matriculation year. They also speak warmly of your Honour’s sporting ability, particularly in netball, and the enthusiasm in which you took part in the school’s social life, writing for the school magazine and attending St Patrick Day parades.

Your Honour also revealed a wry sense of humour. In 1962, in your last year of school, tired of the very steep climb up Cape Street to the main gates, your Honour and another friend placed an advertisement in one of the school magazines. The advertisement read “Wanted: One old bomb and a driver to transport two travel weary matrics to school”. Failing that, you asked if some generous person could install a ski lift. Well, your Honour should not face the same problems here. I am reliably informed that the lifts in this building have recently been refurbished and your Honour can travel express from the basement car park to your chambers on the ninth floor.

Since leaving school your Honour has had three distinct careers. You began your first career working as a trademark attorney, ultimately qualifying as an associate of the Institute of Patent Attorneys of Australia after completing a Bachelor of Arts in English literature and language at the University of Melbourne. You met your husband Michael during this time when you were both studying the compulsory subjects of Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon. Your interest in English has continued. One colleague has said you can become as impassioned about points of grammar as you can on the finer points of law.

When you became a teacher in order to work part time while your children were small – meanwhile you also began studying law part time, first at the University of Melbourne and then completing your degree at the University of Sydney. Your Honour was also later to complete a postgraduate diploma in history from the University of Melbourne in which you were awarded First Class Honours for a thesis on aspects of constitutional history.

Within weeks of completing your law degree your third and final career change took place when you were admitted to practice in February 1979. From the beginning you kept very good company, reading with the present Commonwealth Solicitor-General, Dr David Bennett, QC, who is also in Court with us today. Your Honour proved to be talented, energetic and extremely hardworking and also very fast on your feet. The Solicitor-General recalls an occasion when you attended six mentions across five courts in one morning.

At the end of that year your Honour returned to Melbourne with your family and began to practise at the Victorian Bar. Your Honour built a successful broad-based practice developing particular expertise in commercial, constitutional and intellectual property law. You were regularly briefed by the Commonwealth and a number of instrumentalities as well as appearing for numerous other parties of different persuasions.

You also had the distinction of being led by successive Commonwealth Solicitors-General, commencing with Sir Maurice Byers, QC. Your Honour appeared before this Court as a junior on a number of occasions, including for the Victorian Government in the landmark section 92 case of Cole v Whitfield. You have also written widely on a range of subjects. Your Honour’s dissertation on the commercial exploitation of personality was widely recognised as an engaging and instructive account of Australia’s approach to intellectual property.

In 1989, only 10 years after becoming a barrister, your Honour was appointed Queen’s Counsel, a well-earned endorsement of your talents and ability. Within a year your Honour was appointed Senior Counsel assisting the Royal Commission into the collapse of Tricontinental, a $2 billion corporate disaster. The issues were particularly complex and difficult. However, your hard work and intellectual and administrative ability and your skills at cross-examination were widely recognised. One key figure in another corporate collapse from the same year likened being cross-examined by your Honour as going up against some of the all time greats of Australian Rules football. It is a bit like being picked for a fullback against Gary Ablett, he said at the time.

The Royal Commission also provided one of the few occasions in which your Honour has been professionally upstaged. Your Honour was making final submissions with your back to the windows overlooking the Port of Melbourne. As you spoke, opposing counsel, their instructing solicitors and others in the Commission became increasingly distracted. It was quite an unusual experience for your Honour as your Honour’s submissions were normally received at least with polite attention, but you persevered until finally even the opposing counsel stood up to look out the windows. At this point your Honour turned and saw a gigantic fire blazing on Code Island. A lightning strike had ignited more than 8 million litres of toxic chemicals forcing the evacuation of more than 250 people from nearby factories and ships. Total damage then was estimated at more than $20 million. It had taken an event of this magnitude to upstage your Honour.

Just two years ago, in recognition of your ability, your Honour was appointed to the Federal Court where you have served with distinction. The leadership and community spirit you first demonstrated at school has continued throughout your professional life. Your Honour has served on numerous legal and community based committees. In 1993 you were elected Chairman of the Victorian Bar Council, the first women to chair any Bar Council in Australia. One of your most notable achievements was to establish a formal pro bono scheme with the co-operation of the Law Institute and the Victorian Government. The following year your Honour became the first woman President of the Australian Bar Association.

You have also served on the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, on the Board of the Victorian Legal Aid Commission. Your Honour has maintained close ties with the University of Melbourne. You have served as a member of its Law School Foundation and you have championed the scholarship scheme for indigenous people.

Despite the demands of your legal career you and your husband, Michael, have raised three children, Daniel, Brigid and Kathleen, and share the love of travel, music, art and literature. I know Michael, also a distinguished Victorian Silk in your family, and your granddaughter, Hannah, are here with you today. They must be justly proud of your achievements.

I understand that your mother, Marie Walsh, who unfortunately passed away only recently, knew of your appointment to the High Court and was justly very proud.

I know that your Honour’s experience, expertise, wisdom and compassion will ensure that you carry out your new duties with distinction. My belief is endorsed by one who has known you for more than 45 years, Sister Bonaventure, also known as Sister Mary, one of your former school teachers at Our Lady of Mercy Convent in Heidelberg.

Sister Mary set and marked the exam which you won a scholarship to the school. She said your success had not surprised her. Her Honour was, as she said only a few days ago, an outstanding student, and she also had a strong sense of justice and would champion the cause, is what she says of you. If something needed to be put right, she would put it right, to the best of her ability.

On behalf of the Government and the people of Australia I extend to your Honour warmest congratulations on your appointment and very best wishes for a satisfying term of office.

Your Honours, I would also like to take a moment to pay tribute to former Justice, Michael McHugh. Justice McHugh left the Court last week after reaching the compulsory retirement age of 70, the first puisne judge of this Court to reach that age limit. Justice McHugh has served the Australian community with great distinction, a fine barrister, then as a judge of the New South Wales Court of Appeal, and finally, for the past 16 years as a Justice of this Court.

He has made an invaluable contribution to the development of legal thinking and reasoning. Like his distinguished predecessors, Sir Adrian Knox and Sir William Deane, it is well known that Justice McHugh has a keen interest in horse racing. It is therefore appropriate that he could celebrate his first day of retirement with a further flutter on the Melbourne Cup. I wish him a healthy, enjoyable and rewarding retirement. May it please the Court.

GLEESON CJ: Mr North, President of the Law Council of Australia.

MR NORTH: If it please the Court, on behalf of the Law Council of Australia and of the Australian legal profession as a whole, it is my privilege to welcome Justice Susan Crennan to the High Court and to congratulate your Honour on your appointment.

The unanimously positive response to your Honour’s appointment in an age where appointment processes and appointees are being subjected to more and more scrutiny bears obvious testament to your Honour’s qualities. Your Honour takes the 45^th position of Justice of the High Court of Australian in the 102^nd year since judges first began to be appointed to the Court and in doing so you enter into both Australian legal history and privileged company.

Although only the second woman of those 45, as the Attorney has pointed out, your Honour has scored many firsts. There may, however, be little time to reflect on the privileges of office as your Honour is about to embark on one of the most challenging roles that the Australian nation can provide, and while there have been many fractious times in recorded history of this indescribably aged continent and many worse times, there can be no doubt that the Australia of today faces a character test of the kind many Australians have not had to confront before.

The uniqueness of Australia is readily understood; an island continent in the southern hemisphere of a northern hemisphere dominated world, more isolated from its neighbours than most of the world’s nations, populated by people whose ethnic links owe much to many other cultures and countries, an outpost of the old world in the Asia-Pacific, Australia might seem a ready candidate for defensiveness and insularity, but that is not the case. Australians are a remarkably confident and outgoing people and this confidence thankfully manifests itself in its institutions and in the face that it turns to the world.

During its history, its indigenous people have borne the indignities of dispossession, a matter recognised by this Court in Mabo and other cases and they, and later arrivals, have borne together the burdens of modern nation building, Federation, two world wars, extraordinarily technological advancement and the unexpected by-products of globalisation. The High Court has been at the apex of the many upheavals that have beset the nation during its life. None of this should unduly trouble your Honour.

Your Honour comes to the Court with a track record of achievement in life which suggests the ability to cope readily with change and when speaking on the occasion of your welcome to the Federal Court in early 2004, Bob Gotterson, QC, a former President of the Law Council remarked also of your prodigious capacity for work and your deserved reputation for tolerance, fair-mindedness and tact, lightened at appropriate times with a keen sense of humour, along with a fondness for Old Norse - the language, not the family pet - and an understanding of the constitutional significance of events at the Eureka Stockade your Honours judgments will be well worth the wait but modern times, as Charlie Chaplin once pointed out to a different generation, breed modern problems.

The problems of today will require all of the confidence and tolerance that the Australian people and this Court can bring to bear on them. The High Court’s intermediaries in this task will be, as ever, the Australian legal profession. Whether it is a client who regards his home as his castle, a client convicted of a serious criminal offence or possibly not, a powerful commercial entity with much at stake or a government defending itself against an aggrieved citizen, they will come before the Court with lawyers as their representatives.

Lawyers do not rate highly in the minds of many Australians, clearly an aberration given the many sterling qualities of the Australian people I earlier mentioned, but they do some things extraordinarily well. Representing the poor and the otherwise powerless, often these days at their own risk, is an honour of which the legal profession can never be deprived. Your Honour’s own significant engagement in the development of pro bono schemes and your service to the profession has been squarely in that fine tradition.

In its turn, the High Court will be required to discharge the heaviest burden of all. Your Honour is of course already familiar with the freedoms and responsibilities of judicial office. Only those appointed to judicial office can, I imagine, truly know what judicial independence means. Those of us who are destined to die wondering will never really know, but there is a judicial office and there is the office of the Justice of the High Court. The difference of course is about finality.

Your Honour will be intensely conscious of the fact that when you lay aside your pen, or possibly your mouse, after having completed a judgment, a die will have been cast whose stamp will endure for a long time. It will of course endure for a much longer time if you have found a common mind with sufficient of your colleagues, but even dissenting judgments, sometimes seemingly out of step with the times, have an enduring value. So the independence of a High Court Justice is different from that of any other Australian judicial officer because it is more complete.

As liberating as this may seem, the deflating force of a different more burdensome responsibility arrives simultaneously. Your Honour will be invited frequently to assess the actions of the Executive which, as the Chief Justice noted recently at the Commonwealth Lawyers Conference, both responds to and exerts political pressure. The Chief Justice was speaking about the right of citizens to an independent judiciary and he identified legal practitioners as being among the judiciary’s natural allies in the task of explaining to the public and to those in the political branches of government why they need benefit from, and have a right to, an independent judiciary. The Chief Justice’s message, which he says needs to be communicated and constantly reinforced, is that an independent judiciary is indispensable in a free society living under the rule of law.

Your Honour publicly recognised this on first attaining high judicial office when you said the law and the courts have not been free from widespread general attacks upon institutions of authority despite the absolute necessity of promoting their authority and independence in the maintenance of a civil society. You reminded us of Sir Owen Dixon’s words that the law had always been administered by the High Court “as a living instrument not as an abstract study”.

We could hardly agree more and your Honour can embark upon this next both thrilling and daunting stage of your life secure in the knowledge that in pursuit of these truths you and the Court you join will always have the unqualified support of the Australian legal profession. May it please the Court.

GLEESON CJ: Mr Martin, representing the President of the Australian Bar Association.

MR MARTIN: If it please the Court, it is my privilege today, in the unavoidable absence of the President, to express the Australian Bar’s warmest congratulations to your Honour Justice Crennan.

As has already been noted, your Honour was, before appointment to the Federal Court, in practice at the Victorian Bar. Like Justice Callinan, you have been admitted in many Australian jurisdictions. Like Justice Callinan, you were also admitted in the Republic of Ireland. I have been asked by the Chairman of the Irish Bar to inform the Court that the Irish Bar is delighted to see another of its members appointed to this Court and to convey that Bar’s congratulations. Their celebration of Justice Callinan’s appointment concluded a fortnight ago – no doubt the party will continue.

Your Honour was President of the Australian Bar Association in 1995. You were succeeded in that office by your Pupil Master, the Solicitor-General for the Commonwealth. Some very significant matters were dealt with during your term as President. The ABA’s constitution was amended to provide for election of the President rather than appointment by rotation among the States. Though seen by some as a dangerously democratic gesture, it has been a success. You led the way for the uniform recognition of Queen’s Counsel and Senior Counsel by the various jurisdictions so that there was no longer a need for separate applications in each jurisdiction. Possibly the most important and longest lasting step taken during your term was the implementation of annual trips to Bangladesh by members of the Australian Bar to provide advocacy teaching for local practitioners.

The innovations you demonstrated as President of the ABA were not necessarily reflected in every aspect of your life. You demonstrated a healthy disdain for modern technology by declining to learn to drive until about the time you took Silk. That disdain is not unique on this Court. Your mastery of that skill may not yet be complete, as observers have noted that there have been occasions when, rather than executing a U-turn, you prefer to drive around the block.

Your Honour’s appointment has been greeted with unalloyed acclaim by the Bar. The many attributes which equip you so well for your new task have been related already and I will not rehearse them. They are endorsed without reserve. The ABA and its constituent members wish you well.

I should not return to my seat though without saying something about another former President of the ABA and one of its few life members. In an era when age limits are being removed in nearly all circumstances, Justice McHugh has amply demonstrated that the restriction in section 72 of the Constitution will not always work to the advantage of this country.

We join with the Attorney and his comments and express our admiration and gratitude for your contribution to the law, the profession and this nation. May it please the Court.

GLEESON CJ: Ms McMillan, President of the Victorian Bar.

MS McMILLAN: May it please the Court. It is my privilege to appear today on behalf of the Victorian Bar to welcome your Honour on the occasion of your appointment as a Justice of the High Court of Australia.

The President of the Law Institute of Victoria, Ms Victoria Strong, is today representing the solicitors of Victoria. Our collective Victorian hearts are bursting with pride on your elevation to this Court. We in Victoria are very proud that we now have two Victorians as Justices of this Court - two Justices who reflect the essential qualities of the Victorian Bar. Both Justice Hayne and you have been fearless and forthright advocates who have demonstrated a willingness to do the hard work and perform all manner of tasks diligently and without fanfare. The Victorian Bar expresses its gratitude to both of you for your support of the Bar when at the Bar and following appointment to the Bench for your continuing support of the Bar in its activities.

Your Honour’s considerable qualities and talents have been chronicled by others today and in the media following the announcement of your appointment to this Court. However, not all joined in the general celebration of your Honour’s appointment. Your granddaughter, Hannah, a regular weekend visitor to your Honour, had just one question, “If Nanna’s going to be working in Canberra, what is happening about our Sundays?”

The Age newspaper described you as a renaissance woman. Your local paper, The Progress Leader, community newspaper of the year, reported “Susan Brennan, local grandmother, appointed to the High Court”. The description of you as a renaissance woman was coined by your friend of longstanding, colleague and fellow judge, Justice Alan Goldberg at a dinner hosted by the Victorian Bar on 29 August 2003. On that occasion you and others of the Victorian Bar were anointed living legends of the Bar. Justice Goldberg described you on that occasion as “very much a renaissance woman with a passion for English literature and Old Norse”.

I suspect that you are the only officially recognised and designated living legend on this Bench today. However, we all endorse the Attorney’s comments made today about Justice McHugh and the valuable contribution he has made to this Court. No doubt, as the longest serving member of the current Bench, he too deserves to be accorded the status of living legend.

In addition to your service referred to by the earlier speakers, your Honour has served on the Victorian Legal Practice Board, the Victorian Law Foundation and as a member of the Victorian Attorney-General’s Law Reform Council. You have also chaired the Independent Compensation Panel of the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne. Beyond the law, your Honour has been a member of the Royal Women’s Hospital Ethics Committee, a board member of Australian Book Review and a member of the Council of the University of Melbourne.

In your non-legal life you are interested in literature, history, music, piano, violin and cello. You also have strong interests in architecture, travel and you are a keen cook. You are an avid gardener, or at least a very good overseer of Michael and others, who do the hard physical work, and the proud owner of a splendid garden designed by the renowned Edna Walling in the 1920s.

If further proof of your qualities as a renaissance woman were needed, one would merely refer one’s audience to your post-graduate thesis in history, “Transplanted Chartist Spirit: Achieving Manhood Suffrage in Victoria: the Turning Point of 1854.” Your thesis earned you a Diploma in History from the University of Melbourne, First Class Honours.

If further proof of your quality as a grandmother were needed, one would merely refer one’s audience to your most recent visit to your neighbour’s adoring 2-year old, little Jimmy O’Mara. In order to attract your attention whilst you were telling his parents a story, Jimmy was climbing all over you and finally in desperation he gave you a toddler’s whack on the face. With your Honour’s well-earned reputation for patience, you dealt with the issue fittingly by continuing on with your story, remaining unruffled and unperturbed.

Of course Renaissance women are not always known for their mechanical aptitude. We have all read the reports about your Honour’s difficulties when you recently leant on an emergency stop button and shut down the entire electricity plant. We note the Attorney-General’s comments about the recent refurbishment of the lifts of the High Court. This may be a courteous way of saying that the building has been made Crennan-safe.

Your Honour is very proud of your family. No matter how busy you are, both you and your husband, Michael, regularly see a lot of your children and granddaughter, Hannah. Your son Daniel is at the Bar, your daughter Brigid is a writer and historian. Your other daughter, Kathleen, is an undergraduate studying arts/law at the University of Melbourne.

A welcome to any court is an important occasion and of enormous significance. The importance with which we regard today’s welcome is best demonstrated by acknowledging the efforts of so many of your colleagues and friends who have made the journey to Canberra today to join in the welcome for you. The Victorian Bar and the Victorian solicitors wish your Honour a long, distinguished and satisfying career as a Judge of this honourable Court. For Hannah’s sake, we hope that you will be allowed to take more than the occasional Sunday off. May it please the Court.

GLEESON CJ: Justice Crennan.

CRENNAN J: Chief Justice, your Honours, Mr Attorney, Mr North, Mr Martin and Ms McMillan, ladies and gentlemen, I thank you all for coming here today and I thank the speakers for the generosity of their words of welcome and the expressions of good will from those they represent. I am honoured by the presence here today of Justice McHugh. The Court is honoured today, as I am, by the presence of Senator Calvert, the President of the Senate, Mr Hawker, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Senator Ellison, the Minister for Justice and Customs, Sir Anthony Mason, Sir Gerard Brennan and Sir Daryl Dawson, the Chief Justices of the Federal Court, the Family Court and the Supreme Courts of the States and of the Territories, the Solicitors-General for the Commonwealth and the States of New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria and Queensland and the leaders of many Bar Associations and Law Societies. I thank family members, friends, judicial colleagues and former professional colleagues from the Bars for their attendance.

It means a great deal to me that my two brothers and my three sisters have travelled here today, not least because only they know fully the great debt I owe to our late parents. It is a great pleasure to have my husband, Michael, my son, Daniel, with his fiancée, Laura, my daughter, Brigid, with her husband, Paul, my daughter, Kathleen, and my granddaughter, Hannah, all here today.

When I was sworn in as a judge of the Federal Court of Australia I recorded my many debts to others. I mentioned my gratitude to teachers in the different disciplines which shaped my life and mind and to professional colleagues, including great preceptors of the law, all of whom inspired and encouraged me. Without renaming them, I again acknowledge my indebtedness to them.

The last 16 years during which I was in practice at the Victorian Bar was spent on the 17th floor of Owen Dixon West Chambers. It was home to two great leaders of the Victorian Bar in the common law mould: John Barnard, QC and John Hedigan, QC, the latter now a retired judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria. On the floor above was a great exemplar of the commercial and equity practitioner, S.E.K. Hulme, QC. In the building next door there were two of the great exponents of general practice with wide experience of juries: the late Neil McPhee, QC and John Winneke, QC, the recently retired inaugural President of the Court of Appeal of Victoria.

There are others I could have named, some of whom are here today, but for the fact they remain in practice or are serving judges. As barristers, those mentioned all played a vital role in the administration of justice. They inherited and were masters of the high techniques of the common law. They passed these on. No advocate of any consequence at the Victorian Bar during their time was oblivious to their powers or indifferent to their example.

The period from 3 February 2004 until 31 October last, which I spent as a judge of the Federal Court has left me with an indelible impression of the differing claims of trial work and appellate work, and the need for enough time for reflection when undertaking both.

Sir Nigel Bowen charted a distinguished course for the Federal Court, which has been maintained by the hard work and high calibre of its judges who now deal with a much expanded volume of work. My working relationships with all the judges were extremely cordial and constructive and I learnt a great deal from them about the tasks of judgment writing and the efficient management of a judge’s workload. I particularly record my gratitude to my former Chief Justice, Michael Black, not only for the support he gave his judges but also for his many kindnesses.

The work of this Court is, of course, very different. This Court is an integral part of the life of the nation with the responsibility of maintaining the Constitution and interpreting it in accordance with what Alfred Deakin called “the needs of time”. The Court is also the final Court of Appeal in criminal and civil matters, determines disputes between citizens and government and between governments within our federal system. Because judicial power must be exercised in accordance with judicial process, it is the final protector of the rights of citizens. It is impossible not to feel the weight of the responsibilities involved.

Alfred Deakin introduced the judiciary Bill into Parliament on 18 March 1902 with a perfect sense of the distribution of sovereignty under the Constitution and within our democracy. He said of the Constitution:

“ . . . the statute stands . . . but the nation lives, grows and expands. Its circumstances change, its needs alter, and its problems present themselves with new faces. The organ of the national life which preserving the union is yet able from time to time to transfuse into it the fresh blood of the living present is the judiciary of the High Court of Australia.”

He compared changes to the Constitution which could be affected by a referendum with developments by this Court and he said:

“ . . . the court moves by gradual, often indirect, cautious, well considered steps that enable the past to join the future, without undue collision and strife in the present.”

Half a century later on 7 May 1952, on the occasion of first presiding as Chief Justice of this Court in Melbourne Sir Owen Dixon said, as Mr North remarked today, that the High Court had always administered the law “as a living instrument not as an abstract study”. When I first took judicial office I remarked that a living instrument has a past, a present and a future and encompasses both continuity and change.

Now, over a full century later, which has seen the abolition of appeals to the Privy Council in 1986, the High Court has had the ultimate responsibility for the development of Australian common law matching a conception of Australia’s history and nationhood in which all Australians can expect justice according to law.

Over time, particularly the last two decades, there have been many changes in the practices of the Court, the work which comes before it, and the variety of the legal issues of public importance in respect of which special leave is granted. Those developments have occurred against a background of significant social change and major shifts in public and private values, but the images to which I have referred of a judiciary which transfuses fresh blood into our polity and of the law as a living instrument conjure up the human qualities needed for the impartial dispensation of justice according to law.

It has been the high reputation and abilities of the judges of this court which have commanded the confidence of the Australian community which in turn is so essential to the authority of the Court and to the maintenance of our civil society. I am conscious of such matters and the responsibilities they entail and in that connection I am especially conscious of the loss to the Court of my predecessor Justice McHugh. He had a commanding presence and a powerful voice on the Court. He always showed an acute understanding of the way history illuminated the principles of the law and could guide the resolution of a legal problem. He made a great and I am sure enduring contribution to the development of the common law.

With the support of my colleagues, who have all given me a most cordial welcome, and of the profession, and encouraged by the trust and goodwill expressed today, I look forward to discharging my responsibilities as the 45^th Justice appointed to this Court.

GLEESON CJ: The Court will now adjourn to resume sitting at 12 noon.

AT 10.57 AM THE COURT ADJOURNED