Ceremonial - Farewell to Hayne J - Canberra [2015] HCATrans 105 (13 May 2015)

High Court of Australia Transcripts

[Index] [Search] [Download] [Help]

---

Ceremonial - Farewell to Hayne J - Canberra [2015] HCATrans 105 (13 May 2015)

Last Updated: 18 May 2015

[2015] HCATrans 105

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

REMARKS TO FAREWELL

THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE KENNETH HAYNE, AC

AS A JUSTICE OF THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA

AT

CANBERRA

ON

WEDNESDAY, 13 MAY 2015, AT 10.00 AM

FRENCH CJ: Today marks the last occasion on which the Honourable Justice Kenneth Hayne will sit with us as a member of this Court. His Honour attains the age of 70 on 5 June and, by force of section 72 of the Constitution, his term as a Justice of the Court will expire on that day.

I acknowledge the presence in Court today of the Attorney-General of the Commonwealth, the Solicitor-General of the Commonwealth, Mr Colbran representing the Law Council of Australia, Mr O’Sullivan representing the Australian Bar Association and Mr Peters, the President of the Victorian Bar. I thank them for their attendance on this occasion.

Before he was appointed to this Court on 22 September 1997, his Honour had served for five and a half years as a Judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria. His signal achievements as a scholar, as a barrister and as a judge before his appointment to this Court were fully recounted upon his swearing-in at his official welcome to this Court in 1997. In the 17 years and eight months that he has held office as a Justice of this Court, his Honour has served with three Chief Justices and 13 other Justices. He has written 412 judgments, 400 of them in Full Court matters. Many of them have been published as judgments in which other members of the Court have joined.

Through his judgments, his Honour has left an enduring legacy of thoughtful exposition and development of the law in all the areas in which this Court exercises jurisdiction. He has also worked tirelessly in discharging the responsibility which each of us shares for the administration of the Court and has brought to that task practical judgment informed by a prodigious corporate memory and a commitment to continuing improvement in the management and administration of the Court, particularly in the fields of information technology and library services.

His Honour’s perspective has also been outward looking with a particular interest in engagement with regional courts. He has served for some years as Chair of the Secretariat of the Asia Pacific Judicial Reform Forum, bringing together regional courts under his chairmanship to explore ways of improving court practices and administration. Those ways have included the production of a manual largely funded by the United Nations Democracy Fund entitled Searching for Success in Judicial Reform: Voices from the Asia Pacific Experience. The United Nations Development Program which evaluated the APJRF and its project in 2009 described it as having a vibrant future with the commitment of its members to build an open and transparent judiciary which will uphold the rule of law.

With his wife, Justice Michelle Gordon, who will succeed him on this Court, Justice Hayne has also found time to deliver to law students in the Melbourne University Law School courses of lectures on statutory interpretation, a topic which is at the centre of much of the work of this Court, of courts throughout Australia and the legal profession generally. He has also contributed to the development of a best practice guide in relation to that subject by the Council of Australian Law Deans.

We will miss his experience, the wisdom that comes with it and the reflective intelligence that has informed his approach, which has always been profoundly collegial, to the judicial work of the Court. Counsel will no doubt miss the metaphors accompanying points made from his Honour’s seat on the Bench, including references to the “knife in the napkin” and the “killing ground”. Not so many counsel will miss the devastating questions sometimes emanating from his Honour: “Help me to understand better than I do now the submission you have just put”.

On behalf of all his colleagues, past and present, we thank his Honour for his service to the Court and his friendship with all of us. I personally thank him for his generous support and counsel. We wish him well in the next phase of what we know will be a continuation of his working life, and we look forward to seeing him on future social occasions at this Court as the accompanying person of his successor.

The Court will now adjourn to reconstitute.

AT 10.07 AM THE MATTER WAS ADJOURNED