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High Court of Australia Transcripts |
Last Updated: 15 March 2017
H I G H C O U R T O F A U S T R A L I A
SPECIAL SITTING
AN OCCASION TO WELCOME
THE HONOURABLE CHIEF JUSTICE SUSAN MARY KIEFEL AC
AND
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE JAMES JOSHUA EDELMAN
AT
BRISBANE
ON
FRIDAY, 10 MARCH 2017, AT 9.30 AM
KIEFEL CJ
EDELMAN J
Speakers
Mr C.L. Hughes, QC, President of the Queensland Bar Association
Ms C.A. Smyth, President of the Queensland Law Society
TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS
KIEFEL CJ: Mr Hughes.
MR C.L. HUGHES: If it please the Court.
It is with great pleasure that I speak today on behalf of the Bar Association of Queensland to welcome Chief Justice Kiefel and Justice Edelman on this, the first occasion, on which you sit in the State of Queensland in your new roles in this Court.
Chief Justice Kiefel, you are known to many of us in Queensland and both you and your husband have many friends in this State in the legal profession, and at the Bar in Queensland.
Justice Edelman, in the short time you have been resident with your family in Queensland, you have gained many friends at, and a fine reputation with, the Queensland Bar.
Chief Justice Kiefel, I had the honour of speaking at your swearing-in in Canberra on the morning of 30 January this year. As those of us who were present then well know, I was the fourth person to address the Court, following the Attorney-General of the Commonwealth and the Presidents respectively of the Law Council of Australia and the Australian Bar Association.
By the time I rose, as I said then, there was little left to be said about you, Chief Justice, but there was much more to be thought of you. By now, even more things have been said about you and I am happy to report that everything that I have heard both publicly and privately about your appointment as Chief Justice has been of a startlingly positive nature. In some quarters, your appointment is regarded rather more as an ascension than an elevation.
It is not the occasion today to repeat all that has been said but there are some things which I need, now that I have you on our home soil, I must repeat briefly.
I should remind those present here that your Honour was the first woman Silk in the State of Queensland and one of the first two women to be a judge of the Supreme Court. You were the first woman appointed to the Brisbane Registry of the Federal Court. You sat on the Federal Court for over 13 years and now you have sat in this Court for the decade since 2007.
It is a source of some personal satisfaction for me that you are a proud graduate of Cambridge University where your scholarship was recognised and rewarded and where you met your husband, Michael.
As far as the barristers of Queensland are concerned, there are two matters which I have said before which I must repeat this morning. First, your Honour’s elevation has been the natural result of not just your intelligence and your aptitude for the law and your application of it but also because of the fair, patient and intellectual manner in which you have conducted the courts in which you have sat and over which you have presided.
The second matter is this. It is fashionable these days to say when a woman achieves great things in her career that she is role model for all women. That may well be so, but as I have said publicly before, your Honour’s career path and your Honour’s achievements are both an inspiration and a role model for all the people of this country, regardless of their involvement in the legal profession or not, regardless of their race or creed, and regardless of their gender.
The barristers of Queensland look forward to appearing before you over the next decade and we are proud that you have come from our ranks.
Justice Edelman, you have had a remarkable career in the law and in academia. It is perhaps a nice balance to her Honour the Chief Justice’s scholastic history that your Honour went to “the other place”. Indeed, as is often said, you were the youngest ever Professor of Law at the University of Oxford.
The list of your scholastic and legal achievements was set out in detail by the Attorney-General, the Honourable Senator George Brandis, QC, a member of our Bar at your swearing-in on the afternoon of 30 January this year in Canberra. That list is, put simply, without equal.
Those of us who have had the pleasure of meeting you are aware that if your academic and legal achievements to date are overshadowed, it is only by your personal charm and warmth. The people of Australia are lucky that at such a young age you have determined to give your career to the advancement of this Court.
Like the Chief Justice, you bring to your new role in this Court a fine, well-known and well-regarded intellect. Like the Chief Justice, you bring to your role a fine judicial demeanour. The barristers of Queensland also look forward to appearing before you, Justice Edelman, not just over the next decade but perhaps over the next three decades, although, as I approach six decades of my own, there is a strong possibility I may focus only on the next two decades.
The Queensland Bar is proud that you and your wife and your children have chosen and adopted the State of Queensland for what we hope is more than the foreseeable future.
May it please the Court.
KIEFEL CJ: Thank you, Mr Hughes. Ms Smyth.
MS C.A. SMYTH: May it please the Court.
It is my very great honour and privilege to welcome, on behalf of the Solicitors of Queensland, the nation’s highest and most esteemed Court to our great State.
I am sure I will be forgiven if I take some pride in having the honour of welcoming Australia’s first female Chief Justice of the High Court to her first sitting in Queensland in that role. That it has taken so long for a woman to hold that office is perhaps a subject for another day. It is worthy of note, however, that we have come a long way since 1915 when Queensland’s then Chief Justice Pope Cooper begrudgingly admitted Queensland’s first female solicitor, Agnes McWhinney. I am pleased to note that the objections to women in the legal profession have melted away under the crushing weight of our unassailable determination and competence and Queensland continues to lead the way with women overtaking men in our younger cohorts. Sixty-two per cent of our members who are admitted 10 years or less are women.
It is appropriate that I have the opportunity to welcome your Honour Chief Justice Kiefel while basking in the positive reverberations of International Women’s Day given the role the High Court has played in extinguishing discrimination and protecting the rights of minorities over the years. The Court’s ability to remain focused on what is right rather than what is popular has served our country well and played no small part in creating our nation. It is a trite and oft-made observation that justice must not only be done but also seen to be done but rarely is that quote followed by any explanation as to why this is the case.
On an occasion such as this, I think it is worth considering. Australia is an open and free-thinking democracy despite our aspirations for more to be done so all of our citizens experience access to justice. We can take pride of the rule of law in operation. It is important to remember that the rule of law is a collaborative exercise. As a society, we rely on most people doing the right thing most of the time and they will do that as long as they have confidence in the law and, in particular, the courts.
Justice must be seen to be done to ensure people retain their faith in it. It is for that reason, we are thankful that the High Court, the pinnacle of our justice system and the ultimate expression of the rule of law by which our rights are established, has travelled to Queensland today as it does to our other States in the nation. This allows Queenslanders to see justice in action, to know that it is not something worked out in the cold corridors of Canberra. Your presence here today allows our citizens to be part of the system, to experience it and to know that justice in Australia is even-handed, independent and wise.
The High Court’s enviable track record of delivering justice for all without fear or favour is something of which it is good to be reminded at this time. Lawyers do not rise when the High Court enters out of form or due to an artefact of the position the members of the Court hold. It is, in fact, a sign of genuine respect and appreciation of the leadership of the Court.
It is buoying for the Queensland profession to have the benefit of the Court’s leadership and its physical presence at all times but especially now.
In concluding, may I say that it is personally an honour and a pleasure to welcome the Court today and especially your Honour Chief Justice Kiefel who sits for the first time as leader of the Court in your home State and your Honour Justice Edelman who sits on the High Court for the first time in Queensland.
On behalf of the Queensland Law Society, the peak body for the legal profession in Queensland and its 10,000 members, I bid you welcome and hope your stay is rewarding.
May it please the Court.
KIEFEL CJ: Thank you, Ms Smyth. I will ask Justice Edelman to respond first.
EDELMAN J: Mr Hughes and Ms Smyth, thank you both very much for your kind, welcoming and thoughtful words and thank you to the members of the legal profession for attending this morning.
Although this is the first occasion that I sit as a Justice of the High Court in Brisbane, it is almost two years since my family relocated from Perth to Brisbane. Previously, I had only visited Brisbane once, in 2013 as part of a panel on equitable assignment. There is something very special about a city where 200 barristers and solicitors are interested in a lecture on that subject.
The hospitability and generosity from the academy, the practising profession and my colleagues here on the Federal Court and now the High Court has continued and it is a pleasure to be part of the vibrant intellectual legal community in Brisbane.
The vibrancy of this community has occurred in a relatively short time. As with the ordinance establishing the Supreme Court of Western Australia on which I sat, Royal Assent was given to the Act constituting the Supreme Court of Queensland in 1861. There were then seven solicitors, two barristers and no law school. A century and a half is a short time in the life of the law but in that time the profession has grown to more than 10,000 solicitors, around 1,000 barristers and academics at nearly a dozen universities or campuses offering law degrees. Yet, despite the vast growth in the profession, it is particularly pleasing that it has retained a warm and collegiate atmosphere and environment, covering the mutual endeavour shared by the universities, the profession and the judiciary.
I look forward to this continuing atmosphere when the High Court sits in Brisbane.
KIEFEL CJ: Mr Hughes, Ms Smyth, thank you for welcoming me in my new role and thank you for your very kind words. It is a role which is made possible, of course, by the support I received from the Queensland Bar and from the solicitors of Queensland many years ago. It was in my time at the Bar in Queensland that I learned about collegiality.
It is now the fact that three Justices of the High Court, including a Chief Justice, have chambers in Brisbane. This is a fact which has been noted by States to the south of Queensland. It is hoped that further space will be made available in this building for the High Court, sufficient to enable it to have a courtroom for special leave and single justice hearings and other administrative facilities. The High Court will then have an even clearer presence in Brisbane. I hope to be able to tell you more about this in the near future.
I thank all present for the courtesy which you have extended us in attending today.
The Court will now adjourn to reconstitute.
AT 9.42 AM THE MATTER WAS CONCLUDED
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