Williams, Neil --- "Law Studies at James Cook in the 1970s" [2020] JCULawRw 3; (2020) 26 James Cook University Law Review 13

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LAW STUDIES AT JAMES COOK IN THE 1970s

Neil Williams SC^[1]*

In 1975 James Cook University (then ‘James Cook University of North Queensland’) had about 1700 students. It offered only two courses in law that were accreditable in other Australian law faculties: Introduction to Law and Criminal Law. Both courses were generally taught by Marilyn Mayo who, with her husband John, was a substantial figure in the University community.

Criminal law was sometimes taught by a rising criminal barrister from the Townsville Bar, Bob Greenwood, who was later (from 1984, as Bob Greenwood QC) the director of the ACT branch of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, and then directed the unit that investigated, and endeavoured to prosecute, suspected Nazis who had taken residence in Australia.

He was a larger-than-life figure who had been active in national student politics in the time of Peter Wilenski, (later a senior Commonwealth public servant) and Jim Spigelman (later Chief Justice of New South Wales). He was also a courageous figure who, in the era of police corruption much later exposed by the Fitzgerald Inquiry, prosecuted private informations against police officers who viciously bashed Indigenous Australians, and worked to expose police abuses such as the infamous raid on the hippie commune at Cedar Bay north of Cape Tribulation in 1977. He was a good friend to the law student community at James Cook, always willing to introduce students to the local Bar, and to encourage them toward legal practice. He introduced me to Kerry Cullinane, then a rising junior at the Townsville Bar and later the Northern Supreme Court Judge, and made sure that I saw enough of him to be able ask him to co-certify me as being fit for admission as a student-at-law. Later, Bob Greenwood moved my first admission to practice in Canberra and became my first boss in legal practice.

In 1975 and 1976, the law courses were taught by a young academic from the University of Queensland, Graham Kenny, who went on to co-author with Jim Herlihy the standard student text on criminal law in Queensland. He was a thoroughly prepared, conscientious and inspiring lecturer, always willing to engage with students out of class on legal issues.

He taught the Criminal Code from the perspective of legal principle in a way that, 45 years later, has never left me. Although I have never practised criminal law in Queensland, in the course of other proceedings that I have appeared in in Queensland questions of the criminal code have arisen, sometimes without notice. I have never found myself wanting for an answer, a tribute to the thoroughness with which the course was taught in 1975. A Brisbane judge once began to explain to me, as a Sydney barrister unlikely to be schooled in such matters, that the Queensland Criminal Code made particular provision on a matter. The explanation began with words to the effect, ‘of course, you would not be familiar with our Code, but...’. I was able to interject that I had studied the Code under Graham Kenny at James Cook University in 1975, a point which both established superior Queensland credentials – a Northerner always trumps a Southerner – and training by one of the best in the business.

The law student group at James Cook in those days was small, close, and for the most part intensely interested in the study of law. Social and political life was equally intense.

The Union Refectory and adjacent café were at the centre of student life, including on the weekend. Through the week those who lived off campus, and many who lived on campus, hung out there between lectures and tutorials. On the weekend there was usually a local band on there on Saturday night. While the quality of the music was uneven, they were very well-attended dance parties and the best of the bands were first-rate.

One band that comes to mind was Island, which had Russell Handley as lead singer and on keyboards. He went on to front Popular Mechanics, a band that achieved such a following that a Kiwi band sought to emulate them, using the name Pop Mechanix. When the Kiwi imitators started to tour Australia using that name in 1981, Russell and his brother Mark sought injunctions under the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth), which were granted by Ellicott J in July 1981: Handley v Snoid [1981] FCA 180; (1981) 4 TPR 361. At that time there was much that was unsettled about misleading or deceptive conduct under that Act, and the decision and the appeal (reported as Snoid v CBS Records Australia Ltd [1981] FCA 180; (1981) 54 FLR 202; 38 ALR 383) did much to clarify the manner of proof and the limits on the injunctive power. The Handley brothers were largely successful at both levels.

The tragic sequel is that Russell went on to become one of the first Australians to die of AIDS-related disease. He was interviewed by the ABC shortly before his death, so emaciated he was barely recognisable.

Eddie Mabo worked as a gardener at the Uni at that time, and was well-known to many students. He was both an open and friendly figure, and one who was energetically engaged in trying to advance the position of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Australians. To that end he, with others, established the Black Community School in South Townsville, dedicated to advancing the educational needs of First Australians. Education students from the Uni tutored there regularly, especially in evening classes on a Tuesday night.

At the time I had a part-time research assistant job with Charlie Veron, then a young Turk in the Biological Sciences Department who was shaking the field of coral taxonomy to its foundations. That job meant that I was allowed, as a staff member, to drive the University bus. The Uni generously agreed to make the bus available on Tuesday nights for picking up tutors and students and driving them to the school for a couple of hours of supplementary tuition. This process became known, using the language of the time borrowed from the US, as ‘busing the blacks’. I would pick up Cherie Daniels, one of the tutors, at John Flynn College, then go to the first student pickup at Eddie and Netta Mabo’s house. The Mabo kids were not famously punctual, so our first stop would usually involve a cup of tea with Eddie and Netta while the kids got ready. Later, as Student Union President, I administered a grant from the Arts Council for Eddie’s Torres Strait Island Dance Group to tour Australia. It was a great privilege to get to know Eddie, who fought courageously and with seemingly perpetual optimism, for his rights at a time when, especially within Queensland, things seemed pretty bleak.

He was also deeply engaged with many in the student body, always willing to engage in debate on ideas. In 1975 he agreed to hangi a pig for some kind of weekend gathering at the Uni, which he did in the sand next to the bridge in the middle of campus. The product was delicious, though a little gritty. The university played a significant role in the case that he subsequently brought, both through the intellectual engagement of academics like Noel Loos and Henry Reynolds, and through the 1981 conference (which I attended during a visit to Townsville) where the case was given shape. The process has been described elsewhere in this journal, so I will pass over it.

The Union was very much at the centre of campus life in the 1970’s. Unlike southern campuses that split services, provided by a university union, sport, provided by a sports union, and representation, provided by a student representative council, at James Cook the functions were by statute vested in a single body. The result was that a wide range of students were active in Union affairs, and the body was much more accurately representative of the range of student opinion than the SRC’s on southern campuses. I was deeply shocked in visiting the campus recently to learn that the body had been downgraded in its functions, renamed and had lost control of most of the buildings it previously occupied. This kind of ideologically-driven ‘reform’ has, I have no doubt, made campus life much poorer than in times past. Political battles were fought within the Union and the Council contained the full range of political opinion within it, since all students were members. Services across the range of student needs were delivered by a body that students controlled, and valued as a result.

No discussion of studying law in 1975 can be complete without reference to the defining politico/legal event of the decade, the dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam by the Governor-General. I learned of this in the coffee shop mid-afternoon on 11 November (news travelled more slowly then), where the law students present were pressed for their collective opinion: can he even do this? We were not eminently qualified to opine on the issue at that point, although the weight of conventional legal opinion at the time was that he couldn’t. Professor Anne Twomey’s magisterial Byers Lecture for 2020 (available on the NSW Supreme Court website) makes a convincing case that Kerr acted within conventional views of the prerogative, although whether it was prudent for him to do so might be another question. All main actors paid a high price for the decision, even Malcolm Fraser who was its most immediate beneficiary.

The problem that loomed large for everyone studying law at James Cook then was that, apart from two first-year courses, law studies had to be pursued elsewhere.

Some pursued the Barrister’s Admission Board route, many went on to the University of Queensland, while others went further afield, including as far as the University of Western Australia. I sought the advice of the then-Chancellor of the University and Northern Judge of the Supreme Court of Queensland, Sir George Kneipp, who I knew through the University Council. ‘It doesn’t matter much which path you choose’, he told me, ‘the main thing is to get to the Bar as soon as you can and get knocked around a bit’. The comment puzzled me a little at the time, but I have since learned over many years how bruising practice at the Bar can be, even if it is, as I firmly believe, immensely satisfying and one of the last great jobs.

My own path in the end was to complete studies in economics at the University of Sydney, and then to pursue graduate law studies at the University of New South Wales. UNSW at that time was the foremost progressive law school in the country, still under the influence of its foundation Dean, Hal Wootten QC, who was later the Royal Commissioner into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. He is still a formidable progressive intellect at 98 years of age, and his small group critical progressive philosophy of law teaching has been influential throughout the country.

My time studying law at James Cook was both a very happy one, within a small but vibrant and diverse student community, and a productive one. The University imbued in its law students a critical appreciation of the study of law that has served me well throughout my career, and for which I will always be grateful.

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^* Neil Williams SC is a Sydney barrister who started his law studies at James Cook University in [1]975, after two years of studies in marine biology. In 1976 and 1977, he was the President of the James Cook University Students Union, as the Students Association was then known, and a member of University Council. He went on to take a B Ec from Sydney University, before completing graduate law at the University of New South Wales, and a Masters in Public Law from the Australian National University. Before going to the Sydney Bar, he was the Senior Private Secretary to the Commonwealth Attorney-General, Senator Gareth Evans QC, and worked as a federal prosecutor and as a legislative drafter. He is the author of a number of published works in federal criminal law, public law, and the law of evidence. He took silk in 2001.