Ceremonial - Bell J - Welcome Adelaide

[2011] HCATrans 265

[2011] HCATrans 265

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

SPECIAL SITTING

WELCOME TO

THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE VIRGINIA MARGARET BELL

AT

ADELAIDE

ON

MONDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER 2011, AT 2.00 PM

BELL J

Speakers:

Mr M.C. Livesey, QC, President, South Australian Bar Association

Mr R. Bonig, President, Law Society of South Australia

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

HER HONOUR:   Mr Livesey.

MR LIVESEY:   May it please the Court.

On behalf of the Bar Association of South Australia I am delighted to welcome your Honour on your first sitting in South Australia as a member of this Court.

It is appropriate that we are able to celebrate this occasion in the Mitchell building, named after an eminent judge who made a significant contribution to the criminal law.

For the benefit of those that may not be aware, your Honour is, of course, the 48th member of the Court and the fourth woman.   

Like other jurisdictions, in South Australia there has been difficulty converting the female majority of law graduates into an appropriate proportion of practitioners at the Bar, particularly senior practitioners at the Bar.  However, there have been incremental changes and real progress.  In 2004 the only two appointments to silk in South Australia were women.  Whilst around 25 per cent of the Bar presently comprises women, and over 20 per cent of our silks are female, in recent years increasing numbers of women are undertaking the Bar Readers course each year. 

Scrutiny over appointments need no longer dwell on gender.  Gender is immaterial. As Justice Katzmann said in her capacity as the New South Wales Bar President at the time of your swearing in, “The surge appears to be working”.

That we are still celebrating your Honour’s appointment over two and a half years after the appointment on 3 February 2009 underscores the fact that this is the Court’s first circuit to Adelaide in some time. 

The Bar understands that there are less appeals from the less populous States and that there may be difficulties in setting those appeals down at times convenient to the Court.  The Bar well understands the cost, inconvenience and disruption that circuits cause the High Court and its members.  

However, it is worth pointing out that financial pressures have always confronted the High Court, and were just some of the reasons Sir Alfred Deakin encountered such difficulty in moving the Judiciary Bill to establish this Court in the early years of last century and, as Sir Isaac Isaacs said:

“Economy can be very expensive, and in the administration of justice, it is altogether too expensive.”

Circuits by the High Court provide our local profession, as well as interested members of the public, with an important insight into the operation of the High Court.  Few of us cannot remember when, as students or young practitioners, we first saw the High Court in action.  Seeing the Court in person makes an impression which can never be replicated by the images on a video feed, high up on a wall.

The South Australian Bar sincerely hopes that annual circuits by our highest Court, famously described by Deakin as the “keystone of the federal arch”, will now resume to the less populous States. 

Your Honour has, of course, had a distinguished and successful career defending the rights of the disadvantaged and disenfranchised.  You have a reputation for being interested in social justice, and you have been admired for your “clear eyed approach to defending the underdog”. 

In fact, we would be honoured if you would consider taking up our brief in support of a resumption of annual circuits by the High Court.

Again, for the benefit of those who may not be aware, your Honour attended Sydney Church of England Girls’ Grammar School, Darlinghurst.  There you won an academic prize and established a club devoted to resisting participation in Thursday afternoon sport.

Your Honour has enjoyed a remarkable career in the law.  After obtaining your degree at Sydney University, you commenced in practice in 1977, working at the Redfern Legal Centre until 1984, including as a volunteer when the Centre could not afford a salary.  It was whilst at that Centre that you were involved in what are now regarded as landmark civil liberties cases involving the first Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney in 1978.  You were also involved in the establishment of the prisoners’ legal service.

You joined the New South Wales Bar in 1984.  In 1986 you took up appointment as a public defender, returning to the Bar in 1989.  Between 1994 and 1997 you were one of the counsel assisting the Wood Royal Commission into the New South Wales Police Service.

You took silk in 1997.  In 1999 you joined the Supreme Court of New South Wales and in 2008 the New South Wales Court of Appeal.

You are regarded as “an extremely witty and intelligent member of the legal profession” and, whilst rumours of an earlier career as a go‑go dancer when at university have now been exploded as “an elaborate hoax”, someone has had the last laugh.  Searches of the name “Virginia Bell” turn up a reference to an American who really was a risqué go‑go dancer.

Apparently, there were doubts about whether your Honour would follow the law as a career.  Your father, a former navy captain, believed you to be “a bit of a rebel”, and destined to be an actor.  In fact, you managed to fulfil an actor’s dream during the 1980s when your friend, David Lyle, recruited you for the Nine Network’s The Golden Years of Television.  There you appeared as Ginger de Winter in strapless frocks with taffeta and false eyelashes, proclaiming to be a former president of the Australian Barrel Girls Association.

References to that character are still made by devotees of Australian television, including this memory, which may or may not be apocryphal: 
“Oh, I remember Ginger de Winter on The Golden Years of Television. Name a TV icon of old and you can bet Ginger was there - whether it was as a dancing girl on In Melbourne Tonight, or at Norma’s Bar on the night of the bomb blast in Number 96.  She was everywhere.”

At the time of your swearing in on this Court you alluded to the hard work of judging.  You said:  “To those outside the law and to some within it, judges may be labelled according to whether they are seen to be conservative or progressive or indeed dangerously radical – of course judges have a range of backgrounds and views on social issues – but analyses of this sort take no account of the discipline of judgment writing or, as I have experienced it, the conscientiousness of judges”.

When interviewed soon after your appointment to this Court, your father said that you recognised a “responsibility to give to your community” whereas your brother, Chris, said that you had integrity and the “determination to work like a galley slave”. 

Your Honour has, for well over 12 years now, met that responsibility, serving the people of New South Wales and now of Australia with distinction and hard work. 

Your Honour, again, the South Australian Bar welcomes you.

May it please the Court.

HER HONOUR:   Thank you.  Mr Bonig.

MR BONIG:   May it please the Court.

On behalf of the Law Society of South Australia and the legal profession of this State, I welcome your Honour to South Australia in your role as a Justice of this Court.  It is well over two years now since your Honour’s appointment, as Mr Livesey has noted.  I note from the speeches made at the time of your presentation of your commission the considerable references to your early legal career and your work at the Redfern Legal Centre.  Mr Livesey has referred to this and other parts of your career.  I am sure that your grounding in civil liberties has stood you in good stead over the last two years, and will continue to do so in your role as a Justice of this Court.

I wish to take this opportunity to reassure your Honour that despite the recent unwarranted attack on certain aspects of the work of this Court by certain arms of government, the legal profession does recognise the contribution that this Court makes to the administration of justice in this country and the sometimes very difficult job it has to do in ensuring that justice is done.  This is made even more difficult with the ever‑increasing legislative influence on our lives and on the administration of justice.

I am not sure whether or not your Honour has been to Adelaide before, but you would no doubt know about the many virtues of this city and State.  What your Honour may not be aware of is that you are visiting this State just short of a very memorable celebration of a centenary.  In December this year we will be celebrating the enactment of the Female Law Practitioners Act 1911.  I note that this is, in fact, seven years prior to the enactment of similar legislation in your home State.  This State has had, of course, a number of firsts achieved by female practitioners, the most notable of which is the late Dame Roma Mitchell’s appointment as Queen’s Counsel and then as a Justice of the Supreme Court.  Mr Livesey has referred to the significance of where we are sitting today. 

At a time when female graduates outnumber male graduates in South Australia, and the profession across Australia is dealing with issues involving the retention of females and their career paths, I am sure that many young female practitioners who study your career path may be inspired to see what can be achieved, and not necessarily through the mainstream process.

The Society joins with Mr Livesey in urging this Court to continue to sit in circuit where possible so that its work can be seen by as wide a cross‑section of the profession and the public as possible. 

It is an honour and privilege to welcome you to South Australia, and I trust you enjoy your brief stay here and we look forward to seeing you again. 

Thank you.

HER HONOUR:   Thank you, Mr Livesey and Mr Bonig for the generosity and, in some respects, the comprehensiveness of your kind remarks this afternoon.

I am conscious of the honour of appointment to this Court and with it the heavy responsibility that the discharge of the duties of Justice carry.  I am most grateful for the support and the assistance of the profession of South Australia in the discharge of those duties.

I am very conscious that in the now more than two and a half years that I have served as a Justice of this Court, the Court has not travelled to Adelaide.  I am delighted to be here.  I am particularly delighted to be here because I was conscious, Mr Bonig, of the centenary that is coming up of the enactment of the Female Law Practioners Act.  The cultivated and intellectual life of South Australia admitted of radical developments such as the admission of female practitioners when, as you rightly observe, my home State was still very firmly holding the line. 

I cannot comment on an event as momentous as the centenary that is coming up without myself making reference to Dame Roma Mitchell.  Dame Roma served, not just as an exemplar to women practitioners in South Australia, but to all of us throughout Australia.  My practice was always far too parochial to admit of sorties to Adelaide, but I did have the privilege of appearing before Dame Roma after she ceased being a judge in the Supreme Court of this State, in her capacity as the Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission.  I should say, after having had that pleasure, when I encountered her some time later, she was extremely warm and encouraging to me as a young woman practitioner, in a way that I do not doubt reflected Dame Roma’s encouragement to a generation of women practitioners here in South Australia.  I took a stroll last night down North Terrace and I thought I saw a very nice bronze statue of Dame Roma and I thought how right it was that it should be there.

I became a little less parochial in my years as a judge in New South Wales, largely because of my association with the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration.  In that capacity I came to Adelaide on a number of occasions.  I worked co‑operatively and well with a number of South Australian judges and magistrates and I also came to know your Chief Justice, Chief Justice Doyle, who stands in the very great tradition of South Australian Chief Justices.

I might say, for those of us with a particular fondness for the criminal law and the laws of evidence before they were sullied by the Uniform Evidence Act, there is a wealth of learning in the South Australian Law Reports.  The South Australian profession has produced some very great judges.  It is sufficient to note Chief Justice Bray, Chief Justice King, Justices Wells and Zelling, amongst many others, to reflect on the contribution that the South Australian judiciary has made to the development of the law. 

On a personal note, it is a pleasure to come back.  I have, as I have indicated, been here before.  It is a very beautiful city.  It is a city that retains some lovely buildings before modern brutalism and the neo eclectic acquired vogue.  I am sure all South Australians have a very strong sense that you have a more civilised capital than the rest of the States, and it has to be said there is some evidence in support of the proposition.

I will, Mr Livesey, I assure you, do my best in terms of my personal advocacy to make sure that the Court does return regularly to the annual circuit to Adelaide.

Once again, I thank you for the warmth and support that you have extended to me this afternoon.

The Court will adjourn.

AT 2.14 PM THE MATTER WAS CONCLUDED