Ceremonial - Bell J - Welcome Melbourne

[2009] HCATrans 122

[2009] HCATrans 122

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

MELBOURNE

ON

FRIDAY, 29 MAY 2009, AT 9.14 AM

BELL J

Speakers:

Mr J. Digby, QC, Chairman, Victorian Bar Council

Mr D. Barlow, President, Law Institute of Victoria

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

MR DIGBY:   May it please the Court. 

I appear on behalf of the Victorian Bar to welcome your Honour to Melbourne on the occasion of your first sitting here as a Member of this Court.  I also had the honour and pleasure of representing the Victorian Bar at the ceremonial sitting in Canberra at which your Honour was sworn in and welcomed.

Coming, as your Honour does, from practice and a Supreme Court north of the Murray, I believe that some biographical recitation is appropriate.  As the daughter of a naval captain, your Honour went to school in Sydney, Brisbane and London.  Most of your schooling was at Sydney Church of England Girls Grammar School.

The Commonwealth Attorney mentioned at your welcome in Canberra that you considered, and seriously considered, a career as an actor.  Indeed, that your graduation from Sydney University Law School was almost overshadowed by your contemporaneous graduation from the Sydney Independent Theatre School of Dramatic Act.  Founded by Doris Fitton (later Dame Doris Fitton) in 1930, the Independent Theatre and its drama school were serious theatre and a serious drama school.  Only after the National Institute of Dramatic Art had started to draw potential students away from it, did the Independent close in 1977.  However, as observed by others, including the Attorney‑General, the stage’s loss was the law’s gain.

Your Honour was admitted to practise as a solicitor in 1977.  The Redfern Legal Centre was then less than a year old.  They could not afford to pay you.  You worked as a volunteer.  Your devotion, hard work and commitment were recognised and, after several months as a volunteer, the Centre found the funds to pay you a modest salary.  Your Honour worked at Redfern for six or seven years, doing a great deal of your own appearance work.  You worked in crime, domestic violence, tenancy disputes and consumer credit, all the areas of law affecting the most disadvantaged in our society.  Your Honour’s devotion to social justice became well known.

Even when there was no legal remedy, you were known to offer compassion and support.  The story is told of a young man on a six‑months sentence – his first experience of gaol.  A friend of the prisoner called the solicitor who had defended him seeking help.  The solicitor said, in effect, that he offered no “after sales service”.  The friend came to you at Redfern and, although the case was over and done, you visited the young man in the cells and gave him advice and support.

Your Honour was called to the New South Wales Bar in 1984 and read with Dean Letcher, now a silk.  He has worked pro bono with the Aboriginal Legal Service and still practises in Frederick Jordan Chambers.  Your Honour then practised as a barrister for more than 12 years and in that time you also practised as a public defender from 1986 to 1989 and as counsel assisting the Wood Royal Commission in the New South Wales Police Force Inquiry from 1995 to 1996.  You took silk in 1997.

The Australian newspaper quoted a New South Wales public defender as saying, “In every generation there is a barrister about whom judges say ‘if I was up on a murder charge I would want that person to represent me’.  When you were at the Bar, that was Virginia Bell”.  It is also said that you have the unique distinction of being immortalised in song, in fact, in a song by a punk rock group called Mutant Death.  I will not put this to music, but the words go as follows:

The police, they came and got me;
They threw me in a cell;
They said I had one phone call;
I rang Virginia Bell.

Your Honour was appointed to the Supreme Court of New South Wales in March 1999 and to the New South Wales Court of Appeal in 2008.  In his remarks at your Honour’s ceremonial farewell from the New South Wales Supreme Court last December, Chief Justice Spigelman said:

As a trial judge and in the Court of Appeal, your Honour became involved in the full range of this Court’s jurisdiction, particularly at Common Law.  To the depth and intensity of your experience in Criminal Law as a practitioner, your years as a Judge added breadth to your legal knowledge.

. . . 

You have been involved in some of the most difficult cases which have come before the Court.

. . . 

Your Honour also delivered landmark judgments . . . including important judgments in civil matters.

Chief Justice Spigelman told the story and he gave the facts and details and named the cases.  Even more, I think, than the addresses in Canberra, I commend to those who wish to know your Honour better, the full text of the Sydney Supreme Court farewell.  Aficionados of Chief Justice Spigelman’s thoughts and writings, and there are many, even south of the Murray – cannot recall him so lyrical and complimentary as he was in describing your Honour’s virtues.

On behalf of the Victorian Bar, I welcome your Honour to Melbourne.  The Bar looks forward to your company at our dinner this evening at which your Honour has very generously agreed to make a short speech to which we are all looking forward.  On behalf of the Victorian Bar, I wish your Honour long, satisfying and distinguished service as a Justice of the High Court of Australia.

May it please the Court.

MR BARLOW:   May it please the Court.

I appear on behalf of the Law Institute of Victoria, and the 10,000 or so solicitors of this State, to welcome you to Victoria in your capacity as our newest Justice of the High Court of Australia.

I hope you enjoy your visit to our jurisdiction.  Melbourne is renowned for many things, its fine gold rush buildings, its quaint trams, its fabulous coffee, its fashion and, I am afraid to say, at the moment we currently have the dubious distinction of being the swine flu capital of Australia.  I wish you a safe and, most of all, healthy visit to our jurisdiction. 

We hope to welcome your Honour frequently to Victoria as a guest.  I had the honour of attending the ceremonial sitting to mark the occasion of your swearing in at the High Court of Australia on 3 February this year and may I say that it is a pleasure to be seen and to be able to speak at this occasion today.

Your Honour is well acquainted with the solicitors’ branch of the profession, having begun your distinguished career as a community lawyer.  You then became a barrister, a public defender, senior counsel, Law Reform Commissioner and Judge and you were appointed to the High Court from the Bench of the New South Wales Court of Appeal.  But I am sure you found your work as a community lawyer for the Redfern Legal Centre a very satisfying part of your career, particularly once, as we have heard earlier, you moved on from being a volunteer to the payroll.  You were involved in landmark civil liberties cases and were instrumental in the establishment of the Prisoners’ Legal Service. 

Your appointment to this high office is a tribute to the valuable work the community legal sector performs in providing access to justice. You have demonstrated a lifelong passion for and a commitment to the law and social justice and I am confident the Australian community will benefit from your experience.

On behalf of Victoria’s solicitors, we are pleased to warmly welcome you on your first official judicial visit to our State.

May it please the Court.

HER HONOUR:   Thank you, Mr Digby and Mr Barlow, for your generous and warm remarks.  Mr Digby, may I particularly thank you for not giving us a rendition of the Mutant Death song.  At the time of my appointment to this Court, someone managed to locate a recording of it and it has not survived well. 

May I thank you, Madam Solicitor, for paying me the compliment of your attendance here today.

I am very conscious of the heavy responsibility that rests on this Court as the nation’s final Court of Appeal and I am appreciative of the goodwill of the Melbourne Bar and the solicitors’ branch.  I know that I may count on assistance from your members in the discharge of my duties on this Court.

In my 10 years as a Judge of the New South Wales Supreme Court I was privileged to come to know and to enjoy the friendship of a number of Victorian judges, including your Chief Justice, Justice Kellam, when he was President of the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration, Chief Judge Rozenes, Judge Wodak and many others.  Through my long association with the AIJA, which, of course, is based in Melbourne, I came to Melbourne frequently and I had contact with a number of members of the Victorian profession and legal academics.  I am a devotee of Melbourne and I relish every opportunity to come here and I very much look forward to returning to sit in Melbourne as often as I am permitted to do so.

My only regret is that this Court no longer sits in the Banco Court, where it held its first sitting.  The magnificence of your Supreme Court and that splendid circular library have always made me feel that it must be a very pleasant thing indeed to be a judge of the Victorian Supreme Court.  That is not too express any criticism of this court building, it is merely to reflect that the Victorian profession enjoys the splendour of wonderful gold-rush architecture that we cannot emulate in other States.  Working in these gracious surrounds perhaps explains why it is that the Victorian Bar has its reputation for courtesy.

I thank you all for doing me the honour of attending this morning’s ceremony.

The Court will now adjourn.

AT 9.22 AM THE MATTER WAS CONCLUDED