Ceremonial - Crennan J - Welcome Perth

[2006] HCATrans 572

[2006] HCATrans 572

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 SUSAN MAREE CRENNAN

AT

PERTH

ON

TUESDAY, 24 OCTOBER 2006, AT 10.01 AM

CRENNAN J

Speakers:

Mr K. Martin, QC, President, Western Australia Bar Association

Ms M. Saraceni, President, Law Society of Western Australia

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

CRENNAN J:   Yes, Mr Martin.

MR MARTIN:    May it please the Court, it is a pleasure to welcome your Honour to Perth as the 45th member since Federation of the highest Court in the land.  Having been sworn in as a Justice of the High Court on 8 November 2005, by my reckoning, you are now about two weeks shy of having completed 12 months in the job.  Furthermore, the itinerant character of the High Court in the last 12 months has seen you welcomed in every State capital, including Hobart in March, Brisbane in June and Adelaide in August.

I have to observe, therefore, that your Honour would only be mortal if this ceremonial occasion in Perth did not carry with it something of an element of Groundhog Day.  However, the moral of that film was that a single day needed to be repeated in perpetuity until the events of the day were absolutely perfect in every respect, and now that you have finally reached Western Australia the one missing ingredient for perfection has obviously been found.

The annual visit of the High Court to Perth is a particularly welcome feature in the year’s calendar for West Australian legal practitioners.  As your Honour will now have encountered at first‑hand, it is a long haul across this wide continent, even utilising all the benefits of modern airline transportation.  Because of the distances involved, our members do not have the natural proximity to the High Court’s base of Canberra in contrast to the geographic advantages enjoyed by our colleagues on the eastern seaboard.  It is therefore an important physical aspect of our federal system of government, not to mention of immeasurable benefit to members of the West Australian legal profession, including the barristers I represent this morning, to have an opportunity to see and even appear before the High Court live and in person.

Quite appropriately, your Honour has been the subject of a veritable cornucopia of tributes right across the land since the announcement of your appointment almost a year ago.  Very few details of your Honour’s life and your overflowing catalogue of professional and personal achievements have escaped national mention.  Your Honour has been a fine leader of the Bar, not only in your home State of Victoria, but nationally, as President of the Australian Bar Association, and of course you were a justice of the Federal Court of Australia since 2004 immediately prior to your appointment to the High Court.  In that capacity, remember that you even reached Perth as a member of the Full Federal Court in November 2004.

The effusive national catalogue of tributes which has already been paid to your Honour’s qualities and achievements as a person and as a jurist is of course thoroughly justified and the West Australian Bar is honoured to have the opportunity this morning to join in those tributes.  Close observers of the High Court have already seen some significant judgments that your Honour has already written as a member of the Court in the last 11 and a half months, particularly in cases such as Harriton v Stephens in May and in the Federal Commissioner of Taxation v Citylink Melbourne delivered in July of this year.  Your Honour will therefore be recognised as a very strong intellectual contributor to the onerous responsibilities of the High Court.

Your Honour, my members extend their warm congratulations and every good wish to your Honour, and particularly look forward to appearing before you in the many years to come.  May it please the Court.

CRENNAN J:   Thank you, Mr Martin.  Yes, Ms Saraceni.

MS SARACENI:   May it please the Court, it gives me great pleasure on behalf of the Law Society of Western Australia to welcome your Honour on your first visit to this State as a member of the Court.  I note that your commission of appointment as a Justice of the High Court commenced on November 1, 2005.  I note that date is slightly different from my friend, about a week after the High Court sat in Perth last year.

The timing of these two events has meant that the legal profession in WA has had to wait almost a year to formally welcome and congratulate you on your elevation to the highest Court in the land.  The warmth of the West Australian legal profession’s welcome to your Honour is not at all diminished by this lapse of time.  We welcome you to our State and more particularly to Perth, which is said to be the most remote capital city in the world.

Although physically distant from the seats of power in Canberra, we are currently experiencing buoyant times, not just on an economic front, but also in the legal and sporting spheres.  In the last few days WA has hosted an International Criminal Law Congress.  This week it is hosting the bi‑annual Family Law Conference.  In a few days it will welcome international speakers in a lecture series on Globalisation, Law and Justice, followed by the finals of the 2006 National Golden Gavel Competition for aspiring young advocates.

Whether there is any relationship between such frenetic activity in the legal circles of this State and the recent victory of the West Coast Eagles and subsequent delivery of the AFL premiership cup to this State, or the long awaited presence of this honourable Court sitting in this State, is a matter for speculation at the numerous social occasions in which you will meet members of the profession on an informal basis throughout the week.

On another note, the WA profession joins its colleagues here and in other States in reiterating the importance it places on the High Court sitting in Perth to dispense justice, rather than relying exclusively on technology or punters travelling to the eastern States. Its significance is more than historical or symbolic. It is a recognition that this State is a part of a Federation set up by our forebears and enshrined in the Constitution. I hope that this sitting will become an annual pilgrimage which your Honour will grow to enjoy and look forward to, particularly after you have had the opportunity to soak in the natural beauty of the State and have become acquainted with the warmth of its people.

As my colleague has said, your Honour is the 45th Justice of the High Court and the second female appointee.  That statistic compares favourably with the number of appointees to the Court from this State.  Hopefully neither statistic will remain static.

I now turn to your Honour’s considerable qualities and talents which have already been widely commented on.  For the benefit of the present audience, I note that your Honour’s career history surpasses the oft quoted marker that on average a person will change careers five times in their lifetime, from trademark attorney to secondary school teacher to lawyer to judge, and from wife to mother and then grandmother, but to name a few.

You also made time to serve the professional bodies to which you belonged at a State and federal level.  You served on HREOC, on the Board of the Victorian Legal Aid Commission, University of Melbourne Law School Foundation, the Legal Practice Board, the Victorian Attorneys‑General Law Reform Council, and you chaired the Independent Compensation Panel of the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne.

Somewhere in all this you found time to indulge your passion for English literature and, as I understand it, the Old Norse language.  In the words of Justice Alan Goldberg, you are very much a renaissance woman.  Perhaps your Honour’s accomplishments best demonstrate what can be achieved with a work/life balance.  Hopefully your work as a Justice of this Court will not cause any – or should I say much – imbalance.  Mindful of the Attorney‑General’s comments on your swearing in relating to being upstaged at the Royal Commission into the collapse of Tri‑continental, I feel duty bound to put your Honour on notice.

Although from where you are sitting, your Honour, you cannot see, from the windows of this Court there is a very wide tent land extending along our foreshore which you may have seen.  The sound of revving engines will start very soon as cars do laps of the foreshore.  These are not Perthites staging a protest.  There is no need to concern yourself.  It is the Australian Round the World Rally Championship.  To allay any concerns, it is the last time it is being held in this State.

Your comments made at the time of your appointment about the work of the High Court and the integral part it plays in the life of the nation were such, and I quote:

It is impossible not to feel the weight of the responsibilities involved.

As you near the first anniversary of your appointment, I imagine that the truth of those words continue to resonate with every day.

On behalf of the WA legal profession, I wish your Honour a long, distinguished and satisfying career as a judge of this honourable Court.  May it please the Court.

CRENNAN J:   Thank you, Mr Martin and Ms Saraceni.  I am most grateful to both speakers for their more than generous remarks today, and also for the expressions of support which each of them have conveyed from those whom they represent.

It is a considerable pleasure to return to Perth and to take the opportunity to recognise the contribution which Western Australia has made and continues to make to the legal life of the nation.  As a junior at the Victorian Bar, I travelled to Perth on several occasions, particularly for intellectual property matters.  On the very first occasion in early 1983, I was admitted to practice at 9 am, appeared in court for the balance of the day, then was invited to attend the West Australian Bar’s annual general meeting presided over by its then President, David Malcolm QC.

To my recollection it was a very, very hot evening, but refreshments were on hand.  There seemed to be about 70 or 80 barristers present.  Most had their shirtsleeves rolled up.  I noticed resolutions were passed very quickly with no nonsense and visible good humour.  Counsel from the east were then treated with unforgettable hospitality.  Then Paul Seaman QC, as he then was, later a judge of the Supreme Court, gave me and my leader, Alex Chernov QC, a very pleasant guided tour of the city.  Justice Chernov now serves on the Court of Appeal of Victoria.

Years later, as Chairman of the Victorian Bar, when meetings got a little bogged down in debate, I found myself wishing I could employ the techniques for efficient dispatch of Bar business which I had witnessed in this State.  But the weather was never so balmy and I never had on hand a ready supply of “Little Creatures”.

It was a privilege to meet constitutional lawyers from this State during cases like Cole v Whitfield.  These included then Solicitor‑General Kevin Parker QC, formerly a judge of the Supreme Court and later a judge of the International Court of Justice at The Hague, and also Robert Meadows QC.  When I was President of the ABA it was my privilege to meet Daryl Williams QC.  When I worked as a Human Rights Commissioner, the Commission President was then the late Sir Ronald Wilson who took up that position after retirement from his duties as a High Court Justice.

I should also recall with gratitude the assistance I received from the solicitors of this State who always seemed to compensate for the distance between us by shouldering any resulting inconvenience whenever they could.  I also must confess that I was briefed in a football case once, opposed to the interests of the West Coast Eagles, but I am relieved to report, in front of this audience anyway, that I did not win.

It is important to a national court to accommodate and be enriched by the perspective brought to it by the judges of different States, and during my time at the Federal Court of Australia I benefited greatly from working with and getting to know judicial colleagues from this State:  Justice French, Justice Nicholson, Justice Lee, Justice Carr and Justice Siopis.  West Australians are entitled to feel very proud of the traditions of service to the community and the contributions made by both West Australian lawyers and judges in Western Australia to the Australian legal system.

As you have mentioned, this is my sixth and final welcome from local professions.  Familiarity has not diminished their warmth or my gratitude for that warmth.  Now I can say even more confidently than I once did that the responsibilities are heavy.  However, discharging those responsibilities will be made so much the easier because of the assistance promised and received from the legal profession of Western Australia.  Again, let me thank you all for your attendance and support.

Adjourn the Court.

AT 10.13 AM THE COURT WAS ADJOURNED