Ceremonial - Kiefel J - Welcome Perth -

[2007] HCATrans 618

[2007] HCATrans 618

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 KIEFEL

AT

PERTH

ON

MONDAY, 22 OCTOBER 2007, AT 10.00 AM

KIEFEL J

Speakers:

Ms Maria Saraceni, President of the Law Society of Western Australia

Mr Kenneth Martin, QC, President of Western Australian Bar Association

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

HER HONOUR:   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 High Court.  I believe your Honour is fortunate to be visiting our wonderful city of Perth so early in spring and, as you can see outside this courtroom, the High Court is well placed here in WA.  I also congratulate you for being the third woman to be appointed to the High Court.  It is pleasing that for the first time the High Court will have two women sitting at the same time.

There was plenty of media attention surrounding your Honour’s appointment a few months back.  Your legal career and your life in general have been intriguing.  Attorney‑General Philip Ruddock has said that they were unique.  While your Honour’s life has been extensively talked about at your official welcome ceremony, I seek to recap somewhat for the benefit of the current audience.

Your Honour’s achievements after leaving school at just 15 years of age are nothing short of amazing.  You went from leaving school early to doing legal secretarial work, to becoming a barrister and then a judge and I think in total it is about 17 years that your Honour has sat on the Bench.  This is an achievement which leaves many of us lost for words.  You are an inspiration to many young aspiring lawyers.  Your path shows young people who think they have missed their chance in life that you can do anything you put your mind to.  Today’s aspiring law students are told grades, summer clerking and exam marks are everything, but your Honour is proof that this is clearly not always the case.

Your Honour started work at a law firm called Fitzgerald, Moynihan and Mack in 1971 doing administrative tasks.  In 1973 you were employed by Cannan & Peterson, Solicitors, as a clerk.  Your Honour completed three years Barristers Admission Board of Queensland course and passed with honours.  When you went to the Bar you were only 21 years of age, again, a significant achievement.  If my sources serve me correct, you were the first female appointed silk in Queensland.

Cases of significance are no stranger to your Honour.  While at the Bar you were involved in cases surrounding tax avoidance schemes, defamation, migration work and misuse of market power.

Your Honour’s career at the Bar ended during your time as a part‑time Commissioner to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.  It was then that you were appointed to the Supreme Court of Queensland and from there to the Federal Court of Australia to where you currently are.  I understand that in fact your Honour was on a walking holiday in Norway when you received the telephone call that you had been appointed to the High Court.  I think there may have been some celebrations that night.

The High Court’s annual visit to Perth is an event very much looked forward to by the WA legal profession.  Given Perth’s location, being the most isolated capital city in the world, it is a pleasure to have the highest Court in the land in town.  I am also very much looking forward to your Honour’s presence at the High Court dinner this week which is hosted jointly by the Law Society and the Bar Association.

At the recent opening of the Australian Academy of Law in Queensland you spoke of your view that the principal role of a judge is to maintain ethical standards.  The importance you have placed in that comment on the role of a judge serves well in your new role.  I hope that you look forward to the High Court’s annual visit to Perth and that you are able to experience some of the wonderful things this city has to offer over the coming years and I hope that you will have time to relax and soak up Perth’s culture.

Again, your Honour, on behalf of the Law Society of WA and its members, I offer my congratulations on your appointment and wish you a satisfying and fulfilling career as Justice of the Honourable Court of the High Court of Australia.  May it please the Court.

HER HONOUR:   Mr Martin.

MR MARTIN:   May it please your Honour.  It is a great pleasure on behalf of the Western Australian Bar Association to welcome you to Perth on the occasion of your first visit as a member of the High Court of Australia.  The Bar Association echoes and adopts the well‑deserved tributes that have been paid to you, not only by the President of the Law Society of Western Australia this morning, but indeed all round Australia in the last two months. 

You were sworn in as a Justice of the High Court in Canberra on Monday, 3 September, so this is your earliest venture westward.  It is quite apparent from the narrative of your Honour’s achievements that your professional life is an inspiration to many and it is a great Australian story.  You became a legal secretary at age 17, joined the Queensland Bar at age 21, omitted an undergraduate degree at university as unnecessary, completed a three year Bar Admission course with honours and were appointed as silk at the tender age of 33 and your first judicial appointment to the Supreme Court of Queensland came only six years later.  A year after that you were appointed as a justice of the Federal Court where you served for 13 years between 1994 up to the time of your appointment to the highest Court of the land this year.

Viewed from many perspectives, therefore, you had an inspirational career which is no doubt a testament to your intellect and dedication to sheer hard work. 

You have, of course, visited Western Australia before as a justice of the Federal Court dealing with a number of matters here, so you have at least some familiarity with the building.  I am told that as a trial judge of the Federal Court that those who appeared before you were left with an indelible impression of your fairness, your competence and your great intellect as a trial judge.  The only slight wrinkle that was detected in my investigations was the apparent stress caused to counsel arising from your dedication to case management which extended towards convening a directions hearing on a Western Australian public holiday commencing at 8.00 am Queensland time which was, of course, 6.00 am in Western Australia.

As an outlying State, residents of Western Australia are sometimes accused of gazing with suspicion towards the easterners dominating the governance of the country largely out of Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra.  Queensland is also, in my travelling experience, viewed with more than occasional scepticism or suspicion, the activities of the decision‑makers located southward.  There is, I think, a bond of kinship and mutual admiration between West Australians and Queenslanders who come to share a somewhat different perspective upon the governance of Australia than that which usually prevails as the Sydney‑centric view.

The State of Queensland, your Honour being born in Cairns, has indeed made a remarkable contribution to the High Court of Australia as an institution since Federation.  On my calculations, your Honour is the seventh Queenslander to be appointed to the High Court of Australia.  Your predecessors were Sir Samuel Griffith, the inaugural Chief Justice of the High Court, Sir Charles Powers, Sir William Webb, Sir Harry Gibbs, Sir Gerard Brennan and Mr I.D.F. Callinan, QC.  Three of your six predecessors became Chief Justices of the High Court so statistically there would appear to be a 50 per cent probability of you at least getting to the top job.

The strength of the Queensland contribution towards the High Court since Federation is undoubtedly a reflection of the strength of the Queensland Bar.  The strength of that Bar produced outstanding advocates whose national practices extended to Western Australia.  The names of Pincus, Fitzgerald, Jackson, Callinan, Hampson and McPherson readily come to mind as outstanding Australian silks and, of course, your Honour in your 18 years at the Queensland Bar was developed and nurtured in that environment of excellence.  By the time you left the Queensland Bar to join the Bench in 1993 you were an influential and leading member of the Queensland Bar in your own right.

The occasion of the circuit by the High Court of Australia as the nation’s ultimate Court to the outlying States is a unique worldwide phenomenon.  The High Court of Australia, I think, is the last of the great common law jurisdictions where the highest national Court still travels to the outlying State capital cities, notwithstanding its permanent home on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin. 

It is opportune perhaps, therefore, to reflect upon a speech made in Perth on circuit by Sir Owen Dixon 55 years ago upon the occasion of his first presiding as Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia in September 1952.  His address on that occasion is to be found as one of the collective papers within Judge Woinarski’s celebrated compilation of Sir Owen Dixon’s extra curial addresses in Jesting Pilate.

In 1952 Sir Owen Dixon was aged 67 and he was visiting Perth for the first time as Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia.  He had been a member of the High Court for 23 years, having been appointed at the age of 42 in 1929.  He would, of course, after this address go on to serve a further 12 years as Chief Justice of Australia until he retired in 1964.  Sir Owen was to say this about the journeyman aspect of the High Court’s visit to the outlying States.  He said:

I myself believe it is essential that this Court should continue its itinerant habits for a very long time.  My experience in this city, and every other capital city of the Commonwealth, has shown me that it is of first‑class importance that the litigants in the capital where their cases arise should have the advantage of the services of their own counsel, and the advantage of seeing for themselves how their cases fare, if they choose to attend what from a layman’s point of view but not from a lawyer’s must be considered the dreary arguments which characterise the proceedings of this Court.

In that address 55 years ago Sir Owen Dixon went on to make a fundamental observation about the function of the judiciary which, still read in 2007, does not appear to have been tarnished by the ravages of time.  He said:

The importance of the judiciary does not diminish with time.  All experience seems to show that in modern society the judiciary occupies a fundamental position.  It is fundamental in the true sense that it is a foundation.  It cannot accomplish anything positive, but if it is weak, or if it does not command the assent and commendation of the people in the work that it has done, the edifice which was established upon those foundations grows insecure.

Your Honour, those insightful remarks made on circuit 55 years ago by one of Australia’s greatest Chief Justices are an appropriate recognition of the importance of the High Court to the fabric of the Australian nation and on your first visit as a Member and Justice of the High Court it is a vibrant and visible reminder of the importance of the judiciary as a cornerstone of the democratic society which your predecessors, such as Sir Owen Dixon, laboured so successfully to establish.

We look forward to you visiting Western Australia as a Justice of the High Court for many years to come.  May it please the Court.

HER HONOUR:   Thank you.  Ms Saraceni and Mr Martin, thank you for your kind words and the welcome on behalf of those whom you represent. 

Chief Justice, former colleagues of the Federal Court, Mr Williams, former Attorney‑General, ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for attending today.

I have been coming to Perth now as a judge of the Federal Court for some years.  I have been fortunate to come to know the city of Perth, its wonderful waterways and walkways, to relax in Fremantle, undertake meaningful research in the Margaret River region and for my husband to make pilgrimages to the ground at the WACA.  And courtesy of the Judges French, my husband and I have been introduced to the coastline around Denmark and Albany, two of the best kept secrets in Australia.

I have always thought that Perth and Brisbane have some things in common, Mr Martin.  Each has an abundance of sunshine and a populace with a disposition to match, friendly and outgoing people, hospitable even to folk from Sydney, who seem to wish to be everywhere at once.

I have sat in Perth mostly as an appellate judge, but also as a trial judge.  During these times I have had the good fortune to enjoy the company and conversation of my colleagues on the Federal Court, Justices French, Lee, Carr and Nicholson.  I have not been here since the appointment of Justices Siopis and Gilmour but have had the pleasure of their company on other occasions when interstate and I have had the chance on these visits to catch up with Justice Wheeler and Justice McLure.

I have seen something of your Chief Justice, but as Senior Counsel in a trial I heard in Perth some years ago.  That trial also effected an introduction to some other members of the profession here and a not inconsiderable number of doctors.  I was well assisted as a trial judge by the lawyers from Perth. 

I have said on more than one occasion that I will miss my colleagues on the Federal Court.  On a more positive note, I will now be visiting Perth annually.  I look forward to maintaining my connection with this place and its legal profession.

Thank you again for attending to welcome me today.

AT 10.13 AM THE MATTER WAS CONCLUDED