Ceremonial Sitting - Farewell to the Honourable Justice Callinan - Adelaide

[2007] HCATrans 423

[2007] HCATrans 423

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

SPECIAL SITTING

FAREWELL TO

THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE IAN CALLINAN, AC

AT

ADELAIDE

ON

THURSDAY, 9 AUGUST 2007, AT 9.30 AM

GLEESON CJ:   Yes, Mr Whitington.

MR R.J. WHITINGTON, QC:   May it please the Court.  It is my great honour today on behalf of the South Australia Bar to acknowledge your Honour Justice Callinan’s final sitting in Adelaide as a Justice of the High Court and to pay tribute to your Honour’s significant service to the law.  Your Honour will sit on the Court for the last time on 31 August in Canberra.  Your Honour has commented earlier this year that you are on your last lap and by now the finishing line must be well and truly in sight.

It is fitting that I should say something of your Honour’s career from the perspective of the Bar.  I think your Honour was probably one of the last of the great generalists at the Bar.  We at the South Australian Bar can identify with that as we are very much generalists by necessity more than by design.

Your Honour’s practice spanned many disciplines in the law.  Your Honour defended and prosecuted.  Your Honour extradited, or at least would have extradited if the decision of the Spanish Court of Majorca to extradite Christopher Skase had not been overturned by the final Court of Appeal in Spain.  Your Honour was equally at home on the civil side as on the criminal side.  You conducted both trials and appeals and you appeared before this Court in a number of significant cases.  I know you appeared in many, and indeed, I suspect, all State and Territory superior courts in Australia.

Over the years your Honour has had a number of connections with the State of South Australia.  I know that you have acted in South Australian cases being conducted in both the Federal and Supreme Courts, because I have had the privilege of appearing against you.  You appeared in at least one major gas price arbitration conducted in Adelaide and before your appointment to the Bench you were a director of Santos Limited, probably the most significant public company based in South Australia, and came to Adelaide on a regular basis for board meetings.

Your Honour’s service to the Bar cannot go unremarked.  You were the President of the Queensland Bar Association and later the President of the Australian Bar Association in 1984 and 1985.  Your appointment to the High Court a little under 10 years ago was the first appointment of a Justice directly from the private Bar for about 22 years.  You have remained a great friend, supporter and advocate of the independent Bar since your appointment.

Your other life as an author has achieved an almost legendary status in the legal profession.  Your Honour has found the time while on the Bench to create a substantial body of fictional works to stand alongside your Honour’s judicial writings.  Your Honour’s judgments are notable for the succinct and pithy, even pungent way they generally deal with the critical point.  However, as this Court has recently reserved on the question of fair comment, a discussion of your Honour’s non‑judicial writings at this time would be entirely out of place and inappropriate.

It is customary on occasions such as this to wish the retiree a happy retirement.  I do not intend to do so.  I do not intend to do so because I do not believe your Honour is really intending to retire, but rather in light of your Honour’s considerable array of talents, simply to start another life or two.  Therefore, on behalf of the South Australian Bar, I thank you very much for your service to the law over many years up to this point and wish you the best of good health and good fortune in your various lives and endeavours to come.  May it please the Court.

CALLINAN J:   Mr Whitington, I thank you very much for the most kind remarks that you have made about me.  The fact is that unless some legal conflagration requiring immediate quelling should suddenly break out in the next three weeks, today is in fact the last day upon which I will sit on this Court.

It does not concern me that my last sitting day is on circuit rather than in Canberra.  I have always regarded the regular circuits of the Court as fundamental to its role as the final court of the country, the upholding of the common law of Australia and the Federation itself.  Nor does it concern me that my last sitting day is taking place in Adelaide. 

I first visited this city in 1951 for, I might say, a constitutional event.  It was the Jubilee Year, a celebration of 50 years of Federation.  The particular event to which I was drawn was a schoolboys Jubilee cricket carnival.  One of my clearest recollections of it remains with me today.  It was meeting and shaking hands with Sir Donald Bradman, a privilege that I enjoyed just as much with shaking hands with practically anybody I have met since. 

I was in fact in Adelaide when I was informed that my appointment to this Court was to be put to the Governor‑in‑Council.  I was here for three different reasons.  I had to attend a board meeting of the company to which you referred, Mr Whitington, a company which has had a long and important association with this city and State.

Secondly, Dame Roma Mitchell was, on that very afternoon, to launch my second novel which she duly stylishly did in the presence of your Chief Justice Doyle, only mildly – Dame Roma that is – berating me for not giving more prominence to the female character in it.  I might say in my defence that the whole novel was built around and had more to say about that particular character than any other in the book.  It would no doubt, however, give Dame Roma pleasure that, on my last sitting day and my last sitting day here, another highly accomplished woman lawyer is sitting with me.

The third reason for my presence in Adelaide was to confer with a client whom I was representing in your Supreme Court.  Indeed, I think that it was against you that I was appearing, Mr Whitington, in that piece of litigation.  It was always a pleasure to appear here as I was asked to do invariably with a member of your Bar before both your Supreme Court and the judges of the Federal Court resident in this State. 

It is also a special pleasure to be sitting here today on this panel with the Chief Justice whom I met some 30 years ago, when, as a fairly recent silk, he was Senior Counsel assisting in Brisbane in a Royal Commission inquiring into allegations of impropriety in relation to electoral boundaries and the naming of an electorate south of Brisbane.  We formed a friendship from that time during which, both before and after his appointment as Chief Justice, he has offered me valuable counsel on many occasions.

My nine and half years on the Bench at times have seemed to be prolonged and arduous.  Now, I ask myself where have all the years gone?  That, however, is a question of no importance.  What is of importance is that I have been given a rare opportunity to be at the apex of legal and constitutional affairs of this country for a period.  I can only hope that I have done my duty there conscientiously and competently.  Thank you again very much for what you have said.

AT 9.38 AM THE COURT ADJOURNED