Ceremonial - Special Sitting at Brisbane - Welcome to the Honourable Justice John Dyson Heydon B0/2003

[2003] HCATrans 819

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 JOHN DYSON HEYDON

AT

BRISBANE

ON

MONDAY, 23 JUNE 2003, AT 2.00 PM

HEYDON J

Speakers:

Mr Glenn C. Martin, SC, President of the Queensland Bar Association

Mr Ronald S. Ashton, Vice President of the Queensland Law Society

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

HEYDON J:   Yes, Mr Martin.

MR MARTIN:   If it please the Court.  The High Court of Australia first sat in Brisbane in May 1904 and, perhaps in a sign of things to come, reversed the Full Court which had upheld the trial judge’s decision.  The history of the Court and its peregrinations has been told elsewhere but it has been our fortune to have the Court visit on a nearly annual basis for 99 years and it is always a pleasure to be able to welcome a new member of the Court to the Queensland sittings.

Your Honour is already well known to the profession in this State, if not personally, then through the many books and articles you have written or the many journals and reports you have edited.  It is not an easy thing to find something new to say about a person who has been the subject of so many farewells and welcomes in recent months.  I made inquiries of those at the New South Wales Bar who knew you well, both in practice and on the Court of Appeal.  They were of little public help.  I sought assistance from the judge who now occupies your chambers in the Court of Appeal, hoping that perhaps you had left something behind which might allow some insight not previously revealed.  All I was told was that the room had been stripped bare of belongings and that all that was left was the view.  But perhaps we do not need any inside information. 

Your Honour’s consummate suitability for your most recent appointment is well made, from your career in academe, at the Bar and on the Bench.  Although it may be, speaking purely from a parochial perspective, that the most welcome aspect of your appointment is that it has reduced the number of native‑born New South Welshman on the Court to five.  We have long ago forgiven Justice Callinan’s parents for their oversight in being in Casino at the relevant time, just as we regard Justice Hayne’s origins as standing in his favour.  We also hold in high esteem those born in Canada.

Much more, your Honour, is said and written about judges today then ever in the past.  Unfortunately, the increase in quantity is not matched by a commensurate increase in quality.  Not unlike some popular magazines which portray themselves as having inside knowledge of the activities of the Royal family, there are some commentators who promote themselves as being able to read the inner thoughts and divine the intentions of members of our courts.  Barristers who spend their professional lives attempting to read judicial body language know how difficult, if not impossible, it is to foretell which way a judge may go on a particular matter or how a judge will deal with things in general.  May I though, without attempting to predict your Honour’s future, borrow a little from both you and from Tolstoy.  All happy judges resemble one another.  Each unhappy judge is unhappy in his or her own way.

On behalf of the Bar, we hope that your time on this Court will be a happy one, wherever the Court sits.  May it please the Court.

HEYDON J:   Thank you, Mr Martin.  Yes, Mr Ashton.

MR ASHTON:   Thank you, your Honour.  May it please your Honour.  Your Honour, I am honoured to represent the Queensland Law Society today to welcome you to Brisbane so soon after your swearing in and in doing that I represent all the solicitors of Queensland, to whose hearts is particularly dear the substance and the symbolism of the Court’s regular visits to Queensland.

Your Honour comes to the Court at a time, unprecedented many may think, of close scrutiny of appointments, heightened boldness of comment on the work of the courts, and some wide discussion about judicial conservatism and judicial activism, imagined or real.  The bones of every judgment, your Honour, every remark, are picked over with archaeological zeal, often, I suggest by some who are searching for things that are not there and missing the important things which are.

I would prefer, if your Honour indulges me, to focus upon legal excellence.  Your Honour enjoys a justly won and unquestioned reputation for legal scholarship and high excellence at the Bar and on the Bench, a reputation which transcends and trivialises really these other debates to which I have referred. 

Underlying your Honour’s attainments in the law is a richness of life’s experience, bound to lend healthy perspective, if I may respectfully say so, your Honour, to your Honour’s work.  In your Honour’s farewell speech to the New South Wales Supreme Court, your Honour reflected upon a life which had been a succession of fresh starts.  After being born in Canada, there were seven schools in four countries and two universities in two continents.  Your Honour taught law in four universities on four continents, spent 20 years in private practice at the New South Wales Bar, and three years as a New South Wales judge.  It would be sadly simplistic really to reduce all of this and your Honour’s other great attainments to which I have referred to the jingoistic labelling of conservatism, activism, intervention or reaction.

If your Honour pleases, what the people of Australia are entitled to expect and which you bring to the Court in abundance are legal excellence, robust independence and a compassionate but intellectually rigorous and consistent connection to the life of our great democracy.

We hear, your Honour, that life at the top can be lonely.  In your New South Wales farewell speech your Honour quoted Harry Truman, who, when asked how he felt upon becoming president of the United States on the unexpected death of President Roosevelt, responded to the journalist, “Boys, I feel like the sun, the moon and all the stars fell down on me.  I don’t know if newspaper men pray, but boys if you do, pray for me now.”

Perhaps feeling the loneliness at the top, your Honour, President Truman on another occasion remarked somewhat differently, “If you want a friend in Washington, get yourself a dog.”  Your Honour will always have friends in the Queensland Law Society and amongst the solicitors of Queensland.  It is my great pleasure and privilege on their behalf to welcome you to Queensland and to wish you well in your career on the Bench.  May it please your Honour.

HEYDON J:   I am very grateful to Mr Martin and Mr Ashton for their kind remarks.  While I have had some contact with Queensland lawyers over the years, it has not been as extensive as I would have liked.  In part, no doubt, this has reflected the good judgment of Queensland solicitors.  However, while it has not been possible for me to participate very much in litigation in Queensland, it has been possible to encounter quite a few Queensland lawyers in New South Wales.  This is because of that remarkable dog fence which used to run along the Queensland/New South Wales border.  It was completely effective in stopping southern dogs from going north but it in no way hindered northern dogs from moving south at will. 

Some of the northern dogs who came south decided to stay permanently.  By their ability, they have greatly enriched the New South Wales Bar.  They have also taught us a lot about Queensland lawyers and, as a result, we have known some of those who stayed behind affectionately and well. 

Like great numbers of people in Queensland, we were distressed by the recent death of Mr Justice Robert Douglas, the very capable son of a much admired father.  He was a fine man, a larger‑than‑life character who would, I think, have become a famous Supreme Court judge had he been spared to serve longer.  I am very glad to see his brother, Mr James Douglas QC, here today. 

But quite apart from personal contacts, one knows the quality of Queensland lawyers well.  For example, any sensible New South Wales lawyer who had a problem to which a judgment of Mr Justice Connolly was relevant, would examine it with extreme care and usually with immense intellectual profit.  It is invidious to speak of individual Queensland judges still sitting.  I should acknowledge, however, the high reputation which the Queensland Court of Appeal has generated in its short life. 

I should also record the high esteem in which one judge, who is quintessentially a Queenslander, is held across the entire country and beyond.  The judgments of Sir Harry Gibbs in the Supreme Court, as a federal bankruptcy judge and in the High Court will endure for as long as the common law survives in this country.  The flowering of individual talent, of course, depends on a sound tradition and on a satisfactory environment.  Like Sir Owen Dixon, Sir Harry Gibbs could only have been produced by a legal civilisation of the highest quality.

I look forward to hearing special leave applications from Queensland in the years to come.  The only regrettable aspect is that, because of the quality of Queensland courts, it will only be a few applications which will be granted and, hence, only a relatively small number of Queensland appeals will be heard.

I thank the speakers again for their excessively kind remarks.  The Court will now adjourn.

AT 2.10 PM THE COURT ADJOURNED