Ceremonial - Welcome to Mr Justice McHugh - Perth

[1989] HCATrans 252

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

SPECIAL SITTING

WELCOME TO

MR JUSTICE McHUGH, A.C.

AT

WESTERN AUSTRALIA

ON

TUESDAY, 24 OCTOBER 1989

McHUGH J

Speakers:

Mr R. Le Mi.ere, President of the Law Society

of Western Australia.

Mr E. Heenan, QC, on behalf of the Western

Australian Bar Association.

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

MR LE MIERE:  May it please Your Honour, it is my great

pleasure on behalf of the Law Society of Western Australia to welcome Your Honour to Perth on the

occasion of your first visit to Western Australia

as a Justice of the High Court.

Your Honour was appointed to the High Court

after a distinguished career at the Bar and at

the Court of Appeal in New South Wales.

Your Honour's appointment to this Court in

February of this year followed the retirement of
Sir Ronald Wilson, a much loved and highly respected

Judge who, of course, was the first Western

Australian appointed to this Court. The Western

Australians consoled ourselves a little at

Sir Ronald's retirement with the thought that

Your Honour is no stranger to Western Australia.

Indeed, the Law Society prides itself on its clear

foresight in having invited Your Honour to be the

leader of our 1988 Law SUIIDller School and thereby

anticipating by some 12 months Your Honour's

appointment to this Court. On that occasion,

Your Honour delivered a major and important paper

on the legal jeopardy of lawyers and accountants

involved in commercial transactions. During that

SUIIDller School, Your Honour impressed those of us

fortunate enough to meet you, not only with your

scholarship but also with your unaffected and

generous manner.

Your Honour's speeches, both judicial and

extra-curial, reveal a dedicated intellectual as

well as an appreciation of the complexity and

diversity of modern social conditions and relations.

Those of us who will attend the dinner tonight

look forward to hearing from Your Honour once again.

On behalf of the Law Society and the legal

profession of Western Australia, which the Society

represents, I extend to Your Honour a very warm

welcome to Western Australia and I wish Your Honour

many and rewarding visits to Perth as a Justice of
the High Court.	May it please Your Honour.

McHUGH J:  Thank you very much, Mr Le Miere. Mr Heenan?

MR HEENAN:  May it please Your Honour, it is with great

pleasure and privilege that I welcome Your Honour

on the occasion of your first sitting as a Justice

of this Court in Western Australia.

I speak on behalf of the members of the West

Australian Bar Association who wish to associate

themselves with all that my friend, Mr Le: Miere

said about Your Honour's career and associations

with this State in the past. The members of the

Bar are very pleased, indeed, that Your Honour

has joined this Court and we take great heart from

several of Your Honour's published remarks on

previous occasions. We recall, in particular, a

remark which Your Honour said at a dinner in

July 1984 at the Australian Bar Association

Conference in Surfers Paradise when Your Honour observed that anything that undermines the role

and strength of the Bar in the administration of

justice must necessarily undermine the public

interest.

Your Honour has been a great proponent and

defender of the Bar and we take great pleasure in
recording Your Honour's great successes as

President of the New South Wales Bar Association

and of the Australian Bar Association. In those

roles, Your Honour did much to promote the
formation of the National Australian Bar Association

and indicated in several ways the importance of an

emerging national profession and a national

professional association.

The other remark which we consider is

particularly precious and significant is buried in

an important paper which Your Honour delivered in Western Australia in September 1987 concerning

judicial attitudes to the law~making function.

Among some very scholarly analyses of the

developing role of the judicial prescription,

Your Honour indicated that, "I would contend that

the real criticism of the modern judiciary is its

reluctance rather than its enthusiasm to enter

new areas". We see Your Honour having a remarkable

opportunity to develop the skill of law making

which you have honed in such a fashion but it would

be Ldle to imagine that Your Honour is any rogue

reformer of the law for you are no promoter of

quixotic change. The article which I have mentioned

sets out in a very detailed and analytical way the

way in which Your Honour values the incremental

law~makin:gmodel and we do not, for one moment,

imagine that Your Honour would be any rogue reformer

laying impious hands on the arc of the law, a

particular piece of opprobrium that Lord Simonds

reserved for those who- trespassed on his scope

of equity.

Nevertheless, Your Honour, we are very pleased,

indeed, that you have joined our Federal Supreme

Court and the Bar Association of Western Australia

welcomes you to our State.

McHUGH J:  Thank you, Mr Heenan. Thank you both for your

kind remarks.

It gives me great pleasure to be the subject

of this welcome by the Western Australian legal
profession. It is a pleasure which is increased

by my knowledge of the respect with which Western

Australian lawyers are held throughout Australia.

I first became acquainted with the high quality

of the Western Australian legal profession during my period as an office holder with the Australian Bar Association and the Law Council of Australia

and that perception of the profession in this

State was more than reinforced early last year when

I had the honour of leading the 1988 Surmner School.

I am glad to have this opportunity to say how

grateful my wife and I are for the hospitality

which was shown to us by members of the Western

Australian profession during that visit and I am

grateful that I have the opportunity on this

occasion to record our gratitude.

As many of you will know, there are not lacking in this country persons who strongly hold the

opinion that the High Court, like the Supreme Court

of the United States, should sit only in the

National Capital. It is not an opinion which I

share. The annual visits of the High Court to

Western Australia, to Queensland and South Australia and to Tasmania when it justifies it, give the

public, as well as the members of the profession
of those States, an opportunity to see the workings
of the Court at first hand. It enables litigants,

if they desire, to be present when their cases are

argued. It enables the Justices of this Court to

meet the members of the profession and the judges

of the various courts whose work from time to time

comes to the High Court for further examination.

I know, from my discussion with members of the

profession in this State and the other States which
the Court visits, that the profession in those

States is totally supportive of these annual visits.

No doubt, the benefits which accrue from them are

intangible and cannot be easily quantified in a

monetary cost benefit analysis but they are real

benefits, nevertheless, and those visits, in my

view, play a very important part in the administration

of justice in this country. Hopefully, those annual

visits will continue for the foreseeable future.

Certainly, I shall look forward to making the visit to Perth each year during my tenure on this Court.

Mr Le Miere_, Mr Heenan, I thank you again for

your welcome and I look forward to the appearance

before this Court, not only in Perth, but in

Canberra, of members of the profession of this State

and I again thank you very much.