Ceremonial sitting of the Full Court to farewell to the Honourable Michael Black AC Chief Justice, Federal Court of Australia
BENCH: THE HONOURABLE MICHAEL BLACK AC, CHIEF JUSTICE THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE SPENDER THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE DOWSETT THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE GREENWOOD THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE LOGAN RFD THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE REEVES
GUESTS ON THE BENCH: THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE SUSAN KIEFEL, HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA THE HONOURABLE BILL PINCUS QC
BRISBANE
9.31 AM, FRIDAY, 26 FEBRUARY 2010
BLACK CJ: Justice Spender?
SPENDER J: This Full Court of the Federal Court has been convened today for the legal practitioners of Queensland to farewell Chief Justice Michael Black on his retirement as Chief Justice. Before the Chief Justice invites the President of the Queensland Bar Association and the President of the Law Society of Queensland to address the Court and before the Chief Justice responds, I want to say a little of the enormous contribution that Chief Justice Black has made to the Federal Court of Australia, the law in Australia and to our country.
I do this on behalf of the judges and former judges of the Queensland registry of the Court and the members and former members of the staff of the Queensland registry.
It is inappropriate for me as a serving judge of the Court over which you preside, Chief Justice, for me to comment at any length upon your stewardship. That is a task for others here today who speak to mark your achievements. Nonetheless, there are three matters which call for mention.
The first has been your commitment, both before your appointment as Chief Justice and afterwards, to the environment, including the built environment. I refer to the pantheon of environmental cases in which you appeared as advocate, particularly those before the High Court. I refer also to your continuing interest in court architecture, particularly in the Melbourne and Adelaide Commonwealth Law Courts, and to your recognition of the need to reflect in court buildings the values of access, openness and transparency. In those respects, yours will be a lasting monument.
The second matter is that during your term as only the second Chief Justice of the Federal Court, the jurisdiction of the Court has expanded dramatically, largely at your instigation. You have encouraged and presided over extensive innovations and have contributed greatly to the development and the efficient provision of legal services by the judiciary and the legal profession in the Asia-Pacific region. All this you have done with a combination of charm, sensitivity, insight and courtesy to all. You are a good and decent man and if there be any criticism of your leadership and of your personality, it is that you’ve displayed a tolerance, courtesy and kindness to a fault.
Your political skills in dealing with Government have been a pre-eminent and singular success achieved with both grace and style. While there may be an element of hyperbole in the description by the Australian Law Reform Commission of this court in its report on civil justice, namely that the Federal Court of Australia is “a world-class civil court”, that assessment is a genuine reflection of your achievements.
The third matter has been your manifest concern for the advancement of women in the profession, particularly in respect of this Court. When you were sworn in on 1 February 1991, there were 28 judges of the Federal Court, none of whom was a woman. At that time, there were three former Federal Court judges on the High Court: Sir Gerard Brennan; Sir William Deane; and Justice John Toohey. Today, there are four judges on the High Court who are former Federal Court judges: Chief Justice Bob French; Justice Bill Gummow; Justice Susan Crennan; and Justice Susan Kiefel. Those four judges have been elevated from the Federal Court to the High Court of Australia during your period as Chief Justice. In addition to Justice Kiefel and Justice Crennan, there is Justice Margaret Beazley, now on the court of appeal of New South Wales and Justice Cathy Branson, now the Human Rights Commissioner, who were formerly judges of this Court. Currently, there are a further seven women judges whose primary commissions are on the Federal Court.
Your contribution in these three respects to the Federal Court of Australia, as well as your other contributions, constitute a great legacy. I speak for the local judges of the Court when I express our thanks to you for your endeavours on our behalf over the last nearly 20 years, and we wish our very best wishes to you on your constitutionally-demanded retirement.
BLACK CJ: Thank you, very much, Justice Spender. Mr Douglas, do you move?
MR DOUGLAS SC: May it please the Court. It gives me great pleasure on behalf of the Queensland Bar to speak on this very important occasion. Chief Justice, we gather here north of the Tweed to bid you farewell. In doing so, we acknowledge your outstanding contribution to this court and to the administration of justice in this country. Your Honour enjoyed an outstanding and diverse career at the Bar. Your long-standing interest in the environment was well-demonstrated by your appearance in the Tasmanian Dams case, in which you appeared for the Tasmanian Wilderness Society.
Closer to home, you also appeared in the Daintree case. You should be proud of your work also as a Defence Force Advocate and your advocacy on behalf of the men and women of our armed services. You came to this Court certainly with a reputation as a fine advocate and with a sharp intellect. Your time on the bench has been characterised by unspeakable courtesy, fairness and, indeed, compassion. Cognate with that has been your dignified treatment of citizen litigants. The benefit of that approach, of course, is not unilateral. In an address to the International Organisation for Judicial Education in Sydney in October last year, you observed:
The ultimate and strongest safe-guard of judicial independence is an informed public.
As Chief Justice, your Honour travelled extensively throughout Australia speaking with practitioners and members of the wider community. This did much to enhance the perception and standing of this Court and indeed courts generally. It also spawned a greater understanding and appreciation for the role of the judiciary and the legal process, an important part judges play in the maintenance of the rule of law. Your Honour has been a strong advocate of judicial education. You observed, also in the October 2009 address I mentioned earlier:
That judges should not be so conceited to assume, as perhaps we once did, that a judge is created on appointment as a perfectly-formed being equipped with everything necessary to carryout his or her task and should not be so conceited as to assume that this perfectly-formed being can continue to perform without any further training for another 10 or 20 years.
Your 20 years is almost up, Chief Justice. For judges, like all of us, education never ends. That commitment to judicial education transcends Australian shores. Your Honour has been active, as Justice Spender mentioned, in fostering international judicial relations together with judicial independence and administration in developing countries. Your Honour has spoken on many occasions about the collegiate life of this Court and any court. That is natural in any judicial body, but it is essential in an internationally dispersed court, such as the Federal Court. Your colleagues have told me that they are grateful for your contribution to and nurturing of the collegiality of this Court and for your well-known good humour, charm and engaging personality, again as Justice Spender mentioned.
These qualities harboured by you as Chief Justice have acted as steady foundations for a close Court. Your stewardship of this Court through difficult times as well warrants recognition. This was particularly so in the sad days of 2005, which saw the retirement of Justice Beaumont due to ill-health and his ultimate death, unfortunately, together with the deaths of Justices Cooper, Selway, Healy and Hill.
Your Honour also presided over enormous changes within the Court in both technological terms and process directed towards the timely disposition of the Court’s work. Your Honour, again as Justice Spender touched upon, has a well-known interest in architecture, in particular court architecture. On the ABC program, “In the Mind of the Architect” your Honour made these observations about the new Federal Court building in Melbourne:
It was to be a building that was to be full of light and the light was to make it a very pleasant place to work, but it was also to have the symbolic reflection of access to justice, openness and transparency.
If you are a modernist architect a public courthouse is a perfect building, a chance to reflect the big ideas of Australian law and democracy. These law courts see decisions from Mabo and land rights to the daily dramas of broken lives.
As your Honour said on that occasion. Such is your Honour’s interest in design and architecture that some might say you should be known as Michael the Builder rivalling the well known Bob. During your two decade tenure you have given the Federal Court two new significant homes. Much of your Honour’s own personality and view on life are reflected in the Commonwealth Courts which are being constructed in Melbourne and Adelaide.
You have commented on some occasions that some of the architectural elements in the Commonwealth Courts in Adelaide were inspired by the reflection of the Brisbane River in the glass of this very building. And your Honour said that to me last night again. The Victorian and South Australian buildings are a lasting testament to your vision that – and I am going to quote you:
The court building that opens itself to the world is indicative of justice, that it’s open to the world and is transparent and of course light is an illumination of the truth.
Your Honour has been a strong advocate of the Independent Referral Bar. You have supported the work of the Australian Bar Association and have been a ready contributor to the work of that association and also the Queensland Bar Association through your willingness to present at conferences and other events. On your many visits to this state, it is not uncommon for you to be observed wearing one of Brisbane’s most prized sartorial statements, a Queensland Bar tie.
Your Honour has presided over a Court which since your appointment has grown in size, stature and reputation. Today the Court boasts some 49 judges and over 370 staff. Chief Justice, you can depart this Court with the satisfaction of knowing that it is an even greater institution that you inherited, if I can put it that way, on your appointment in 1991; something I know you have ascribed to achieve. Your Honour has the enduring respect and admiration of members of the Queensland Bar. We congratulate on your outstanding service to the law and to the administration of justice in this country. For the next stage of your life we wish you and your wife, Margaret, every happiness and personal fulfilment. May it please the Court.
BLACK CJ: Thank you, Mr Douglas, very much. Mr Eardley?
MR EARDLEY: Chief Justice Black, I am delighted to have the honour of speaking today on behalf of the solicitors of Queensland. We are very pleased that you have included Brisbane in your farewells throughout the Commonwealth. It is a tribute to your Honour’s standing in the profession that so many of us have been keen to pay public tribute to you. Other speakers today have given multiple examples of your important contribution to jurisprudence and the work of the Court. In particular, your work on new methods of conducting trials such as the rocket docket system, new rules on discovery and expert witness, together with electronic management of material, have placed you at the forefront of those of us attempting to avoid the Sydney vortex.
Of course, we Queenslanders consider moving the centre of the universe to Brisbane to be a very good move. Mr Douglas has already suggested an acronym which we could remember you as Michael the Builder, the second possible title would be as Quartermaster General of the Federal Court. You have an unsurpassed record in successfully representing the court in matters of judicial funding. You have been the great provider to your fellow justices. I am sure, your Honour, it is the same in other States that any Supreme Court justice who visits these chambers usually departs with a sigh of envy at the standard of the facilities. Your skill as a negotiator in these matters has been exemplary.
Your Honour, both Justice Spender and Mr Douglas have made mention of your work as Chief Justice amongst your fellow judges. Repeating those words is important on this occasion. Your fellow justices emphasise that you have always demonstrated a very high degree of private thoughtfulness, kindness and understanding, a collegial respect and ever willingness to assist any justice with a professional or personal dilemma. You have been truly instrumental in building a true camaraderie amongst all of the justices of the Court.
Your colleagues particularly appreciated your well intentioned admonition to every new justice. You advise the new justice that he or she had to find time to smell the roses. An all encompassing phrase, your Honour, emphasising the necessity to regularly rise above the parapet of legal life and enjoy the pleasures of life at the same time as discharging the burdens of office.
Your Honour is a keen gardener. Cultivation of roses is one of your specialities at Kew and at Shoreham. I need not emphasise the need for you now to heed your own advice. Your Honour’s outstanding contributions to the law and profession are rightly emphasised, but I see another indirect success story. Photographs of your Honour have regularly appeared in the print media. You could be taken for the judge from Central Casting whose features convey intelligence combined with compassion. More importantly, even when you were trying to be stern, the twinkle in the eye could never be masked. All in all the type of person a reader would personally like to know.
Your Honour we will farewell you from a life of dedication and service to the law. On behalf of the solicitors of Queensland I thank you again for your dedication, your sacrifices and your commitment to the rule of law. We wish you well in what we hope will be a long and happy retirement.
BLACK CJ: Thank you very much indeed, Mr Eardley.
SPENDER J: Before the Chief Justice replies, I should note that Justice Berna Collier, because of illness, is unable to be with us today on the bench. She is very, very sorry for her inability to be with us. Chief Justice.
BLACK CJ: Thank you very much Justice Spender, Mr Douglas and Mr Eardley for your very generous remarks, which I greatly appreciate which I am moved by.
I would like to begin by saying how greatly honoured the Court is by the presence with us as our guests on the bench of the Honourable Susan Kiefel, a Justice of the High Court of Australia and former judge of this Court and the Honourable Bill Pincus, a former judge of our Court and of the Queensland Court of Appeal. We are also greatly honoured by the presence in Court of the Honourable Paul de Jersey, the Chief Justice of Queensland and the Honourable Ian Callinan, a former Justice of the High Court. We are honoured, too, by the presence of many other people, especially the judges of the Supreme Court, including the President of the Court of Appeal, members of the Court of Appeal, judges of the Family Court of Australia, the Chief Judge of the District Court of Queensland and the Chief Magistrate. I am also very glad that the resident Federal Magistrates are with us. Thank you all very much indeed. And I see Mr Neate too, with whom we work in the Native Title Tribunal of which he is President.
I am also moved too, by the presence of so many members of both sides of the profession and, as a member of the Bar, especially by so many members of the Queensland Bar. It is one of the great Bars of the common law world.
I should thank the judges of the Family Court for making this courtroom available to us. Our own principal courtroom is not presently available, but will, we are assured, be available for the welcome of the third Chief Justice which will take place in Brisbane on 22 March.
As to that matter, I am delighted, of course, that the Honourable Patrick Keane is here in Court today, presently in his capacity as a judge of the Court of Appeal. This is not an occasion for a formal welcome, but I think I may be permitted at least to repeat what I said when the Attorney-General informed me of the appointment of the third Chief Justice. I said:
I warmly congratulate Justice Keane on his appointment as the next Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia. Justice Keane is renowned for his scholarship and for the exceptionally high quality of his judicial work. He is a person of outstanding ability in many fields and I wish him every success in his new office.
Of course, much more can be said and I am sure will be said, but that is the essence of it, and I very much wanted to say that myself today. Perhaps as the outgoing Chief I can, and should say, that he is assured of the same warm and friendly welcome in every other part of Australia as I know he has already received in Queensland.
I would like to respond to the kind remarks that have been made by Justice Spender and from the Bar table by expressing first my thanks to the staff and then my thanks to my judicial colleagues.
I thank the staff without whom we would find it impossible to function at all as a modern Court. We have been fortunate indeed to have such excellent staff. We are a self-administered Court and we are fortunate in that, and have been for the whole of my time as Chief Justice. So our staff are very much a part of a common team.
I cannot mention them all by name, but I know it will be understood if I do take a minute or two to mention some of them. First of all I thank Mr Ramsey, who was the District Registrar when I was appointed and who retired earlier this month after 25 years of stirling service to the Court. In Mr Ramsey’s time the Court established itself very firmly in Brisbane. It moved from office buildings, three, I think – I can remember two – to this modern purpose-built courthouse of a very high standard. This building was completed on time and, I think, within budget and the move to it was achieved seamlessly. Mr Ramsey was assisted in that endeavour by Ms Jocelyn Green, who retired recently, but whom I remember well and I wish to thank also.
I would also wish to thank our Acting District Registrar, Ms Heather Baldwin, for her excellent service to the Court. Others that I would like to mention are Mr Peter Robinson, Ms Kay Van Brederode, for her many years of service in Darwin and more recently as our native title trial logistics manager here. Thank you also, Ms Fewings, for your excellent work in the field of native title. As judges we should never forget the importance of our libraries; we have an excellent library service in the Federal Court and I thank Ms Czarniecki, our library manager in Brisbane for her work here. And thank you to the executive assistants and the associates to the judges, many of whom – executive assistants – have served for a very long time. We could not function without you. Every judge will tell you that.
As to the associates, let me say that it is an enormous pleasure to work with such talented young people, and the excellence of your work and your commitment to the law gives me much confidence in the future. So thank you all, you have contributed greatly to the efficient and harmonious administration of the Court in this registry and, and this is important, to the corporate sense that we have as a national Court.
And finally, we should not forget the court officers. In that connection I am very pleased that the senior court officer in Brisbane, Mr Bevan, who has been with the Court for almost as long as I have, is on duty today. Mr Bevan, typical of many, served Australia as an officer in the infantry for some 25 years before joining the staff of the Court. His theatres of service included Vietnam and Rwanda; difficult places to serve – a large understatement. The nation is grateful to men and women like him and his colleagues and today we all express our gratitude. I thank him and his fellow court officers, nearly all of whom, if not all, have also served in the armed forces or in the police force.
Then there are my judicial colleagues. It has been an enormous pleasure to work with them all, past and present. It has not only been a great pleasure, it has been a great privilege and I shall miss them all. I cannot mention everyone, of course, but I must say that I am particularly grateful to Justice Spender for his large contributions to the work of the Court here and nationally. He acts as Chief Justice when I have been on leave, or on duty but overseas, or simply overseas. I have always known that I could leave the Court, confident that everything would be in order when I returned and I was never disappointed.
Justice Spender was also the driving force behind this Court building. He was assisted by Mr Ramsey and Ms Green, but he was the driving force. His insistence, in a manner characteristic of his Honour’s insistence upon excellent design and work of the highest quality is reflected in everything you see in this building. His work laid the foundation for the next and difficult stage in the Commonwealth Law Courts Program, which was to get the work started in Melbourne and Adelaide, and more recently in the refurbishment of our principal courtroom in Hobart and big works in Sydney, some of which will come to completion only on my retirement – a word that I have to get used to. Only Darwin now remains to be done, as I remarked recently and will have occasion to mention again the size of Justice Spender’s contribution is more apparent to me now than it was some years ago before I had myself experienced the difficulties of the process.
I thank Justice Dowsett, too, for all that he has done in many fields, including notably: judicial education within the Court and nationally, the establishment of the Federal Court’s new criminal jurisdiction; and native title, a continuing and very important task. I have no doubt omitted other matters, but I hope I have covered the main ones. His contribution has been very substantial.
I am grateful to all my colleagues and, as I have said, it is not only been a great pleasure, but it has been a great privilege to work with them.
I would like to say to the judges of all the courts who are present here, how good it is that there is friendship and co-operation between the courts. As I look out from this slightly elevated position, it is very moving to see so many people with whom I have had the pleasure of knowing over many years and whom I count as friends. Co-operation and friendship between the courts has not always been the case, but it is the case today. There are no glass partitions of the vertical variety here or elsewhere as there once were in another place, further south. The whole judicial system is better for that. In saying this we should recognise the large contributions made by Chief Justice de Jersey and Justice Spender in breaking down those absurdities. Of course they have been supported by our colleagues, but their leadership has been decisive. There may still be glass partitions of a horizontal nature but the removal of them is in progress and is work in progress.
There is one other matter about the judiciary I remember our late colleague and friend, the Honourable Richard Cooper, whose work in many fields, but perhaps most notably in the establishment of the court’s national maritime jurisdiction, was especially valued. I am both moved by and proud of the fact that one of the Federal Court’s ceremonial symbols, the Coral Sea oar mace, has accompanied me over the past few weeks to Hobart, Adelaide and Perth and returned with me to Brisbane yesterday. It is one of the Court’s ceremonial symbols but one that was designed to travel, and it has. I did have some hand in its establishment. It was presented to the Court and is maintained by our Court, in Richard’s memory. It stands as a permanent tribute to a great judge of Queensland and of the Commonwealth.
And so to the profession: how fortunate that we are in this country to have a legal profession that is vigorously committed to high professional standards of excellence and integrity and independence. The Queensland Bar is noteworthy for its strength and its independence and its excellence. I had the privilege of appearing in Queensland quite frequently in federal matters during my years as a silk and on some occasions before that. Earlier still, and this may not be well-known, as a very junior barrister, I learned much from appearing before a great Queensland master of the law and a very great judge, the late Sir Harry Gibbs, then Federal Judge in Bankruptcy and a quite frequent visitor to Melbourne. This building is named after him and that is a matter of great satisfaction.
Appearing before Sir Harry was a great and instructive experience for a young barrister, as indeed it was when he was Chief Justice of Australia. That was, as well as being instructive, also a formidable experience. It was very valuable.
It was also an enormously valuable experience to appear, as I quite frequently did, before another great Queenslander, Sir Gerard Brennan, when he was a member of the High Court. Of course, that was well before he became Chief Justice. In that latter capacity, however, I had the privilege of being a member of the Council of Chief Justices when he presided over it.
During my time as Chief Justice the sense of there being a national profession has greatly developed and practitioners do feel that they belong to a national profession, an Australian profession, but that feeling is strengthened by the rich diversity of the States and the Territories. It is a diversity which, as a federal judge, it has been my privilege to experience and now to celebrate. This has been particularly apparent to me over the past few weeks.
I leave the bench with great faith in the strength of the common law of Australia, as we now know it to be, and the independence and expertise of the profession in both its branches. Tasks do lie ahead. There is the continuing task of procedural reform. This is a task well suited to the skill and imagination of judges and well suited also to the skill and imagination of the profession. That is a great project which must continue and in which we must all co-operate with enthusiasm and for the common good.
It will be apparent that there are others whom I must thank and I shall do so on another occasion. I include my own staff and most notably my spouse, Margaret, whose support has been constant and indispensable.
Thank you all for your presence here today. It is greatly appreciated and I can assure you. Although this will, as I have to accept, be the last time during which I shall sit as a judge in Queensland, it will certainly not be my last visit here.
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