Ceremonial Sitting of the Full Court
to Welcome the Honourable Justice Bennett
Transcript of proceedings
THE HONOURABLE DEBRA MORTIMER, CHIEF JUSTICE
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE MORDECAI BROMBERG
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE ANNA KATZMANN
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE BERNARD MURPHY
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE JONATHAN BEACH
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE MARK MOSHINSKY
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE KATRINA BANKS-SMITH
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE MICHAEL WHEELAHAN
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE MICHAEL O’BRYAN
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE STEWART ANDERSON
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE HELEN ROFE
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE SHAUN McELWAINE
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE TIMOTHY McEVOY
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE LISA HESPE
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE CATHERINE BUTTON
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE CHRISTOPHER HORAN
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE PENELOPE NESKOVCIN
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE CRAIG DOWLING
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE STEPHEN McDONALD
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE ELIZABETH BENNETT
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE AMELIA WHEATLEY
MELBOURNE
9.15 AM, WEDNESDAY, 19 FEBRUARY 2025
MORTIMER CJ: Please call the welcome.
COURT OFFICER: Welcome of the Honourable Justice Bennett.
MORTIMER CJ: A warm welcome to you all. This Court building sits on the country of the people of the Eastern Kulin Nation, whose traditional lands extend around Port Phillip and Western Port bays, and up into the Great Dividing Range and the valleys of the Loddon and Goulburn Rivers. I recognise and respect the many generations before colonisation who walked these lands, cared for their country and practised their laws and customs in their languages. I recognise and respect the determination of First Nations peoples to restore and preserve their connection to country, their laws and customs, and their languages. It is such a delight to see such a – so many people here today. The Court is truly overflowing, which is reflective of the wide endorsement of Justice Bennett’s appointment.
I acknowledge and thank those who are attending; the presence in particular of current and former Justices of the High Court, former Justices of this Court, Justices of the Federal Circuit and Family Court, Judges and former Judges and Registrars from the Victorian Supreme Court, the County Court, the Coroners Court, the Magistrates Court and State and Federal Tribunal Members. We have the legal profession here in large numbers, particularly and unsurprisingly the Victorian Bar. Fresh from his own welcome yesterday, I acknowledge the presence of the new Chief Justice of Victoria, Chief Justice Richard Niall. To Justice Bennett’s partner, Carly Schrever, her Honour’s family and friends, thank you for joining us today. I say a special good morning to Ned and Clancy and Matilda.
This is both a celebration and a ceremony. We celebrate Justice Bennett’s appointment as a significant milestone in her career. We conduct a public ceremony so that members of the community and the legal profession, the academy and all those with interests in the law can, if they wish, learn about the qualities and attributes of the new Judge who has accepted the responsibility to serve our community in the administration of justice in this Court.
Justice Bennett, you took an affirmation of office on 20 December last year, upstairs in the level 16 conference room, in front of family, friends and many of your new judicial colleagues from the Victorian Registry. You promised, as every Judge of this Court has, to do right to all manner of people according to law, without fear or favour, affection or ill will. That is a promise about independence, fairness, courage and impartiality. Those are values I am confident you will uphold in your service to the Australian community as a Judge of the Federal Court. I congratulate you on your appointment, and I invite the Attorney-General for the Commonwealth to address the Court.
THE HON M. DREYFUS KC MP: May it please the Court. I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, and pay my respects to their elders past and present. I extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people here today. It’s a great privilege to be here today to congratulate your Honour on your appointment as a Judge of the Federal Court of Australia. I thank you on behalf of the Australian Government for your Honour’s willingness to serve as a Judge of this Court. The Court extends its best wishes for your career on the bench. Your Honour’s appointment to the Federal Court has been warmly welcomed by the Australian legal community, and it is another success in a diverse and eminent career.
The presence of so many of your colleagues in the judiciary and the legal profession here today demonstrates the high regard in which your colleagues hold your Honour. I particularly acknowledge the Honourable Justice Gordon and the Honourable Justice Steward of the High Court of Australia; the Honourable Ken Hayne, former Justice of the High Court of Australia; the Honourable Chief Justice Richard Niall, Supreme Court of Victoria; Justice Karin Emerton, President of the Court of Appeal; the Honourable William Alstergren, Chief Justice of the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia; the Honourable Michael Black, former Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia; and other current and former members of the judiciary, and members of the legal profession.
Your Honour’s family proudly share this occasion with you today. Your wife, Carly, is here with your children, Ned, Clancy and Matilda, your parents, Paul and Marie, and your siblings, David, Philip and Sarah. I acknowledge your brother, Andrew, and his family, who are joining us via live stream from Singapore, which is a wonderful thing. Your Honour grew up in Brisbane and then Melbourne with your parents and four older siblings. I’m told your father’s favourite book is Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, but that he vehemently denies naming you after that Elizabeth Bennett. However, there is no doubt that the novel’s salutary warning about the perils of both pride and prejudice are a superb grounding for anyone aspiring to be a Judge. I’m told that your childhood featured a lot of cricket games with your older brothers, a few of which you were so eager to be a part of that you agreed to be the wicket.
Your Honour also discovered a passion for football in childhood, becoming vice-captain of the football team in grade 6 after persuading the boys to let you play. I am told you were particularly horrified to learn that there was no football team on starting high school at Genazzano College. This skill for persuasion followed you into high school debates, where you habitually took the role of third speaker, due to your talent for thinking on your feet. Your Honour attended Monash University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws with Honours in 2003. Your Honour was admitted as a legal practitioner to the Supreme Court of Victoria in 2005, and practised as a solicitor at Allens, specialising in commercial litigation.
I’m told that it was as a research assistant to Professor Bob Baxt AO, a partner at Allens at the time, that your Honour met your wife, Carly. Your Honour was the associate to the Honourable Justice Marcia Neave in 2005 and 2006 before returning to Allens in 2007. Your Honour was subsequently called to the Bar in 2009, and took silk in 2021. At the Bar, your Honour had a broad practice in public, regulatory and commercial law matters, and in commissions of inquiry. Among a vast array of achievements, your Honour also held an appointment as counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse and Neglect for Persons with a Disability.
Your Honour’s dedication to serve the Bar is evident in your commitments beyond the Courtroom. Your Honour served on various boards and committees until your appointment to this Court. Some of your notable roles have included Co-Chair of the LGBTIQ Working Group at the Victorian Bar, Vice President of the Bar, and then President of the Bar for all too short a time. Your Honour has devoted significant time to pro bono work, including a number of landmark cases, including the human rights of LGBTIQ people in Australia, including Norrie and Re Kelvin. It’s with great pleasure that I now turn to a few of your Honour’s personal qualities.
Throughout your career, your Honour has been known as courageous and spirited in everyday life, although notably calm in a crisis, which may have been the result of volunteering with St John Ambulance until your early 20s. I’m told your wife, Carly, speaks of your incredible and steadfast integrity. I understand you upheld the rules when you worked at Templestowe Safeway in your teenage years, no matter what – refusing your own mother the key to the bathroom for not providing photo ID.
Your colleagues describe you as a generous mentor, and a leader with whom juniors and solicitors love to work. I’m told that you’ve acted, formally, as a mentor to six readers and that you’ve always undertaken a significant amount of pro bono and volunteer work over the years. I’m also told that your Honour enthusiastically encouraged your readers to think of themselves as part of a Bar family, introducing each of them to your own mentor, Dan Star KC, who memorably exclaimed, “You’re my granddaughter!” upon meeting one of them. Your Honour has recently gotten into farming after taking over the care of your late grandparents’ hobby farm alongside your brothers, Phil and Andrew, and you’ve become fluent in the language of pasture improvement, crop irrigation and cattle raising.
I’m also told your Honour has a great love of history, particularly Tudor England and the English monarchy. Star Trek also features amongst your passions; although, I would caution that “to go boldly where no man or woman has gone before” is perhaps not the best starting point for a Judge. Your greatest love, talent and focus outside the law, however, is your family. I’m told it’s not uncommon for you to spend quality time together hosting singalongs around the piano, and that your Honour has always been very dedicated to your family life, supporting your wife Carly as she forged a new career and as a wonderful and devoted mother to your three children.
Your Honour’s appointment to this Court acknowledges your accomplishments in the legal profession, and steadfast nature. And your Honour takes on this judicial office with the best wishes of the Australian legal profession. It is trusted that you will approach this role with the same exceptional dedication to the law that you have shown throughout your career. On behalf of the Australian Government and the Australian people, I extend to you my sincere congratulations, and welcome you to the Federal Court of Australia. May it please the Court.
MORTIMER CJ: Thank you, Attorney-General. Mr Justin Hannebery, President of the Victorian Bar Association, also representing the Australian Bar Association.
MR J. HANNEBERY KC: May it please the Court. It is my great privilege to appear today on behalf of the Australian Bar Association and the Victorian Bar to welcome your Honour to this esteemed Court. I, too, acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the peoples of the Kulin Nation, and pay my respects to their elders past and present. In Star Trek Voyager, Captain Kathryn Janeway is stranded in the Delta Quadrant, 70,000 light-years from Earth. She must lead a diverse crew, including former enemies back home, balancing duty and morality while making difficult decisions. She holds onto hope, her principles and her identity, ultimately earning the trust of her crew. It is, therefore, fitting that one of the most cherished decorations in your Honour’s chambers is a print of Captain Janeway with your Honour’s face superimposed – a gift from friends who clearly recognise that Janeway’s confidence, empathy and integrity resonate deeply with your Honour’s own character.
Your Honour’s journey to this bench also began light-years away from any expectation of a legal career. The youngest of five children, you came from a family without a background in the law, and moved to Melbourne after spending your first six years in Brisbane. An early love of debating revealed a sharp intellect and a taste for advocacy, leading to an Arts Law degree at Monash University. Articles at Allens Arthur Robinson followed, where a moot Court victory not only highlighted your natural advocacy talents, but gave you the opportunity to spend valuable time with a teammate who would eventually become your wife, Dr Carly Schrever – perhaps the most strategic victory of all.
Your Honour’s interest in the law and your future wife was then cemented in the Victorian Supreme Court, where Carly had become Associate to Justice David Habersberger. Presiding over Orrong Strategies v Village Roadshow, his Honour was joined by Jim Sher KC, Charles Scerri KC for the defendant, and my learned colleague, the Attorney-General, the Honourable Mark Dreyfus KC, acting for the plaintiff – a classically dry commercial affair with catchwords such as “computation of time” and “meaning of non-limited resource financing.” The trial lasted seven months, over which time Carly was a steadfast presence.
For reasons perhaps now obvious in hindsight, your Honour took great interest and frequently observed proceedings in the public gallery. Inspired, your Honour became an Associate to Justice Marcia Neave AO with the Court of Appeal. Justice Neave recalls a terrific Associate who relished debate, demonstrated clarity and confidence, and took on delicate tasks with poise, including procuring spare furniture for chambers and decoding cryptic sartorial directives, such as the requirement to wear weepers. Your Honour’s entrance to the Bar in 2009 was marked by the same confidence. You read with Dan Star KC, who recalls a barrister with emotional intelligence in spades and an insatiable work ethic, saying yes to every opportunity across diverse areas of law.
This foreshadowed another of your Honour’s defining traits, boundless energy and openness to challenge. At the Bar, your Honour quickly gained a reputation for formidable advocacy – nimble, fierce and always well-prepared. You established a broad practice spanning public, regulatory and commercial law, flourishing at level 22 of Owen Dixon West. Significant cases followed, including a High Court immigration matter with now Chief Justice Debra Mortimer and now Chief Justice Richard Niall. You ran pro bono cases for women trafficked into sex work and appeared in landmark discrimination cases including Christian Youth Camps v Cobaw, which secured justice for a group of same-sex attracted teens denied access to a Phillip Island holiday resort.
A colleague in Cobaw remembers seeing you in a full-throttle debate about the issues of the case with Chief Justice Mortimer one day. The same colleague recalls being told off by Australian airport officials due to your loud argument with her in the customs queue. You had visited Woodstock in New York and had differing views of whether that constituted having visited a farm. To declare or not to declare, that was the question. Clearly, in professional life and beyond, arguing about the facts is where your Honour feels most at home. Your Honour also played a key role in several Royal Commissions, including acting for ANZ in the banking Royal Commission, serving as counsel assisting in the Disability Royal Commission, and later as senior counsel assisting the Commission of Inquiry into the Tasmanian Government’s responses to child sexual abuse in institutional settings.
At the Disability Royal Commission, your paradoxical gifts for emotional intelligence and intellectual ferocity were on full display. Your Honour was able to sit empathetically with vulnerable witnesses and support them in giving evidence one day and hold corporate entities to account with unrelenting precision the next. It’s worth noting your strategic advocacy at the commission was matched only by your unrelenting ability to procure Tim Tams from the Auslan interpreters, who for some reason had a superior catering allocation in that department, impressive on all counts. Over 16 years at the Bar, your Honour developed a reputation for generosity, taking long calls from colleagues seeking advice, though always concluding conversations with your trademark abrupt sign-off, “See ya,” click.
You championed mental health and wellbeing, and for many years corralled colleagues into a pre-Christmas lunch zombie apocalypse laser tag battle. At times, you were even able to bring that rare flower, levity, into the courtroom. In your final Court of Appeal appearance, you referenced Dunmunkle, a case with a name that had long amused you and your friend Kathleen Foley SC, who that day was opposed to you. Laughing out loud and then aware the bench was looking on bemused, you helpfully explained how it was simply an unusual-sounding name. The bench took your explanation warmly. It has been said that some juniors even wagered each other a dollar to slip the word into proceedings. Perhaps I will soon be two dollars richer myself.
Your Honour mentored six readers, Steven Brnovic, Edwina Smith, Morgana Brady, Philippa Kelly, Gemma Cafarella, and Raymond Elishapour, who I can assure you were all here very, very early to get the best of the standing room seats. Ms Cafarella recalls a mentor who fostered camaraderie and productivity, while Ms Brady highlights your Honour’s ability to instil a sense of belonging at the Bar. Your Honour was extremely good at making sure that everyone felt as though they had a place and that they belonged at the Bar; that they were part of something bigger than them. For many, you came to embody the Bar itself through your generosity, leadership and encouragement.
You took silk in 2021 while serving as counsel assisting in the Tasmanian Commission of Inquiry, a role demanding intense scrutiny and travel. The inquiry was the largest Royal Commission held in that state, it contained difficult and distressing material, and it was therefore subject to intense media scrutiny. It also overlapped, for a time, with your work in the Disability Royal Commission and the pandemic. With three young children at home, it was a chaotic time, and you faced significant challenges sharing a home office with your psychologist wife, who was often involved in virtual consultations with clients. More than once, it required strategic, if undignified, crawls out of the room to preserve client confidentiality. Needless to say, you juggled everything with the good grace and humour you are famous for.
For many years, you served with dedication on more than a dozen voluntary boards and committees, including as Co-Chair of the Victorian Bar’s LGBTIQ Working Group. Elected to Bar Council in 2022, your Honour’s leadership was defined by energy, empathy and practicality. In handling complex challenges, you always asked yourself and others, “What is best for the Bar?” Despite being reliably five minutes late to Bar Council meetings, you came in peace – usually – and often bearing cupcakes.
At a recent High Court dinner, you were given the task of summoning guests from one room to another. Known for your famously sharp, loud and effective whistle, you were entrusted with the Bar’s most treasured artefact, the dinner gong. You struck it with such enthusiasm that the tip of the drumstick flew off, allegedly striking Justice Gordon.
In your personal life, your Honour is a devoted wife and mother. In 2012, in what could be categorised as defiance of Commonwealth law on same-sex marriage, you and Carly wed at the Provincial Hotel in Fitzroy, witnessed by Justices Neave and Habersberger. Later, you legally married in New York, before the 2017 Australian marriage reforms recognised your union.
Your Honour and Carly are now parents to twin boys, Ned and Clancy, and a daughter, Matilda. Your Honour balances judicial rigour with an evangelical enthusiasm for twins. Maree Norton SC notes, “Anyone wanting to rise in her Honour’s estimation should mention they are a twin, raised twins, or once sat on a bus next to twins – and if they’re redheads, all the better.” Your family, many of whom are with us today, either in person or watching online from Singapore and elsewhere, are incredibly proud of you, particularly your wonderful parents, Paul and Maree. I congratulate them for raising such a talented, kind and empathetic daughter. Beyond the law, your Honour finds joy in history, theology, science fiction and the Hawthorn Football Club. With a psychologist wife who is a world-leading expert on judicial stress, we trust burnout will not befall you. It would reflect poorly on both of you.
So, just in case, Dr Schrever has offered the following professional advice, and I quote,
“Given all the research, my own included, suggests that the strongest predictor of judicial wellbeing is the quality of your relationships. My professional advice would be to nurture your relationship with your spouse at all costs.”
We are confident your Honour will take the advice on board. Now, it is common in welcome speeches for it to be truthfully acknowledged that there was universal acclaim at the happy news of the appointment. In your Honour’s case however, I would not be honest unless I reported that there were certain of us that greeted the news with a somewhat more mixed array of emotions, and I ask that your Honour take that as a compliment of the highest order; we mourn just a little for your too short Bar presidency.
The Bar will miss your energy, courage, intellect and generosity; however, these qualities will undoubtedly serve you well in your new role. On behalf of the Australian Bar Association and the Victorian Bar, I wish you a long and distinguished judicial career. May it please the Court.
MORTIMER CJ: Thank you, Mr Hannebery. Mr Tom Ballantyne, Deputy President for the Law Institute of Victoria, and representing the Law Council of Australia.
MR T. BALLANTYNE: May it please the Court. I, too, acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which we meet, and traditional owners of country across our nation. I also pay my deep respects to elders past, present and emerging, and any First Nations peoples with us today. It is my great privilege to represent the nation’s solicitors, and appear on behalf of both the Law Council of Australia and the Law Institute of Victoria to welcome your Honour as a Justice of this Court. The respective presidents of the Law Council and the Law Institute, Juliana Warner and Matthew Hibbins, send their regrets that they are unable to attend today, but they pass on their congratulations and best wishes for your time on the bench.
We’ve already heard much about your Honour’s life and career, and there’s no need for me to go over the same ground, but it is worth us sharing a few additional thoughts and stories that highlight the strengths your Honour will bring to the bench.
Throughout your legal career, you found a variety of ways to serve, to raise ethical standards and to support human rights as part of your commitment to justice and to the community. We’ve heard you started your career as one of 35 articled clerks offered clerkships at Arthur Allens Robinson. I’m told you were a standout there, although there were a number of other outstanding clerks that year, as we’ve heard, not least of which Dr Schrever.
We’ve heard that you had a reputation as a careful and deft problem solver during your time as a solicitor. Carly recalls one incident at Allens when you were drafting a letter for a partner and inadvertently pressed send, just as that partner mentioned he wanted to make one more change. Determined to prevent the letter from being sent, you apparently leapt out of the chair and pulled the plug out of the computer. Such a natural understanding of technology is no doubt a compelling factor in your appointment. Louise Jenkins, a litigation partner at Allens at the time, remembers you as one of her favourites – bright and bubbly and fun to have around, all while doing the hard yards required of a young lawyer. Your Honour has clearly made a permanent impression at that firm. I’m told that you are still celebrated internally as one of their finest alumni.
And as we’ve heard, you had a varied experience in the law before going to the Bar, rising to Senior Associate at Allens, as an Associate in the Court of Appeal and working in-house at a major Australian bank. Outside of firm life, as a young lawyer, you were also Convener of the Amnesty International Victorian Legal Group, which was established in 1998. You were involved in drafting submissions and legal research, as well as monitoring and campaigning on human rights issues in Australia. And I’m told you contributed to much of Amnesty International Australia’s work, including submissions over the ASIO Act, the Marriage Legislation Amendment Act, and Australia’s ratification of the International Criminal Court and Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture.
As we’ve heard, that public service continued after going to the Bar, and in 2011, you were part of the legal team that won the Law Institute President’s Pro Bono Award. You were in very good company in that award, working alongside Chief Justice Niall and the Chief Justice of this Court, Debra Mortimer, who were both senior counsel at the time. And as my colleagues have ably detailed, your Honour has had a distinguished career and built a reputation for technical excellence.
However, I do worry at times about our profession’s almost myopic focus on technical excellence. I think it’s often to our detriment because it appears to me that one’s character is an equally important attribute, and one that is almost essential on the bench. Thankfully, your Honour has demonstrated a strength of character to go with your expertise. Your practice has always embodied ethical behaviour. This was something stressed by everyone we spoke to. During recent training for public sector lawyers, you were quoted as saying, “Sometimes people approach ethics like it’s something to be gotten around, but it really should just be part of the law we practise. When we do that, a lot of the tension can fall away.”
Your Honour is also known for your empathy and your decency. A colleague of mine managed to pass the Bar exam and the reader’s course while juggling two young children. When I told her that I was speaking at your welcome, she spoke glowingly of your Honour – not of your technical expertise or your achievements in the Courtroom, but of your contributions in the Vic Bar Mums WhatsApp group. She said that it actually meant a lot to her to see someone in your Honour’s senior position going out of her way to offer support and advice to others, trying to navigate the demands of professional and family life. I’m sure she’s only one of many who feel that way.
These reflections not only speak to your Honour’s decency and principles, but also to your leadership. We’ve heard a lot about the leadership that you’ve provided for the profession. These attributes are critical on the bench. And when framed with your technical expertise, highlight the strength of this appointment. Your depth of legal knowledge, your experience, your empathy and your insight will no doubt be appreciated by all those who appear before you in this Court. And we look forward to the continuing significant contribution your Honour will make to the administration of justice and to the nation.
So on behalf of the solicitors of Victoria and of Australia, I thank you for your service thus far and wish you a long and satisfying career as a Justice of this Court. We also want to wish you and your family all the best for the next chapter of your life. May it please the Court.
MORTIMER CJ: Thank you, Mr Ballantyne. Justice Bennett, I invite you to reply, and wish you all good luck in replying to all of that.
BENNETT J: Thank you, Chief Justice. I, too, would like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the lands on which we meet, the people of the Eastern Kulin Nation, pay my respects to their elders past and present, extend that respect to any First Nations people present here today, and I echo the Chief Justice’s comments about her admiration for the resilience and continuity of First Nations people, both where we sit today and around the country.
Justice Gordon, Justice Steward, Chief Justice Niall, current and former Judges of this Court, other Courts, distinguished guests, family, friends, friends who have travelled, I’m looking around the courtroom and I could think of an anecdote to say about almost all of you, and I want to tell you how grateful I am from the bottom of my heart that you’ve come today, and what it means to me to see you all standing here or sitting here. It is an enormous highlight of my life.
I’m going to now return to my prepared notes.
I thank each of those who have spoken today for their very kind words. Attorney-General, the honour of this appointment is very much in my mind. That Mr Hannebery has forgiven me to such an extent as to speak so warmly today is a credit to him and a relief to me. Thank you for your kind words, everyone, and for your reasonably restrained use of Jane Austen references.
I am grateful to the Chief Justice, the Judges of this Court, the Registrars and Court staff for their support of me as I’ve started out this new chapter. I’ve been exceptionally well-supported, and including about today, the logistics of which have not been entirely straightforward. So thank you to everyone for making my start at this Court so seamless.
I have been to a lot of welcomes in my career. I’ve always loved them because we are one of the few professions I think that pauses ceremonially at different points in our career: our admissions in the Banco Court, signing the Bar Roll, ceremonial bows for silks, the welcoming of new Judges. Some people read this love of ceremony as a slightly self-indulgent form of self-admiration, but I have always seen it as the opposite. I’ve always seen it as being a moment of reflection where we’re invited to bring into focus that the role we perform is about others more than about ourselves.
The pace of life in the law, like pretty much everything else these days, can get hectic, and it feels important to take moments like these to recall that the work we do matters – and it matters more than we do. I remember someone telling me that every day in Court was the biggest day in someone’s life, even if it’s just another day for you. And ceremonial moments like this help us recall the importance of the system of which we’re all a part. I hope to bear it steadily in mind in my new role.
Now, I came to the law after a devastatingly successful run as a checkout operator at Safeway. My scan rate was well over 30 items a minute and I had a produce test result history to be proud of. So I felt ready. And I arrived in the commercial litigation department at Allens, article to Louise Jenkins. Reader: I was not ready. Still, those early days as Louise’s article clerk taught me two critical lessons: first, never split an infinitive (“to boldly go”) and second, the law responds to hard work. I believe that remains true as a judge and I will seek to work hard to discharge my duties in this court. But my days at Allens were rewarding. It was a wonderful group of articled clerks, some of whom are here today and as you have heard, included my now wife. So I guess I must record my gratitude to the HR department.
I got my first sense of what a judge’s work might involve when I was associate to Marcia Neave. I am proud to have been her Honour’s first associate and she showed me the way in which the black letter of the law collide with the personal and that one did not necessarily have to subordinate the other. It was possible to be a careful and learned lawyer while simultaneously keeping the impact on individuals in mind. When I came to the bar, I read with Dan Star, now KC. He didn’t know me when he agreed to let me read with him and he personified the generosity and collegiality of the bar more broadly and I remain deeply grateful to him.
When I came to host my six beloved readers present in court today, Steve, Edwina, Gemma, Pip, Morgana and Ray, I tried to emulate Dan as much as I could and we call ourselves a family of the bar and that’s exactly how it feels. I’ve worked with too many wonderful silks over my time at the bar to even contemplate naming them all. Indeed, I feel at risk with the number of people that I have already named, but I hope that many people here will forgive me if I do single out Peter Hanks KC. He had a calm, careful and measured advocacy style that countered my occasionally hot-tempered take on an issue and over time, it became clear to me that my somewhat passionate response to issues occasionally could benefit from the calm reflection in the manner of Hanks KC.
In recent years, I joined the Bar Council and my world expanded beyond those with whom I had worked to include barristers from all practise areas and seniority. I gained a lot from that time on Bar Council and I’m grateful to everyone who serves the Bar in the various ways that they do, both on Bar Council and through its committees. It’s an enormous commitment and it’s done with real love for the Bar and I think it deserves thanks. I found it a particularly enriching experience. A strong independent judiciary needs a strong independent bar that understands integrity and values learning and creativity and we have that here in Victoria. I was honoured to serve on the Bar Council, even though if I was president for only about three Scaramuccis or the time of one lettuce head.
It would be remiss of me not to mention at least at a high level the networks of support that fan out across the bar. I’ve shared floors with some truly brilliant and memorable barristers on Rosanove level 6 and Owen Dixon level 22. I will miss all of my friends there very much and all of our many idiosyncrasies (you know what they are). I’m grateful to my clerk, Jane King, and I’ve been supported by a range of excellent PAs over the year: Lou Coffey, Kelly O’Loughlin and most recently, the extraordinary Kate Walker.
There are other networks of support that don’t really exist physically that we’ve heard about a little bit today, Bar Mums is notorious. There are other subgroups of Bar Mums that I would like to acknowledge as well. Rainbow Bar is arguably the most fun, but there are others; they all provide support, assistance and perspective. I recall reading somewhere that “anybody can rise to meet a crisis and face crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh, I really think that requires spirit” and in many ways, those groups assist in riding out the petty hazards of the day at the bar. There are good days and bad and those networks are especially important on the bad days. So the lessons of my years at the bar remain closely with me and I will try to bring hard work, fairness and hopefully a calm disposition to my work as a judge.
Without giving too much away about when I wrote this speech, at the welcome for Niall CJ yesterday, he spoke about the uncertain times in which we find ourselves and the importance of an independent, robust institution in protecting the rule of law. Without trying to paraphrase his Honour’s eloquence, I say with all respect I share those hopes and I’m honoured to be a small part of one of the institutions charged with that important task. I recognise it is an obligation that takes courage and competence and I will seek to bring both.
I was counselled against leaving my family to the end of this speech, but that’s not the way the speech wrote itself so I wanted to turn to my family for a moment.
My parents unashamedly and entirely centred their life around their family and I don’t ever recall becoming aware of that fact. It was a simple reality that was always observed and never required any explanation. Now, Dad, I always assume you left your journal where I could find it so I would read it, but I recall one day when I was
in high school you wrote that I appeared to public speak without any fear. The reality was then, and still is now, that there is a strange safety that comes from knowing that whatever happens, there will still be a barbecue on the deck at Mum and Dad’s on Sunday, my mother will always be impressed no matter what, my sister will break the tension with a joke and my brothers will give me a headlock one way or the other. I couldn’t humiliate myself in a way that would matter to them and so it didn’t matter.
The effect of the unspoken understanding that subsists in my family has always been, perhaps, to create a tradition of assuming that we know these things without any real verbalisation. So it’s fitting that while there is transcript, to say what is perhaps often unsaid. Thank you both very much. Thank you all for your belief in me and the creation of a family that is so strongly bonded we take up half the courtroom. I love you both very much and I feel deeply the values of respect and loyalty that are so core to the family you have created.
I am, as has been mentioned, the youngest of five children. Two of my three brothers are present in court and so is my sister. I’m grateful to them for many things: to David for his unquenchable enthusiasm for knowledge. He has a prodigious reservoir of information which he’s always happy to share. And to Philip and Andrew for teaching me how to get back up when I get knocked down. I could have learned that lesson without being knocked down quite so many times, but I can’t now complain. Phillip and Andrew were very generous to me; in their upper high school, they had their driver’s licence and would sometimes drive my sister and I to school and they would slow almost all the way down before we had to get out of the car. So I’m very grateful to them for that as well.
As much as I love my brothers, growing up with three older brothers can have its challenges. Happily, I had my sister. Sarah is among the most intelligent, empathetic and brutally witty people that I have ever known. I wouldn’t be here without her and I’m pleased to see her partner Trent with her in court today as well. Present in court here are my uncles and aunts and I’m grateful for their support to me over the years. My late uncle Steven was, before his daughter, the only other member of my extended family to have studied or worked in the law and I wish he could have been here today.
I have had enormous good fortune in my life. The greatest of that good fortune is, without question, meeting and marrying my wife, Carly Schrever. As you have heard, that owes a great deal to the law as well. The fact that she did her PhD in judicial stress has the effect of putting me under an ironic amount of pressure to be a well-balanced judge. But Carly has always made me want to do my best and to be my best, because she’s worth it. Thank you, Carly, for everything.
I’m pleased to have our children Ned, Clancy and Matilda here in court today. They are a constant source of joy to us and I am deeply proud of the young people that they are growing into.
Thank you all for your attendance today. Forgive me all of my omissions and emotions. Thank you.
MORTIMER CJ: Thank you, Bennett J. The court will now adjourn. Thank you.
