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TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

O/N 167435

FEDERAL COURT OF AUSTRALIA

CEREMONIAL SITTING OF THE FULL COURT 

FOR THE SWEARING IN AND WELCOME OF THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE MURPHY

BENCH:
THE HONOURABLE PATRICK KEANE, CHIEF JUSTICE
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE GRAY
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE MARSHALL
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE NORTH
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE FINKELSTEIN
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE GUIDICE AO
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE KENNY
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE STONE
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE JESSUP
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE TRACEY RFD
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE MIDDLETON
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE GORDON
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE BROMBERG
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE DODDS-STREETON
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE MURPHY

MELBOURNE

9.32 AM, TUESDAY, 14 JUNE 2011

Copyright in Transcript is owned by the Commonwealth of Australia.  Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 you are not permitted to reproduce, adapt, re-transmit or distribute the Transcript material in any form or by any means without seeking prior written approval from the Federal Court of Australia.

MURPHY J:   Chief Justice, I have the honour of announcing that I have been appointed a judge of the Federal Court of Australia by her Excellency the Governor-General, and I now present my commission.

KEANE CJ:   Madam District Registrar, would you please read the commission.

THE DISTRICT REGISTRAR:   Commission of appointment of a judge of the Federal Court of Australia.  I, Quentin Bryce, Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, acting with the advice of the Federal Executive Council and under section 72 of the Constitution, and subsection (6)(i) of the Federal Court of Australia Act 1976, appoint Bernard Michael Murphy to be a judge of the Federal Court of Australia, assigned to the Melbourne registry, beginning on 13 June 2011 until he attains the age of 70 years.  Signed and sealed with the great seal of Australia on 7 April 2011, Quentin Bryce, Governor-General, by her Excellency’s command, Robert McClelland, Attorney-General.

KEANE CJ:   Justice Murphy, I now invite you to take the oath of office.

MURPHY J:   I, Bernard Michael Murphy, do swear that I will bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her heirs and successors according to law; that I will well and truly serve her in the office of judge of the Federal Court of Australia, and that I will do right to all manner of people according to law, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will, so help me God.

KEANE CJ:   Justice Murphy, I now invite you to subscribe the oath that you have just taken.  Madam District Registrar, would you please place the commission and the subscribed oath with the papers of the court.  Before I call on Ms Glanville to address the court on behalf of the Attorney-General for the Commonwealth, I would like to say a few brief words of welcome to Justice Murphy.  First, I should acknowledge our distinguished guests, Justice Hayne of the High Court of Australia, The Honourable Michael Black AC, my predecessor as Chief Justice of this court, justices of the Family Court of Australia, of the Court of Appeal of Victoria and the Supreme Court of Victoria, Federal and State magistrates, and former judges of the Federal Court, you are all most welcome to this important occasions, and the renewal of the life of the court.

Justice Murphy, on behalf of all your new colleagues on the court, can I extend the warmest of welcomes to you.  You come to the court with a formidable reputation for commercial acumen and experience as well as an enviable work ethic.  These advantages will serve you well as you tackle the work of the court.  You come to the court from the solicitors’ branch of the profession, and in that regard you follow in the footsteps of most illustrious predecessors who have been outstanding judges of the court.  It would not be seemly to mention sitting members of the court, but in this context I feel I can’t forebear to mention the late lamented Justice John Lehane, who was one of the finest lawyers to serve on any court on any bench in the country.

Justice Murphy, you are also notoriously physically fit, but I am sure that your new colleagues will find it in their hearts to forgive you for that.  We all look very much forward to working with you and we hope you enjoy working with us as much as I’m sure we will enjoy working with you.  Ms Glanville, do you move?

MS L. GLANVILLE:   May it please the court.  And first may I acknowledge the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation, traditional owners of the land on which we meet and pay my respects to their elders, past and present.  I am honoured, at this special sitting of the Federal Court of Australia, to represent the Attorney-General, the Honourable Robert McClelland MP, who regrettably cannot be here this morning because of his ministerial commitments.  The Attorney-General has asked that I convey his warmest congratulations to your Honour on your appointment as a judge of this court.  Although solicitor friends and colleagues have been lamenting your loss from amongst their ranks, they are overjoyed and immensely proud that one of their own is to be elevated to high office here today.

The history of the Federal Court reminds us that the appointment of solicitors as judges of this court is a rare event, but is not without precedent.  Your Honour’s skills and talents as a solicitor will bring a unique perspective to the bend.  Your Honour’s appointment recognises the diverse range of skills, expertise and experience that you bring to office, of which I will talk more in a moment.  I understand that on learning the news of your appointment your Honour felt, in your own words, somewhat “discombobulated.”  I trust that you have overcome your initial feelings of confusion and disbelief and are now ready to take up the challenges of serving on this important bench.  

Celebrating this special occasion with you and with much affection is your Honour’s family:  your wife, Leonie, your daughter Katie and her partner Tom Peattie, your son Declan, your brothers, Patrick and Daniel and their wives, and your sister Catherine.  

In 1973 your Honour graduated from Healesville High School where you were school captain and dux.  I understand that in your younger years your Honour wanted to be an Aussie Rules footballer, but was not able to master the code.  Your brothers, against whom you regularly competed, were much better than you and described you as “unco.”  Despite these disappointments I am sure that the excellent school report cards you brought home must have provided some comfort.  Perhaps it is these early dreams of football stardom that fostered your Honour’s love of Geelong Football Club.  Your Honour is known as a keen supporter and fountain of knowledge about the club. 

Others here today will speak of the influence your father, Joe, also a solicitor, had on your career.  In 1974 you decided to enter the field of law and enrolled at Monash University in courses for a bachelor of jurisprudence and a bachelor of laws, graduating in 1978.  It is no secret that one of your Honour’s most important encounters following university was meeting your future partner, Leonie.  In 1980 your Honour was admitted to practise in Victoria.  In 1987 and 1989 you were also admitted to practise in the Supreme Courts of Western Australia and New South Wales respectively.  

From 1980 until 1995 your Honour was a lawyer, then senior partner with the firm of Slater & Gordon Lawyers.  Here your Honour was known as a rising star, mentored by the late Judge Mike Higgins, who became a judge of the Victorian County Court.  Judge Higgins’ personal injury work has certainly been described as legendary, and it seems that this relationship affected the areas of law in which you would later serve.

As a practising solicitor your Honour had the unusual adaptability to move into many aspects of the law, most prominently personal injury, industrial law and class action.  In 1996 your Honour moved to the firm of Maurice Blackburn Lawyers.  Later, in 2005, you became chair, and from 2009 you have served as chair of the firm’s pro bono special justice practice.  Since 1998 your Honour has specialised in commercial class action litigation, involving interlocutory, trial and appellate proceedings in the Federal Court and the Supreme Courts of Victoria and New South Wales, and in the High Court.  Your Honour has the distinction of having been involved in some of the largest class action settlements in Australia to date, including the Aristocrat shareholder class action, the GIO shareholder class action and the Vitamins cartel class action.

Your Honour has excelled in all areas in which you have practised.  In the period of your appointment as a senior partner of Slater & Gordon, the firm had expanded in the area of industrial relations from the third-largest in the state to the first.  In recent years, as chairman of Maurice Blackburn, your Honour has demonstrated your ability to provide strong and effective leadership across the firm.  In leadership roles you have been variously described as having the attributes of intelligence, charisma, directness, generosity, hard work and kindness.  Your Honour is known as the first to arrive at work and the last to leave, a terrific mentor and teacher, who provides useful and insightful feedback, and thinks about those lawyers under you in a strategic and constructive fashion.

If that were not enough, your Honour’s capacity to present papers and lectures as a lawyer is very well established.  In the past 10 years I believe your Honour has attended expert panels by invitation and presented something in the order of 42 papers, lectures and seminars on matters largely relating to class action law.  Your Honour has also been a senior fellow in the Melbourne Law School, as a teacher on the Melbourne Law masters program, as a frequent contributor to bachelor of law and juris doctor classes, and as a co-author with Professor Camille Cameron on an article for the Melbourne University Law Review, titled Access to Justice and the Evolution of Class Actions in Australia 2006.

Your academic colleagues have come to respect you as an academic lawyer because of the ease with which you have been able to move between legal practice and the academy and academia and for your ability to integrate theory and practice.  Your Honour has also brought some other important things to teaching.  As senior fellow in the Melbourne Law School, you were known to treat every student with respect.  You are relaxed, and you do not check your sense of humour at the door.  Perhaps the most impressive thing about Bernard Murphy the academic is that ever since you 
have become involved in teaching you have been reflecting on your own strengths and weaknesses and thinking about how things might be improved.

The same things that have made your Honour a good practitioner and a good teacher will also make you a good judge.  A keen intellect; good judgment; your sense of justice, central to who you are; a love of the law and your pursuit of professional excellence; your hard work; adaptability; patience; good listening skills; courtesy and a good dose of commonsense that so characterise your legal career will be highly valued by this court.

Justice Murphy, on behalf of the Australian government I extend to you my warmest congratulations on your appointment and welcome you to the bench of the Federal Court of Australia.  May it please the court.

KEANE CJ:   Thank you, Ms Granville.  Mr Colbran, do you move?

MR M. COLBRAN QC:   May it please the court.  I appear on behalf of the Law Council of Australia and its constituent bodies to pay tribute to your Honour Justice Murphy on your appointment to this court.  The Law Council represents more than 56,000 lawyers through its constituent bodies, which comprise every Australian Bar Association and Law Society and the large law firm group.  In an interview with The Age after your appointment was announced, you said you were:

…very humbled by the opportunity that has been given to me and I look forward to serving the court.

This sense of humility and thirst for service has pervaded your Honour’s 30 years of work in the law.  You have represented some of the most vulnerable people in the Australian community, doing all you could to see that they got a fair go from the legal system.  Of particular note is your work with those affected by the horrific 2009 bushfires in Victoria.  As someone who regularly rode through the towns of Kinglake and Whittlesea, two of the hardest hit regions, your Honour felt a particular affinity for the victims of this terrible disaster.  170 people died in the Black Saturday bushfires and of these, 121 were in the East Kilmore, Kinglake fire.  In addition, over a thousand homes were destroyed in that fire alone.

Your Honour headed the team of solicitors that instructed Robert Richter QC, Tim Tobin SC and Lachlan Armstrong, who represented the bushfire survivors and victims of that fire at the Bushfires Royal Commission.  Your Honour also coordinated the work of the country firms that represented victims of the other four electricity-related bushfires, those at Horsham, Coleraine, Weerite and Beechworth.  It was your Honour personally who conducted discussions with counsel assisting the Royal Commission, and with the Victorian Government Solicitor on behalf of all those other solicitors and the clients they represented, and until your appointment to this court, your Honour headed the Maurice Blackburn team in the Victorian Supreme Court class action suit in which your firm represents more than 1000 claimants.

Ms Glanville, speaking on behalf of the Commonwealth Attorney-General, has spoken of the extraordinary breadth of your Honour’s practice, covering the disparate and highly specialised fields of personal injuries law, industrial law, and for the last many years, class action commercial litigation.  In the class action arena you have the distinction, as we have heard, of some of the largest class action settlements to date.  That may be a measure of the substance and importance of those actions, the level of wrongs righted, and the heavy responsibility your Honour bore, not only in those cases but also as head of the class action department you established at Maurice Blackburn, a department that now has some 27 lawyers devoted to class action litigation.

Commercial class action cases on this scale involve hundreds, sometimes thousands of claimants.  They often involve multiple, separately represented defendants and respondents with cross-claims against each other.  There are complex issues of fact and law and typically these cases are vigorously defended over many years.  It is this level and quality of practical and professional expertise that your Honour brings in your appointment to this court.  You bring also the theoretical and intellectual dimension of your academic teaching and writing, as a senior fellow of the University of Melbourne Law School.  On behalf of the Law Council of Australia and of the Australian legal profession, I wish your Honour distinguished and satisfying service as a judge of this honourable court.  May it please the court.

KEANE CJ:   Thank you, Mr Colbran.  Mr Moshinsky, do you move?

MR M. MOSHINSKY SC:   May it please the court.  I appear on behalf of the Victorian Bar and the Australian Bar Association, to congratulate your Honour Justice Murphy on your appointment to this court.  The president of the Australian Bar Association, Michael Stewart SC, of the Queensland Bar, is unable to be here today and has asked me to pass on his apologies and best wishes.  Professional colleagues who have worked with your Honour praise your sound judgment in the assessment and strategic conduct of major litigation.  We have heard of your Honour’s specialisation since 1998 in commercial class action litigation.  Your Honour was a pioneer in that field.

The class action regime, found in Part IVA of the Federal Court of Australia Act, took effect on 5 March 1992.  However, section 33B limited the use of that regime to causes of action arising after the commencement of Part IVA in March 1992.  McMullin v ICI Australian Operations before Wilcox J in the Sydney registry of this court, was one of the early representative actions to go to trial, judgment being given in 1997.  Thus it was that your Honour was a pioneer when, in 1999, you commenced Australia’s first successful shareholder class action, King v AG Australia Holdings Limited, formerly GIO Australia Limited, and Others.  

The story of that case is worth telling.  It is a classic case in which the central aim of representative class actions, access to justice, was given effect.  Representative actions were created to provide a mechanism for individual citizens to seek redress for civil wrongs committed by governments, corporations and others more powerful 
than the individual, where previously access to justice was effectively denied because the individual person’s claim was small and an individual action not economically viable.  You brought that case on behalf of 22,000 primarily mum and dad GIO shareholders.  The AMP takeover bid for GIO offered $5.35 a share.  The GIO directors’ part B statement and advice to shareholders in two-inch high bright red font shouted “reject this inadequate offer.”  But there were undisclosed liabilities.  The professional investors and super fund managers knew that the $5.35 offer was fantastic.  They all took it.  The mum and dad investors didn’t.  

Ultimately, the mum and dad investors had under a scheme of arrangement to accept AMP income securities worth only $2.75.  The representative applicant, Mr King, had a claim for about $3000.  For the first time in Australia, individual citizens with comparatively small claims had a legal remedy for misleading and deceptive conduct;  they had access to justice.  The litigation was protracted and fiercely fought.  You were opposed by no less than nine groups of well-resourced respondents.  There were seven appeals to the Full Court on procedural matters.  You won them all.  The case ran five years, settling in 2003 for about $112 million, of that, about $15 million in party/party costs.  The respondents' costs have been estimated at approximately $30 million. 

Some 22,000 largely mum and dad shareholders received an average of about $5000 each.  This was just on 60 per cent of their loss suffered.  Academic and other commentators have heralded the case as a landmark result and a breakthrough for corporate governance.  It has also long been recognised that shareholder class actions hold corporations and their officers to account above and beyond any penalties imposed in the regulatory regimes and so contribute to a culture of good corporate governance.  The same can be said about the many other class actions your Honour conducted.  

Your Honour also has a literary side.  In 1985, acting for Wittenoom asbestos workers, you and your colleagues at Slater & Gordon interviewed some 350 claimants in the weeks over Christmas. 

You were taking statements day and night.  In between, you were hard at work reading statutes in the Western Australia Supreme Court library.  Exhausted in every way, your Honour still found the energy to write verse in the library.  It went like this – and apologies to Dorothea Mackellar:

I love a complex statute,
Whose meaning is not plain, 
Of complex words and phrases,
At which the language strain.

Your Honour's poetic judgments are eagerly awaited.  

Class actions are expensive to run, into the millions of dollars in a large action, and the Australian rule that costs follow the event is a substantial disincentive.  It took immense courage to run, in particular, the early class actions. It put not only the applicants, but the law firm, also, at risk.  Both at Slater & Gordon and at Maurice Blackburn, your Honour and the firms in which you were a partner have had the conscience and courage to stand up for the individual against major corporations in complex, long-running and expensive claims.  One senior counsel has put it thus:

Your Honour was a rare lawyer who had the guts and had a go.  You didn't always win, but you gave each and every matter you took on a red hot go. 

Courage, compassion, hard work and intellect, a commitment to justice and access for justice,  a relaxed and engaging manner with colleagues and clients alike;  these are the qualities your Honour brings to your place on the court.  

On behalf of the Victorian Bar and the Australian Bar Association, I congratulate your Honour on your appointment and wish you distinguished and satisfying service as a judge of this court.  May it please the court. 

KEANE CJ:   Thank you, Mr Moshinsky.  Mr Holcroft, do you move.  

MR HOLCROFT:   May it please the court.  I appear on behalf of the Law Institute of Victoria to congratulate your Honour Justice Murphy on your appointment to this court.  Our president,  Caroline Counsel, is currently overseas and has requested that I pass on her congratulations and best wishes to your Honour.  It is my great pleasure as president elect of the Law Institute of Victoria to speak today on behalf of the institute and the solicitors, especially of the State of Victoria.  Your appointment to this court is of special significance.  It is of special significance to this state's more than 15,000 lawyers, as I am instructed you are the first Victorian solicitor to be appointed to the Federal Court.  Your Honour's appointment is a rare honour.  You have spent the last 30 years representing victims or fighting for fair;  a professional direction you decided on as a young boy not long into double figures.

You inherited your father's attitude to the law which was to use it to help ordinary people.  Your inspiring father, Joe Murphy, built a thriving practice, Joseph B. Murphy, in Greensborough, Diamond Creek and Lonsdale Street in the city not far from Maurice Blackburn House, the site of your former law firm.  It is fitting, indeed, that you keep a framed copy of your father's admission certificate in your office alongside your own.  Joe Murphy was a firm friend of retired legal stalwarts like Frank Vincent, later Vincent J of the Court of Appeal, Dee J of the County Court, Jack Gaffney, registrar of the criminal appeals and registrar of the Court of Appeal, and the late silver-tongued barrister, Fred James. 

It goes without saying that Joe Murphy who died in 1985 would have been an extremely proud father today.  Joe died when he was 54, the age that your Honour is now.  In a continuum of parent/child relations, your Honour's own daughter, Katie, and son, Declan, are both studying law at Monash University and gaining work experience at Maurice Blackburn.  Katie, I am instructed, is fluent in Spanish and Mandarin and is working in the area of medical negligence, and Declan is spending time in the pro bono social justice practice.  Both have expressed an interest in helping the legal problems of ordinary people.  I am instructed that Declan shares his father's love for the Geelong football club which is also proving to be a winning inheritance.  Although, may I say, it is only early in the season. 

It could also be said that your Honour got your fierce work ethic from your father who left school at 15 at the behest of his father, a ditch digger.  Working in a clerical job at a solicitor's office, Joe felt the pull of the law.  He decided to study it, and did this through the Council of Legal Education Course at RMIT whilst working full-time, supporting his family and captaining and coaching the Greensborough football club.  To get the quiet he needed to study, Joe often sat in his car or on a park bench.  Your fathers Herculean efforts rubbed off on your Honour.  Among your colleagues, your work ethic is legendary.  12 to 14 hour days are the norm, and that is after a quick sprint on the road bike. 

You joined Slater & Gordon in 1980 and completed your articles under the firm's then senior partner, Geoff Jones.  When the late Mike Higgins – later Higgins J of the County Court – went on long service leave, you received his workload.  18 Supreme Court cases, no less, all listed for trial within months, and I am advised that you enjoyed acting for these clients and the cut and thrust of litigation and those trials.  

Your Honour joined Maurice Blackburn in 1996, and from 1998 you practiced as a commercial litigator specialising in class actions.  You were elected chairman of Maurice Blackburn from 2005 to 2011.  You did not join a class action practice at Maurice Blackburn;  you created one.  In the beginning, it was a phone and a desk.  Now the class action practice is a legal juggernaut.  It is not a stretch to say that your Honour has changed the legal landscape.  You set up much of the framework for class action litigation and in doing so improving corporate governance standards.  

Your Honour also gives time to Australia's oldest child welfare agency, the Children's Protection Society, of which you are and will continue to be vice-president.  Your Honour has played an important role in the agency's fundraising efforts.  It was in a corporate box at an ACDC concert bought by your Honour at a Child Protection Society fundraiser that I am instructed you wore a fake mullet.  

Your Honour's sense of fun is nominated as one of your most endearing personal qualities.  The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, whom you recruited and worked with at Slater & Gordon, refers to your Honour's sense of humour in the book The Making of Julia Gillard by Jacqueline Kent:

I have found myself laughing at things he has said and done months later. 

One thing in particular is mentioned by friends and colleagues, and that is your Honour's love of fancy dress.  I am instructed that there has been the Phantom, Elvis, Ike Turner – thankfully not Tina Turner – and memorably Hannibal Lecter, replete in strait jacket and mask.  Your Honour went as a mummy to the Monash University Law Society ball.  It has been suggested that the judicial robes were part of the appeal of a career on the bench.

Leonie is an all-round rock to you and your children.  Together you have travelled the world, riding elephants, searching for tigers, hiking among bears and more adventures are planned, provided that Leonie does not have to sleep in a tent.

It is important today to acknowledge your wife's contribution.  A one time school teacher of English literature and history, Leonie then lectured part-time at the University of Melbourne and is now tutoring overseas students at RMIT, she is the heart of the Murphy family.  Her support, no doubt, made it possible for your Honour to reach the heights that you have.  

I am instructed that Lycra skins are now an outfit of choice when you go road or mountain bike riding.  Your Honour is known to be pleased to find a sport that you're good at.  

As Ms Glanville touched on, football, although not an area in which you excelled, was an area that your Honour enjoyed.  Your Honour views this as a genetic misfortune of incalculable proportions, not at least because your Honour and two brothers were gifted players.  Your father played AFL for Fitzroy in the late 1940s.  Son Declan, I am told, is not bad either.  In a match between the Newport Railways Workshop and shunters for whom you played on one occasion in your 20s, you lost four front teeth, having not had a kick.  In true fighting spirit, the next day your Honour, who had his teeth pushed back by an emergency dentist, had an appearance in the Melbourne Magistrates Court against an unrepresented litigant.  Suffice to say the fine lawyer was beaten hands down by the unrepresented litigant.  We doubt that that litigant appreciated the size of the legal scalp that he had captured, albeit under some severe distress of your Honour. 

On another occasion playing basketball, I am instructed you were sent off after a scuffle.  Fellow player and lawyer Eugene Arocca, who is here today, is now chief executive at the North Melbourne football club, represented you at the tribunal.  Mr Arocca reports that you were a horrible client.  You kept passing him notes which annoyed the adjudicator immensely, and you were banned for two matches.  Mr Arocca says that with your Honour, despite your allegiance to the Cats, the Federal Court has got the judicial equivalent of the number 1 draft pick.  

When your wife beat you at tennis, then golf, you did turn to bike riding.  Your Honour enjoys mountain bike riding with Federal Court fellow Justice Bromberg, also VCAT Senior Member Eric Riegler.  And if you see a convoy of three Ford Territories crossing the West Gate Bridge, it is likely to be a significant tranche of the judiciary going to the You Yangs mountain bike park.

Justice Bromberg notes your Honour's extreme competitiveness and frequent collisions in the course of getting from start to finish as fast as humanly possible.  He says your Honour is the only mountain bike rider he knows to injure himself before leaving the car park in a daring wheelie manoeuvre gone bad.  Justice Bromberg has suggested to the Chief Justice of the Federal Court, Patrick Keane, that your Honour have a special robe made that is black and blue rather than the traditional black and maroon to camouflage any weekend mountain biking injuries.  Whatever colour your robes, your Honour's manner, not to mention your mirth, will be much appreciated by the practitioners who appear before you. 

Your Honour has been where they stand.  Coming from the ranks of solicitors, you understand the pressures that practitioners come under and the difficulties bringing cases to court.  Your Honour's personable demeanour, your breadth of knowledge, your ability to get to the nub of a legal tangle in no time and your compassion are all highly anticipated.  Today is an historic day for the profession.  The Law Institute of Victoria and the solicitors of the State of Victoria wish you well.  May it please the court. 

KEANE CJ:   Thanks, Mr Holcroft.  Justice Murphy.  

MURPHY J:   Thank you, your Honours, colleagues, friends and family.  I thank all of those responsible for my appointment as a judge of this court, both for the honour bestowed and the trust reposed in me.  I am extremely humbled to be so appointed, and I will work very hard to repay that trust.  

I am very grateful for the very kind words of Ms Glanville, Mr Colbran, Mr Moshinsky and Mr Holcroft.  And let me express my professional appreciation for the very clever way in which they sought to avoid their duty of candour to the court.  Although I appreciate the eulogising, because it is well-intentioned and intended to honour me, you should have no fear whatsoever that I will believe a word of it.  

I thank all of you for sharing this special occasion with me and for the honour you do me and the court by attending.  I am very touched.  This appointment is one more illustration, if I needed it, that I have had a very fortunate life.  And I want to take the short time that I have – and it is short – to record my gratitude to some of those who have helped me.  

As you might expect, having heard the speakers, I must start with my parents, my father Joe and my mother Heather.  They were born into working class families during the Great Depression and times were not easy.  As has already been stated, my father was forced to leave school at age 15 and worked in various indoors and outdoors jobs, including football playing and coaching, until at age 32 he got a job working as a law clerk.  He quickly realised that he could be a lawyer and did his matriculation and a law degree at RMIT while working full-time as a law clerk with six children in tow.  With an often absent father, my mother bore the burden of raising the family, and through their joint efforts my father became a successful and well-respected lawyer running his own small suburban and city firm.  

Both of my parents believed that life is not about money or accumulation of wealth, but rather is primarily about community and connection with others.  They were very involved in the lives of their communities, and they believed there is a dignity in hard work, in family, and in friendships not limited by class or religion.  I wouldn't be here today if they had not found time with their hectic workloads and their busy family life to teach me the value of work and education, to love and support me and to inspire me.  I thank them both deeply.  I wish my father was here to share this day. 

I also thank my wife, Leonie, my partner of 30 years, who supports me, curbs some of my excesses, and so far has tolerated my shortcomings.  I rely on her.  I am grateful to her parents, Vince and Mary, and her brothers, sisters and in-laws for their friendship and support and for coming along today.  

My two children, Katie and Declan, have given me so much happiness for which I am very thankful and they have grown into decent, hardworking people, who seem to understand that with opportunity comes responsibility for which I am proud.  

My brothers, Patrick and Danny, and my sisters, Anne and Cathy, and my in-laws on that side, have also been good to me.  I thank them for that.  I must say that almost certainly would not have been here today if Patrick and Danny had not been so good at football and been so dismissive of my pathetic attempts that I ceased competing against them and instead lay behind the dam bank reading book after book.  The very sad truth is despite my legal career, had you asked me on most occasions, although not today, whether I would rather have been a full forward at Geelong, the answer would probably have been yes.  

My friends have always surrounded me with laughter and fun which I have greatly appreciated.  I am thankful that all the stories that weren't told today, because sometimes it's true I have appreciated the fun a little too much.  Time will not permit me to name these people, but many of them are here today.  They are, and have been, a key to my fortunate life.

Many colleagues in the law have also had a very positive influence on me which I thank them for.  In 1979, I did articles at the very good firm of Slater & Gordon under the senior partner, Geoff Jones, who was a patient and excellent teacher.  Jenny Lush and Mike Higgins, both great lawyers, took an interest in me and assisted my development.  They taught me lessons that I still rely on today.  I also worked with a cohort of fine young solicitors including Peter Gordon, Steven Plunkett and Julia Gillard from whom I learned a lot.  Various barristers assisted me:  counsel like the redoubtable Ted Hill, common law silks like Jim Howden, Jack Rush, Paul O'Dwyer and Paul Scanlon, and industrial law silks such as Herman Borenstein and Tony North and Mordy Bromberg, the latter two of whom I am now proud to sit alongside on this court.  

In early 1996, I was fortunate to join Maurice Blackburn, a strong litigation firm with a particular mission to assist ordinary people in their legal disputes and a wonderful culture.  The people of that firm supported me unconditionally in the difficult endeavour of starting a class actions practice not that long after the Federal Court class action regime was created.  People such as John Cain, Greg Tucker, Peter Koutsoukis, Rod Hodgson, Steve Walsh, Eugene Arocca, John Voyage, Josh Bornstein, Kate Booth, John Berrill, Liberty Sanger and Don O'Halloran, gave me unwavering support that I will never forget.  Those people on that last list who were not administrators are or were also terrific lawyers in their own right.  

Over time, I was lucky to work with some of the best class action solicitors in the country in a team beautifully managed by Tina Vecchio;  lawyers such as Andrew Watson, Ben Slade, David Niven, Rebecca Gilsenan and others.  My success was built on their hard work and their great capacity and also on the advocacy and ingenuity of some of the best barristers in Australia:  junior counsel such as Lachlan Armstrong and Michael Lee, both of whom have been briefed in more successful class actions than any other;  senior counsel such as Dr Kristine Hanscombe, Herman Borenstein, Julian Burnside, Stephen Gageler, now the Solicitor-General, Noel Hutley, Tony Bannon and Alec Leopold.  I pay tribute to the work of all of those lawyers and thank them for helping me.  

I should probably also mention the excellent defence solicitors such as Steve Burns of Ebsworths, Ken Adams and Damian Grave of Freehills, Michael Rose and Ross Drinnan of Allens, Andrew Christopher of Baker & McKenzie, Andrew Morrison of Clayton Utz and Michael Landvogt of Lander & Rogers.  They too taught me some lessons that assisted my career.  I now feel grateful for those lessons, although I didn't feel so at the time.  

Professor Camille Cameron, my co-lecturer in class action law at Melbourne University law school, deserves my thanks for assisting me in my painfully slow development as a lecturer.  I will miss Camille when she leaves to become the dean of the law school at Windsor University in Canada shortly.  

Finally, can I mention that last Friday I was surprised to read in the Australian Financial Review that I was replacing Justice Finkelstein on this court.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  He is irreplaceable.  His energy and seminal contributions to so many areas of law, including the class actions area in which I worked, mark him out as one of the great minds of the court.  I thank him for the inspiration he has given me and wish we could have had some real time working together.  

So now, although I am under no illusion about the scale of the task, I can't wait to get started.  

In part, this is because I believe in real rather than theoretical access to justice.  I want to join with the other judges on the court to ensure that rights under the law can actually be utilised by ordinary people and small business and are not just an illusion.  

In part, it is because I have a long-term interest in trade practices, corporations, competition and consumer law, so I am excited about the possibility of working in those areas, but also about the opportunity of learning some new ones.  

In part, it is because I have come to love class action law, and I want to continue to develop that jurisprudence within the pre-eminent work in Australia for that type of work.  

And, finally, it is in part because I want to repay the community that has given me such a fortunate life.  

I again thank everyone responsible for the opportunity I have been given, and all of you for your warm welcome today.  Thank you.  

KEANE CJ:   Thank you, Justice Murphy.  You are all invited to join Justice Murphy and his family outside on the concourse for a cup of tea.  Adjourn the court, please, Mrs Healy. 

MATTER ADJOURNED at 10.13 am INDEFINITELY