Ceremonial sitting of the Full Court
To welcome the Honourable Justice Moore
Transcript of proceedings
The Honourable Debra Mortimer, Chief Justice
The Honourable Justice Nye Perram
The Honourable Justice John Nicholas
The Honourable Justice Anna Katzmann
The Honourable Justice Michael Wigney
The Honourable Justice Melissa Perry
The Honourable Justice Brigitte Markovic
The Honourable Justice Robert Bromwich
The Honourable Justice Michael Lee
The Honourable Justice Thomas Thawley
The Honourable Justice Angus Stewart
The Honourable Justice Wendy Abraham
The Honourable Justice John Halley
The Honourable Justice Elizabeth Cheeseman
The Honourable Justice Kylie Downes
The Honourable Justice Scott Goodman
The Honourable Justice Patrick O’Sullivan
The Honourable Justice Timothy McEvoy
The Honourable Justice Elizabeth Raper
The Honourable Justice Geoffrey Kennett
The Honourable Justice Ian Jackman
The Honourable Justice Yaseen Shariff
The Honourable Justice Samuel Vandongen
The Honourable Justice Cameron Moore
The Honourable Justice Nicholas Owens
The Honourable Justice Stephen Stellios
The Honourable Justice Houda Younan
The Honourable Justice Elizabeth Bennett
The Honourable Justice Erin Longbottom
The Honourable Justice Amelia Wheatley
SYDNEY
9.16 AM, WEDNESDAY, 26 FEBRUARY 2025
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MORTIMER CJ: A warm welcome to you all. We’re on Gadigal country. I pay my respects to the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, to their ancestors and their elders who have looked after this country for generation after generation prior to colonisation, and whose connection to this country, to their culture, their laws and traditions remains strong and vibrant.
Today is the first of three welcomes this week in Sydney. There have also been several other welcome ceremonies across the country in the past few weeks and also next week, and that is a cause for celebration. It is a sign of great health in our legal profession that we’re able to produce so many high calibre advocates and new Judges. It’s a delight to see all of you here today, testament to the wide endorsement of Justice Moore’s appointment. We’re honoured to be joined by the Chief Justice and Justices of the High Court, former Justices of the High Court, the Chief Justice and Justices of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, President and Justices of the Court of Appeal, former Justices of this Court, Justices of the Federal Circuit and Family Court, Chief Judges and Judges from a range of State Courts. We also welcome many members of counsel, and Solicitors, members of the Academy, and a wide range of colleagues from Federal and State Tribunals.
In this ceremony we recognise the distinguished career of Justice Moore, and we celebrate his appointment. By a public ceremony like this, members of the profession and the community are able to reflect on the qualities of the new appointee. Such a milestone is not reached without the support and encouragement of family, friends and colleagues, and I’m pleased in particular to welcome Justice Moore’s family and friends on this special occasion. Justice Moore, you took the oath of office on 18 December here in this building in front of family and friends and many of your new judicial colleagues in this 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 – a promise that is about independence, fairness, courage and impartiality. Those are the values I’m confident you will uphold in your service to the Australian community as a Judge of the Federal Court.
And on behalf of the Judges, Registrars and staff of the Court, I congratulate you on your appointment. Mr Blunn, Australian Government Solicitor, representing the Attorney-General for the Commonwealth, I invite you to speak on behalf of the Attorney-General.
MR M. BLUNN: May it please the Court. I join in acknowledging the Traditional Owners of the land on which we meet, and pay my respects to their elders past and present. I also extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people here today. The Attorney-General, the Honourable Mark Dreyfus KC MP, regrets that he cannot be here to share this occasion with you today. I recognise the privilege that I am afforded in having the opportunity to represent the Attorney in congratulating your Honour on your appointment as Justice of the Federal Court of Australia. The Attorney has asked that I convey the Government’s sincere appreciation for your Honour’s willingness to serve as a Judge of this Court, and the Government extends its best wishes for your career on the Bench.
Your Honour's appointment to this Court is a significant milestone in your outstanding career in the law, the importance of which is underscored by the large number and seniority of your colleagues in the judiciary and the legal profession that are present today. May I particularly acknowledge the Honourable Chief Justice Gageler AC, Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia; the Honourable Justice Gleeson, Judge of the High Court of Australia; the Honourable Justice Jagot, Judge, High Court of Australia; the Honourable Justice Beech-Jones, Judge of the High Court of Australia, the Honourable Chief Justice Bell, Chief Justice, Supreme Court of New South Wales; the Honourable Justice Ward, President of the Court of Appeal, Supreme Court of New South Wales; the Honourable Justice Preston, Chief Judge, Land and Environment Court of New South Wales; other current and former members of the judiciary, and of course, members of the legal profession.
May I also acknowledge the presence of your Honour’s family, who proudly share this occasion with you – your wife Cate, with your children Sebastian, Felix and Hugo, your parents Diana and Barry, and Cate’s mother Barbara and father John. Not for the first time, your Honour, this Honourable Court has me on a tight timetable, making it difficult to expose in detail the scope and nature of your Honour’s achievements and the contribution that you have made to the law, but there is a mix of history and achievement that has led to this moment that should be shared.
Your Honour grew up in Brisbane, attending Brisbane Grammar School. It is unsurprising, given your Honour’s intelligence and capacity for hard work, that school was enjoyable and successful for you – excelling in the study of English literature, history and Chinese. Co-curricular activities included tennis, debating and what I’m told could be described as a passion, classical music and playing the piano. Building important skills for your professional career, I also understand that you developed great patience teaching four-year-old students how to play the piano, and, again, noting that I am focusing on the matters of importance in your Honour’s trajectory, some additional matters are worthy of comment, particularly concerning your taste, sophistication and courage.
I’m told that your Honour’s tie at school was always a perfectly formed Windsor knot, standing in contrast to the ties with an elastic neckband that found favour with your contemporaries. Perhaps in keeping, your Honour favoured a fountain pen eschewing the humble Bic Biro. As to courage, taste or sophistication, your Honour thought it appropriate, and reasonably so, to ask your 13 year old friend’s parents whether the ham you were being offered for lunch was fresh.
Your Honour’s trajectory to the Bar and the Bench was obvious in your final years of school, excelling as a debater, maintaining, as you did your chambers, organisation in your locker of which Marie Kondo would be jealous, transforming clutter to serenity and inspiration, and finally finishing school with the highest possible university entrance score. Your Honour graduated from the University of Queensland with a Bachelor in Arts in 1989 and a Bachelor of Laws with First Class Honours in 1991.
Your Honour moved to Sydney, and was admitted in New South Wales in 1993, working at Freehills before being called to the Bar in 1998, and then being appointed Senior Counsel in 2011. As a junior Barrister, your Honour’s very first trial involved a negligence claim against an inspector who had overlooked a termite infestation. Just prior to the trial, your client, most likely nervous, asked you to confirm just how many termite infestation cases you had done. Unsurprisingly, it was, of course, your first trial in which termites were the key issue. Your client’s reaction to that fact, and the outcome of the trial, seemed not to be known to any modern legal research capability.
Of course, your Honour went on to grow a diverse and successful Commercial and Regulatory Law practice with a particular focus on Competition Law, Consumer Protection, Intellectual Property, Energy Regulation and Class Actions. In particular, your Honour was briefed in a large number of the leading competition law cases over the last 20 years, involving contested acquisitions, cartel conduct and other anti-competitive conduct. Some key cases of note include AGL’s acquisition of Macquarie Generation, Metcash’s acquisition of Franklins Supermarkets, and litigation involving access to the Port of Newcastle; all very significant matters.
I pause to note, your Honour, that in every case there is a winner and a loser, such is the adversarial nature of our legal system, and it is striking to me that your Honour’s list of triumphs closely correlates to my list of losses. Perhaps more than others in this Courtroom, I’m particularly pleased that your Honour finally took a job – and the most important one – for the Commonwealth.
Against that background, I join with a large number of practitioners here today in being able to speak to your Honour’s capacity for independent and original thought, analysing facts and issues closely and carefully without preconceived notions or presumptions. Frequently, your Honour took responsibility for shaping the winning direction of your matters. You would make every appearance an opportunity to shape your client’s case, even at a directions hearing. Your Honour has been known to take this responsibility to extremes, leaving Cate in the delivery ward to take over a telephone directions hearing that your more-than-capable instructing solicitor had completely under control.
Your Honour was also very much part of the life of Banco Chambers, of which you were a founding member and a distinguished floor leader, building, with others, a formidable reputation for chambers. As floor leader, you were a first port of call, providing a sympathetic and non-judgemental ear to anyone seeking advice or assistance, particularly during times of personal hardship, including the untimely passing of your colleague and friend Sandy Dawson.
Your Honour also played an important role in mentoring junior members of the Bar, a number of whom have gone on to take Silk and mark this occasion with you today.
It is a great pleasure to recognise a few of your Honour’s personal qualities that have culminated in your appointment to this Court. Your pride as a husband to Cate and father to Sebastian, Felix and Hugo is obvious to those who know you, celebrating Cate’s considerable achievements in her own legal career more than your own, and taking delight in the independent lives established by your children. I’ve literally been told that your Honour has a great love and appreciation for wine, a fact previously only known to me as a rumour.
In addition to your love for classical music, wine and coffee, your Honour is a passionate bushwalker and lover of the outdoors. Your Honour has walked through all the national parks in Tasmania, a considerable achievement. Friends speak of your excellent sense of humour, your generosity, your patience and coolness under pressure, and your practical and sensible advice.
Like many, I had the privilege of attending the welcome to this court of Justice Bennett just last week. At that ceremony, the Chief Justice made observations about the important role of Judges in doing right to all manner of people according to law, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will, a role that directs attention to the importance of independence, fairness, courage and impartiality. I would add another quality, being diversity of thought. What emerges from these welcome speeches, including those to come, are the differences between the new Judges of this Court: different people who bring different backgrounds and experiences to being independent and fair, and it is clear, your Honour, that your background and your experiences will make a rich contribution to this court.
Your Honour takes on this judicial office with the best wishes of the Australian Legal Profession, and it is trusted that you will approach this role with the exceptional dedication to the law 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, Mr Blunn. Dr Higgins, President of the NSW Bar Association and representing the Australian Bar Association.
DR R. HIGGINS SC: May it please the Court, I too acknowledge the Gadigal of the Eora Nation. I give my respect to their elders past and present, and extend that respect to all First Nations persons present today. Chief Justice Mortimer, it is a privilege to speak today on behalf of the New South Wales and Australian Bar Associations. Justice Moore, what a happy, happy day. It is a happy day for your Honour: today your exploring has ended, and you have arrived where you started.
In 1993, you were an associate to the Honourable Professor William Gummow AC while a judge of this court. That was the first step in a legal pupillage which involved the kind of extreme heat and pressure which geologists typically associate with the formation of diamonds. Your Honour read at the bar with your new colleague, Justice Jackman, and your former colleague and former Solicitor General of the Commonwealth, Justin Gleeson SC. A certain intensity of temperament was perhaps inevitable, and, perhaps inevitably, your Honour’s career at the Bar was panoptic.
Your Honour was, at any particular time, involved in almost all cases being conducted in Australia in the fields of Intellectual Property Law, Competition Law and Class Actions. The extreme number of commitments this produced was aggravated by your Honour’s notorious desire to be involved in every decision made and every submission written in every case. It has, as a result, on occasion, been suggested unkindly that your Honour does not understand the concept of delegation.
But that is wrong. Your Honour has always known that a delegation is a group of people who represent the views of an organisation, a country, or the like. It has also, on occasion, been suggested, again unkindly, that your Honour was unwilling to say no to any brief, but that, again, misunderstands things. Your Honour is, in truth, the first of a distinctive hominid species, FOMO-sapiens. FOMO-sapiens is genetically incapable of resisting the excitement of a new brief; your Honour never had any choice.
In this morass of work, it is revealing that your Honour was equally infused by Patent and Competition Law, one of which confers lawful monopolies and the other of which polices unlawful ones. Your Honour thrills in seeing a conundrum from all sides; that trait will serve you well on this court. The matters in which your Honour was involved were also often instances of mega-litigation. Your Honour acted for many years for Channel 7 in the C7 litigation. Later, your Honour acted alongside Justice Burley for Apple in the Apple-Samsung Patent and Competition Law litigation. Last year, your Honour acted for many months for Google, in the epic Apple-Google litigation. These vast endeavours never unnerved your Honour. To the contrary, you seem to relish distilling the large and complex into the confined and simple. That capacity, too, will serve your Honour well on this Court. All of this should make clear that today is a very, very happy day for Senior Counsel in the practice areas of intellectual property, competition law, and class actions. A lot of work has just come back onto the market.
In that connection, I should observe that fellow members of the efficient oligopoly that is the Australian competition law bar are confounded by your Honour’s recent decision. The voluntary exit from a market by a participant with considerable market and bargaining power is inexplicable as a matter of orthodox economics. Now, the answer may lie in behavioural economics, or it may reveal yet another endemic characteristic of FOMO-sapiens; the analysis is ongoing. Today is, importantly, a happy day for this Court. That is not simply because a truly first-rate lawyer has accepted judicial appointment, nor is it simply because your Honour is so well-fitted to judicial office, although the significance of each of those facts should not be understated. It is also because your Honour is a truly distinctive Chambers colleague.
Your Honour was a founding member of Banco Chambers, a member of its board for 20 years, and latterly, its Head of Chambers. Viewed from afar, your Honour’s interest in colleagues had an almost anthropological air. At one point last year, your Honour was heard to observe that being Head of Chambers had taught you that – and I quote – “many Barristers live quite complicated lives.” That was said without judgment, and more with the posture of David Attenborough. But anyone who knew your Honour well appreciated that under that somewhat scientific exterior lay a profoundly generous, trusting and loyal friend, who would be equally generous with time, money, thought and attention, even though your Honour’s available quantities of each greatly differed.
Your Honour’s interpersonal mode of expression is also distinctive. An email from your Honour frequently read like a haiku written simultaneously by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, balancing the pessimism of one with the optimism of the other. Last year, your Honour and I were quietly planning a transition in a significant matter, in the weeks before your appointment was announced. This had caused your Honour some anxiety, which was best expressed in a one-line email which read:
There is a plan (although plans can go wrong).
Another of your Honour’s haikus is an email sent to a friend and favoured Junior, which is now framed on his Chambers’ wall, which reads:
Your work often makes me very happy. That is sometimes difficult to put into words. I will try harder.
Your Honour’s brother and sister Judges have welcomed a very, very fine colleague. Today is a happy day for your Honour’s family. Your wife Cate is a hugely accomplished partner of the firm King & Wood Mallesons. Interstate hearing clashes may now be substantially a thing of the past. Cate can continue to accumulate Frequent Flyer and status points now that your Honour no longer needs to. Your three sons can perhaps enjoy more bushwalks with your Honour. Your Honour may have more time for leisure pursuits. As things stand, your Honour is a member of no gym. You do not run half marathons, play social cricket, or skid through the streets in Lycra with cycling friends. Your Honour has, I suspect, instead worked out how to digest stress instead of carbs in order to stay lean and fit. Other fitness opportunities may now present themselves.
Justice Moore, at the recent swearing-in of your friend and now fellow Judge, Justice Brereton, I observed that a ceremony like this is an act of stopping. We pause and mark a moment. And it allows us to measure life thus far a little like silence measures music. Your Honour has worked very, very hard. Your reward is to continue to work very, very hard, but now, not in the service of arguments propounded for clients, but of the correct and expeditious resolution of disputes according to law. This is, as a consequence, a very happy day for the people of this nation. The Barristers of this country know that you will wear that responsibility well, and we know that your Honour will discharge that responsibility with characteristic rigour, vigour and, we hope, just a little joy. May it please the Court.
MORTIMER CJ: Thank you, Dr Higgins. Ms Ball, President of the Law Society of New South Wales and representing the Law Council of Australia.
MS J. BALL: May it please the Court. I echo the acknowledgments made of the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. I am very pleased to be here today to welcome your Honour’s appointment on behalf of the Law Society of New South Wales and the Law Council of Australia. The Law Council of Australia President, Juliana Warner, had the pleasure of working with your Honour during your storied career, and would have loved to have been with us in person today to mark your elevation. Unfortunately, she has a conflict that makes this impossible, and she asked me to pass on her regrets and best wishes to your Honour. Speaking with those in the profession who know your Honour well, there is little surprise and unanimous support for your appointment. Even in the first year of your practice, those around you quickly identified your talent and potential, and agreed you would excel in the law. Your considerable expertise, which spans a range of areas of the law, is widely and highly respected. While your Honour’s humility means you were not likely anticipating getting called to the bench, you have nonetheless been inadvertently preparing for this moment for many years.
I understand you have a close circle of friends, which includes others in the legal profession, who debate topics, both big and small. Your Honour has always been the elected adjudicator of these friendly arguments, and quickly hands down short judgements that are well-considered, clear and, when the subject allows for it, humorous. Your Honour will be a respectful, calm, efficient and effective officer of this Court. Your sense of integrity, as well as understanding of the stress and pressure that those in the midst of a court case may be under, will serve those who come before you well. Throughout your career, and as a leader at Banco Chambers, your Honour has modelled the principles of inclusiveness and support for all. The profession has been well served through your mentorship and commitment to developing and uplifting others. Perhaps one of the things that speaks most to your Honour’s character, and the respect you have for others, and vice versa, is the fact that, no matter how heated a legal battle might be, once it is over you and your opposing counsel remain friends. You personify the much touted, but sadly less-often-practiced, concept of leaving it on the field.
Your Honour has a voracious work ethic, and there is consensus that no one is sure how you manage the load you take on at all, yet alone so successfully. Quite wisely, you take that all-or-nothing attitude into the rest of your life, and, when having time away from work, put all your focus and effort into decompressing and getting away from the daily grind. Holidays include time with friends and family, hiking, seeking out the best gastronomical experiences, travelling and exploring the world. It is no surprise, then, that I hear that a favourite destination for your Honour is Italy. A story I was told about one such trip highlights your Honour’s inclination towards speaking softly and succinctly and keeping a dry sense of humour at all times. You were out on a drive with your son, and somehow got the car stuck in a narrow alley. When I heard this story, all I could picture is that scene from the Austin Powers movie where he gets a golf cart caught in a skinny tunnel and has to undertake essentially a hundred-point turn. So, I’m imagining that is what is going on, and you have been trying to extract yourself for some time when your son asks, “Daddy, are we going to get out of here all right?” And the reassuring response from your Honour was apparently, “I’m not sure we will.”
As I mentioned, your Honour’s friends are often a central part of your recreational endeavours, and they appreciate the time spent with you and the memories that you have made together. Your friends are particularly grateful for your penchant for collecting red wines, but having to generously share them because you don’t actually drink all that much yourself. You are a devoted husband and father who is actively involved with all your son’s hobbies and sports. However, I am led to believe that you strictly, and very early on, put your foot down to make sure those activities never included cricket. Perhaps your colleague, Justice Jackman, a lover of cricket, might have persuaded you otherwise of the joys of cricket.
I would like to finish with two little anecdotes that I think just beautifully sum up how pleased and grateful the profession is in regard to your Honour’s appointment. Firstly, there is no question your Honour could have been kept doing the work you enjoyed so much at the Bar and been perfectly happy and content. However, your Honour wanted to give back. Being a judge is a commitment to service, and it is one your Honour will acquit with grace and enthusiasm. The second is that members of the profession are already looking forward to appearing before your Honour. Your Honour, on behalf of the Australian legal profession, I congratulate you on your elevation and thank you for the contribution I have no doubt that you will make to the administration of justice in this country. As the court pleases.
MORTIMER CJ: Thank you, Ms Ball. Justice Moore, I invite you to reply.
MOORE J: Chief Justice, fellow judges, distinguished guests, I am honoured to have so many of you gathered here today. Others have undertaken the important task of acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we are gathered, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and I do likewise. Thank you Mr Blunn, Dr Higgins and Ms Ball for your over-generous remarks, although Dr Higgins has tempered that over-generosity in certain moments, and I feel I need to clarify that I have nothing against cricket.
Although this ceremony was billed in some places as a swearing in ceremony, I have been a judge for over two months. More than is usually the case at such ceremonies, I have an idea of what I am getting myself into, although it is too late to back out now. Fortunately, I’ve had an exceptionally warm welcome from my fellow judges and from the court staff, and it has been an absolute pleasure to be here. I did work here a very long time ago as an associate, and upon my appointment, one longstanding employee simply said, “Finally, you’re back.” Looked at from that perspective, perhaps I have been mucking about for a little while. Tony Bannon helpfully asked me last year, “When are you going to man up and take an appointment?” Apart from the mild hypocrisy inherent in the question, he was on point, but it was superfluous by then.
As a new judge in a court with a docket system, I was allocated a considerable number of cases in one go. I looked through them and decided I should list quite a few of them for case management. A surprising number of them promptly settled. I’m not quite sure what to make of that. Perhaps they thought, “He’s a new judge. He has no idea what he’s doing. We had better settle,” or perhaps it was, “He’s a new judge with too much space in his diary. He will foolishly try and move us along and make us do things like file evidence and prepare for a hearing. We had better settle.” My experience with those matters that didn’t settle has confirmed the wisdom of advice to young practitioners that advocacy starts at the first mention, not just at the commencement of the hearing.
In thinking about today, I’ve had cause to reflect on decisions to move from one thing to another, and I’m glad that I became a lawyer in the first place. When I was at school, that wasn’t necessarily the plan. Contrary to Mr Blunn’s information, I was better at maths and science than the humanities. I wasn’t a natural speaker. I’m still not. My parents knew that there was a young lawyer couple who lived up the street who did commercial law and thought perhaps I should speak to one of them to see what it was like. Their surname was McMurdo. They both ended up doing rather well. I was duly sent to see Philip McMurdo, who was then a junior, who told me that being a barrister was a wonderful thing and that he couldn’t think of anything negative to say about it. And so that was that, and here I am. In retrospect, it was an almost dangerously unqualified summary of life at the Bar, but it did the trick.
After leaving the University of Queensland, I was associate to Justice Gummow in this court for 18 months, just prior to his appointment to the High Court. It was something of a transformative experience, a complete immersion in law and practice. I left with a better understanding of what the law was, but also with the benefit of his strong views on what the law should be, but was not, on a whole variety of topics. And then, over subsequent years, bit by bit, that is what the law of Australia became.
After being an associate, I went to work at Freehills. I was there for five years. I worked on numerous interesting cases, and I never did a discovery. I am pleased that there are quite a number of partners of that firm here today. I spent most of my time in the intellectual property section. I emphasise that for the benefit of Annabelle Bennett, who thinks that my interest in IP was a late epiphany. It was not. I have always been doing IP cases. I have never not been doing one. I gather Annabelle is also worried about my interest in competition law, and that it may cause me to treat patents and other IP rights as questionable anti-competitive monopolies. There should be no fears on that front. At Freehills, I worked for Sue Gilchrist, who taught me many important things, including how to write a proper letter, and was subsequently a very supportive instructing solicitor and friend over many years. I thank Sue for all of those roles.
When I commenced at the Bar, I was a reader on Eight Floor Selborne Chambers. That floor has a fiercely independent and eclectic – indeed legendary – tradition and culture. It was a good introduction to the Bar. Colleagues there were welcoming and supportive. My tutors, as it has been noted, were Justin Gleeson and Ian Jackman. I therefore had an excellent grounding in soft people skills. I ended up doing many cases with Justin. He was then entering what some have described as his scary phase. We were an odd combination, because I was most definitely not scary, but we seemed to work well together and had some good results. Justin was very democratic in his sharing of the advocacy, including cross-examination. He also had a slightly alarming tendency to leave part-way through a case, which tended to focus one’s mind as a junior, because I sometimes had to complete a case that I didn’t know I was running. Justin was extremely generous with his time and his guidance, and was as fine a tutor as one could wish for.
As things turned out, I did fewer cases with Ian Jackman, but he gave me much support and encouragement and invaluable practical advice. I won’t say what it was, but it was extremely pragmatic. I am glad to be joining him on this Court. In my fifth year at the Bar, I was approached by some people about the possibility of forming a new Chambers. It seemed like something of a risky venture. I am very pleased with what ultimately emerged from that risky venture. It took some dedicated work, but the resulting institution has been worth it. Banco Chambers had been my professional home for over 20 years, and a very welcoming home. My colleagues at Banco have been the source of great friendship and camaraderie. I have had the best clerk in Sydney, Jeh Coutinho, and excellent support from an enthusiastic staff. I will miss you all. My decision to go to the Bench was not an easy one, because I loved being a barrister. In our somewhat corporatised and regulated 21st century world, the very survival of a separate Bar consisting of sole practitioners operating independently and following a set of robust historical traditions is almost miraculous. Its very survival speaks to a recognition of its important contribution to our system of justice.
There are nevertheless certain aspects of the Barrister model that would not necessarily be endorsed by a Department of Human Resources. For some, the enforced independence can give rise to isolation, stress or a potential lack of support, including through times of personal crisis. The model also has the potential to operate as an impediment to greater diversity. Having spent some time thinking about this over the last decade, and seeking to put in place policies and support at a Chambers level, it is good to see many Chambers and the Bar Associations taking active steps in this regard. The Court also has at least some role – perhaps a more minor role, compared to the role that Chambers can play, but it does have a role – including to ensure that court hearings are professional, pleasant and constructive, including by insisting on a high degree of professional courtesy; to have a stable, predictable and sensible time for hearings, so that people can manage and plan their lives, including their family and childcare arrangements; to have the hearing in the correct and expected location; perhaps more minor, but still important, to ensure that practitioners get a proper break in December and January.
If I fall short in supporting any of these things, please let me know. As a Barrister, nearly all of my matters were ones where the parties could afford to fight, and usually could afford to fight long and hard. Obviously that is not true of all cases in the Court, and in some cases parties cannot afford legal representation at all. That tends to inhibit the delivery of justice. The Court is taking active steps to refine and build its pro bono referral program, including by way of developments to that program, to make it easier for a broader range of practitioners to contribute. Many people here today may hear more about that in the not-too-distant future, including from me, because we will be encouraging more people to be involved, including so that the burden does not fall on a limited number of people who give a lot of their time.
I was fortunate at the Bar to have the opportunity to be involved in many notable cases. In the area of competition law, I was briefed on an ongoing basis by the finest practitioners in Australia in the field. The majority of them were women. Two of those regular instructors, Gina Cass-Gottlieb and Liza Carver, are now undertaking crucial roles at the ACCC, making that effective regulator even more focused in the interests of all Australians. They have quite contrasting styles. It was always refreshing listening to Liza tell some of Australia’s most senior executives that they were foolish, that they had stuffed up, or were liable to stuff up, and that they had better listen up to what their counsel was about to tell them. I won’t list everyone who instructed me. Many of you are here today. It has been a pleasure working with you all. I also had the benefit of working with countless excellent juniors. Many are present. You are too numerous to name, but that makes me no less grateful for all that you have done over the years. I had eight readers, five of whom have taken silk. Two in particular, Declan Roche and Robert Yezerski, did a large number of cases with me over the years. You know that you are exceptional, but you won’t mind me telling everyone.
I am glad to have many friends here today. Some people here don’t really know what I did, or what I’m doing now, or why there are so many people in this room with robes on. That means there will always be plenty of people I can speak to when I have reserved judgments. Thank you all for your good friendship over the years and your support today. My parents, Barry and Diana, are here today from Queensland. They provided me with excellent opportunities. They have been supportive in the best possible way throughout my life, and very sensibly let me do my own thing at various points. It’s wonderful to have you here at this ceremony. My three sons are here. To my oldest sons, Sebastian and Felix, I am very proud of what you have achieved and what you are achieving. Cate and I are delighted to see the fine young men that you have become, and I am very glad that you are here today. My youngest son, Hugo, who is nine, is also here. We are also very proud of you, Hugo. I look forward to seeing you grow up and thrive over the next decade.
My wife Cate is an organisational phenomenon, who does much better than me at keeping our family operational whilst being a successful and respected partner at King & Wood Mallesons. She has briefed numerous barristers in this room, and some of the judges, and has been an opponent to other people here, and you all know how good she is. Cate, I am immensely proud of you. You have also provided unstinting support and love to me over many years, and to our family, and without this I would not be here today. It is wonderful that we are able to celebrate together. Thank you all once again for attending.
MORTIMER CJ: Thank you, Justice Moore. The court will now adjourn.
