Welcome of the Honourable Chief Justice Patrick Keane
and sitting in welcome, Melbourne
Transcript of proceedings
RTF version THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE GRAY
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE RYAN
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE SUNDBERG
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE NORTH
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE MANSFIELD AM
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE FINKELSTEIN
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE GIUDICE
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE KENNY
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE JESSUP
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE TRACEY RFD
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE MIDDLETON
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE GORDON
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE McKERRACHER
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE BROMBERG
THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE DODDS-STREETON
MELBOURNE
9.33 AM, THURSDAY, 6 MAY 2010
COURT OFFICER: Welcome to the Honourable Patrick Keane.
KEANE CJ: Mr Colbran, do you move?
MR COLBRAN: May it please the Court. I appear on behalf of the Victorian Bar to welcome your Honour Chief Justice Keane on the occasion of your Honour’s first sitting in Melbourne. I was privileged to attend the Ceremonial Sitting at Brisbane at which your Honour was sworn in. That was a grand and joyful occasion, with your family sharing in the celebration and your grandchildren constituting what your Honour humorously characterised as a “cheer squad”. Similarly, in many cultures, kings used to be accompanied to official functions by a group of praise singers who would punctuate the proceedings with outbursts of praise for the King.
Your Honour needs no such accolades. Nevertheless, tradition requires the rehearsal of the achievements of a newly appointed Judge. In Brisbane, your Honour’s appointment was celebrated by no less than the Commonwealth Attorney-General, the Presidents of the Law Council of Australia, the Australian Bar Association and the Queensland Law Society, and the Vice-President of the Queensland Bar. Having gone so well in Brisbane, it’s a pity the whole show could not have come on the road to Melbourne, but Mr Stevens and I are honoured and delighted to welcome your Honour to Melbourne and to be your Honour’s Melbourne praise singers, although I regret we cannot match the spontaneity of the cheer squad.
Your Honour was educated at the Christian Brothers St Joseph’s College on Gregory Terrace, Brisbane. You went to the University of Queensland on an Open Scholarship and graduated with a Degree in Arts and a First Class Honours Degree in Law, winning the University Medal and a number of prizes. On the Sir Henry Abel Smith Scholarship, you did graduate work at Oxford and graduated Bachelor of Civil Law with First Class Honours, being awarded the Vinerian Scholarship and the JHC Morris Prize for First Place in Conflict of Laws. You practised for 27 years at the Queensland Bar, and of those, more than 16 years as Queen’s Counsel and 13 years concurrently as Solicitor-General for Queensland.
Your Honour has been said to be, and I quote, “a first-rate traditional legal technician,” words evocative of Sir Owen Dixon. Your Honour’s immediate predecessor in office, Chief Justice Black, was also recognised for his, and I quote, “use, to great effect, of the high technique of the common law, adapted to an age of statute.” Your Honour is also the author of numerous scholarly articles, and you bring to this Court the visionary power of ideas deeply considered. You served on the Queensland Court of Appeal for five years, until your appointment to this Court.
At the valedictory sitting of the Supreme Court of Queensland in your honour, Chief Justice de Jersey said, and I quote:
Justice Keane has been a highly valuable member of this Court, reflecting the gifted lawyer he is, an astute lawyer with a fine capacity for decisive and reliable judgment. He was, from the very start, not just quick, but rapid, in the production of judgments, and that reflected his unbridled capacity for hard work, his judicial assurance and his immense learning.
Your Honour, on behalf of the Victorian Bar, I warmly welcome your Honour to Melbourne, and I wish your Honour long, distinguished and satisfying service as Chief Justice of this honourable Court. May it please the Court.
KEANE CJ: Thank you, Mr Colbran. Mr Stevens, do you move?
MR STEVENS: May it please the Court. I appear on behalf of the Law Institute of Victoria and the solicitors of this State to welcome and congratulate your Honour on your appointment as Chief Justice of this Court. The medieval Irish bard is, in many ways, the Irish equivalent of the African praise singer, or perhaps vice versa. Like Mr Colbran, I’m honoured to perform that role in welcoming your Honour upon your appointment and welcoming your Honour to Melbourne. Although we understand your Honour’s practice did not bring you to Melbourne, you are, nevertheless, no stranger to this city. You have, we understand, visited often with Justice Middleton, whom you know from your days in Oxford.
Brisbane lacks our bracing Melbourne winters, but your Honour has been drawn to visit the Middletons’ cheerful winter fireplace and the delights of a number of our Melbourne restaurants, including, I’m told, the Mask of China. The wider Melbourne profession looks forward to getting to know your Honour in what we hope will be much more frequent, and now public and professional, visits to our city. Your Honour will, I’m sure, be aware that it is traditional to now adopt, as Chief Justice of the Court, an AFL side. May I humbly suggest that your Honour not be fooled by those temporarily occupying the top of the ladder, but choose a team which will be there in the future; my side, Melbourne.
In addition to the Open Scholarship you won in the Queensland Senior Public Examinations, your Honour worked part-time through your studies at the University of Queensland. From 1973 to 1975, while studying for your Law Degree, you worked and served your Articles in the law firm of Roberts & Kane. In February 1976, upon completion of your degree and articles, you were admitted to practice as a solicitor. Your Honour then worked as an employee solicitor with Feez Ruthning for two years, until your admission to practice as a barrister in December 1977. Your Honour took leave from Feez Ruthning to spend the nine months northern hemisphere academic year at Oxford, and your son Patrick was born in December 1976 in Oxford.
Your Honour thus brings to the Court the foundational experience of three years' articles in a small firm with a largely commercial and litigation practice, and two years, albeit interrupted by your time in Oxford, as an employee solicitor with Feez Ruthning, a large city firm. Feez Ruthning and its predecessor firms date back to 1846, in what was then the Moreton Bay District of New South Wales some 12 years before Queensland became a separate colony, a firm with a long history. The firm also had a national reach in your Honour’s time there, and in 1996, it merged with the Sydney firm of Allen Allen & Hemsley, now Allens Arthur Robinson.
My counterpart, the President of the Law Society of Queensland, Mr Peter Eardley, recalled at your Honour’s Brisbane welcome your talent and integrity at the Bar. I quote:
We solicitors have a common lament from your time at the Bar. Your name was foremost on our list of preferred counsel. Many a solicitor was disappointed to be told you had applied the cab-rank rule and that the other side had got in first.
Mr Eardley spoke also of, and I quote -
the great admiration we all have for your legal talents, but also the great personal affection we all have for you.
Your Honour thus brings to your office as Chief Justice the formidable combination of intellect, integrity, industry and personal charm. On behalf of the Law Institute of Victoria and the solicitors of this State, I too wish your Honour long, distinguished and satisfying service as Chief Justice of this honourable Court. May it please the Court.
KEANE CJ: Thank you, Mr Stevens. Colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, I should immediately acknowledge the presence of distinguished guests who honour the Court and me by their presence today; the Honourable Justice Hayne AC of the High Court of Australia; the Honourable Justice Susan Crennan AC of the High Court of Australia; the Honourable Diana Bryant, Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia, and justices of the Family Court; the Honourable Marilyn Warren AC, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria; and the Honourable Chris Maxwell, President of the Court of Appeal of Victoria; Mr Gageler, Solicitor-General for the Commonwealth. It is a pleasure to see at the Bar table the Solicitor-General for Victoria, Ms Pamela Tate, my former comrade-in-arms; and one of my mentors, Mr Merralls QC. It is also a pleasure to welcome back to the Court the Honourable Daryl Davies QC, a former judge of this Court.
Mr Colbran and Mr Stevens, thank you very much for your warm words of official welcome to Melbourne. I speak of the official nature of this welcome because I’ve been made very welcome in this city by members of the Victorian Bar and Victorian solicitors for more than three decades, just as they have always done their very best to make me feel at home at Noosa in Melbourne’s “northern outskirts”. It is, as always, great to be in Melbourne, and I’m honoured by the kindness of this welcome from members of the Victorian legal profession, a profession which, for 150 years, has set the highest standards for lawyers in this country.
Mr Colbran, on occasions like these, behind you stand the shades of Sir Edward Mitchell, Sir Leo Cussen, Sir William Irvine (who rejoiced in the appropriately Victorian nickname of “Iceberg”) Sir Owen Dixon, Sir Robert Menzies, Sir Wilfred Fullagar, Sir Douglas Menzies, and Sir Keith Aickin, and to speak of more modern times, the much lamented Neil McPhee QC and Ron Castan QC. Each of these is a great name, not only in the legal history of Victoria, but in the history of the English-speaking Bars. They are also great names in the story of the Australian Commonwealth. The brave and lucid advocacy of Sir Robert Menzies was as much responsible for the decision in the Engineers Case, the prism through which we have viewed our Constitution for 90 years, as the cerebrations of Sir Isaac Isaacs.
One knows that one should not seek to draw comparisons between these legends and our contemporaries, but I might be permitted to say that members of the Victorian Bar with whom and against whom I have appeared have always exhibited qualities of skill, resourcefulness, rigour, fairness and courage which honour the example set by their great predecessors. That was certainly my experience on the occasion of my very first professional association with the Victorian Bar, when (a quarter of a century ago) I was led in a case in the High Court by Mr Stephen Charles QC. That experience was a liberal education in itself, as Sir Robert Menzies said of appearing as junior to Sir Owen Dixon. Nothing in the 25 years since has altered my view that Victorian advocates are of a quality second to none.
Mr Stevens, the solicitors of Victoria have always been at the forefront of the Australian legal profession in ensuring that those in need are not denied access to legal advice and representation. It is also the case that in the last two decades, the leading firms of solicitors in Melbourne have spread their reach across the continent. If I might speak for a moment as a former employee of one of the firms of Queensland solicitors which disappeared in the Melbourne expansion, sometimes the energy with which that expansion was pursued seemed a little intimidating to the targets of their attention. One of the senior partners of the firm you mentioned, Mr Stevens, said to me that it put him in mind of a German expression, “Heute Deutschland, morgen die ganze Welt.”
But the world did not come to an end with the expansion of the Victorian firms and the result has been that there is a more confident and outward-looking legal profession in Australia, and that is a great thing. I look forward to benefiting as a judge of this Court from the high professionalism of the Victorian legal profession. I thank you all for your kindness in attending this morning and the courtesy you do the Court and me. We will now adjourn to reconstitute the Court for the hearing of today’s appeal. Adjourn the Court, please.
MATTER ADJOURNED at 9.46 am ACCORDINGLY
