Swearing-in of chief justice Susan Kiefel before a glittering throng … Soapy Brandis at his self-basting best … New AG for NSW … End of the justice cluster … A certain amount of blood gets spilled
IT was a busy day beside the Molonglo with swearings-in of chief justice Susan Kiefel and Justice James Edelman.
These events in living audio-visual colour will soon be posted on the High Court website so we can all swoon at Soapy Brandis in his full-bottom wig.
The Kiefel show was packed to the rafters. Spotted in the throng were Cozzi Cosgrove; the nondescript presiding officers of each house of parliament – Stephen Parry and Tony Smith; Robert French; Gerry Brennan; Bill Gummov; the Kirbster; Allsop; Kenny Hayne; Susan Crennan; loads of federal judges; CJs from every corner of the Commonwealth; solicitors-general by the cart load; big wigs from the ABA and the Law Council; Dame Sian Elias, the CJ of NZ; the CJ’s mentors, family and friends; and many barristers hoping to be noticed for the worthy effort in turning up.
Soapy, puffed with the pleasure of his own splendour, said that leaving school at 15 gave Her Honour an “unpromising start”.
It was her “steely determination” that saw her through, completing secondary school at night and then studying law through the BAB.
He reminded the gathering of her honour appearing in the Franklin Early White Nectarines IP case and soon we were onto cases in which HH appeared with Soap as her junior.
“I cannot fail to be nostalgic about the many times in those years when I appeared as your honour’s junior. I particularly remember Dowling v Dalgety in 1991, a case about the Goondiwindi sale yards which provided the great John Lockhart with the opportunity to write his magisterial judgment on market power.”
Yes, quite unforgettable.
Despite, all the slog te new CJ is a “lot of fun”. She rowed at Cambridge, where she met her rowing coach husband, Michael.
She loves theatre and music, is an “competent cellist” and is brushing up her skills on the keyboard, she cooks, entertains, hikes, fishes for trout and loves Rottweilers.
In reply, Kiefel was suitably modest, reminding us that judges serve, “not for the purpose of personal acknowledgement or the enhancement of reputation”.
She was happy to be praised at this ceremony, as it “could in the future be replaced by criticism from other quarters”.
Gabrielle (Goody-Two-Shoes) Upton is out and Mark Speakman SC is in.
They have swapped jobs – Goody is dispatched from AGs and goes to environment, while Speakers leave environment and saddles-up as New South Wales’ attorney general.
Better still, the whole horrible Department of Justice under former Dubbo copper, Troy-Boy Grant, has been scrapped. Troy-Boy retains police and fire engines.
Upton’s stint as NSW attorney general was not a happy one as she was the junior minister to Troy-Boy, who was then deputy premier. It was as though the police ran “justice” which, in turn, ran AGs.
Now Speakman is the stand-alone attorney general and senior in cabinet rank to the police minister.
Just before Christmas the NSW bar and law society issued a rare joint statement calling on the premier to bust up the “justice cluster”.
“It is unacceptable that an attorney general would be subservient to the police minister in any way, either in reality or perceptions.”
The result of this cluster f*** is that last year NSW got police-driven legislation that rolled over the top of the AG, e.g. the Crimes (Serious Crime Prevention Orders) Act and the Criminal Legislation Amendment (Organised Crime and Public Safety) Act.
The prevention orders legislation is particularly objectionable, allowing the police to apply for orders against people who have not been convicted of any serious criminal offence.
Together, both Acts give the police powers to curtail the liberties of citizens without due process, in a way that is seen to rival the criminal justice system.
Speakman, a serendipitous name for a barrister, was appointed silk in 2004.
One of our parliamentary snouts says that Speakman was “gifted” the seat of Cronulla when the Libs moved Malcolm Kerr out. He did his HSC at Caringbah High School before a BEc and LLB at Sydney and then an LLM at Cambridge.
He is regarded as conservative, but not idiotically so. Former premier Mike Baird gave him the environment portfolio so he could learn about cabinet procedure, and the working of the state bureaucracy. Baird was always intent on bringing Speakman into the AG’s job before the 2019 election.
The new FLO has the job of building bridges with the legal profession after they collapsed somewhat under Goody’s reign. He also has to keep at bay the jarring demands of Alan (Dunny) Jones and police PR ranter Ray Hadley.
Parliamentary watcher Alex Mitchell said that Speakers got the top law job despite “demonic lobbying” by the hard right in support of Alister Hens-Kens the member for Ku-Ring-Gai.
Last year Hens-Kens distinguished himself as a lawn order bright spark by speaking in favour of the new prevention orders law, describing it as an “innovatiove but reasonable change” – adding that since it’s modelled on British legislation it must be all right.
It was left to bar prez Noel Hutley to point out the significant differences between the UK and NSW laws.
Justinian also had the unpleasant duty to point out a case in which Judge Judy Gibson in the District Court revealed that Hens-Kens had appeared without a fee agreement and charged $32,000.