Former Adelaide footlights performer steps-up to new role as President of the Commonwealth Lawyers Association … Alex Ward also embroiled in history of the Australian Military Court … Kevin Childs on the case
DAME Judith Anderson, Nick Xenophon, Don Dunstan and Anthony Lapaglia excluded, it’s not easy to name South Australians who have made a noteworthy contribution to the nation’s affairs.
Step forward Alex Ward, new president of the Commonwealth Lawyers Association, who took on the role at the association’s Scotch and golf special chit-chat in bleak Glasgow after going to the barricades for a new military court.
Barrister Ward, once subtly described by The Australian as “gregarious”, went through St Ignatius College, Adelaide. Importantly, he’s is an old pal of satirist Shaun Micallef, another distinguished Adelaidean.
He began at Ward & Partners with his father, Kevin, before schlepping across to Ward & Ward with his wife Amanda in 1993. Their children are Nicholas, Xanthe and India.
Eventually eschewing the university footlights that so captivated Micallef, (although he remains a board member of the Adelaide Fringe) Ward, an insurance and personal injury brief, was a legal officer in the Royal Australian Navy Reserve, thrusting him into the High Court’s demolition of the Australian Military Court, which overturned an entire Commonwealth judicial structure and put a hole in the Howard government’s bilges.
Coalition senators warned the “court” wouldn’t survive a challenge to its constitutionality, but the government didn’t want to upset the delicate flowers of the ADF by bringing in an external judicial creation to consider military prosecutions.
The High Court ruling in the tea-bagging case came two years after the AMC was set up in 2007, throwing into doubt the 171 cases it had tried.
Back then ADF victims of harassment and bullying suicided with little effect on Defence.
A report from the Standing Committee on Defence, Foreign Affairs and Trade committee report in 2005 unanimously called for reform. It wanted a permanent military court outside defence laws and hierarchy “to ensure its independence and impartiality”.
The Howard government, however, would not switch cases of serious military misconduct from the control of the military. A refusal to back our boys and girls in Iraq and Afghanistan was almost treason. Ward worked hard for the Military Court, explaining that any ADF member charged would have a choice of lawyer and face an independent prosecutor.
More background on the evolution of the new court here
As president of the Law Council of Australia, Ward backed Brigadier Lyn McDade, Director of Military Prosecutions, in her decision to charge three Australian special forces soldiers over the deaths of five Afghan children and one adult during an operation in Uruzgan in February 2009.
More than 32,000 people signed petitions against the 18-month investigation and the charges.
Cut to October last year and the swearing-in of the inaugural military judges of Military Court of Australia in what was described as “an even more transparent and impartial military justice system reflecting world’s best practice”.
Brigadier Ian Westwood became the first Chief Military Judge. His job is to ensure, “the orderly and expeditious discharge of the business of the Australian Military Court and managing its administrative affairs”.
Two permanent military judges, Colonel Peter Morrison and Lieutenant Colonel Jennifer Woodward were also sworn-in.
Woodward was a senior prosecutor for the ACT and a commercial litigation practitioner, but also came out of Defence.
The requirement is that the military judges are not serving military officers. Knowledgeable, but independent is the new name of the game.