UPDATE … Beazley P moves to Government House … Andrew Bell SC anointed as the new P … Various hopefuls shattered … Medical specialists rolling in it … Silly season in Adelaide … Theodora reports
None of our tips came good and we’ve wasted quite a bit of money with off-licence bookmakers.
Here the AG’s announcement about Doc Bell, commonly known as “Taco Bell”:
Prominent Sydney barrister Dr Andrew Bell SC will be elevated to the bench of the Supreme Court and will replace Governor-designate Justice Margaret Beazley AO QC as President of the Court of Appeal, Attorney General Mark Speakman announced today.
“Dr Bell is one of the Sydney’s leading barristers, with 24 years at the bar. He has appeared in 30 High Court appeals, more than 80 appeals in the NSW and Western Australia Courts of Appeal, as well as appearances in the Full Court of the Federal Court,” Mr Speakman said.
“Among the many accolades won by Dr Bell during his stellar career are his dual University Medals at Sydney University, his Rhodes Scholarship in 1990, his first place in the postgraduate Bachelor of Civil Law at Oxford University and his doctorate from Oxford. He took silk in 2006.”
He is the Senior Vice President of the NSW Bar Association and a past Chairman of a Professional Conduct Committee. For the past decade, Dr Bell has been an Adjunct Professor of Law at Sydney University.
He was twice chairman of Eleven Wentworth, one of Australia’s leading chambers in commercial and constitutional law. In 1990- 1991, he was the Associate to Sir Anthony Mason AC KBE QC, the ninth Chief Justice of Australia.
Dr Bell’s notable cases include Qantas v Rolls Royce, involving an engine explosion in an Airbus A380. He represented Gina Rinehart’s children in their litigation against her and appeared for the Seven Network in various cases arising from Australian Federal Police raids. Outside of the law, from 2009 to 2016 he was the chairman of Sculpture by the Sea Inc.
Mr Speakman paid tribute to Justice Beazley, who will become the 39th Governor of NSW in May this year.
“Justice Beazley is a highly decorated Federal Court of Australia and NSW Court of Appeal judge whose legal career crosses four decades,” Mr Speakman said.
“She has been a trailblazer for female lawyers across the state as the first woman appointed to the bench of the Federal Court in 1993 and then to the Court of Appeal in 1996, where she continued to break records by becoming the first female President in 2013. She was the third woman to join the Supreme Court judiciary.
“I thank Justice Beazley for her outstanding contributions to the judiciary and congratulate her on becoming the new Governor of NSW.”
Dr Bell will be sworn in as a Justice of the Supreme Court on Tuesday, 28 February 2019 when his appointment of President of the Court of Appeal also begins.
And here’s Bell’s bio on the 11 Wentworth website.
For those carrying a presidential swagger stick in their knapsacks there will be disappointment. In a rush of blood to the head we had mentioned Leeming, Ward, Hoeben, Justin Gleeson, Noel Hutley, Moses and John Sheahan as possibilities.
As is the case with uninformed predictions – these were names we desperately plucked from the air.
By-the-by, the bar is not happy with the retrospective arrangement that serving judges can keep judging till 75. It’s a drag on new appointments, slowing down already painfully slow career paths.
The governor-designate’s consort is Dennis Wilson, ADR guru at Wardell Chambers.
Journalists at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age dug up some interesting income statistics from data collected by the ATO in the 2015-2016 financial year.
In the median taxable income pecking order the medical profession took the top three positions above judges – living proof that we should have all done what our mothers wanted and studied medicine rather than law.
If medicos are excluded, then judges and magistrates come out on top of the income table, followed by members of parliament.
And men have failed to breach the cashmere ceiling, where we find that 98.9 percent of legal secretaries are women.
Another slow news day in Adelaide where we find last Sunday’s edition of the Sunday Mail (Jan 20) leading with a story about the discovery of the ghost of long-departed chief justice Sir George Murray hanging about the Supreme Court, even as it undergoes redevelopment.
The builder, Hansen Yuncken, is reported to have called in a psychic to investigate an eerie “presence”. An unnamed spiritualist is said to have had a conversation with Sir George, who died in 1942.
A government spokesman was quick to pour cold water on the story, insisting no time was lost investigating the claims, no money was spent on the medium and no changes will be made to the plans.
This didn’t stop the paper devoting an entire page to the ghost story, where “unnerved workers” told their bosses that fire extinguishers and chairs had been moved, “mysteriously”.
The “presence” was detected by the psychic after she ran her hands over the site plans. Sir George, a confirmed bachelor, spoke to her complaining about the position of the bench in courtroom 11.
This is what you get for news in a town where the Murdoch press runs all the main local rags.