The Opening of the Law Year ceremony – Cairns, 15 July 2024
Hope lives.
The sad, unrelenting work of a criminal defence lawyer takes its toll. It dulls the senses, dampens emotion and I have come to believe, tarnishes the soul. Too long in the profession makes hope hard to find, or at least hard to see.
In past years I attended traditional Opening of the Law Year ceremonies in search of a little hope. These church services provide an opportunity for legal practitioners and judicial officers to solemnly reflect on their professional obligations and their shared mission of delivering justice according to law. They offer a time and place to pray for guidance. For me, the ceremonies failed to resonate. Though there was one service in Rockhampton, memorable for the crow that found its way into the Church’s rafters and offered irreverent commentary on the proceedings below.
This year I attended an Opening of the Law Year ceremony that did resonate. This ceremony in Cairns was unlike any other I have attended. It was a powerful and moving secular ceremony. The ceremony owes its existence to the leadership of His Honour Justice Henry, in cooperation with other judicial officers, lawyers and First Nations Peoples. Its power came not from an elevated authority figure speaking down, but from people coming together as equals; its capacity to move came not merely from the words spoken, but from the symbolic reconciliation played out by First Nations People on one side, and judicial officers and lawyers on the other. The descendants of foes, looking each other in the eyes and exchanging possessions.
The ceremony, in the courtyard of the Cairns Court Complex, is the result of cooperation between the Gimuy Walubara Yidinji people, and members of the judiciary and legal profession.
The Invitation to the ceremony states:
In the middle ages, when the only law in operation at the land now occupied by the Cairns Courthouse was that of First Nations People, Judges in England would gather at Westminster Abbey to pray for guidance for the year ahead at a service marking the opening of the law year. In the modern age, here on the traditional land of the Gimuy Walubara Yidinji, we conduct an opening of the law year ceremony at which the judiciary and lawyers join with the Gimuy Walubara Yidinji in a ceremony of annual –
- acknowledgement of the Gimuy Walubara Yidinji people and their law, the Gimuy Walabaru Yininji being the Traditional Owners of the land upon which justice is administered in Cairns; and
- reflect on the important professional obligations the judiciary and practising lawyers owe to the entire community in administering the rule of law in the year ahead.
The elements of the ceremony are:
- entry of ceremonial maces;
- welcome to Country;
- the call out;
- the coming together of the law;
- addresses by Dr Henrietta Marrie AM and Her Honour Judge Fantin, District Court of Queensland;
- representative reciting of the practitioners’ oath of admission;
- representative reciting of the judicial officers’ oath of office;
- representative elders of Gimuy Walabara Yidinji declare the law year open.
For me, the smoking ceremony in particular was transformative. Three young Gimuy Walabara Yidinji men crouched together and made fire and then smoke. The men offered the smoke, aromatic with lemon myrtle, and in it, the audience bathed. So we were welcomed and cleansed. The call out, loudly spoken in language, summoned and prepared the spirits for the ceremony to come.
Next, Dr Henrietta Marrie AM spoke movingly of her connection to her traditional home, the place upon which Cairns now sits. She spoke of the authority, power and place of her ancestors and the coming of the colonists. The insight and story she offered is a testament to her generosity and that of the Gimuy Walabara Yidinji people.
Her Honour Judge Fantin (DCJ) offered some thoughts of particular relevance to criminal law practitioners in the audience. A link to Her Honour’s speech appears on her judicial profile on the Queensland Courts website.
Her Honour’s speech contemplated the meaning and importance of the judges’ oath of office, and the legal practitioners’ oath of admission. Her Honour referenced a recent lecture by Baroness Carr Of Walton-On-The-Hill, Lady Chief Justice of England and Wales. The lecture was entitled ‘To know the Law and Observe It Well – Magna Carta and Criminal Justice’. Her Honour Judge Fantin observed that Her Honour the Chief Justice made three points. Firstly, judges and legal practitioners must know the law and how to observe it well. Secondly, they must know its spirit. Thirdly, they must observe the law with moral courage.
Describing the second point, Her Honour Judge Fantin said:
Second, to know the law requires us to know its spirit. And the spirit of our law has always been one that draws on a diversity of experience. The common law is one that is made of many threads, and we have drawn them historically from many sources.
The spirit of the law must be one based on a recognition of and learning from diverse experiences and a proper understanding of our nation’s history and the consequences of colonialism on our First Peoples.
What does this mean for us?
I think that being true to our oaths requires us to reckon with the history of our nation. …
To be true to our oaths we must educate ourselves about the richness and complexity of our First Peoples’ history, culture and laws.
We must educate ourselves about our colonial settler history and its consequences for our First Peoples.
About the frontier massacres which occurred at the hands of the Native Police, a semi-military force which operated without the intervention of judge, jury or the law and whose role it was to ‘dispense’ (which became a euphemism for kill) Aboriginal people.
In Far North Queensland this history is painfully close to home, and relatively recent.
We must educate ourselves about what followed that: the system of reserves in Queensland that subjected Aboriginal people to total, arbitrary control for the next seventy years, and lasted into the 1970s.
We have become a carceral culture. Like every other jurisdiction across Australia, Queensland continues to disproportionately imprison First Nations adults and children.
The overrepresentation of First Nations people in Australia and Queensland prisons is evidence of a chronic failing in the administration of justice.
We know from the research that how likely someone is to end up in jail depends on a number of factors, underpinned by structural causes: being in foster care, poor education, early contact with police, unsupported mental health or cognitive disability, alcohol and drug problems, unstable housing and homelessness, coming from a poor and disadvantaged neighbourhood – and being Indigenous.
We know from the research that addressing these factors, and the underlaying structural ‘caused of these causes’ – such as early abuse, racism, discrimination and poverty – with early intervention and support materially reduces the risk of someone offending and ending up in jail.
Following the failed referendum on constitutional recognition and a Voice to Parliament we must strive to meaningfully recognise First Peoples and their rights.
We must continue to provide First Peoples with meaningful roles and decision-making power in matters that uniquely affect them.
A representative reciting of the practitioners’ oath of admission and a representative reciting of the judicial officers’ oath of office followed. Next the Law Year was declared open by representative elders of the Gimuy Walubara Yidinji.
Afterwards, those gathered to watch and learn mixed with those involved in the proceedings. There were handshakes, quick catch ups and thanks. Then, those gathered there gradually dispersed: to courtrooms and chambers, to offices, businesses and homes.
Soon, all that remained in the courtyard was the smoky scent of lemon myrtle and a little hope. That in future things will be different, that over time things will be better.
*Franklin Richards is a Legal Aid Queensland Assistant Public Defender based in Townsville. He was admitted to the bar in 1997 and has worked in private practice, with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service and the Qld ODPP.
