Chief Justice de Jersey, Chief Justice designate Keane, Attorney General Cameron Dick, your Honours, sponsors, guests and colleagues.
Welcome to the Bar Associations Annual Conference for 2010. Sorry about the weather.
You will have seen from your program that the conference is tightly packed with eclectic content. That leaves little time, or need for speeches but there are several matters I ought address.
At least one of the reasons many of you are here is the calibre of those presenting this weekend.
Much work, by way of individual and group preparation, has been descended to by our presenters in order to afford an informative entertaining and challenging program.
On your behalf I thank the speakers and panel members for availing us of their talent time and effort. I also thank the session chairs for the essential role they have agreed to perform.
Preparation for these annual conferences commences in the month following the previous conference. Much work is entailed. With deference to others, there are several people in particular I would like to mention in that regard.
The Association’s Continuing Professional Development Department offices are Helene Breene and Celeste Baker. They are assisted by our Manager of Professional Conduct, Lee Cross. We are privileged to have the benefit of their skills, not just for this conference, but for all the CPD opportunities provided to members throughout the year. Thank you Helene, Celeste and Lee.
The conference organising committee (of which I am one) would be lost without the skills of our erstwhile Bar colleagues, Justice Logan of the Federal Court and Justice Martin of the Supreme Court. Those gentlemen continue to be steadfast supporters of the Bar Association and are very much the progenitors of the program upon which we are about to embark.
I would also like to thank our conference sponsors whose contribution, among other things, enables us to make this occasion less costly to members.
Mercedes Benz — Brisbane is the major sponsor, and for the fifth consecutive year. Chris Budd and Chris Tabb are in attendance and would be pleased to assist you with any automotive enquiries by you or, while you are immersed in the conference program, your partner. I am told that test drives are available.
Medico Legal Insurance, again, is a great supporter of the Bar and is a sponsor. Peter Steele, Anthony Brown and Stuart Carter are here to assist you in the important spheres of insurance — professional indemnity, life, disability, trauma, chambers and private. Too many tragic instances have occurred in recent years of members ignoring the need to insure, adequately or at all. Peter Steele’s track record in affording assistance is unsurpassed.
The legal publishers again have assisted us with sponsorship. They have displays outside where you can view and discuss their wide range of product, both hard copy and electronic. Richard Williams is here from Thomsons, Michael Bell from LexisNexis and Brian Martin of CCH.
Wilson HTM is also a sponsor, again for the fifth year. Andrew Fleming is here and he can assist you with your investment advice requirements. Andrew and his team are the advisors to the Bar Association and their sage advice led to the Association suffering no capital loss despite the GFC.
Queensland University of Technology has again sponsored the conference also. We thank that proud institution, of which many of you are graduates, for their support.
There are several competitions and prizes available through the sponsors. Please enter those.
We are privileged to have here with us at the conference Chief Justice de Jersey who will chair the first session this morning.
I have remarked on other occasions of the status of the Chief Justice as the capable and steady leader of the legal profession in this State. Thank you again for your support.
Justice Keane, who will participate later this morning in Session 3 concerning written advocacy, as you know, is shortly to be sworn in as Chief Justice of the Federal Court.
Justice Keane, while we mourn your loss to the Court of Appeal, we applaud your federal appointment.
Your high intellect and legal skills have been universally acknowledged. No doubt your appellate and administrative skills will be well suited to, and will be embraced in the federal sphere.
As I remarked in the Christmas Greeting speech late last year, the Bar Association deals with many issues on your behalf.
The 20 members of the Bar Council meet every three or four weeks to deal with a detailed agenda, usually for about three hours, but with an enormous amount of preparatory work and reading done by members individually, and as members of Council committees.
We published recently to members, a strategic plan. We are committed to its implementation.
The Council is there to be responsive to the concerns of members, both as to the profession and as to the issue of justice generally.
We have included in the papers before you a list of members of the Council, together with their telephone numbers and email addresses.
While members’ ordinary contact is through the Association CEO, Dan O’Connor, you may feel more comfortable, for confidentiality or other reasons, contacting one of the Council members. Feel free to do so. The members cover a wide range, as to practice, interest and geography. We want ideas.
We have also included in the papers, for your convenience, a list of the names, telephone numbers and email addresses of the ethics counsellors who I have appointed for this calendar year. They can provide skilled assistance to you in the manner about which I wrote to members several weeks ago. Keep in mind that they are there to assist you in arriving at a solution; they are not the solution, nor are they there to provide absolution. A member must take ultimate responsibility for his or her conduct.
Having a separate group of counsellors affords, hopefully, greater confidentiality and organised attention. My intention in establishing that group was to militate against the prospect that any member, confronted by an ethical issue, does not put his or her head in the sand. Any demons are best confronted.
A salient issue for our profession, of course, at present, is that of the proposed national regulation. As an association, and as a constituted member of the Australian Bar Association and the Law Council of Australia, the Bar Association is contributing to the debate.
Our critical thesis is that Queensland has a thorough and well balanced system of regulation of lawyers.
Whilst uniformity of regulation and standards across the nation is laudable, the last thing this State needs is a system which is inferior to that which we have at present, particularly one in which southern based bureaucrats (who may or may not be lawyers or practising lawyers) dictate proper ethical or administrative professional standards, whether in Brisbane, Cairns or Mount Isa.
One of the touchstones of the success of our profession is collegiality.
Experience dictates that many of the serious complaints which are delegated by the Legal Services Commission to the Association for investigation concern our members who operate on the fringe.
Mixing regularly with other members, particularly in the context of continuing professional education, is likely to diminish if not obviate the prospect of falling foul of ethical rules, performing below par or earning the ire or disrespect of a client or the judiciary.
The other matter to keep in mind is that our core specialty is advocacy. Much of our CPD is directed to that. It is our strength but it must be nurtured. But we must always strive to elevate our advocacy standards, and sensibly, but not blindly, moving with the times in procedural practice.
Another Bar institution I ask you to support is Hearsay, our electronic journal and portal to the world.
Successive chamber groups will be requested by me (which in my lexicon means “required”) to be the featured chambers each month providing article copy. Please do not let down the editor Martin Burns SC, his hardworking personal assistant, Emma Macfarlane, or the Association in this important sphere.
We move now to the first session, which is our keynote address by the Attorney General.
The Honourable Cameron Dick is the State Member of Parliament for the Brisbane electorate of Greenslopes. He is the Attorney General and Minister for Industrial Relations in the State Government headed by the Honourable Anna Bligh.
Despite being a member of Parliament for only a relatively short period, the Attorney comes to his ministerial role steeped in experience of academic achievement, legal experience and experience of life.
In addition to obtaining Bachelor Degrees in Law, Commerce and Arts from the University of Queensland, Mr Dick, like a number of you here, studied at Cambridge, he reading International Law and being awarded a Master of Law Degree from that noble institution.
He has worked in the public and private sectors, both in Australia and overseas. Prior to his election he practised as a solicitor and then as a barrister.
In the time of my predecessor Mr Stewart SC, and with me, Mr Dick has always made himself available, despite a heavy program.
Forgive me for saying it Attorney, but hopefully your courteous and positive response to the Association (whether it be in respect of proposed legislation, legal funding, regulatory issues or judicial appointments) is a function, at least in part, of the fact that the Association can be relied upon to afford you expert, objective, unbiased and non-political assistance and comment.
Richard Douglas S.C.
President
To download presentations delivered at the conference, please click on each title below:
Overview of the Moynihan Report: Changes to the Criminal Justice System
Peter Davis S.C.
Written Advocacy
The Honourable Justice Margaret Wilson
Written Submissions at Trial
The Honourable Justice Glenn Martin
Employment Law Issues – Recent Developments
Sandy Horneman-Wren S.C.
Querulants – Unusually Persistent Litigants. Recognising them and dealing with them.
Professor Paul Mullen
