Farewell Speech for the Honourable Justice Jordan

At the ceremony held to mark the occasion of the retirement of the Honourable Justice Jordan from the Family Court of Australia on 15 December 2009, the Association was represented by Michael Kent SC. His speech is reproduced below. 

I have the honour of addressing the Court on this special occasion on behalf of the Australian Bar Association; the Queensland Bar Association and the Law Council of Australia including the Executive and members of the Family Law Section.

Whilst I acknowledge and accept the formalities attendant upon my engagement by these representative organisations, it is an inescapable fact that Justice Jordan and I have known each other well for a very long time now. I have to concede that there is consequently something of a dilemma for me given the tension between what I might be expected to say on behalf of the professional bodies I have mentioned and what I would choose to say, speaking for myself.

Your Honours, my dilemma has apparently been recognised by someone else because yesterday, received at my chambers, anonymously and unsolicited, was a carefully typed manuscript. It bore the simple but impressive title “Speech of Farewell to the Greatest Judge Ever”.

Now whilst it is a fact that over the past couple of weeks I have had to respectfully decline His Honour Justice Jordan’s offers, in daily telephone calls, to assist me with the content of this speech; I of course have no hesitation in rejecting the proposition that His Honour would go so far in attempting some form of self-adulation. Likewise, in relation to reports made to me that His Honour’s long-serving Associate Gloria Tyrrell was seen in the vicinity of my chambers at around the time of delivery of this manuscript I put down to complete coincidence. There are a multitude of possible explanations for Gloria to have had cause to visit the Inns of Court yesterday although, admittedly, why she would choose to wear a Groucho Marx styled false nose, glasses and moustache is something of a mystery to me.

Having emphatically rejected the notion that Your Honour Justice Jordan could be the author of this document, I can only assume that the unknown author is present with us today. To that person, whoever you are, may I say thank you for attempting to alleviate my burden. However, I must apologise to you for not being able to make use of this no doubt well-intentioned assistance. That is for a number of reasons.

Firstly, this manuscript comprises many closely typed pages and the time available to me would simply not allow me to eulogise His Honour for that long. Secondly, even allowing for the degree of licence one has in moving from truth to fantasy in praise of a departing judge, I concluded that, with all due respect to Your Honour Justice Jordan, much of the content of this manuscript simply would not gain any traction, even with an audience as receptive as this one.

By way of example, the meaning of “Greatest Judge Ever” in the title became expanded upon in the text. It quickly became clear that this description of Your Honour was not confined to the Brisbane Registry of this Court, nor indeed even to the Family Court of Australia itself, nor even to the Commonwealth of Australia. I therefore did not feel sufficiently confident that I would be recognised as having sufficient knowledge of the legal history of the civilised world as would permit ready acceptance of my describing Your Honour as its greatest ever judge.

Moreover, as this will be the last time I appear before Your Honour as a Judge, whilst it is likely that I will have cause in future to appear before one or more of the other judges here present, it struck me as unhelpful for me to make any direct comparisons between Your Honour and other judges, or at least any that are favourable to Your Honour.

Another reason was that I do not have sufficient knowledge as to the interaction between the Judges of this Registry over the past eighteen years or so to know whether Your Honour in fact has played, as described in the document, a “critical mentoring role” to each and every of your fellow judges. Consequently, I do not know whether this critical mentoring role as described was “instrumental in Justices Warnick and May securing appointments as Judges of the Appeal Division.”

Whilst I have a general recollection that Your Honour’s appointment to the Family Court received some favourable media comment, I do not recall, as the manuscript would have it, that there was a media outcry in terms of “Family Court’s gain is High Court’s loss”.

I therefore cast the manuscript aside but I am happy to make a copy of it available to anyone with a particular interest in creative or fictional writing.

Retirement, particularly for judges, is often a marker point in life.  It is fair to say that advancing age has never sat easily with Your Honour.  It is a matter of record that at the age of thirty-five Your Honour claimed a date of birth making Your Honour some ten years younger than your true age.  Tragically, with each passing decade, the gap between Your Honour’s true date of birth, and the claimed date, has grown ever-wider.

I know I speak for Your Honour’s family and friends in expressing the hope that Your Honour’s retirement is accompanied by some acceptance of the age and stage Your Honour has reached in life.  I hope that in the near future our mutual friend, Judge Terry Martin SC, and I might accompany Your Honour and Pauline to a restaurant and Your Honour does not insist upon summonsing the twenty-something year old waitress to our table and introducing Pauline to her as your mother; Terry as your great-uncle and me as your father.

Your Honours, knowing Justice Jordan as I do, including his losing battle in his struggle with the ageing process, I am sure that today is bitter sweet for His Honour. Sweet because today is of course proximate to His Honour’s birthday. Bitter because it is in fact proximate to His Honour’s seventieth birthday, rendering His Honour’s retirement a statutory imperative.

In the course of research for this speech I came upon a transcript of Your Honour’s speech in 1991 on the occasion of Your Honour’s swearing-in as a Judicial Registrar.  Actually for “research” read “Justice Murphy sent me a copy”.  Reading that speech I was reminded that, in a telling insight into Your Honour’s sense of relevance, Your Honour used the solemn occasion of your swearing-in as a judicial officer to call upon Wayne Bennett, the then coach of the Brisbane Broncos, to consider his position given a then recent run of losses.

The other notable thing about Your Honour’s speech on that occasion was that Your Honour identified as the critical factor in deciding to accept that appointment the importance with which you viewed the role of Judicial Registrar within the Court.  Apparently not so important that Your Honour did not choose to leave it at the first opportunity, given a better offer.

It is traditional on these occasions to undertake some review of a departing Judge’s jurisprudential legacy.  I have something of a unique advantage in doing so in respect of Your Honour.  That is because Your Honour has apparently been in the habit, throughout your judicial career, of authoring a memorandum addressed to your colleagues in this Registry following any judgment of Your Honour which received a favourable review either from the Full Court or from the media.  Consequently, there exists two such memoranda.

From this rich vein of material I have selected the memorandum which I respectfully suggest provides the greatest insight into any struggle Your Honour has had with self-doubt; and into Your Honour’s capacities for humility and self-assessment.  It is a memorandum dated 21 May 1998 following a media report in relation to a case known as Re: Evelyn.  It is addressed to the Judges and Judicial Registrar in the Brisbane Registry.  It reads and I quote:

I note that in a moving personal touch Your Honour had the memorandum signed by Your Honour’s Associate Gloria on your behalf.

Your Honour, may I say with respect, that historians would counsel us that it is now too close to relevant events, and some significant time needs to pass, before it can confidently be concluded that Your Honour has achieved your stated ambition to be just a very ordinary Judge.

Your Honours, in the edition of the Courier Mail published on 18 August 1994 a quote is attributed to Justice Jordan in respect of His Honour’s appointment as a Judge.  His Honour then expressed the hope that litigants in his Court, whether or not they agreed with the decision, would regard themselves as having had a fair hearing.

May I say that, without doubt, Your Honour has brought to the task of judging an acute sense of fairness and a great deal of empathy for, and understanding of, the frailties of the human condition.  This is a jurisdiction in which sometimes the best, but more often the worst, of people and their lives are exposed and played out.  In a system which depends upon integrity of process as the lynchpin of reaching right and just outcomes, and for preserving the dignity of the litigants participating in it, Your Honour has played an integral and outstanding part.

On behalf of the legal practitioners who have appeared before Your Honour over the past eighteen years I sincerely thank Your Honour for the courtesy and respect you have always shown us and say that the courtesy and respect we have shown Your Honour has been richly deserved.

Recognising the maxim that behind every successful man is a surprised woman we extend our sincere thanks to Pauline for the strength of the support Pauline has provided to enable Your Honour to make the contribution Your Honour has made to the community over eighteen years.

We wish Your Honour a long, happy and fulfilling life beyond the bench.

Michael Kent SC