May it please the Court. It is my privilege on behalf of the Bar to welcome your Honours Andrews, Clare and Everson as the newest Judges of the District Courts of Queensland and to congratulate each of you on this important appointment.
This Court is an important one and that is something that will only increase as the projected increase in population takes place in South-East Queensland and elsewhere throughout the State.
It follows that it is essential that Judges appointed to the Court have demonstrated abilities and qualifications which not only equip them for the demanding task ahead of them but which also command the confidence of the broader community. The Bar has confidence in all your Honours’ qualifications for this appointment.
Your Honour, Judge Andrews. A credible case could be made in support of the proposition that your Honour was always destined to join this Bench and that powerful forces have conspired to that end for a very long time. The Chief Judge has mentioned your father’s chairmanship of the Court when re-established in 1959 and your connection with the late Judge Leo McNamara, the father of your wife, Marianne.
A more contemporary gravitational force, however, which may have drawn your Honour in this direction probably commenced with the brief but happy period during which you shared Chambers with her Honour, the Chief Judge. I understand that one of your Honour’s first appearances in the Court upon which you now sit was before his Honour Judge McNamara who interrupted what was no doubt your carefully prepared submissions on an ex parte application for substituted service to inquire whether you knew his Honour’s associate and upon discovering that you did not, his Honour took the trouble of introducing you in a relatively elaborate fashion to his 22-year-old associate and daughter, Marianne, and thereby sealed both of your fates, it would seem.
I mention this event so as to be fair to your Honour’s children, James, Imogen and John for, while the Bar would exert no pressure upon them to continue to contribute to the ranks of this Court as the family has done, I think it is only fair that they be informed of the sorts of tactics that are likely to be deployed against them by their father should they or those they are fond of wander in range of his Honour’s courtroom.
Your Honour was a respected counsel and enjoyed a busy and fulfilling practice, both as a junior barrister and more recently as a Silk.
It has been said by those close to you, correctly, I think, with respect, that had you been less modest and gently spoken you may have enjoyed an even busier practice, but that self-promotion of your talents has never been part of your Honour’s persona.
I am not sure, however, how this can be reconciled with your Honour’s rather unusual step of agreeing to participate in the ABC documentary about the systems throughout the Commonwealth for the appointment of Silk at the time when your Honour was undergoing the harrowing waiting period that precedes the Chief Justice’s announcements of those whose applications have succeeded. In any event, this unusual step for such a publicity-shy man did your Honour’s cause no harm, as your application did succeed.
Not only is your Honour well equipped intellectually for this new role, but you bring to it a wealth of experience as a civil trial lawyer. You will be sadly missed by the Bar and particularly those many members with whom you shared Chambers. They have been ideally placed to observe your valuable combination of a warm sense of humour, a gentle charm and a steely determination always to do what is right and fair.
Your Honour, Judge Clare. If Judge Andrews’ specialty has been in the civil field your Honour’s is decidedly in that of the Criminal Jurisdiction with a diverting side interest one may say in the machinations of the Media, particularly as played out in the medium of popular breakfast radio programs, I understand.
Your Honour’s father, Mr Frank Hurley, is no doubt as proud of your Honour’s achievements as Sir Dormer Andrews would have been of his son’s. The Attorney-General has provided comprehensive details of your experience in the Criminal Jurisdiction and all I can say that it is difficult to imagine a broader expanse of experience there.
Something I would like to mention though is the fact that you took Silk in 2006. As a consequence, this appointment robbed the Bar of an all too rare commodity. A woman who has achieved such professional standing that she is recognized by the Chief Justice as one of the Bar’s leaders. This is the price the Bar must pay in order that its members and the wider public enjoy the benefits of women of merit being appointed to the Bench.
Now, I am reliably informed by those within your office that since becoming the Director of Public Prosecutions you have supervised the transformation of the Office’s structure, management and financing while at the same time appearing in notable trials and the vast majority of criminal appeals to the High Court.
I also understand that you tried on numerous occasions to do the family camping thing, with what might euphemistically be called but limited success. I am told you pack as if you are moving the whole family permanently to Mawson’s Hut in the Australian Antarctic Territory, but somehow forget to pack the tent.
Your position as the Director of Public Prosecutions has been an arduous one and important one and while the demands of being a Judge of this Court are significant we hope that this new role will allow you sufficient time to enable you to pack the tent next time.
Your Honour, Judge Everson. After this ceremony your Honour will commence to sit in Cairns, that thriving, growing and increasingly economically prosperous centre of Far North Queensland. It is an important centre of population growth and economic development. No doubt because of this it has a proudly independent streak which requires people such as your Honour who are appointed from outside its boundaries, to fulfill such an important role as this to exercise a certain sensitivity to local attitudes and philosophies. I am confident that your Honour will take this approach.
This is in part because there is a certain symmetry to your Honour’s appointment to sit as a Judge in this city as you are no stranger to the place as has already been mentioned. You decided almost immediately upon concluding your articles of clerkship in Brisbane years ago to go traveling north where you practiced a litigation solicitor in Cairns for an extended period.
During that time, I understand, you immersed yourself in the life of the area, joined the Palm Cove Surf Lifesaving Club and indulged two of your favourite pastimes: swimming, and when the club rescue boat was not otherwise in use, diving off Scout Hat Island. All of these things will come back to you, I have no doubt.
Another connection with the north has also been mentioned and it is the happy accident which resulted in you meeting, while bushwalking on beautiful Hinchinbrook Island, a young special needs school teacher who later became your wife, Nicky.
So in a sense when you win the community’s respect, as I am confident you will, the Cairns community will rightly be able to claim your Honour as one of their own.
Your Honour’s practice spanned the full gambit of the civil sphere that in later years has resulted in the specialization in the Planning and Environment Jurisdiction, together with associated enforcement proceedings under the Integrated Planning Act. This experience will stand your Honour in fine stead when taking up this important position in this bustling northern centre.
So today we welcome a Judge with wide experience in the civil field, another with commensurate experience in the Criminal Jurisdiction and the third with experience in the Courts specialist jurisdiction. In all, if I may say so, with respect, a well rounded addition to the Court.
Your Honours, the Bar wishes you well in your new roles.
Michael Stewart SC
President
