Retirement of the Honourable Justice Jerrard

Your Honour, I have an ex parte application.

I know that your Honour has firmly eschewed a formal valedictory ceremony. Nevertheless, on behalf of the barristers of Queensland I seek your leave to make a few remarks.

The basis of my application is that the occasion demands it.

Perhaps it would be appropriate to postpone the decision on whether leave should be granted until your Honour has heard the substance of my submissions.

Your Honour’s appointment to this Court a little over 6 years ago raised the eyebrows of some. It is a concrete mark of your Honour’s success that they have all been comfortably back in place for a long time now.

Recently one of your brother Judges who many would expect to have a very different philosophy to your Honour’s, told me that the quality he admired most about you was your complete intellectual honesty. It is common to hear the best of Judges praised for their high intelligence, legal learning, experience and capacity for hard work and your Honour possesses these qualities. But armed with all of these attributes a person can still be a failure as a Judge because he or she has been false to their judicial oath. The oath your Honour took required that you decide the cases that came before the Court according to law without prejudice of any kind. It is not an easy thing to do but the Bar shares the opinion of your colleague that your Honour retires from this scene with a perfect record on this point.

In highlighting this I should not be taken to suggest that you have slavishly followed a well trodden path. On the contrary, you have always deserved your reputation as someone who can be expected to approach issues from a slightly different perspective. A Court such as this which is charged with not only presiding over individual cases but also with the task of determining them in ways which ensure the orderly fair and consistent development of the law in this state can only benefit from a different approach such as yours. I submit with certainty that it is accepted by the Bar that you have added an important, different and valuable dimension to the work of the Court.

This independence and individual perspective should have been expected. There were signs of it as early as when you arrived for your first day at the prosecutions branch of the old Solicitor-General’s Office with long hair, a leather jacket and a bike helmet much to the horror of the traditionalists who ruled there then. Interestingly you were not the only one to set tongues wagging — Philip Nase was of a similar disposition. Eventually you must have decided that your rakish image was better suited to the other end of the bar table and you moved to the Public Defender’s Office where such subversive appearance scarcely rated a mention. As we know, deep down people often change little so your Honour’s departure marks a sad moment in the Court’s history. The departure of its last hippy.

Your appointment rejoined you with the President with whom you had worked many years ago at the Public Defender’s Office.

I detect that the decision to retire early has not been an easy one for you to make. You have close friends on the Court especially the President with whom you worked for many years at the Public Defender’s Office but most importantly because you felt an obligation to perform this important public role. On the other side of the scales lay your family, Bronwen and the twins and perhaps also your refuge at Straddie. While the Bar regards your departure as a great loss to the Court we applaud your decision as the right one. Again, true to your reputation, you have applied the correct principle.

Please accept our sincere congratulations for your fine achievements as a Judge of this important Court and our warm wishes for a long happy and fruitful retirement.

Michael Stewart S.C.
President