We join to acknowledge with gratitude our departing colleague’s substantial judicial commitment, over many years, to the good government of the State.
It is fitting we are joined by the State’s first law officer, the Honourable the Attorney-General, the Shadow Attorney-General, Ms Annastacia Palaszczuk, Her Honour the Chief Judge and her colleagues, Judges of the High and Federal Courts, including Justice Kiefel and Justice Keane, the leaders of the profession — the Presidents, and retired Judges and tribunal members.
Those Judges who cannot be here regret that circumstance. The President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Margaret McMurdo, especially asked to be associated with my remarks, as did Justice Logan of the Federal Court.
Undoubted modesty has, over the years, led some retiring Judges to eschew these ceremonies. Justice White kindly agreed to my urging for the sitting, subject to two constraints she imposed, brevity and accuracy.
Well as to brevity, prolixity is not I hope my style; as to accuracy today, there is simply no need for hyperbole.
Her Honour’s record speaks for itself. After two years as Master from 1990, she was appointed as a Judge in 1992, and after 18 years, as a Judge of Appeal in 2010. She retires on reaching the statutory retirement age. Her judicial work has been characterized by wisdom, learning, discretion, courtesy and grace.
The wisdom has been augmented by her extensive and most commendable extra judicial commitments, with the Churchill Trust since 2003 — now as National President, with the University of Queensland Senate for 16 years, and with the Royal Australian Navy, concluding as a Deputy President of the Defence Forces Disciplinary Appeals Tribunal from 2008, and I note with pleasure the presence today of the President of the Tribunal, Justice Tracey.
May I be permitted to say, in my respectful view as Chief Justice, that Justice White has epitomized the most desirable qualities reasonably expected of members of the Supreme Court.
We regretfully farewell her, with gratitude, and Mr Michael White QC, from our own immediate midst, and wish them both well as they enter into a new chapter of their lives together.
The Hon Chief Justice de Jersey AC
The Bar Association of Queensland was represented at the ceremony by the President, Roger Traves QC, whose address is reproduced below.
May it please the Court
It is a privilege to appear here today on behalf of the members of the Bar Association of Queensland, at this ceremony, to mark Your Honour’s retirement. Occasions such as this, when the Bar stands as one, reaffirm our unity of identity and purpose and our relationship with the Courts before whom we appear.
Your Honour’s early legal career and interest were as an academic. Your Honour’s outstanding academic ability was recognised at Adelaide University, from which you graduated, by Professor Dan O’Connell, a renowned Professor of International Law and the Law of the Sea. Professor O’Connell later held the Chichele Chair in International Law at Oxford University.
Your Honour assisted Professor O’Connell in his work, researching for him in the area of State Succession of Newly Formed Colonies, working for some time in the West Indies and Geneva.
Your Honour has, of course, been a judicial officer now for twenty-two years. But for many of us, our first recollection of Your Honour is not as a judge, but as an academic at the T C Bierne School of Law at the University of Queensland. The head of the law school then was the much liked and respected constitutional lawyer Professor Kevin Ryan, later Justice Ryan of this court.
At the TC Bierne School of Law you lectured and tutored with two women who were to become good friends— Her Excellency the Governor General, Quentin Bryce, and, of course, Her Honour Chief Judge Patsy Wolfe, who is here today. It is a matter of some note, and an achievement of some significance that each of you should have become such prominent members of our profession and, indeed, our community.
Your Honour was always a lecturer and tutor in demand. In those days, of course, there would be a rush by students to enter their name when, at the commencement of a term, tutorial sheets would be posted outside the law school administration office, upstairs in the Forgan Smith Building just along from the library.
Your Honour’s sheet was always filled first, and beyond the allocated number, students squeezing their names in, while other tutors must have, when all but them had left for the day, forlornly have walked past the notice board, pretending not to care but surely disappointed that theirs had but one or two. And your Honour was a good tutor indeed. Lucid, prepared, organised, informative, with a very good grasp of the law. I heard one of the former Presidents of the Bar Association, and one of our life members, his Honour Justice Martin reminding Your Honour the other evening that he had been tutored by you. There is no doubt he is the better for it.
When Your Honour and the Chief Judge decided to go to the Bar in 1982, there was no space available in the Inns of Court, so you joined with in chambers the able and considered Sandy Thompson, then recently of Feez Ruthning, and the spirited and rambunctious Chistopher Hughes, recently returned from punting on the River Cam and completing his LLM at Cambridge. It was an eclectic chamber group and one suspects a good place to be.
Like most new barristers, Your Honour did a wide range of work. Some of this, in your early days, required attendance at the Holland Park Magistrates Court. Your Honour and the Chief Judge quickly became known there. In the mid 1980’s, as many here would recall, Magistrate Detori was in the habit of determining the order of trials in a busy list by inviting Counsel before Court started for the day to come to his chambers and “draw a card”. Having gathered counsel to his Chambers, His Worship would take the pack from his drawer, shuffle it expertly, and present the pack to the assembled barristers. He called Your Honours the Queen of Hearts and the Queen of Diamonds — not a good start for other Counsel, who were expecting an impartial draw. It took a rare turn of luck for any other Counsel to start before Your Honours at the Holland Park Magistrates Court.
Your Honour’s appearance and role in the Mabo case is well documented, not only in written records of the day but now cinematography. Interestingly, Your Honour was led in that case by Justice Byrne, John Byrne QC as he then was, and then by Geoff Davies QC as he then was. When both were in turn appointed to the Bench, Your Honour was entrusted the fact finding aspect of the case on your own. Your Honour is reputed to have conducted the case particularly well, and to have conducted there a very telling cross examination of an important witness. Indeed, more generally, Your Honour had a reputation for quite fearless advocacy.
Your Honour accepted a position as Master of the Supreme Court in 1990 and then took a position as Justice of the Supreme Court in 1992, when the Masters jurisdiction was abolished. Your Honour was elevated to the appellate division in 2010.
This steady progression is testament to a number of qualities: first, and foremost, to your knowledge and ability to apply legal principle, but also to your discipline, efficiency and industry. The community sometimes underestimates the challenge faced everyday by the judiciary, to expose to assessment their reasoning in often difficult matters of principle and judgement. A practitioner has always the protection of qualification or reservation: not so a judge. Your Honour’s judgments were confident and decisive and a pure and faithful application of the law. That, in itself, was important, because it made the law and the outcome of a case in Your Honour’s Court predictable, and that is of such importance for those called upon to advise and to appear.
I wanted to convey to Your Honour the deep admiration of the Bar for the manner in which you conducted your Court. But it would be wrong to permit that observation to obfuscate those other judicial qualities which Your Honour so amply possessed.
The attendance here today from the Bar speaks to the respect with which Your Honour is held by us. It is difficult to speak too highly of our admiration for you. But, may I say respectfully, you have been a wonderful judge. May I, on behalf of those who stand with me today, and on behalf of all of those whom I represent, congratulate Your Honour on your contribution to the law and the administration of justice in this State. It has been both a privilege and a pleasure to appear before you. We shall, indeed, miss you.
May it please the Court.
Roger Traves QC
