E&OE...................................................................................................
Chief Justice, Chief Justice of Australia, your Excellencies, your
Honours, Premier,
Mr Whitlam.
I have the honour and privilege today to participate in this ceremony
on behalf of the solicitors of New South Wales and to offer my congratulations
on behalf of the Law Society of New South Wales to this Court on obtaining
its 175th anniversary.
It is, of course, a time when I believe despite our reluctance as
Australians over the years to think over much about our history and,
as Mr Whitlam said, we have tended in the past to think of history
as belonging to other countries. I do believe that as we approach
the Centenary of the Federation of the Australian nation and as Australians
begin to ponder the fact that within a very short period of time there
will be no Australians left alive who were personally associated with
many of the seminal events which have given shape to the modern nation.
We are as Australians becoming increasingly interested in and preoccupied
with our history. We are finding new meaning to many of the institutions
that have been important to our society over the years. And no collective
view, no institution has been more important to the development of
the modern Australian society than, of course, the rule of law.
We have many debates in our community about the desirability of writing
a bill of rights into our Constitution. There is an ongoing debate
acquired on most occasions as to whether the best protection of liberty
is a robust common law or perhaps something that is more firmly rooted
in statute. And it is not my role today to prolong or to add further
dimension to that debate except to express the view that in all the
time I have been in public life I have held very strongly to the conviction
that there are three great bulwarks to a democratic society in its
best sense. You need a vigorous and robust parliamentary system, you
need a free press and you need an incorruptible judiciary. And the
courts of this nation of which the Supreme Court of New South Wales
is in many ways the exemplar, the courts of this nation through the
years have demonstrated constant integrity, a constant discipline
and constant incorruptibility. The willingness of courts to impose
upon themselves and particularly this court those disciplines, to
impose those disciplines on its members has been a constant reassurance
to successive generations of Australians.
Of course the court has changed. Of course the profession of which
I had the honour of practicing until I entered Federal Parliament
has changed. I am reminded of the more obvious changes, the far larger
number of women. When I did my first year at the Sydney University
Law School in 1957 something in the order of 12 or 15 in my year were
women. When my daughter commenced that same year 35 years later 52
per cent of her first year were women. The technological changes that
have overtaken the practice of solicitors in the last quarter of a
century would leave a person who had been out of practice for 25 years
which is my situation returning to that practice in many respects
bewildered. It would have changed in so many ways yet there is a continuity
and that continuity is that the practices of a solicitor is the practice
of public service. A solicitor has an obligation to serve clients,
a solicitor has an obligation to honour the traditions of the profession,
a solicitor has an obligation to honour the principles and the service
of the law. The law is a valuable bulwark against tyranny and a slide
into authoritarianism. As we have seen only too sadly in one or two
places recently the first signs of a drift to authoritarianism is
an apparent encroachment by the executive upon the absolute independence
and the absolute integrity of the courts of a nation.
Your Honour, it is a privilege to extend on behalf of the solicitors
of this State the members of the Law Society of New South Wales, our
sincere congratulations on the 175th anniversary of this
very distinguished court, this great bulwark of freedom in Australia.
Thank you.
[ends]