KEANE CJ: The Court has convened to mark the retirement of Justice Ryan. May I begin by saying how pleased we are that we are joined
on the bench today by the Honourable Michael Black AC who served as the Chief Justice of the Court for 19 of the nearly 25 years
of Justice Ryan’s service since his appointment in September 1986. We are also very pleased to welcome Sir Daryl and Lady Dawson,
Justice Maxwell, the President of the Court of Appeal of Victoria, Justices of the Family Court and of the Supreme Court of Victoria,
Federal Magistrates and former judges of this Court. Before I call upon Ms Glanville to address the Court on behalf of the Attorney
General of the Commonwealth, I would like to express, very briefly, on behalf of all the judges of the Court our admiration for Justice
Ryan, our gratitude for his outstanding contribution to the work of the Court and our sadness at this his retirement.
I begin by mentioning a note I received from Justice James Allsop, the President of the Court of Appeal of New South Wales, who was
unable to be here today. Before his translation, of course, he worked with Justice Ryan as a Judge of this Court and in his note
Justice Allsop said of Justice Ryan:
He was a colleague whose intelligence, quiet charm and grace made him a joy to work with.
I have no doubt at all that these sentiments accord precisely with the views of all the judges who have served with Justice Ryan.
Few contemporary judges can hope to emulate his Honour’s contribution to the service of the law. Justice Ryan’s judgments are to be
found recorded in volumes 8 to 190 of the Federal Court Reports. That is an extraordinary contribution to the jurisprudence, not
only of this Court, but of the nation and each one of those judgments is still worth reading for its lucid exposition of the facts
and the law set in crystal clear but unhurried prose. They will long remain as examples of the art of judgment writing. Likewise,
his Honour was a model of judicial conduct in Court. No party who lost a case before his Honour was ever in doubt that every argument
that might fairly be advanced on his or her behalf had been fairly heard and fully and conscientiously considered by his Honour and
no losing party ever left his Honour’s Court with a sense of grievance that he or she had been treated with anything less than full
regard for that person’s dignity as a litigant and a citizen.
It would be remiss of me not to mention also his Honour’s contribution to mercantile law in this country. So far as admiralty law
is concerned, it is an important aspect of this Court’s jurisdiction. Justice Ryan’s knowledge of maritime law was profound. It was
brought to bear not only in his decisions on the Court but he also played a significant role in drafting the Admiralty Act 1988. Off the bench Justice Ryan was a whole hearted contributor to the administration of the Court. He will be much missed for his calm
and insightful advice in relation to the administration of the Court. He will also be missed for his amiability and equability in
the social life of the Court. On behalf of all the judges of the Court I wish him and Gabrielle many happy years of well earned retirement.
Do you move, Ms Glanville?
MS GLANVILLE: May it please the Court. First, may I acknowledge the people of the Kulin Nation, the traditional owners of the land
on which we meet and pay my respects to their elders past and present. It is a great honour and a privilege to be here at this special
sitting of the Court to celebrate the career of the Honourable Justice Donnell Ryan and to pay tribute to his Honour for 25 years
of outstanding service to this Court. Other commitments have prevented the attendance today of the Attorney-General, the Honourable
Robert McClelland MP. He has asked that I convey to your Honour his and the Australian Government’s appreciation of your longstanding
and excellent service to the Federal Court of Australia. It is wonderful to see your family here on this special occasion, your wife,
Gabrielle, your son, Christopher, and his wife, Stacey, and your daughter, Fiona. I would also like to acknowledge the presence of
the former Chief Justice of this Court, the Honourable Michael Black. They join friends and colleagues here in Melbourne wishing
you well for the next chapter of your life.
Before we do this let’s take a moment to reflect on your Honour’s past and your valued contribution to this Court. Your Honour was
educated at Dandenong High School, Melbourne. You excelled in your studies at the University of Melbourne and graduated with an honours
degree in law and an arts degree in which you read Latin. Prior to your appointment to the bench of this Court in September 1986
your Honour had a long and distinguished career in the law. In 1965 you were admitted as a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme
Court of Victoria. In 1980 you were appointed Queen’s Counsel in Victoria and then in New South Wales in 1982. Your Honour had a
largely industrial law practice at the bar. In this polarised industry it is a testament to your Honour’s competence and impartiality
that you were briefed by employers and unions alike.
With the considerable experience and talent that you brought to judicial office, every confidence was placed in your Honour that your
service to the Court would be of a very high order. Without question, you have surpassed that expectation. In addition to being a
Federal Court judge your Honour has also been a judge of the Industrial Relations Court of Australia and an additional judge of the
Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory. While this gives some insight into the breadth of your skill and knowledge, your
Honour has left a particularly lasting legacy in the fields of industrial relations and admiralty law. In these areas your Honour
has not only used your insight to make learned and considered decisions; you have also given thought provoking speeches and presented
many, many papers.
As presiding member of the Admiralty Rules Committee your Honour made some significant contributions to the work of the Court. A particularly
lucid and noteworthy judgment that you gave as part of a Full Court decision was that in the Scandinavian Bunkering case in 2006.
In that case, through compelling logic, the Court held that the word “boat” in section 106A of the Fisheries Management Act 1991 included the bunkers on board a boat and “ship” as defined in the Admiralty Act included the bunkers. This finding had significant ramifications as it determined the rights of the parties to have control over
fuel in the bunkers. Your Honour also noted in making this finding, and perhaps this is the key point, the practical implications
that would arise if bunkers were treated as property separate and distinct from the ship.
This example is just one of many that shows the way that, in the process of making your decisions according to law, you always retained
an acute awareness of the practical context in which your decision would operate. Your Honour has always taken an interest in learning
and you have always taken the time to impart your knowledge to others. We remember that your Honour was a teaching fellow in law
at Monash University from 1965 to 1969 and a tutor at the College of Legal Education from 1966 to 1971. You have always assisted
others to learn, who ever they were and whatever the situation. You gave your time generously to guide other counsel at the bar and
you were supremely patient on the bench. Despite your judicial commitments you still found time to share your expertise with law
students, for example, by presiding over the final international maritime law arbitration moot competition in 2005. Your judicial
colleagues say that you are “an utter pleasure to sit with”. They comment particularly on your ability to express difficult ideas
in remarkably apt and simple language.
You have been described as orderly, generating a feel of confidence in the courtroom, generally, and certainly a judge who takes great
care in everything that he does. Your objectivity has given all parties a sense of having been heard. In addition to being endowed
with wisdom you have also been described as intensely likeable with an ability to put all parties at ease. Your Honour’s humility,
intellect, thoughtfulness and calm demeanour are some of the characteristics that explain why you are held in such high esteem. One
of your judicial colleagues said of you that your quiet charming manner camouflages a first-class brain. We are very grateful that
the Court has been the fortunate beneficiary of your considerable intellect.
I understand that your Honour also serves on another Court. I am told your Honour is a keen tennis player and shows an uncharacteristically
fiery attitude on the tennis court which one would never expect from a calm that you project on the bench. Hopefully, in your retirement
you will have considerable time to pursue to this passion that you love. Your Honour, it has indeed been a great privilege to be
here today to express the government’s appreciation for the quarter of a century of dedicated service you have provided to this Court
and for the wider service to the law. On behalf of the government I extend my very best and sincere wishes to you and to your family
for your future. May it please the Court.
KEANE CJ: Thank you, Ms Glanville. Mr Tang, do you move?
MR TANG: May it please the Court, I appear on behalf of the Law Council of Australia, the Law Institute of Victoria, and the solicitors
of this State. The President of the Law Institute, Caroline Counsel, is presently overseas but has asked me to pass on her apologies
and best wishes to your Honour and your wife, Gabrielle, in your retirement. Similarly, the President of the Law Council of Australia,
Alex Ward, regrets that he is unable to be here today but extends his personal congratulations and best wishes. I am, indeed, delighted
to be able to speak on behalf of the Law Institute and there is a pleasing symmetry in that retired Supreme Court Judge, the Honourable
Bernard Teague, was a partner of Corr & Corr a predecessor of my firm, Corrs Chambers Westgarth, when he spoke on behalf of the
Institute at your welcome to this Court in 1986.
Your Honour served articles at the very old small city firm in Melbourne, Cole & O’Heare, established in the 1880s. Although only
ever a two-partner firm, Cole & O’Heare were, in 1900, appointed the solicitors in the Colony of Victoria for the Sydney company,
City Mutual Life Assurance. It was through family connections with the late Sir Michael Chamberlin, a Director of City Mutual, that
your Honour was introduced to Cole & O’Heare. The firm of Cole & O’Heare lives on today in Cornwall Stodart through John
Chamberlin who is head of Estate Planning and Probate there. Very shortly after admission to practise your Honour went to the Victorian
Bar and Mr Moshinsky will speak in greater detail of your Honour’s practice at the bar.
I shall, however, mention one thing from those days, namely, that for some years before your Honour’s appointment to this Court you
chaired the Law Council of Australia Industrial Law Committee. In particular, you led that Committee as it embarked on an analysis
of the 1985 Hancock Committee Report on the Australian Industrial Law and Systems. The report of that Committee became the foundation
of the 1988 Industrial Relations Act. Your Honour has always been of a scholarly bent. In your Honour’s day at the University of
Melbourne most law students simply completed the straight four-year Bachelor of Laws course. However, your Honour chose to do a combined
Arts/Law degree and study classics in your arts degree. As has been said, you graduated with an honours degree in law.
Your Honour was one of the first barristers to be recruited by Sir David Derham, the founding Dean of the Monash Law School, to be
a teaching fellow in the law course there. Monash took its first law students in 1964. Your Honour tutored the law course there from
1965 to 1969. Student radicalism was strong at Monash from the mid-1960s and the story was told at your welcome – that you told a
student in one of your Monash tutorials that thongs were not appropriate attire for tutorials in law. In your days in Melbourne University
many law students still wore jackets and ties to classes and in residential colleges students wore academic gowns to tutorials. Things
were very different at the “farm” as Monash was then known.
The next edition of a student newspaper, Lot’s Wife, carried the headline “Fascist Tutor expels Student”. Your Honour may well be
aghast at what now passes for appropriate wear on what is termed “casual Fridays” at many city law firms. Your Honour also tutored
in the Council of Legal Education Long Articles course at the RMIT in which course your pupil master, Haddon Storey, was a lecturer.
In the early 1970s when the Leo Cussen Institute began its practical training course as an alternative to Articles your Honour was
a consultant for the Supreme Court Litigation Unit. Your scholarly bent has also been seen in your service from 1974 to 1980 as the
Editor of the Federal Law Reports.
Your Honour has, as a judge over the years, delivered many substantial papers and lectures both scholarly and practical in Australia
and overseas. Many of these have been in admiralty and maritime law but also, for example, on work choices and on the International
Labour Organisation Conventions and related instruments. Just a few years ago you delivered the prestigious Frank Stewart Dethridge
Memorial address at the Maritime Law Association of Australia and New Zealand at its 2008 conference in Perth. On a lighter note,
your Honour and your wife, Gabrielle, were holidaying one year in Fiji. Gabrielle had omitted to pack any light reading for herself.
When you bumped into Simon Wilson and his wife Gabrielle rushed up to Estelle Wilson and asked desperately whether she might borrow
one of her Agatha Christie novels saying, “I didn’t bring anything to read and Don’s idea of light holiday reading – all that he
has brought - is The Confessions of St Augustine.”
Judicial colleagues remark on your Honour’s profound gift with language, your ability to express difficult ideas precisely with brevity
and felicitous language. They say also that one of the pleasures of sitting with your Honour on the Full Court was your careful courtesy
in suggesting corrections to another’s draft reasons for judgment. You confined yourself to the substance adding significantly to
the analysis, clarity and grace of a draft and not correcting the author’s punctuation or style. One departure from that perhaps
was when one draft had a grammatical error in a Latin phrase, “inter alia” in a reference to persons. Your Honour’s background and passion for classics overcame your natural courteous reticence. You suggested
that it would be better in English, “amongst others”, but that if Latin were preferred it should be “inter alios”.
The District Registrar of the Court in Melbourne for much of your Honour’s time on the bench has commented on your Honour’s ready,
willingness to hear any application even when you were not the duty Judge. He does not recall you ever having declined a request.
She also speaks of the universal high regard in which you are held by the Court staff. Your Honour was similarly generous in your
readiness to serve on Court committees, a quiet contributor to the collegiality and cohesion of the Court and its judges. I would
like to mention one case that my group at Corrs Chambers Westgarth and which was heard before your Honour being the Ashwick proceedings
against the Commissioner of Taxation.
As your Honour will recall the case had its genesis in the heady 1980s and John Elliott’s grand plans to establish Elders Finance
Group as Australia’s largest merchant bank. The intervention of a 1987 stock market crash and a recession we had to have brought
a stop to that ambition and led to significant bad debts being incurred and claimed as tax deductions by the group now known as Fosters.
Your Honour found in favour of the 13 applicants on all counts. The Commissioner appealed to the Full Court comprising Bennett, Edmonds
and Middleton JJ. Recently, the Full Court dismissed the appeal finding no error in your well-reasoned and measured judgment bringing
welcome relief for our client to a dispute with the Commissioner that had commenced with the writing off of a debt some 13 years
earlier.
Of course, it’s inevitable that certain decisions will excite the interest of the media and that not everyone will agree with every
decision made. A Google search on your Honour’s name suggests that your 2009 decision in relation to admissibility of evidence sought
to be led by the DPP in the case against Richard Pratt revisiting some of the ACCCs civil settlement with his companies falls into
that category.
In 2009 Professor Jeremy Gans wrote an article for the Crikey website, which was somewhat critical of your Honour’s decision, in likening
the outcome to the Elliott fiasco. I presume that to be a reference to the failed case the National Crime Authority ran against John
Elliott again, harking back to his time in Fosters. The article elicited only one response, a curious biblical paraphrase, that he
who has not erred in law cast the first stone. In any event, and happily for Mr Pratt, DPP abandoned the case after your ruling and
shortly before his death.
I would like to conclude with a postscript to a story Bernard Teague told at your welcome, about your representation of Builders Labourers
Federation Secretary, Norm Gallagher. Mr Teague noted, and I quote:
You also appeared successfully for Mr Gallagher, in appeal to the Full Court against a conviction of contempt of this Court, and it
was not your Honour’s fault that comments Gallagher made to the press when judgment was handed down resulted in another contempt
charge. One that stuck.
The postscript reflects the breadth of your Honour’s practice as counsel and the power of your advocacy. The late Jack Lazarus had
appeared for Mr Gallagher in a criminal trial concerning secret commissions. Mr Gallagher was convicted and Lazarus was advising
his client that he saw several sound bases for an appeal. The following conversation has been recounted, Gallagher:
Well, Jack, it’s time to get Don Ryan on board.
Lazarus:
Don is a fine appellate lawyer, but his field is industrial law not criminal law.
Gallagher:
That doesn’t matter, Jack, that bloke can walk on water. Fair dinkum, even I get embarrassed when I think of some of the wins Don
got for me and the boys.
Your Honour has been an outstanding advocate and an outstanding judge and collegial member of the Court in a career that has, to date,
spanned more than 46 years. On behalf of the law institute and the solicitors of this state, and of the Law Counsel of Australia
and its constituent bodies, I wish your Honour and your wife, Gabrielle, the very best in all that lies ahead in your retirement.
May it please the Court.
KEANE CJ: Thanks, Mr Tang. Mr Moshinsky, do you move?
MR M. MOSHINSKY SC: May it please the Court. I appear on behalf of the Victorian Bar and the Australian Bar Association to pay tribute
to your Honour’s nearly 25 years on the Court and more than 46 years service to and in the law overall, since your admission to practice
in 1965. The president of the Australian Bar Association, Michael Steward SC of the Queensland Bar, is unable to be here today and
has asked me to pass on his apologies and best wishes.
Your Honour was admitted to practise in April 1965 and came to the bar in July. You read with Haddon Storey, later QC and also Attorney-General
of Victoria. Haddon Storey’s practice was largely commercial and perhaps not surprisingly your Honour’s early practice in the magistrates
and county courts was mostly in commercial matters, real property and building disputes. Even when your Honour began to be briefed
in industrial matters and that became the major focus of your practice, you still maintained a general practice. That included being
senior counsel assisting Justice Hope in the royal commission of inquiry into the Combe-Ivanov Affair and ASIO, in which the media
described your Honour variously as resembling a butler and an undertaker because of your black woollen coat. Your Honour had 10 readers.
Both your readers and those who appeared as your juniors speak of your Honour’s generosity, patience and courtesy, and of the value
of all they learned.
Your Honour served on the Australian Law Reform Commission as a part-time commissioner for some seven years, from 1984 to 1990, for
two years at the bar and continuing in your early years on the bench. As has been mentioned, your Honour took silk in 1980. You appeared
before the High Court in industrial matters and also constitutional matters. A judicial colleague who was present at the new silks
ceremony in the High Court, recalls still today the Chief Justice, the late Sir Harry Gibbs’, positively beaming smile as your Honour
made your bow. The late Chief Justice’s smile reflects the high regard and affection which your Honour has been and is held by professional
colleagues, both in your days in practice as a barrister, and since then for the last 25 years as a judge of this Court.
As counsel, your Honour represented your clients with strength and passion. You honoured the cab rank rule and appeared in highly
contentious and controversial matters, particularly in the industrial jurisdiction. In the very best traditions of the independent
bar your Honour brought to your work in the adversarial arena also diligence and detachment. The professional advocate, you never
permitted yourself to be drawn into the surrounding conflict; you never became involved in the politics. You were an acknowledged
leader of the industrial bar, not only in Victoria, but nationally. As a judge, your Honour displayed patience, integrity and fairness.
You brought to the task immensely good judgment, both in the jurisprudence and in its principled commonsense practical application.
Your Honour expressed at your welcome your admiration of your predecessor, the Honourable Sir Reginald Smithers. You said of his Honour
that he, quote:
Worried his way to a resolution, which was as acceptable as could be achieved in the circumstances.
The same experience of and sympathy for the human condition animated your Honour and it sometimes appeared, from the frown of concentration
on your face, that your Honour was troubled and doing your utmost to work through – it might be said to worry through – to a just
result. Your Honour has delivered notable and authoritative judgments in many areas of the law, especially in substantive and procedural
law of admiralty. Your Honour has the distinction that your decision in a little considered area of maritime salvage law, your decision
in Santo Rocco Di Bagnara, is one of only a few Australian decisions, other than decisions of the High Court, that has been given extensive treatment in an
English legal text, in Geoffrey Brice’s Maritime Law of Salvage, published by Sweet and Maxwell and now in its fourth edition.
A recent notable test case decision that should be mentioned is your Honour’s 2009 decision in Anstis v Commissioner of Taxation. This was a classic David and Goliath struggle. A young woman studying to become a primary school teacher, claimed $920 as educational
expenses by way of deduction. The Tax Office denied the deduction. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal affirmed that decision. She
appealed, represented by her father, who had qualified but did not practise as a solicitor. Your Honour held in favour of the student
and against the Commissioner. The Commissioner fought the matter through to the Full Court and then to the High Court. Before the
Full Court and the High Court, the Commissioner was represented by the Solicitor General, Stephen Gageler SC; the student still represented
by her father. The principle and logic of your Honour’s decision were unassailable, both the Full Court and the High Court agreed.
There is a postscript, the matter did not end there. The Government announced in its 2011 budget that legislation will be passed
to be effective from 1 July this year, to reverse the effect of the High Court’s decision in Anstis.
Just as at the bar, your Honour was a generous mentor and friend to your readers and juniors, so on the bench you did the same for
the 15 young lawyers who served as your associates. Rarely does a judge receive thanks for a favourable decision. Indeed, most would
see any such thanks as not seemly. One year your Honour heard an application for an injunction by 30 employees who claimed to have
been wrongly dismissed a couple of weeks before Christmas for seeking better conditions. Instead of hearing the application for an
injunction, your Honour ordered a speedy trial and heard the matter on its merits. Within 14 days of the initiation of proceedings
on Christmas Eve, your Honour gave judgment, ordering that the employees be reinstated. The employees wanted to express their thanks
and they gathered in Little Bourke Street underneath your Honour’s window in the old High Court building and serenaded your Honour
with Christmas carols.
For over 46 years your Honour has served the law and the people in their dealings with the law with, as has been said, immensely good
judgment, with humanity, decency and due regard for legal principle. Your Honour is today the third most senior judge of this Court,
after only the Honourable Chief Justice Keane and the Honour Justice Peter Gray. Although your Honour has until 11.59 tonight to
tie up any other loose ends, I hope this may be the time for the Irish jig that was suggested for today in the Solicitor-General’s
welcome to your Honour nearly 25 years ago. The Solicitor-General, Dr Gavin Griffith QC, referred to your Honour’s prowess in dancing
an Irish jig on a restaurant table, by way of demonstration and proof of your Irish roots. Dr Griffith wished your Honour, and I
quote:
A happy, even a merry time as a judge of this Court –
and suggested that you might perhaps dance an Irish jig on the bench at your farewell in 25 years time. The 25 years have passed,
the time for the Irish jig, your Honour, has come. On behalf of the Victorian Bar and the of the Australian Bar Association, I wish
your Honour and your wife, Gabrielle, a long and happy retirement. May it please the Court.
KEANE CJ: Thanks, Mr Moshinsky. Justice Ryan.
RYAN J: Thank you, Chief Justice, Ms Glanville, Mr Tang and Mr Moshinsky for your over generous remarks. Even more than is customary
on these occasions, you have exaggerated my attainments and glossed over my shortcomings. I sometimes think that speakers at functions
like this should call to mind the exordium of Mark Antony, “I come to bury Caesar not to praise him.” However, these ceremonies do
perform more than a funerary function. They give the retiring incumbent an opportunity to acknowledge the many debts which accrue
over a significant period of judicial office.
I instanced at my welcome some of the manifold obligations which I had incurred in an earlier professional life, particularly as junior
and then senior counsel. It is not appropriate to remind you of them today. Nor is this the time or the place to say much of more
personal matters, but the family of a judge shoulder abnormal burdens and suffer uncommon privations. My wife forsook her own profession
as a medical practitioner to accommodate the demands of being a judge’s spouse. My daughter, Fiona, is now a hard bitten common law
advocate and my son, Christopher, has the impatience of a scientist and an army reserve officer with the abstractions of legal reasoning.
Nevertheless, each of them has taken a tolerant interest in the esoteric matters which have preoccupied me from time to time.
It was my son who at the tender age of four was asked by the Chief Justice, Sir Nigel Bowen, at my welcome in the former High Court
building in Little Bourke Street whether he was enjoying himself. And he replied; “Yes. But I haven’t seen the Queen yet.” My daughter
has recently produced a son, Thomas, but, at only six months, he has had more pressing concerns than having a judge as a grandfather.
I have a pronounced sense of indebtedness to the many former and present colleagues with whom I have worked on this Court. My term
of office has overlapped those of the first three Chief Justices. Sir Nigel Bowen had been a practicing politician and a former Commonwealth
Attorney-General. He brought special skills to delineating the jurisdiction of the new Court and consolidating and expanding it in
its formative years.
I am particularly glad that the Honourable Michael Black has been able to join us on the bench today. He has been instrumental in
conceiving and creating what these days is called the “built environment” of the Court. The buildings which house the Court in each
state and territory are models of modern courthouse design and largely owe their existence to his vision and drive. His successor,
the Honourable Patrick Keane, who presides today, has already displayed a brand of intellectual leadership and energy which promises
to usher in a new era of the Court’s pre-eminence as a superior court of record. The work of the Court, based as much of it is in
federal statutes and subordinate legislation and the review of commonwealth administrative action, has frequently been carried on
in a climate of political controversy. However, I can truthfully say from fairly long experience that I have never detected an iota
of partisanship in the Court’s disposition of cases.
A strong collegiate spirit has informed the work of its judges and never more so than in the collaborative work of Full Courts. I
know there are sceptics who look askance at the preponderance of joint judgments and one line concurrences, but I have been in the
kitchen where these things are cooked. Again, I can truthfully say that the judgments of Full Courts are invariably arrived at after
an independent examination of the issues by each member and reflect his or her personal conviction as to the result required by law.
I recognise that separate courts of appeal have cemented their place in the structure of Supreme Courts around the country. However,
that owes much to the volume of criminal appellate work and appeals from common law damages which those courts have to undertake.
I would think it a retrograde step if a similar separation between appellate and trial judges were imposed on this Court.
I have also been fortunate in the companionship and co operation afforded by past and present colleagues on this Court and friends
on other Courts in social and extra curricular activities. Regrettably too many of my former colleagues have been cut off whilst
at the height of their powers. I mourn their passing. I have been extremely fortunate in the efficiency and concern shown by my executive
assistants, particularly Ms Brenda Conway, who I am glad has been able to be here today and my last, and present, EA, Ms Karen Halse.
As well as the myriad routine tasks which she has performed so admirably over the years, she has had to cope with the extraordinary
pressures of the last few weeks, almost all of them the result of my own dilatory habits.
I am repeatedly amazed at the numbers of highly qualified and multi talented young people who are prepared to give a year or more
of their professional lives to work as judge’s associates. I have had more than my share of the best of them. Some of them have subsequently
gone on to flourishing careers at the bar or in leading firms of solicitors. One has recently taken silk and another has just published
the second edition of his magisterial work, Defamation and the Internet.
One, having worked with distinction in the United Nations, is now married and a mother of three in Brussels. Yet another has made
a mark as an international lawyer and now teaches in that field at University College London. Others have worked in government service,
non-government organisations and sporting administration and the list goes on. I thank each of them for their dedicated assistance;
I can only hope that they consider themselves to have derived some small benefit to compensate for their unstinting work in the Court.
A court, as complex and far flung as this one, cannot operate without input from a diverse range of administrative, clerical and other
support staff. This Court is extremely well served by its Registrars and Deputy Registrars, many of whom have been pioneers and innovators
in court assisted alternative dispute resolution. As well, they contribute immensely to the smooth running of the Court’s many committees
and its liaison with the practising profession. That leads me naturally to acknowledge the assistance which I and my staff have,
almost without exception, received from counsel and solicitors in the management of my docket and the disposition of cases in it.
You, Mr Tang, and Mr Moshinsky should convey these thanks to the members of your respective associations. I’ve already mentioned
the support staff but it would be remiss not to acknowledge the invaluable work of the court officers and those who have worked in
important auxiliary roles, notably Bruce Phillips, John Cottle and Graham Healey. The latter retired at the end of last year and
I’m glad that he has been able to return today. Stephen Williams, the court services coordinator, has succeeded to Graham’s responsibilities
as stage manager for events like today's. I should also compliment the willing assistance in research and retrieval technology given
by John Botherway and his library staff. There are doubtless many whose contributions I have omitted to mention or inadequately acknowledged.
They should all be assured that, despite my oversights, their efforts have been no less appreciated.
One of my former brothers, I think it was Roger Giles, said that when he was in this position he could almost feel the judicial power
of the Commonwealth ebbing from his fingertips. I have not so far had in modern parlance an “out of body experience” like that. Perhaps
it will happen at midnight tonight.
I do not propose entirely to fade in the sunset but Mr Moshinsky will be disappointed that there will be no Irish jig either now or
in the foreseeable future. I hope that my retirement will enable me to maintain and renew many of my contacts in legal and academic
circles. In any event, I shall retain my interest in the work of the Court and in the activities of many who are present today. I
am gratified indeed that so many have made time in their busy professional and personal lives to attend today. I’m conscious that
some have travelled very long distances to be here. I’ve also received fulsome apologies from many whose unavoidable commitments
have prevented their attendance. It only remains to say thank you all.
KEANE CJ: Thank you, Justice Ryan. The Court will adjourn and you are all invited to join Justice Ryan and his family for a cup of
tea outside. Adjourn the Court, please.
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