CONDOLENCES

Mr DREYFUS (Isaacs) (12:43): I rise to mark the passing of the Hon. Justice Mary Gaudron KC, one of the most significant Australian jurists of her generation and a person whose life changed both the law and the legal profession. Justice Gaudron has rightly been remembered for breaking barrier after barrier.

She faced sexism throughout her university studies but graduated with first-class honours from Sydney University and took the University Medal in Law. She did this while also having had her first child, Danielle, the year before her graduation. She was the first woman appointed to the New South Wales Bar Council.

She became the first woman Solicitor-General of Australia. In 1987, at the age of 44, she became the first woman appointed to the High Court of Australia, But Justice Gaudron should not be remembered simply because she was the first woman to occupy those offices. She should be remembered for what she did with them, for the contribution she made to the law itself.

Her Honour's work was distinguished by a deep and sustained concern with equality before the law. In Street v Queensland Bar Association, her judgement helped give real content to the Constitution's protection against discrimination based on state residence. Her Honour's thinking about equality recognised something that now seems straightforward but was not always treated that way by the law: that treating people identically does not necessarily mean treating them equally.

And of course there was Mabo. In their joint judgement, Justices Deane and Gaudron confronted directly the dispossession of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. They described that dispossession as 'the darkest aspect of the history of this nation'.

Those words have endured because they expressed with unusual clarity the responsibility of the law to acknowledge the truth of our history. Her Honour's contribution extended across constitutional law, criminal law, industrial law and the law concerning discrimination. Former associates came to refer to her with some affection as 'the queen of chapter III'.

I had the honour to appear before Justice Gaudron in the High Court on several occasions. Her Honour was known as a rigorous, exacting thinker—someone who reasoned methodically from principle. She respected precedent but never let it stop her from questioning whether a law that looked fair on paper actually worked fairly in practice.

Her Honour's former associates have recalled a habit that says something about the care she brought to her work. When travelling, she would send draft judgements back to chambers with a dot placed above every single word, indicating that she had considered each one. Beyond this, Justice Gaudron was known for her sharp, irreverent sense of humour.

A particular exchange has stayed with me from the judge's pension case, Austin v The Commonwealth of Australia, in which I appeared in 2002. The case concerned taxation of the pensions of state judges, and counsel was presenting actuarial calculations that assumed that women judges lived longer than men. Justice Gaudron questioned this in an exchange with counsel.

Wisely, counsel accepted Her Honour's point, noting that women judges work just as hard as men and so likely die just as fast. Justice Gaudron, in response, quipped, 'Because they work twice as hard, they probably die twice as fast.' I was very pleased that Justice Gaudron was present at the High Court in October 2022 when I, as then Attorney-General, welcomed Justice Jane Jagot to the court.

On that day, for the first time since Federation, women formed a majority of the High Court. Thirty-five years earlier, Justice Gaudron had sat on that bench as the only woman. Those two moments tell us something about how much our legal institutions have changed.

Justice Gaudron helped make that change possible by demonstrating beyond argument that the barriers that had kept women from positions of leadership in the law had nothing to do with ability. Justice Gaudron gave Australia 16 years of distinguished service on its highest court and a lifetime of service to the law. She leaves an enduring body of jurisprudence, generations of lawyers who have followed the path she first trod, and a legal profession profoundly reshaped by her presence.

I extend my condolences to her family, her friends and all those in the legal profession who knew and loved her. Australia is richer for her life and service. I and many others will mourn the loss of Mary Gaudron.