CONDOLENCES

Mr CALDWELL (Fadden—Opposition Chief Whip) (12:49): I thank the member for Isaacs for his tribute to Justice Gaudron. They were fine words and entirely appropriate from a KC of his distinction. I rise today to pay tribute to the Hon.

Mary Gaudron KC, who was a remarkable Australian lawyer, jurist and trailblazer. Much will rightly be said about the fact that Mary Gaudron was the first woman appointed to the High Court of Australia. Her appointment in 1987 was indeed historic, but perhaps an even greater testament to her life is that her legacy cannot simply be reduced to her being the first woman to sit on our nation's highest court.

She was undoubtedly one of the most consequential jurists of her generation. Before entering this place, I practised as a solicitor and was admitted to the Supreme Court of Queensland and the High Court of Australia. But, as I studied at university between 1997 and 2002 during what were the final years of Justice Gaudron's service on the High Court, I never had the distinction of appearing in that place before her.

So I remember her not simply as a figure from Australian legal history but from the judgements we studied at university. For a young law student the names Brennan, Toohey, Gaudron, Gummow, McHugh and Kirby became very familiar indeed, and I can still remember reading judgements bearing that familiar formulation—Toohey, Gaudron and Gummow JJ—as we tried to understand the court's reasoning and occasionally simply tried to understand what Their Honours were actually saying.

There is something rather poignant now in reflecting that these cases that we were studying as contemporary law have become part of Australian legal history, and Mary Gaudron played a remarkable part in making that history. Her name appears on some of the most consequential decisions in Australian law. In Mabo v Queensland she joined Justice Deane in a judgement that confronted the legal and historical consequences of the dispossession of Indigenous Australians.

She sat in Dietrich v The Queen, which profoundly influenced our understanding of the requirements of a fair criminal trial. She was part of the court in both Australian Capital Television and Nationwide News. They were foundational cases that were concerned with the implied freedom of political communication, which is a constitutional principle of particular relevance to every one of us who serves in this place.

Particularly for a Queensland lawyer her time on the court encompassed the Wik Peoples v Queensland, which was another decision which fundamentally shaped Australian law. These were not questions at the margins. They concerned some of the most difficult questions our highest court can be asked to determine: the limits of government power, equality before the law, the requirements of a fair trial, freedom of political communication, Indigenous rights and the proper interpretation of our Constitution.

Justice Gaudron brought to those questions a formidable intellect and a deep concern for the practical operation of the law upon individuals. Her own story was equally remarkable. She entered a profession in which women were still too often treated as outsiders and rose to its very pinnacle.

In doing so she did not simply occupy a seat that no other woman had occupied before her. She demonstrated beyond argument that women belonged at the very highest levels of the Australian legal profession and the judiciary. For generations, Australian law students who followed—including me and my wife, Lauren, who is also a practising lawyer—Mary Gaudron became part of the law we studied.

For generations of lawyers, her judgements became part of the law we practised, and, for our nation, the principles she helped articulate remain part of the law by which we are governed. This is an extraordinary legacy of public service. I extend my condolences to her family, her friends, her former colleagues and the entire Australian legal community, who will deeply feel her loss.

May she rest in peace.