Justice William Charles Crockett AO - Victorian Bar

Farewell Speech by The Honourable JusticSolicitor-General, Mr Shand,Mr Provis, learned counsel,ladies and gentlemen. I thankthose who have spoken for theirundeservedly kind remarksabout my work as a judge andfor their good wishes. I thankyou all for your attendancethis afternoon.THE administration of justice is acollective endeavour. It is not onlythe responsibility of judges, butalso of the profession, and the judgescould not perform their own role withoutthe support of their staff. In my case, Ihave been particularly well served by myassociates, secretaries and tipstaves andassisted, too, by the staff of other judges,of the Court and of VGRS. I am trulygrateful to them all.Even with all that support, particularlyin recent years I have found thework to be very burdensome. I makeno complaint: it “comes with the territory”.But I am now convinced thatthe State would be better served bythe appointment of someone younger,or at all events fresher, to the Court ofHis Honour Mr Justice Callaway.Appeal. That is one of the main reasons Ihave decided to retire at 61 rather than70.It is not because I regret acceptingappointment. I have never regrettedbeing a Supreme Court judge. My reasonsfor that are those expressed by SirEdmund Herring at the end of his speechin the Twelfth Court on 31 August 1964the day before he retired as Chief Justice.(The relevant passage is quoted in StuartSayers’ biography at pages 340–341 andreported in the opening pages of [1964]V.R. at 47. I leave you to read it for yourselves.)And now the time has come for me to laydown my office, but before I do so there aretwo matters to which I feel bound to drawattention. The first is this, that under theAustralian constitution the great commonlaw courts of Australia are the SupremeCourts of the States. Federal Parliamenthas no power to set up common law courtsand so it is that to the Supreme Courts ofthe States the citizen must continue tolook for protection from illegal arrest andother encroachments upon his liberty. It isto these Courts that he must come for awrit of habeas corpus. These Courts andtheir prestige must therefore, at all costsbe sustained so that they will continue toattract the finest characters and the bestlegal brains that we can produce. As acommunity we will pay heavily if we allowour Supreme Court to be relegated to aposition of inferiority.The second matter I feel I should mentionis that the principle of the independenceof the judiciary from the executive isQUEENSLAND ENVIRONMENTAL LAWASSOCIATION INC.ANNUAL CONFERENCE16 TO 18 MAY 2007'Your System or Mine'Keynote Speaker: Tim Flannery2007 Australian of the YearConference content includes:- Comparative analysis of the planning & environment regulatory regimes inQld, Vic and NSW- Keynote judges session with specialist judges from the 3 jurisdictions andmuch more.Contact QELAs office on 07 3832 4865,email info@qela.com.au or visitwww.qela.com.au.Peppers Salt Resort & SpaKingscliff, northern NSW28