Bar council royalists collapse
Bar Talk • Friday, November 14, 2014 Royalist faction fails to consolidate electoral gains ... Fracture and isolation ... Wiser heads prevail as youngsters fail the chook raffle test ... Meanwhile, QCs saddle-up at VicBar
Royalists advance, then retreat
If ever there's a group magnificently capable of blowing itself up, it's the Royalist Hyde Page faction of the NSW Bar n Grill.
There they were with a dominant grip on the bar council ready to press their advantage, only to fall over themselves with raw ambition and infighting.
In the wrap-up only two royalists have arrived on the executive: treasurer Justin Hogan-Doran and hon secretary Philippe Doyle Gray.
Doyle Gray had been on the council in an earlier life and it is quite usual that the secretary's job should go to a junior barrister. The three senior republican incumbents have kept their positions: Jane Needham president, Noel Hutley senior-vice and Arthur Moses junior-vice.
Needham and Moses were unopposed and Hutley saw off a challenge from monarchist Jeff Phillips.
Philip Selth, the executive director, who was facing the chop from the hardliners, retains his position with another two years on his contract.
Justinian has been told that no deals were done, rather by mid-week it was evident the royalists had fractured, with older and wiser heads falling away from the young Turks. By this stage QC standard bearer Hyde Page was isolated.
At post-election caucus meetings it was evident that HP was angling for the position of junior-vice.
Some of the royalists thought this would have been a touch too vulgar and fell away.
It is understood other senior members of the bar, who are not on the council, also had a quiet word with the older grizzlies on the queen's ticket.
Hyde Page also suggested at one of the numerous meetings that the bar council could pass a motion referring the silk applications from David Smallbone and Mary Walker to the silk selection committee, with a direction that the committee determine each of those applications on the merits.
In the sober light of day it was realised that there was more issues facing the bar than the self-aggrandisement of QC appointments. Jane Needham made that clear after the council meeting last night (Thursday, Nov. 13).
She repeated the same message in a carefully worded statement to members today (Friday).
"It has been an interesting week. One issue - that of whether the bar should approach the government to seek the requisite legislative amendments to enable senior counsel to practice under Letters Patent as queen's counsel – has caused some controversy in the wake of last week's Bar Council election result. That result indicates that there is interest among members in the Bar Council pursuing this issue with the New South Wales Government.
The bar faces many challenges, the resolution of the queen's counsel/senior counsel issue among them. But matters such as the continuing response of the bar to the Law Council NARS report, the implications of a national profession, the uniform practice rules, and of course our statutory regulatory functions, will also take up time and require significant and concentrated effort."
Tomorrow (Nov. 15), in The Saturday Paper, Chief Justice Tom Bathurst is reported as saying that QCs are unnecessary:
"I don't think that the title, be it QC or SC, is going to alter the reputation of the institution or the reputation of the people there. The institution depends on the people that get it, having been of top quality. If they are of top quality they'll get work either here or, to an extent its available, overseas whether they're called SCs, QCs or neither of those things."
The Labor opposition in the NSW parliament has pledged to do away with QCs should they be reinstated, which on current indications from the government is unlikely.
Yarra Bar has just elected a new council with a sweep of QCs in the category A block. The executive is also dominated by queeners.
It might be interesting if an incoming Yarraside Labor government entirely revokes Letters Patent for appointment as queen's counsel.
The whole issues smacks of the farcical and the vain-glorious. Hyde Page was on ABC 702 this week talking-up the splendour of QCs, while over on the commercial station 2UE a caller described the bar "a pack of wankers".
Someone from 5 Selborne also was ringing around Phillip Street and environs in some sort of role as a self-appointed preference whisperer. How alarming.
Previous reports
Justinian
An earlier version of this story suggested that John Hyde Page had wanted to promptly elevate to SC "several allies who had missed out on silk".
Hyde Page says that is not so and we're happy to correct the record.
He says that he thought David Smallbone and Mary Walker should be referred to the silk selection committee and their applications determined on their merits.
He was concerned that Smallbone may win his Supreme Court case against the bar association, resulting in a substantial award of costs against the bar. In this instance Smallbone's silk application would have to be determined.
In the case of Mary Walker he is of the view that she suffered an injustice having her application for silk refused because she is a mediator.
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