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Upholding the Australian Constitution: The Samuel Griffith Society Proceedings |
1. Addresses
Professor Geoffrey BLAINEY, AC was educated at Ballarat High School, Wesley College and the University of Melbourne, where he subsequently took up what was to prove an illustrious career both as an academic historian and an author. After 15 years in the Economic History department (1962-77), the last nine of them as Professor of Economic History, he became the Ernest Scott Professor of History in 1977. In 1987 he retired from this post (and as Dean of the Faculty of Arts) in the face of the storm of malignant criticism arising from his public remarks about the serious future problems being created for Australia by our immigration and official multiculturalism policies. Both before that time, and since, he has been a prolific author, with such works as The Peaks of Lyell (1954), Mines in the Spinifex (1960), The Tyranny of Distance (1966), and Triumph of the Nomads (1975). More recently, he has produced such best-sellers as A Short History of the World (2000) and A Very Short History of the World (2004). He is today a Governor of the Ian Potter Foundation and a member of the Council of the Australian War Memorial, among many other activities.
Paul HOULIHAN was educated at St Patrick's College, Ballarat but managed to escape what today passes for a university education. He has worked in industrial relations for over 30 years, beginning with the Federated Clerks Union of Tasmania, where he was appointed State Secretary from 1972 to 1979, and continuing with an eight-year spell at the National Farmers Federation, during which he was involved in some of the major industrial disputes of the era, including the famous Mudginberri dispute. In 1988 he established his own industrial relations consultancy, First IR, and has been in private practice since then. In March, 1996 he was involved in providing significant practical input into the creation of the federal Workplace Relations Act 1996, the so-called Reith-Kernot Act. In 1998, he was appointed a Director of P&C Stevedores, the NFF backed company which set up in competition to the established waterfront players at Webb Dock in Melbourne and which, in the teeth of the ACTU and the Federal Court, won the great battle against the Maritime Workers' Union which has since transformed the Australian waterfront. Today he is a director of IR Australia, a national workplace relations consultancy based in Sydney, where he has been engaged in a wide range of industrial and commercial negotiations.
2. Conference Contributors
Professor James ALLAN, a Canadian by birth, was educated at WA Porter Collegiate, Scarborough, Toronto and at Queen's University, Ontario (BA, 1982; LLB, 1985), the London School of Economics (LLM, 1986) and the University of Hong Kong (PhD, 1994). After working at the Bar in Toronto and in London, he has since taught law in New Zealand, Hong Kong, Canada and the United States before appointment as Garrick Professor of Law at the University of Queensland in 2004. The author of numerous articles in professional legal journals, he says that, since moving to Queensland, he "has been revelling in a country not burdened with a Bill of Rights".
Ben DAVIES was educated at Melbourne High School, at the University of Melbourne (BA, 2001) and at Monash University (LLB, 2005). In 1996 he won the Australian Universities Debating Championship, and represented Melbourne University in the 2000 World Universities Debating Championship. A man of widely diverse interests (film-making, car restoration), he has been an adviser to two federal Ministers (Hon Tony Abbott and Hon Kevin Andrews), as well as being a member of the Victorian "No" Campaign Committee for the 1999 Republic referendum. A member of the Board of The Samuel Griffith Society since 2003, he was the inaugural winner, in 2005, of the Governor-General's Prize for essays on the Australian Constitution. He now works as a solicitor in Melbourne.
John GAVA was educated at the Fairfield Patrician Brothers School and at Macquarie University (BA/LLB, 1981). After admission to the ACT Bar, he worked in the Attorney-General's Department and the Australian Tax Office before moving into academia in 1983 and returning to full-time study (LLM, 1987). After teaching in the Law faculties at Melbourne and Macquarie Universities, in 1999 he moved to Adelaide University, where he is now Reader in Law.
Eddy GISONDA was educated at Eltham College, Melbourne, and at Monash University (BA, 2001; LLB (Hons) 2003), and is currently completing a thesis at the University of Melbourne on law and political philosophy. A practicing solicitor, he is also the chairman of a community legal centre, and committee chairman and executive board member at the Law Institute of Victoria. He has tutored in constitutional and private law at Monash University, the University of Melbourne, Ormond College and Newman College, and is now an associate to Justice Kenneth Hayne at the High Court of Australia. His articles on law have been published in The Australian.
Hon Dr David HAMILL was educated at Bremer High School in Ipswich, at the University of Queensland (BA (Hons), 1979), and as a Rhodes Scholar, at Oxford (MA, 1985). In 1983 he became the Labor Member for Ipswich in the Queensland Legislative Assembly. On the election of the Goss Government in 1989 he was appointed Minister for Transport and Minister Assisting the Premier on Economic and Trade Development (1989-1995), and Minister for Education (1995-96). On the election of the Beattie Government in 1998 he became Treasurer (1998-2001), before retiring from the Parliament and returning to the University of Queensland (PhD, 2005). Today he is active in a range of community organisations, including as Chairman of the Australian Red Cross Blood Service, and is a Director of Babcock and Brown Infrastructure Limited.
Julian LEESER was educated at Cranbrook, Sydney and the University of New South Wales (BA Hons, 1999; LLB, 2000). He was an elected delegate for Australians for Constitutional Monarchy at the 1998 Constitutional Convention, and subsequently served as a member of the "No" Case Committee for the Republic referendum. He has since served as Associate to then High Court Justice Callinan (2000) and as Adviser to the then Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Hon Tony Abbott (2001) as well as, more recently, Special Adviser to the Attorney-General, Hon Philip Ruddock (2004-06), with responsibility for constitutional law and court administration. A solicitor, he now serves as Executive Director of the Menzies Research Centre. He is currently working on a biography of the late Sir William McMahon.
Michael MANETTA was educated at St Ignatius' College, the University of Adelaide (LLB (Hons), 1987), and Christ Church, Oxford. He was Associate to the late Justice Michael White of the South Australian Supreme Court (1987-1988) and a Senior Associate at Messrs Minter Ellison, Solicitors, in Adelaide, before joining the South Australian Bar in 1995. He practises at Anthony Mason Chambers in Adelaide in commercial law, equity, admiralty, tax and administrative law. In 1996, he served on the South Australian Constitutional Advisory Council chaired by Professor Peter Howell, and in 1998 served at the Constitutional Convention as a legal advisor to the SA delegation of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy.
Dr Charles PARKINSON was educated at Melbourne Grammar School, the University of Melbourne (BA (Hons) 2001; LLB (Hons) 2003; MA 2003) and, as a Commonwealth Scholar, at Trinity College, Oxford (DPhil 2005). He worked at Freehills before becoming Associate to Justice Hayne of the High Court of Australia. His book Bill of Rights and Decolonization (Oxford University Press) was published in late 2007.
Dr Geoffrey PARTINGTON was born in Lancashire and was educated at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Middleton and the Universities of Bristol (BA, 1951; MEd, 1972), London (BSc, 1971) and, after his emigration to Australia in 1976, Adelaide (PhD, 1988). He was a teacher, headmaster and Inspector of Schools in England and has since taught in the school of Education of Flinders University, South Australia. During that time nearly 200 of his essays and articles have been published, many in scholarly journals on topics as disparate as anthropology and moral education. His books include Women Teachers in the Twentieth Century, The Idea of an Historical Education, What do our Children Know? and The Australian Nation: Its British and Irish Roots.
Sir David SMITH, KCVO, AO was educated at Scotch College, Melbourne and at Melbourne and the Australian National Universities (BA, 1967). After entering the Commonwealth Public Service in 1954, he became in 1973 Official Secretary to the then Governor-General of Australia (Sir Paul Hasluck). After having served five successive Governors-General in that capacity, he retired in 1990, being personally knighted by The Queen. In 1998 he attended the Constitutional Convention in Canberra as an appointed delegate, and subsequently played a prominent role in the "No" Case Committee for the 1999 Republic referendum. While a visiting Scholar in the Faculty of Law of the Australian National University, his research has done much to clarify the role of the Governor-General in Australia's constitutional arrangements, culminating in his book Head of State (2005).
John STONE was educated at Perth Modern School, the University of Western Australia (BSc Hons, 1950) and then, as a Rhodes Scholar, at New College, Oxford (BA Hons, 1954). He joined the Australian Treasury in 1954, and over a Treasury career of 30 years served in a number of posts at home and abroad, including as Australia's Executive Director in both the IMF and the World Bank in Washington, DC (1967-70). In 1979 he became Secretary to the Treasury, resigning from that post---and from the Commonwealth Public Service---in 1984. Since that time he has been, at one time and another, a Professor at Monash University, a newspaper columnist, a company director, a Senator for Queensland and Leader of the National Party in the Senate and Shadow Minister for Finance. In 1996-97 he served as a member of the Defence Efficiency Review, and in 1999 he was a member of the Victorian Committee for the No Republic Campaign. A principal founder of The Samuel Griffith Society, he has served on its Board of Management since its inception in 1992 and is Editor and Publisher of its Proceedings.
Dr Anne TWOMEY was educated at Sacred Heart College, Shepparton and at the University of Melbourne (BA/LLB (Hons), 1989); the Australian National University (LLM, 1996); and the University of New South Wales (PhD, 2006). As a constitutional lawyer, she has worked for the High Court of Australia, the Commonwealth Parliament and the NSW Cabinet Office. She is currently an Associate Professor at the Law School of the University of Sydney. She is the author of The Constitution of New South Wales (2004) and The Chameleon Crown---The Queen and Her Australian Governors (2006). Now completing a book on the Australia Acts 1986, she intends to write her next book on procedural and jurisprudential issues concerning constitutional amendment.
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URL: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/SGSocUphAUCon/2007/16.html