Chauvel - Swearing-In Of Ailsa Patricia Duffy
new-zealand-labour-party
Tue Oct 16 2007 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)
Chauvel - Swearing-In Of Ailsa Patricia Duffy
Tuesday, 16 October 2007, 9:37 am
Speech: New Zealand Labour Party
ADDRESS BY CHARLES CHAUVEL MP, ON BEHALF OF THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL, AT THE SWEARING-IN OF AILSA PATRICIA DUFFY AS A JUDGE OF THE HIGH COURT OF NEW ZEALAND
AUCKLAND, FRIDAY, 12 OCTOBER 2007
May it please Your Honour:
I am delighted, as a friend and former colleague of Your Honour’s, to have been asked to appear on behalf of the Government on the occasion of your swearing-in as a Judge of the High Court, and to convey the congratulations and best wishes of the Law Officers to you on your appointment.
I would like to mention briefly Your Honour’s broad professional experience which, with respect, makes you ideally suited to high judicial office.
As the Chief Justice has mentioned, after graduating with your LLB from Auckland University in 1977 and your admission to the Bar in 1979, you commenced practise as a barrister sole. A short time later, you moved to the Grey Lynn Neighbourhood Law Office, and became its Head Solicitor. This marked the beginning of your career-long association with this office and the vital role it plays in the community, being nominated as one of its trustees from 1999, and becoming its Chairperson in 2001. You have thereby demonstrated a concern for the vital principle of making access to justice as broadly available as possible.
You returned to the Bar for a period in 1985 before making the life altering decision in 1988 to uproot yourself and to make the move from Auckland to Wellington to join the Crown Law Office as a Crown Counsel. You did not cut your ties with Auckland following the move, and made regular trips back home, at your own expense, while you were at the Crown Law Office. I suspect those return trips were perfectly timed to avoid an imminent brisk southerly rolling in off the Cook Strait. So it is fitting then, although admittedly a loss for Wellington, that you have elected to sit in Auckland.
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Others present in the Court today, including Justice Ellen France, Mary Scholtens QC and Karen Clark QC will be able to join with us both in attesting to the extraordinary qualitative professional opportunities that are available at the Crown Law Office. During your time there, you made the most of them, and quickly distinguished yourself as a determined and astute litigator. In 1991, when the Office was restructured by Solictor-General McGrath, as he then was, to better recognise the demands on the Office from the manner in which contemporary Government functions, you were appointed Team Leader of the newly created Commercial Regulatory Team. During this time you acted for a number of government departments with commercial regulatory responsibilities in commercial and civil litigation on a wide array of legal issues. By the time that I was appointed as one of your fellow Crown Counsel in April 1994, you had already begun to distinguish yourself in the field of fisheries law, an especially litigious area following the implementation of the transferable quota regime in the 1980s.
I well remember one week late in December 1995 when 3 fisheries judicial review proceedings were being heard back to back by Justice Robertson, who came down to Wellington especially to hear these cases. One of those cases was Ruocco v Quota Appeal Authority & Director-General of Agriculture & Fisheries, in which Your Honour appeared for the Director-General. After that hearing, one of our colleagues, who was involved in the final hearing of the week, reported that Justice Robertson had mused that disputes over company shares in Auckland didn’t generate nearly as much passion as cases over fisheries quotas in Wellington. I recall that Your Honour was delighted by this suggestion, which you took as confirmation that these claims were being defended with suitable vigour!
In addition to a heavy litigation workload, while at the Crown Law Office you were appointed as a Committee of Inquiry under s 8 of the State Sector Act 1988 to investigate the unauthorised disclosure of a cabinet document relating to the Smokefree Environments Bill, and were also appointed as counsel assisting a ministerial committee of inquiry into Hepatitis C infected blood products.
In 1996 you decided to return to the Bar. By that stage, the notion of specialisation in public law matters was something to which the profession and the public in Wellington were becoming accustomed. You took the brave and at that point fairly novel step of establishing a public law practice in Auckland. However, your reputation, and the expertise in public law that you developed while at the Crown Law Office quickly followed you, and you received a number of appointments to Committees of Inquiry and to carry out independent reviews for Government agencies. Some of these have been mentioned by the Chief Justice, and another was your appointment by the Chief Executive of the Child Youth and Family Department to carry out an independent review of that Organisation’s call centre’s handling of telephone calls made by Coral Burrows’ father, Ron Burrows, concerning his daughter’s care. Later that year, you were appointed to carry out an independent review for the Accident Compensation Corporation of a claimant’s file;
In conducting these inquiries and reviews, you demonstrated an ability to achieve results, wherever possible, that all parties could accept and move forward from, obviating the prospect of the issues involved being dragged out in litigation for years to come.
Shortly after returning to the Bar, you were appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1998. Over the last 12 years since returning to the Bar you have also received numerous other appointments including:
• Member of the Auckland Crown prosecutors’ panel;
• Member of the Auckland District Law Society Professional Disciplinary Matters Committee;
• Member of the Serious Fraud Office prosecutors’ panel;
• Assistant Commissioner of Trademarks, Assistant Commissioner of Patents, Assistant Commissioner of Designs to conduct hearings under the Trade Marks Act;
• Member of the New Zealand Law Society’s Civil Litigation and Tribunals Committee;
• Member of the Auckland District Law Society Council.
Your commitment to the profession and your wider interests in the law have also been significant. You have written numerous legal articles and participated in a number of legal conferences over the years. You have been a member of the Legal Research Foundation, and the Auckland District Law Society’s subcommittees on Continuing Legal Education and Public Issues. In particular you have played an important role in advancing the role of women in the profession. In recognition of this, in 1993 you were awarded the New Zealand Suffrage Centennial Medal. As the Chief Justice has observed, you have been known throughout your career to have been very supportive of the many other less experienced counsel with whom you have worked, providing them with guidance and with opportunities for their development. I am glad to be able to count myself amongst their number.
It is self-evident from your remarkable career to date that you have demonstrated the skills, judgment and professionalism required of those on the bench. Judicial office is a form of public service that demands a great deal of its holders, but which is vital to the wellbeing of our society. On behalf of the Government, I thank you for agreeing to undertake the responsibilities of such office. I wish you, your partner Colin, and the family and friends who will continue to provide you with important support and encouragement, all the very best for this next stage of your legal career.
ENDS
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