SEK Hulme interview 17 November 2006

SEK, you took silk in 1968. Because you took silk fairly quickly, that meant you only had a few readers during your time?

Yes, four, I think. Peter Galbally, Jack's son, who I think has now left the Bar, hasn't he? Has he retired?

I probably wouldn't be the one to ask. Possibly you're right

Gavan Griffith, Ron Castan and Bruce Coles, part of the Coles family. Bruce married an English girl and he was at the Bar here for a while, then went back to England, then came back to Australia and then, I think, went back to England. In the end, he stayed in England and became a judge there. I think he's probably now retired. He became what they call a circuit judge. I'm not quite sure what a circuit judge is. It's been invented since I was there, but he became a circuit judge and I think that was all. I stopped taking readers because, as a matter of interest, I took silk in 68. I first applied in '66 and I was livid when I was refused. I think I'd cleared myself for that one, not taking any junior. Barry Beach and I, we were the first of the post-war people, I think, and we both applied in '66 and were knocked back by Winneke, and again in '67, and then we were let through in '68.

Do you know why you were knocked back?

Winneke said that there were people senior to us, who'd been in the army, who should be given their opportunity - this was people like Ken Marks, Charlie Francis, etc. I forget who some of the others might have been. He had no very good explanation and I know that John Starke went around and saw him and went to a perisher on him. Whether that was the first or the second time, I don't know, but Starke went to the trouble. He just showed up in chambers one morning, kind of loomed in the door, leaving the girls outside in a bit of a panic. You don't expect to find a Supreme Court judge walking into junior counsel's rooms wanting to see him, but he tore strips off Winneke in the usual Starke language. Anyway, next year when I rang to make an appointment, his associate said, "Look, you needn't even come over this year. It will all be all right". I got really furious at the earlier refusal when Winneke's predecessor, Sir Edmund Herring, saw me in the street and he said, "When are you going to take silk? Why haven't you taken silk?" and I had to say, "Well, because your successor has knocked me back". So when I found the previous Chief Justice was thinking that it was more than time that I took silk, I thought, well - kind of - I haven't been impertinent. It was right to be applying. I never quite forgave Winneke, but I suppose no doubt life is very hard.

How does it contrast, do you think, with today's Bar culture? Do you think it is easier to take silk these days than perhaps when you took silk?

Look, I find it very hard to answer that because I don't really know how hard it is now. From what I gather of it, you seem to see a lot of people here applying several times in order to kind of build up the numbers, I think, not really wanting it at the time, but I don't know how hard (it is). The Winneke system of only applying once a year was new with Winneke. Before that, they had the old fashioned system. You applied whenever you liked. You saw the Chief Justice and if he would otherwise approve you, a delay was built in. You were given permission to send out your letters to those (who were) senior to you on the list, so that if they wished to apply, they would have the opportunity to remain senior to you. I remember when Keith Aickin applied, that forced George Lush's hand. George Lush had been at the Bar longer than Keith, substantially longer than Keith, and hadn't quite dared take silk. He then decided he wasn't going to be bypassed by Aickin, so he did apply for silk and was granted and was an instant success. He ought to have taken silk already, but he hadn't. Winneke didn't like that system and he introduced this system that he would open the books once a year and those who wanted to apply could apply, and you either got a yea or a nay and then the books were closed until September next year, which is not a bad system. I don't mind the system.

So there really was a gap, between those who'd been in the army and were that much older. I suppose there was always the fear that if the youngsters passed them, they might never get back into the game again. So I can see his point, but there were people - I mean I was in and out of the courts all the time. I knew who had a busy practice and who didn't. Barry Beach was in the same position. Barry had a very big practice, but we were, I think, the first of the - Barry would have been ahead of me at the university and, although I'd lost two or three years through going to Oxford, I took silk, I think, ahead of any of my year, but we were probably were the first of the genuine post war people.

Conducted for the Bar Oral History project by Juliette Brodsky in Owen Dixon Chambers West and filmed by Rocco Fasano