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Transcript
Signing the Bar Roll

Peter O’Callaghan interview 22 July 2009


I read with Kevin Anderson, of whom I have an absolute complete and utter appreciation, and love indeed. He was a man of very considerable legal talents, though not often appreciated as much as they should be. But he was also a magnificent person, and he was gregarious, he would talk with everyone, and when he became chairman of the Bar Council, he I think more than any other chairman of a Bar Council, facilitated social intercourse between all barristers. And I’d read with him in Selborne Chambers, and I was always amazed at how much work he must have done in the nights, because of the time that he spent with me and with others coming into his chambers, and he was a great person.

Was it he who said to you, never to knock back a brief if it was offered to you?

Well that was he certainly who said that, and I had always subscribed to that idea, because I hasten to say that I think that barristers shouldn’t think that they decide what they are going to do, it’s other people ought to decide what they think they ought to do. And consequently I’ve always adopted the idea of: if there is a brief within its proper purview, you should take it. And in that, my first brief I got was funnily enough in the licensing jurisdiction, from Frank Curtain, and he was as all the other licensing solicitors were, keen rivals, and there was a certain piquancy in the fact that he briefed me on my first case. But I then was happily doing a lot of licensing work; I’d previously instructed John Campton as the barrister for most of the applications for transfers, and I’ll return to John later, but he was a consummate, and remained a consummate barrister. But I then, as happens if you do take briefs, I got briefed in other jurisdictions, I did quite a deal of crime, and I was briefed on circuit to go to Warrnambool particularly, later to Ballarat, but I was then offered the brief to appear in the Royal Commission into Liquor in 1994.

1964?

1964, I’m sorry. Yes, 1964, before PD Philips. And Jim Forrest, of revered memory, said ‘don’t take it, you’ll ruin your practice if you take that – you’ve got a practice starting, you’ve got the circuits going, don’t do it’. And I spoke to Jim Foley, and Jim Foley said ‘oh no’. And what I gather must have happened is that Jim Foley went to Kevin Murphy of Luke Murphy and Co, and said that ‘if the AHA are going to have O’Callaghan as their counsel, it’s said that he’s likely to lose his practice’. Jim obviously didn’t believe that and he may have put it very artfully to Kevin. The consequence and the amazing consequence was that I was briefed to appear for the AHA, in the Royal Commission into Liquor, at a brief fee of 60 guineas, which was in that day compared to the ordinary supreme court brief of 35 guineas. And I can remember in the midst of that Royal Commission, Woodsy Lloyd, a great fellow and a great friend, coming out there for someone and opining to me that he knew what my fee was, and stating that it was obscene. And I said that ‘I would agree that otherwise it’s obscene, but not when it’s my fee’.

(Laughter)


An edited version of an interview conducted for the Victorian Bar oral history project by Juliette Brodsky, filmed by Stewart Carter at Owen Dixon Chambers and edited by David Broder.

 

 
   
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