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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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