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AUSTRALASIAN PIONEERS' CLUB
BRISBANE QUEENSLAND
27 AUGUST 1999
PEOPLE, PLACES AND THE ARTS ON FEDERATION<
BY
THE HON JUSTICE I D F CALLINAN
OF THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA
What should I talk about on the eve of the 21st century?
What could I say to a group of people who are proud of their
pioneer ancestry? It seemed to me that one topic above all
others might be apposite and that was the people who, one
hundred years or so ago, did so much to shape what we are
today. It would be impossible to touch upon all of their fields
of achievement so I have decided to say something on a few
apparently diverse but in fact not entirely unrelated subjects,
the architects of the Federation, their interests and the
cultural milieu in which they lived.
I say nothing about the desirability or otherwise of a republic.
That will be a matter between the ballot box and me at the
time of the referendum. However, there is much I would say
in defence of our constitution and those who wrote it. Could
I ask you to reflect upon how well it has served us in the
hundred years of its existence? Nothing places more strain
upon a written constitution than hard and dangerous times,
and change, especially rapid change. Over the last one hundred
years Australia has fought in two major world wars and three
other significant and costly engagements, in Korea during
the Korean war, in Malaya during the insurgency and in Vietnam.
International and interstate air travel have become commonplace.
Images of everything from a performance at the Opera House
in Vienna to a flood in Central China are beamed to satellites
in the sky for instant replay on television sets in our living
rooms. We are linked to the world wide web, and daily, astonishing
electronic and technological advances are made. What is absolutely
remarkable is that the written constitution that we have has
proved flexible enough to accommodate these changes and to
enable the best to be exploited and much of the inferior to
be avoided.
Many of those who criticise our constitution fail to understand
that it is the envy of many other countries. It is a document
that picks up so much of the best of the Westminster experience
and the United States' written constitution. Who were the
people who were responsible for it? How was it, that living
in Australia, weeks and weeks away from the great population
centres in the northern Hemisphere, that these people could
know so much about what was going on there and were able to
avail themselves of the wisdom of those distant places.
Numerous names come to mind. Let me mention first Alfred
Deakin. He was the second Prime Minister of Australia. At
the time of federation he was only 44 years of age. He was
a native born Australian and right from the beginning of the
discussion about the possibility of an Australian nation he
was an avowed supporter of it. It may not be generally known
that he was also keenly interested in the arts. Indeed he
aspired to be both an actor and a playwright. As a young man
he wrote high-minded, moralistic dramas, one of which was
an historical piece in poetic form, Quentin Masseys. Only
one of his works survives and even of it there are few remaining
copies. The author was disappointed that no one would produce
the play with himself playing the lead as the main character
and in consequence he burned all of the copies that he could
find.
His contribution to Australia as a politician, as a founding
father and a wise and moderate Prime Minister was far greater
than it could ever have been as a dramatist. However, throughout
his life until his death in 1919 he maintained his interest
in literature. He wrote of himself "my heart is always in
the highlands of literature".
Notwithstanding that he was a true-blue Australian, indeed
perhaps aggressively so, it is claimed by his supporters that
in 1907 when he attended the imperial conference in London
he was offered leadership of the English Unionist political
party, an offer which he declined.
It is significant that federation began to be seriously discussed
throughout the 1880s and into 1890. I think that it is right
to say that it is during the 1880s that the idea of Australian
nationhood in lieu of a scattering of colonies began to take
root. The nationalistic movement was not however confined
to politics. This was a period of great cultural originality.
Julian Ashton became president of the Art Society of New
South Wales in 1887. He was a vigorous campaigner for Australian
art, and by that he meant Australian, and not colonial art.
Another important politician of the times, Sir Henry Parkes,
the Premier of New South Wales, and he became acquainted.
Parkes was enlisted to the cause of Australian art. He attended
the annual dinner of the Art society in 1888 and joined in
the toast to "Australian art". The key year of course was
1888. It was in that year that a new society called the Victorian
Artists' society which still exists today was formed, but
of most importance it was the year of the "9 by 5" exhibition.
The main contributors to it were Streeton, Conder, Roberts
and McCubbin. Much of the work included striking impressions
of the Australian countryside, of blue and gold, and lonely
figures in the landscape. Pictures were five inches by none
inches in dimension because that was the usual size of the
cigar box lids of cedar on which they were painted. The artists
of the day could afford little in the way of sized and prepared
canvas and did much of their work on cigar box lids and the
large solid cedar drapers' panels around which materials were
customarily wrapped. These artists had a national vision as
grand and as true as that of the politicians and statesman,
and, apart from Conder, who returned to England and died there
whilst still a relatively young man, continued to see and
reveal the Australian landscape in all of its unique and sometimes
stark splendour.
But perhaps the most important figure in the founding of
the Australian nation was Sir Samuel Griffith, a Queenslander
through and through. There are some who today would seek to
take from him credit for his pre-eminent role in the composition
of the Australian constitution but I think that his reputation
in that regard lies beyond any fair minded criticism. Sir
Samuel Griffith had been an accomplished barrister and a successful
politician for many years before he became Lilley's successor
as Chief Justice of this State. He brought to the deliberations
on the new Constitutions at the various federation conferences
a deep knowledge of the law, and of the Canadian and the United
States constitutions, as well of course, as the unwritten
Constitution of the United Kingdom.
Among the many prophetic statements that he made during the
debates is this one when one of the other delegates challenged
him to write a Constitution so framed as not to cause collision
between the House of Representatives and the Senate. Frankly
and undoubtedly correctly he replied:
- "it is absolutely impossible every Constitutional government
consists of two or more parts; each one of which can put
the machine out of gear. That is the essence of Constitutional
Government. The only means of avoiding collision is to have
autocracy."
That is another way of saying centralised and concentrated power
are absolute. Better to have a democracy as inefficient as it
may be than government by junta.
Throughout the last decade of the last century Sir Samuel
Griffith laboured over the form of the Constitution. It was
the Constitution that he himself would come to have to construe
and apply on many occasions on his appointment as the first
Chief Justice of the new High Court of Australia.
We may well ask ourselves what kind of a place the 1890s
Brisbane of Sir Samuel Griffith was. Some might have a notion
of a backward place, far removed from European civilisation
and devoid of art and sensitivity. That would be a false notion.
The city was not without its many artists, actors, writers
and venues for their productions. It is said that the first
free citizen who was an entertainer to visit Brisbane was
a man called George Croft who came in April 1847, only five
years after the Moreton Bay colony was opened to free settlers.
He performed at an amphitheatre he opened in South Brisbane.
The performance was always the same. It consisted of balancing
on his head on top of a three metre high pole surrounded by
fireworks, and finishing the show with an obscene song. The
first theatre company to come to Brisbane performed here in
1856. A burning topic at that time debated at the School of
Arts was "Has the legitimate stage a moral or immoral tendency?".
Probably the first play by a Queensland playwright to be
performed in the State was "The Belle of Brisbane", or as
it was sometimes called, "The Lady of Queensland". It was
written by a local resident, Myers David Isaacs and staged
in a new theatre in Elizabeth Street which had been built
by an entrepreneur who combined the occupations of musician,
dance teacher and publican. In the following years an English
travelling opera company performed 15 operas. There were in
fact just as many, if not more, venues for the performance
of live theatre in the second half of the nineteenth century
as there are in Brisbane now. Not all of them were well adapted
for the purpose. Some players in the 1870s refused to return
to the Royal Victoria Theatre because of its tiny stage, the
heat, the noise of the rain on the iron roof and the mosquitoes.
A French visitor in 1883 wrote:
- "Shakespeare's masterpieces were performed on a stage
three yards square, and the ghost of the king of Denmark
could be seen making his exit behind a backdrop representing
Mount Versuvius in eruption. Hamlet dressed like an undertakers'
mute, philosophised on the vanity of the human condition
while contemplating a hollowed-out pumpkin in which an artist
had cut out of the jaw a nose and two huge round eyes."
But I come back to the golden years of the 80s and the 90s.
They were golden literally, because discoveries of that metal
led to the boom which saw the population of Brisbane double
to approximately 100,000 by 1880. People demanded entertainment.
The theatre royal opened in 1881. It had a capacity of 1,350
people and only closed to be demolished in 1959.
But the grand theatre was her Imperial Majesty's opera House,
better know as Her Majesty's which opened in the same year
as the nine by five exhibition, 1888. It seated 2,200 people
and had a stage large enough for spectacular musicals. In
the same year another theatre, the 700 seat Princess was built
on the South side of the river, but sadly it was in the doldrums
for a period after 1893 when the flood in that year swept
away the only bridge connecting the two sides of the city.
It stands today, tragically grossly underequipped and in need
of renovation. To go forward I would mention the Tivoli theatre
which opened in 1915 by which time Sir Samuel Griffith was
still Chief Justice of Australia. Downstairs it seated 2,800
people and above, there was a roof garden open to the skies
which accommodated another 1,200 people.
There were a number of local authors who wrote and staged
their own productions, and there was a great deal of interest
in all of the arts at the time. Two brilliant women painters
of Brisbane, Bessie Gibson and A A Greene left Brisbane just
after the turn of the century to remain overseas for forty
years.
One overwhelming concern of theatre goers, was to make sure
that they could reach their homes after a performance. One
attraction was the availability of good public transport.
In 1881 the Theatre Royal advertised that omnibuses leave
the theatre for all the suburbs immediately after the performance.
May I return again to the founding fathers. Sir Edmund Barton,
another native-born Australian was our fist Prime Minister
and one of the first three Justices of the High Court. He
was a scholar and a classicist. He loved fishing and cricket
and was said to be a fair batsman but an atrocious fieldsman.
He also liked umpiring and umpired in a match between New
South Wales and Lord Harris' English eleven which was interrupted
by a riot.
He was Speaker in the turbulent Parliament of New South Wales
in the 1880s. Somewhat unfairly rival politicians of the day
nicknamed him "toby tosspot". But it was said that whatever
he had imbibed did not disable him from giving clear decisions
at 5 am after disorderly sittings. He was no stranger to the
Athenaeum Club where he enjoyed mixing with the editor of
the Bulletin, the artist whom I have already mentioned, Julian
Ashton and a wide circle of cultured and interesting people.
He had a reputation for charm, generosity, wit and evenness
of temper. Like so many of his educated contemporaries, he
loved literature and in particular Shakespeare and opera.
He interested himself in the affairs of the New South Wales
library and was for many years a trustee of it. He too was
an avid supporter of Federation. He fervently believed in
universal suffrage and wished for the replacement of the Privy
Council by a new High Court as the final court of appeal for
Australia. He was appointed the Chairman of the Drafting Constitutional
Committees at the Adelaide federal convention in 1897.
When he became a judge he quickly gained a reputation for
impartiality and a capacity to grasp the essential issues
very quickly. Those who heard it said that he had a rich and
beautifully modulated voice and were greatly impressed by
his knowledge of British and American case law. In 1915 he
was sworn in as a Privy Councillor and sat on its Judicial
Committee in several cases.
It was sometimes said of him that he lacked ambition. That
is a very unconvincing charge in view if his energetic devotion
to the federal cause over a period of twelve years, his Prime-Ministership
and his fine judicial career.
Another of the great founding fathers was Henry Higgins,
not I would emphasise the Henry Higgins of Pygmalion and My
Fair Lady fame. He was born in Ireland and came to Australia
when he was 19 years old in 1870. His father was Methodist
minister and brought him up in frugal and evangelical piety.
Like so many of the other towering figures of the time he
was a classicist and an accomplished lawyer. He was an immediate
success when he came to the Bar of Victoria and very unselfishly
helped to support his family and made many financial contributions
to the education of his brothers and his sister, Anna, who
was one of the first women to attend the University in Melbourne.
He took up the federal cause in the 1880s and became a politician
and supporter of many causes which were thought to be radical
at the time. He was appointed a Justice of the High Court
of Australia in 1906, one day after Sir Isaac Isaacs thus
enlarging the Court to five members.
Higgins had a broad range of cultural interests. He was ahead
of his time. He advocated the admission of female graduates
to all of the privileges of male students of the university.
He was generous in public endowments and donated 1,000 pounds
in the cause of his particular love, poetry, for a poetry
scholarship. He was an expert on Browning and was instrumental
in the establishment of the commonwealth literary fund. Much
surprise was caused to his friends and family by his bequest
of 20,000 pounds to the Royal Irish Academy, an act which
some thought incompatible with his intense nationalism.
It is difficult to think of anyone today in public life with
the accomplishments of the people whom I have mentioned. Their
achievements are all the more remarkable when account is taken
of the primitive state of communications at the time. The
sheer physical effort of writing by hand as contrasted with
type writing or as we would now say, "word processing". How
did they ever find the time? From where did the energy come.
Sir Edmund Barton was accused of laziness. Imagine what he
would have done if he had been energetic. Sir Samuel Griffith's
judgments were models of erudition and clarity. Yet as quite
an old man he still found time to translate from the Italian,
and in 1912 published an English version of Dante's Divine
Comedy.
But it ought not to be imagined that these great people were
exempt from criticism. Not only the Parliaments of the day
were turbulent. Politics were just as much a "rough house"
then if not more so than today, and newspapers were partisan
and polemical. And these people who were politicians and jurists
were just as much criticised in their judicial roles as in
their political ones.
I cannot pretend to any enjoyment of the media attacks upon
the judiciary in this country but today on the other hand
neither my colleagues nor I can afford to be too sensitive
about it. I suppose we would join with Noel Coward in saying:
- "We love criticism so long as it's unqualified praise"
But that's not the way that things are. Judges are not allowed
the luxury of a retort such as the one which was made by the
great Welsh poet, Brendan Beehan:
- "Critics are like eunuchs in a harem. They're there every
night, they see it done every night, they see how it should
be done every night abut they can't do it themselves."
Nor can we say of critics, as Eugene O'Neil did, that he loved
every bone in their heads or as John Osborne put it "asking
a working writer what he feels about critics is like asking
a lamp-post what he feels about dogs".
Judges have certainly had some harsh things said about them,
but nothing quite so harsh as was said about he American politician
and President, Calvin Coolidge, that he was so silent that
he was always worth listening to.
No, Judges cannot afford to be sensitive.
Public life is a little like the theatre with which I have
had some acquaintance.
I've never read any description of a judge of the kind used
in respect of the actor, Dennis Quilley, in a musical version
of "Blithe Spirit" by Noel Coward. Bernard Levin said
this:
- "Denis Quilley played the role with all the charm and
animation of the leg of a billiard table."
When Michael Redgrave played the lead in "Hobson's Choice"
the poison pen critic, Kenneth Tynan said that although some
critics had seen overtones of Lear in his portrayal, he thought
a somewhat bad tempered Father Christmas would have been nearer
the mark.
When Terrence Stamp played Dracula, The Times' dramatic
critic said that he had nothing to offer except a noble profile,
his entrances were insignificant, his voice without menace
or mystery, and his physical tricks consisted largely of flapping
his cloak like a bat failing to take off.
One of the most damming criticisms was of a play by J.B.
Priestley called "When We Are Married". One critic
said:
- "It would make an ideal treat as a night out for your
despicable in-laws. Send them a couple of tickets and then
meet them later at the Theatre restaurant for a blazing
row."
Criticisms therefore that have been made of the courts seem
by comparison to be rather mild stuff.
I have travelled rather a long way from the topic of this
speech. I hope you will forgive me my discursiveness. I also
hope that if our constitution is to be re-drawn we can find
people of the intellects and wisdom of those who drew our
current one willing to participate, and I can only fervently
hope that the document we get is more than half as good as
the one that those far-sighted constitutional pioneers gave
us almost precisely one hundred years ago.
This country has every reason to be proud of all of our pioneers,
not just those who laboured on the land and in factories and
other places but those who were pioneers in the arts and constitutional
stature of this country.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
In preparing this paper, reference was made to the
following sources:
Jarman, The Guinness Book of Poisonous Quotes (1991).
Joyce, Samuel Walker Griffith (1984).
La Nauze and Nurser, Walter Murdoch and Alfred Deakin on
Books and Men, Letters and Comments 1900-1918, (1974).
Nairn and Serle, Australian Dictionary Of Biography,
Vols 7, 9 and 12.
Reynolds, Edmund Barton (1948).
Rigg, No Turn Unstoned: The Worst Ever Theatrical Reviews
(1983).
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