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Interview with Mr Fabian Dixon SC

In celebration of the Law Council of Australia’s 90th Anniversary, the Law Council is celebrating this significant milestone by highlighting its rich history and key achievements throughout the years. As part of this campaign, the Law Council had the privilege to interview a selection of past Presidents, gaining a unique perspective on their time in the role.

Reflecting on your time as Law Council President, what were the three key policy priorities within your term?

I think the three biggest policy priorities during my term were, dealing with what was then going to be proposed as the Federal Magistracy coming into operation in the Family Court; the situation concerning mandatory sentencing; and the ongoing position concerning the national practising certificate, which was only just developing from its embryonic stage.

These issues were probably the three that took up quite an amount of my time as President.

What was your greatest achievement as Law Council President and why?

I don’t like the word ‘greatest’, because I think any achievement if it’s a positive one is important. But I suppose from my personal point of view, it was being able to deal with the myriad of issues that come before you as President and articulate them to the media and public.

In my term as President, I was always available to the media, because my opinion was that if the media contacted you and for any reason you said no, ‘I don’t want to do it, or I’m not up to speed on that’, they wouldn’t come back to you.

From my point of view, I was always accessible to the media on any issues relating to the Law Council or relating to the law, and that meant for me I was doing upwards of eight to 12 media interviews per day. Sometimes it would be on the weekend, and that was both audio and television.

In 1998 back when I was President, some of the issues I dealt with in the media included: the national practising certificate regime; proposed family law reforms; detention of Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia; delays in the family court; problems with legal aid; the human rights situation in relation to East Timor; the Paris Forum, which was coming up in relation to transnational practice; expert witness guidelines; and just the normal constitutional matters with the Law Council.

For me the achievement was getting my head around all those things, often in a short time frame, and being able to articulate, hopefully in a positive way, the important issues, so that the general public could understand it.

I tried to distil issues down to common sense and speak in plain English, so people didn’t think, ‘well, he spoke for five minutes, but what the hell was he talking about?’ So that was one of the achievements.

What was your most memorable Law Council moment and why?

I have memorable moments from when I was doing things for the Law Council, and also personal memorable moments.

So far as the Law Council was concerned, I think what was memorable was the close association that we were attempting, at that stage, to have with law societies in the Asia-Pacific region.

It was important and memorable in that we held in Canberra a conference with the Presidents of Law Asia and that brought in Presidents and Vice-Presidents from Asian law societies. We were able to discuss what we wanted for our region, which appears to be kind of a flavour of the month at the present time.

From my personal point of view, I found it memorable when I spoke on behalf of the Law Council at the opening of the new Commonwealth Law Courts in Melbourne, which encompassed the Federal Court and the Family Court. I was able to tender to the first exhibit in that Court, which was a picture of then Chief Justice Michael Black, hanging his head outside of an old steam train in Tasmania. It was important because the Federal Court, as you may or may not know, is built on top of a train station, so that was interesting and a bit of fun.

Based on your unique perspective as a Law Council President, how has the role of the Law Council been important over the last 90 years and how is the role relevant today?

From my point of view, the position of the Law Council has changed in that it is now a truly representative council of lawyers in Australia, while it had just attempted to reach this position in the past.

From my point of view, it is important that it be the body that speaks on behalf of all Australian lawyers, both barristers and solicitors, and be in a position to drive change, because if the Law Council doesn’t drive change on behalf of the profession, then it will be driven by others. We can see other little splinter groups coming out and it’s up to the Law Council to position itself and position lawyers for the future.

I make a joke when I speak in relation to this, in making it clear that while I’m a President from the last century – I was one of the last presidents of the 20th century in 1999 – I was also a President moving towards the important changes in the new millennium.

I think what was particularly important for me and for the Law Council at that time was that the federal Attorney-General stated that he only wanted to deal with one body on national legal issues, and that body was the Law Council. Before my Presidency, I had been on the Law Council for some 12 years, and witnessed the unsettled nature of some Constituent Bodies, who threatened to leave if the Law Council did not handle things a certain way. The statement by the Attorney-General, which endorsed the importance of the position of the Law Council, helped to clarify the role of the Law Council and both the perception and understanding that it represented lawyers nationwide on national legal issues.

So I took much comfort from the Attorney’s statement regarding the position of the Law Council. I believe that this has to be the position that the Law Council should continue to push so that its relevancy today continues to be apparent.

Mr Fabian Dixon SC

Read biography here.

Last Updated on 11/04/2024

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