Lionel Murphy
Lionel Keith Murphy was an Australian politician, barrister, and judge. He was a Senator for New South Wales from 1962 to 1975, serving as Attorney-General in the Whitlam government, and then sat on the High Court from 1975 until his death in 1986.
Murphy was born in Sydney, and attended Sydney Boys High School before matriculating at the University of Sydney. He initially graduated with a degree in chemistry, but then went on to Sydney Law School and eventually became a barrister. He specialised in labour and industrial law, and took silk in 1960. Murphy was elected to the Senate at the 1961 federal election, as a member of the Labor Party. He became Leader of the Opposition in the Senate in 1967.
Following Labor's victory at the 1972 federal election, Gough Whitlam appointed Murphy as Attorney-General and Minister for Customs & Excise. He oversaw a number of reforms, establishing the Family Court of Australia, the Law Reform Commission, and the Australian Institute of Criminology, and developing the Family Law Act 1975, which fully established no-fault divorce. He also authorised the 1973 Murphy raids on ASIO. In 1975, following the death of Douglas Menzies, Murphy was appointed to the High Court. He is the most recent politician to be appointed to the court.
On the court, Murphy was known for his radicalism and judicial activism. However, his final years were marred by persistent allegations of corruption. He was convicted of perverting the course of justice in 1985, but had the conviction overturned on appeal and was acquitted at a second trial. In 1986, a commission was established to determine whether he was fit to remain on the court, but it was abandoned when Murphy announced that he was suffering from terminal cancer.
Early life and education
Murphy was the youngest of five sons, and sixth of seven children of William, a native of County Tipperary, and Lily Murphy. He was born and grew up in Sydney. Though the Murphy household was Irish Catholic, albeit estranged from the Church, Murphy became a humanist and rationalist.He was educated at government schools in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs, including Kensington Public School in Kensington, where he was dux after repeating his final year in 1935, and Sydney Boys High School from 1936 to 1940 in nearby Moore Park, graduating with A levels in English, Mathematics, and Chemistry and B levels in Physics and French. After completing his secondary education, in 1941, Murphy matriculated to the University of Sydney, though he had not been successful in gaining a university scholarship awarded to the top 100 in the state. His initial scholastic performance was ordinary and he briefly considered transferring to study a Bachelor of Arts majoring in psychology at the Faculty of Arts.
Murphy excelled in his final year, graduating from the School of Chemistry, Faculty of Science with a Bachelor of Science with Honours in Organic Chemistry. In 1943, he commenced working in the chemical industry, thereby coming under the authority of the wartime Manpower Directorate.
In 1945, Murphy commenced studying law at the Sydney Law School of the University of Sydney and, in 1949, graduated with a Bachelor of Laws with Honours. While at the University of Sydney, during both his science and law degrees, Murphy was politically and socially active and was involved in the Students' Chemistry Society, the Junior Science Association, and the Science Association.
In 1944, in his third year of his science degree, Murphy was elected to the Students' Representative Council but was dismissed two hours after his election victory, on a "constitutional technicality". This event is said to have cemented his interest in politics and law, and he commenced participating in the university's debating society and its monthly debates the following year.
Legal career
Unusually, two years prior to his graduating with and possessing a law degree, Murphy passed the Barristers' Admission Board examination and was admitted to the New South Wales Bar Association in 1947. After graduating from the University of Sydney Faculty of Law, Murphy took up residence in University Chambers, Phillip Street and then moved to the fourth floor of Wentworth Chambers. He rapidly established himself as a labour/industrial lawyer, representing left-wing unionists.In 1960, he was appointed as a Queen's Counsel.
Parliamentary career
Murphy was a member of the Australian Labor Party from an early age. In the Senate pre-selection convention in the Sydney Trades Hall in April 1960, he had the backing of Ray Gietzelt but lacked factional endorsement. However, he drew first position in addressing the delegates and won support with an impassioned but well-structured and infectiously optimistic seven-minute speech on the Labor Party's historical commitment to civil liberties and human rights. He was elected to the Australian Senate in 1961, and, in 1967, he was elected Opposition Leader in the Senate.Attorney-Generalship
In 1969, Labor Leader Gough Whitlam appointed him Shadow Attorney-General and, when Labor won the 1972 election, he became Attorney-General and Minister for Customs & Excise. One of Murphy's more dramatic actions as Attorney-General was his sudden visit to the Melbourne headquarters of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation on 16 March 1973. This came about because ASIO officers were unable to satisfy his requests for information concerning intelligence on supposed terrorist groups operated by the Ustaše in Australia. Murphy's concern about the matter was heightened by the impending visit to Australia of the Yugoslav Prime Minister Džemal Bijedić. ASIO officers claimed not to be able to locate the file with which to properly brief Murphy. Murphy's belief was that, though a security service was an important part of the Australian social fabric, like any other arm of executive government it must be accountable to the relevant Minister. According to journalist George Negus, then Murphy's press secretary: "Lionel had asked for the files of the six most dangerous or subversive people in Australia". When the files arrived, Murphy found they were of several Communist Party unionists and people such as CPA leader and peace movement activist Mavis Robertson. When he told Whitlam, they both laughed.Murphy was highly involved in the behind-the-scenes machinations and parliamentary debates around the appointment of DLP Senator Vince Gair as Ambassador to Ireland in 1974, which preceded Whitlam's calling of a double dissolution election for May 1974.
Murphy's most important legislative achievement was the Family Law Act 1975, which completely overhauled Australia's law on divorce and other family law matters. It established the principle of "no-fault divorce", in the face of opposition from the Roman Catholic Church and many other individuals and organisations. This act also established the Family Court of Australia.
Civil Celebrants
Murphy used an existing provision of the Marriage Act 1961 to establish the Civil Marriage Celebrant programme. Using this provision he appointed about a hundred Civil Celebrants and urged them to provide marriage ceremonies of dignity, meaning and substance for non-church people. It was an initiative opposed by the Australian Labor Party, the public servants of his department and his personal staff.The civil celebrant program is almost entirely the result of one man’s vision. Murphy himself told me the story of how he was opposed by his own staff, the public service, his fellow Members of Parliament s and officials of the Labour Party. He defied all, and, on July 19, 1973, in the dead of night typed the first appointment himself, found the envelope and stamp, walked to a post box and posted it himself. Lois D’Arcy, carries the honour of being appointed the first genuinely independent civil celebrant in Australia, and actually in all the world.
Although it was a radical move at the time, the programme proved to be very successful. In 2015, 74.9 per cent of marrying couples in Australia chose a civil marriage celebrant to officiate. The programme broadened to include secular funerals of substance, namings and other ceremonies which celebrated the landmarks of human existence. Murphy took an enthusiastic interest in this programme - sending telegrams of congratulation to the first several hundred couples married by civil celebrants and would often unexpectedly turn up uninvited to weddings performed by celebrants to delight in his achievement.
Human Rights Bill
As Attorney-General, Murphy drew up a Human Rights Bill giving as among the reasons: "in criminal law, our protections against detention for interrogation and unreasonable search and seizure, for access to counsel and to ensure the segregation of different categories of prisoners are inadequate. Australian laws on the powers of the police, the rights of an accused person and the state of the penal system generally are unsatisfactory. Our privacy laws are vague and ineffective. There are few effective constraints on the gathering of information, or its disclosure, or surveillance, against unwanted publicity by government, the media or commercial organisations". Murphy also introduced important legislation substantially abolishing appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, removing censorship, providing freedom of access to government information, reforming corporations and trade practices law, protecting the environment, abolishing the death penalty and outlawing racial and other discrimination.File:Operation Crossroads Baker Edit.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Atmospheric nuclear explosion in the Pacific. Murphy took the French Government to the International Court of Justice over nuclear tests at Mururoa.
Furthermore, Murphy established a systematic legal aid service for all courts, set up the Australian Law Reform Commission with Michael Kirby as its inaugural chairman and set up the Australian Institute of Criminology.
Murphy took the French Government to the International Court of Justice to protest against its nuclear tests in the Pacific. The French government conducted 41 atmospheric nuclear tests at Mururoa after 1966 and formally ceased atmospheric nuclear testing in 1974 as a result of public pressure facilitated by Murphy's ICJ case.