It's a great honour to rise to speak and pay tribute to the Hon. Mary Gaudron KC, a former justice of the High Court, a trailblazing Australian lawyer, the first woman to be appointed to the High Court and somebody who I want to add my personal tribute to, having been an associate on the High Court, which she served on—in my case, an associate to her colleague the Hon. Ian Callinan AC, KC. I want to acknowledge my friend the member for Fenner, who worked a couple of years before I did, for Justice Kirby, on the same court and will no doubt provide some of his own reflections on Mary Gaudron.

I want to say the names of some country towns here: Wingham, Casino, Gympie, Newcastle and Moree. They're five Australian country towns, and five of the seven justices on the Gleeson court, on which I was privileged to be an associate, grew up in country Australia. Mary Gaudron grew up in Moree, and her story is a great Australian story—a girl from a modest background who, by dint of her intellect and her application and her burning sense of justice, rose to be a leader in her profession and ultimately a trailblazing lawyer: the first and, to this point, only woman to be Solicitor-General of New South Wales; the youngest person ever to be appointed to a federal court in our history; and the first woman to be appointed a justice of the High Court. She was a remarkable trailblazer, and I think it says something good about Australia, but it also says something particularly about the legal profession that then, as now and as it has been historically, it has been a way in which people from modest circumstances, through application and intellect, can rise. That was certainly the case with Mary Gaudron.

Mary Gaudron's career was remarkable. Inspired by Dr HV Evatt, who was visiting her town and presented her with a copy of the Constitution during the 1951 Communist Party dissolution referendum, she went from being a recipient of a document from a great Australian lawyer to being somebody who ultimately interpreted the law. She attended St Ursula's College in Armidale before going on to Sydney university, where as a part-time student she became the first female part-time student to win the university medal. Winning the university medal and coming first in your year at law school is always an extraordinary achievement, but when you think she was at law school with such great intellects as her later colleague former justice Bill Gummow, who is no slouch, particularly as an intellect and particularly in equity, it shows the level of intellect and intellectual attainment that Justice Gaudron brought.

She was somebody who had a burning passion for equality. She was briefed by the Whitlam government. Clyde Cameron had met her before they came to government, and she was briefed by him to present the government's case in the equal pay case. Some of the work that she did on maternity leave and equal pay she regarded as some of her most important work. At only 31, she was appointed Deputy President of the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission as a judge. She later became Solicitor-General of New South Wales, and in 1987 the Hawke government appointed her to the High Court.

I want to make some observations for myself about the sort of judge she was. Firstly, as a former solicitor-general, she was always tough on governments and particularly tough on the Commonwealth; although I think on federal versus state debates the record will show that her sympathies lay with the Commonwealth over the states in the main. She was particularly tough on governments that weren't there arguing for a full throated position. Secondly, she was unsympathetic to government agencies that cried poor. That was not something that she was particularly interested in. Thirdly, she was very forceful. When she put an argument, she put it in a forceful manner and she wanted to hear the proposition tested. She didn't do it to pick on counsel; she did it because she was interested in the argument and interested in the law.

My memory of her is of being great company and great dinner company in particular. I had the privilege of not only having dinner with her several times as an associate. Subsequently, when she retired, I would visit her even in her home with my friend and former flatmate Haroon Hassan, who was her associate, and would have a few champagnes with her. It was always great company. She was not a partisan figure, but I think it was clear that she had strong Labor values. The Labor Party had appointed her to her various offices, she spoke at the funeral of Justice Lionel Murphy, and she was a bit taken aback that I wanted to leave the legal profession to work for Tony Abbott when he was a minister in the Howard government. That was probably a bit far for her! She loved stirring the possum. She loved having a debate. She had a wonderful sense of humour.

I want to say something about some of the messages that some of her associates have given me. I know that my friend the member for Fenner is going to mention some of those other things. I want to mention a few of them. The first of her associates I want to mention is Rick Kalowski. Rick went on to have a glittering career, including as Head of Comedy at the ABC. Rick has been a sort of guardian angel for me in my own career. I would never have been an associate to Justice Callinan had Rick not suggested to me that I might enjoy doing this and that I should apply, so I'm very grateful to him. When I asked Rick to provide a memory of Mary Gaudron, he said:

I loved her. She was perhaps the single most important mentor and teacher to me in my professional life.

And she was modest to the point of occasional oddity.

For example, the angriest I ever saw her with me—and there was a solid Top 10 of those—was when I had the audacity to want to fact check with her, details of her own actual life for the section I was asked to write in The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia. This is how modest she truly was.

It wasn't just people like Rick that she influenced. There was former attorney-general Nicola Roxon. There were judges of the Court of Appeal of New South Wales, like Richard McHugh. There are academics. There is former lawyer, Jesuit priest and a good friend of mine father Frank Brennan. A beautiful note was sent to me by Fiona Phillips, who is one of her former associates, that reflects on Mary Gaudron's horror at the antisemitism that we've seen in recent years. She writes:

Mary was the first person to call me in January 2025 when news broke that my street had been firebombed.

And later that year, following the Bondi Massacre she got in touch to see how I was "bearing up", signing off her message "Equality for all. Mary G".

I mentioned my friend Haroon Hassan a moment ago. It says something lovely about your year as an associate—and I'm sure that my friend the member for Fenner would feel the same—that you meet these extraordinary judges with extraordinary intellects, you see them debate each other in court, you see them debate each other outside and you see people who can disagree, yet they're not disagreeable and they enjoy each other's company. Such was the case with the associates too. Haroon had stood for the Australian Democrats in the Senate. He had a Pakistani Muslim background. His father had been a distinguished academic, and his father and mother introduced me to the beautiful cello of Jacqueline du Pré. Haroon wrote beautifully of Justice Gaudron:

What that almost unfathomable record of achievement cannot convey is what it was like to work beside her. She devoured information and could cut to the heart of a complex appeal with a single withering question. She painstakingly drafted her judgements in longhand, in purple ink from a trusted fountain pen. She edited with a severity reserved for her own prose; no sentence that could not justify itself survived. She was impatient with incompetence and pomposity but unfailingly courteous to those without power, from the most junior counsel to the court attendants and registry staff.

Her jurisprudence rested on a conviction, infused throughout her judgements (and stated more bluntly in chambers), that equality before the law must mean something concrete.

Her other associate in my year is the remarkable Lucy Martinez. Lucy like Mary was a girl from a country area, Townsville, who has gone on to have an extraordinarily glittering career as an international arbitrator. Whenever Justice Gaudron and Justice Callinan would write together, I was always the beneficiary of the extraordinary editing that Lucy did. Her brain was far more powerful than mine. In fact, I saw a tribute that the American legal academic Noah Feldman recently made of Amy Coney Barrett. I think it is remarkable of Lucy too, and it shows the calibre of people that Justice Gaudron chose. Noah Feldman said of Amy Coney Barrett, and I would say of Lucy Martinez, that she is legally technically a genius and one of the strongest lawyers I've ever encountered. The fact that she could start a practice, having worked as an international arbitrator overseas, and then run that practice from Townsville says something about the great start she got from Mary Gaudron, as did so many others who were privileged to work with her.

Mary Gaudron was at the High Court during the Mason, Brennan and Gleeson years. She was there for all of those big cases, whether it was the Mabo case on native title, the implied freedoms case or cases dealing with chapter III of the Constitution and expanding judicial power. Mary Gaudron played a key role in all of those cases. She will be remembered as a lion of the law, as a trailblazing female lawyer and as a wonderful and great Australian. May her memory be a blessing.

It's a pleasure to follow my friend and colleague the member for Berowra in rising to pay tribute to the Hon. Justice Mary Genevieve Gaudron KC, former Justice of the High Court of Australia. I came to know Justice Gaudron when I worked as associate to Justice Michael Kirby from 1997 to 1998. She was generous, confident, warm and funny. She took an interest in the associates and treated us with kindness.

Justice Gaudron was born in Moree in 1943. She won a scholarship to the University of Sydney and graduated with the University Medal. She was the first female part-time student to receive the medal. She was admitted to the New South Wales bar in 1968. In 1972, she became the first woman appointed to the New South Wales Bar Council. She appeared for the Commonwealth before the arbitration commission in the equal pay case. In 1974, aged 31, she became a deputy president of the commission. She later regarded the equal pay case and the maternity leave case as among the highlights of her career. The latter helped establish a general federal award standard of up to 52 weeks' unpaid maternity leave. Her concern with equality was constant throughout her professional life.

In 1981, Justice Gaudron became Solicitor-General for New South Wales. She was the first woman to hold that office in any Australian state. Soon afterwards, she became the first woman in New South Wales to be appointed Queen's Counsel. As Solicitor-General, she appeared frequently before the High Court, including in the Tasmanian dam case. The Australian Law Journal described her advocacy as 'outstanding and ingenious'.

In 1987, at the age of 44, Justice Gaudron was appointed to the High Court of Australia. She was the first woman to serve on the court and the only woman to serve on the court during its first century. Naomi Sharp SC, one of Justice Gaudron's former associates, remembers her truly incredible intellect, her elegant, persuasive and relentlessly logical reasoning and her leading role in the court's chapter III jurisprudence. She also recalls Justice Gaudron's strength of character, her steadfast integrity and her belief that we are always diminished by the absence of equality.

Justice Gaudron made significant contributions to the law governing native title, judicial power, equality and the freedom of political communication. In Mabo, she and Justice Deane described the dispossession of Aboriginal peoples as the darkest aspect of the history of this nation. In Dietrich, she joined the majority in recognising that the right to a fair trial could justify a stay where an indigent accused faced serious charges without legal representation. In Australian Capital Television, she helped shape the implied freedom of political communication. In Kable, she joined the majority in holding that state parliaments could not confer functions on state courts that were incompatible with their place in an integrated national judicial system.

Her thinking about equality also shaped her constitutional jurisprudence. In Street v Queensland Bar Association, and later in Castlemaine Tooheys, she developed the idea that discrimination could involve the unequal treatment of equals and the equal treatment of unequals. Her chapter III judgements emphasised equal treatment under law, judicial independence and the requirement that judicial power be exercised according to judicial process. In Leeth, she would have invalidated a law under which Commonwealth offenders could receive different treatment depending on the state or territory in which they were tried. In Wilson, she joined the majority in holding invalid a law that directed judges to perform functions threatening public confidence in the judiciary.

Former Gaudron, associate Rick Kalowski's entry in the Oxford companion to the High Court of Australia describes Justice Gaudon as a rigid logician, while noting her reluctance to depart from precedent without carefully reconsidering its correctness. Haroon Hassan, who also served as her associate, recalls what Justice Gaudron was like to work for:

She devoured information and could cut to the heart of a complex appeal with a single withering question. She … drafted her judgements longhand, in purple ink from a trusted fountain pen.

She edited rigorously. As Haroon puts it, 'No sentence that could not justify itself survived.' He also recalls that she was 'impatient with incompetence and pomposity, but unfailingly courteous to those without power, from the most, junior counsel to the court attendants and registry staff' and, I should add, the associates.

Justice Gaudron was also great company. Naomi Sharp remembers her as a tremendous entertainer and a gifted and witty raconteur whose humour ran to the wicked. She recalls that Justice Gaudron could literally hold court and was known to spring into Irish songs. Haroon Hassan remembers her irrepressible sense of fun, her compassion and her commitment to social justice. Her impromptu champagne parties were, he says, the stuff of legend. He recalls Justice Gaudron in full flight, cigarette in one hand and champagne glass in the other, telling stories in gravelly tones. Rick Kalowski remembers how little interest she had in burnishing her own reputation. When he tried to fact check details of her life for that entry, she became angry with him for doing so. Rick says, 'That's how modest she truly was.'

Her loyalty was also demonstrated after the death of Justice Murphy in 1986. Kalowski recalls that Justice Gaudron spoke powerfully at his memorial service at the Sydney Town Hall to a packed audience. Former Gaudron associate Fiona Phillips recalls that when Justice Gaudron and Justice Toohey were appointed to the High Court the following year, Justice Gaudron asked to take what had been Justice Murphy's chambers. Phillips notes that Justice Murphy was somewhat of a pariah at the time and regards the decision as characteristic of Justice Gaudron's loyalty and fearlessness. As her colleague on the bench, Justice Michael Kirby recalls Justice Gaudron's unwavering support for women's equality; for him and his partner, Johan van Vloten; and for members of minorities. He remembers her as a strong and consistent champion of article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

Justice Gaudron's example stirred others. Gina Cass-Gottlieb recalls how inspiring it was as a young lawyer to see the first woman appointed to the High Court. She recalls Justice Gaudron mentoring many women lawyers and told me simply, 'She really was loved.' Naomi Sharp describes Justice Gaudron as someone who blasted past every closed door, paving the way for generations of grateful women who followed. Her former associates remember her generosity with her time and support and the privilege of having her in their lives. Haroon Hassan writes that Justice Gaudron's legacy lies partly in the proposition she embodied that the highest court in its land is strengthened by voices that had, until 1987, never been heard there. He observes that many women who have since been sworn into superior courts have followed a path she trod alone for far too long.

Justice Gaudron served on the High Court until 2003. She then served as a judge of the International Labor Organisation's Administrative Tribunal from 2003 to 2012, including as its president from 2009 to 2011. Justice Gaudron changed the law and changed the legal profession. She was kind to her associates and served as the mentor to many. Mary Gaudron helped make Australia a fairer and more inclusive country, and she reminded those around her that being a leader doesn't mean you have to stop enjoying life. To her family, friends, colleagues and former associates, I offer my condolences.

It is a privilege and an honour to stand here today and make some remarks about the incredible Justice Mary Gaudron. One of the things I love about being a parliamentarian is coming to these debates, these condolence motions, where I hear from my colleagues and learn so much about the people that we're honouring with a motion such as this. I thank the member for Fenner for his extraordinary remarks and the detail around Justice Gaudron's extraordinary contribution to the law. He was able to speak with such eloquence about matters of law, logic and legacy not only from a legal professional perspective but from a human perspective. I won't speak so much of the detail of that, although I'm sure there'll be much repetition in what I have to say and what others have documented. I'll speak more plainly, really, of Justice Gaudron's humanity and her characteristic rural style, which certainly appealed to me as a rural woman.

So it is that today I rise to acknowledge the passing and indeed the most extraordinary life of the Hon. Mary Gaudron KC. Much has been made of Justice Gaudron's status as a pioneer, and rightly so. While I don't want to repeat my colleagues, it's impossible not to acknowledge some of her many firsts, and we must not ever forget the firsts that this woman forged. She was the first woman appointed Queen's Counsel in New South Wales. She was the first female solicitor-general in that state or anywhere in Australia, and both the first female and the youngest person to become a federal judge.

Then, of course, in 1987, which is really not very long ago, she became the first woman appointed to the High Court of Australia, and she certainly was not the last woman appointed. Justice Gaudron was acutely aware that she would pave the way or not for other women to come, later saying she didn't want to be the first and the last, or to give anyone cause to say, 'We tried a woman and it didn't work.' Well, they tried it, and it did work.

Justice Gaudron has been followed in her firsts by scores of talented and capable women—so many, in fact, that it's easy to forget that it wasn't always this way. Justice Gaudron was forced to resign her part-time job at the Crown Solicitor's Office after getting married because—yes, it's hard to believe, but it's true—at the time, married women weren't permitted to work in the Public Service. She was the first woman to ever speak at a High Court swearing-in ceremony, and it was her own—extraordinary.

Justice Gaudron's groundbreaking career began not in the well-appointed suburbs of large cities like Melbourne or Sydney but at a local convent school—so familiar to us in rural and regional Australia—in north-western New South Wales. I think in the past few days we've all heard that fabulous story of young Mary from Moree receiving a copy of the Constitution from a visiting Doc Evatt. She was determined to be a barrister—again, incredible for a young girl in a country town, who I'm sure wouldn't have met too many barristers and obviously hadn't met any women barristers. She was determined to become one, and so she did. She ignored the advice of a local solicitor who suggested perhaps she should consider a job at the telephone exchange instead. It's a classic story of the grit and the persistence of Mary Gaudron and, more broadly, the grit and persistence of many rural women who've had to break through such barriers.

Justice Gaudron's ferocious intellect was matched by her equally ferocious commitment to social justice, something she acknowledged was shaped by her working-class upbringing in regional Australia—not that she thought her background was or should be remarkable on the High Court, because to her it was self-evident that the judiciary should reflect the whole of Australian society.

She was known as fiery and quick witted but always plain spoken. On hearing that the vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney had wanted to award the university law medal to the male student who came second to her, Justice Gaudron is said to have observed, 'The only difference between us is that I sit down to pee.'

I had the honour of working with Justice Gaudron on the development of legislation for a federal anticorruption commission, something she'd been advocating for since 2017. When Justice Gaudron first came to my office with a team of other extraordinary and experienced judges, one of my staff, a young woman and a law graduate, told me that meeting Mary Gaudron was a dream come true. She could barely speak when Mary Gaudron walked into the room. Of course, as we've heard, there was no-one kinder to young professional women and young lawyers—and young women anywhere, actually—than Mary Gaudron. Indeed, it really is one of the greatest privileges of serving in this parliament to meet and work with people of the stature of Justice Gaudron.

For someone of such huge stature, she actually wasn't very big; she was quite small. One of my fond memories of that time of developing that legislation for an anticorruption commission was doing a press conference with a whole range of retired judges. Justice Gaudron came along, but she said, 'I don't do press conferences; I'm not going to do a press conference.' I managed to persuade her, and she said, 'I'll do it, but I do need to have a cigarette first.' So here she was, this amazing, courageous woman who I had the great, great pleasure—I don't generally like being around when someone's smoking a cigarette, but, by golly, you wouldn't get me between her and the outside garden. So out we went. We had a chat about what we'd talk about in this press conference. She had a cigarette. She came out, and the press were waiting for her. You could have heard a pin drop. They wanted to hear what Justice Gaudron had to say. We all did.

Justice Gaudron's legacy will persist in all for whom she paved the way, and her legacy will also persist for a just and equal Australia. I offer my heartfelt condolences to her family, her friends and her associates, all of whom I know are so proud to have been associated with Justice Mary Gaudron. Vale. May she rest in peace.

It's a privilege to rise today to speak about the Hon. Mary Gaudron KC, the first woman to take silk in New South Wales, the first woman to serve as state solicitor general and, in 1987, the first woman appointed to the High Court of Australia.

I rise not as someone who knew Justice Gaudron, as my friends the member for Fenner, the member for Indi and the member for Berowra did; all made heartfelt and meaningful contributions this evening. But I rise as someone who was impacted by her and who greatly admired and respected her. I wish I had had the chance to meet her and go to one of her champagne parties that the member for Fenner told us about this evening, which sounded truly excellent.

I commenced my law degree at the then University of Adelaide in March 2001, in my second year of uni. I was two months shy of being 19, and I found law really hard. At the University of Adelaide there was a really heavy focus on legal theory and a great emphasis on precedent with hours spent trying to find the obiter and distinguish it from the ratio in really dense, long judgements.

In 2001, the composition of the High Court of Australia was as follows: Chief Justice Anthony Gleeson, Justice Michael McHugh, Justice William Gummow, Justice Michael Kirby, Justice Kenneth Hayne and Justice Ian Callinan—all men. We also, of course, had Justice Mary Gaudron, the only woman. I admired her greatly.

As part of the Bachelor of Laws degree, as I said, we had to read a lot of High Court judgements. To be frank, the most popular judge wasn't Justice Gaudron; it was Justice Kirby. His progressive approach made him stand out on that bench, which I thought generally applied a more conservative black-letter approach to the Constitution, so I too was on the Kirby bandwagon.

But there was another judge I always sought out when reading a judgement, and that was Justice Mary Gaudron. I was not alone in seeking her out. What did she say? What did she think? What perspective did she bring? Did she write the majority or join it? Did she write a dissent or join it? Her views were always of great interest to me, not only because of the high-quality way that she constructed her position and the high-quality way she analysed the various competing and complex arguments put before her but, yes, because she was a woman, that first woman on that High Court bench dominating and leading and being excellent in a profession that was, throughout her career, absolutely run by men.

We've all heard her stories—law firms telling her they don't hire women as a general policy, barristers' chambers refusing her the opportunity to buy into a room when she joined the bar in 1968. But she persevered and she succeeded in circumstances when it might have been easier to stop and do something else. She had something to offer—a great intellect, work ethic and a sense of social justice—and she wanted to contribute, and jurisprudence in this country is better for her having had the gumption to just ignore those who told her no, to just crack on and find her own path. That path led her to be appointed to the High Court bench at the age of 44. That's my age right now, which is why I find her feat even more remarkable. Having reached this age of 44, I think I admire her and her achievements more than ever now.

When I started reading Justice Gaudron's judgement in the early stages of this century, it was in an era when the legal profession was dominated by men still. More women than men were starting to study law at university but there was a dearth of female barristers, a dearth of female senior associates, special counsel and partners. The way that the law was practised was heavily and almost exclusively about how much time you were present in the office, slaving away over those little billable hours. It wasn't conducive with having a family or, frankly, a life.

There also remain stubborn attitudes about women's capability, intellect, together with questions about whether they possess the necessary aggression and disposition to really handle being a top lawyer. These attitudes persisted during my 20-year career, but I always thought, 'If Justice Gaudron could do it then so could I and so could other women.' I saw women lawyers routinely allocated tasks like preparing documents to go in a brief to counsel, with their male colleagues—often more junior—getting to write the actual brief to counsel. I saw women regularly allocated to smaller cases, which would bring in less money for a firm, or allocated to non-billable work like presentations and articles, with their male colleagues given roles speaking to and directly advising clients. This happened regularly.

At a previous firm I was working at in the not too distant past, there was one woman partner in the whole of Australia. When I asked the male global managing partner what the plan was to mentor, sponsor and promote more women, I was told that the strategy was to wait for the men to die—then the women would get an opportunity. When I was a young lawyer, I had a client ask me to read a contract but then 'get someone with brains to read it'. I did a fair bit of advocacy in international commercial arbitration proceedings and I regularly had clients not want me to do that, even though I was half reasonable at it, because I was a young woman.

But the attitudes and barriers that Justice Gaudron faced were far more significant than my experiences. She persevered and she became a High Court judge. Her appointment and her tenure on the bench are significant for the entire legal profession, not just for women. Men could also see her value, and we heard her value being spoken about tonight by the member for Fenner and the member for Berowra. They could see her intellect, her sharpness, and they respected it. But most importantly, women could see her. We often say 'you cannot be what you cannot see', so to Justice Mary Gaudron, I say: I saw you. I heard you. I read your words and I thank you for them and for paving the way for Justice Bell, Justice Kiefel, Justice Gordon, Justice Jagot and Justice Jacqueline Gleeson to make their way to the High Court bench.

Some of Justice Gaudron's words were significant, and she penned the majority judgement with Justice Deane in Mabo v Queensland (No. 2), which recognised the existence of native title in Australia under common law operating to firmly and rightly acknowledge the connection that First Nations people have with this country. Justice Gaudron's judgement was significant, finding that native title rights were sourced from Indigenous laws and customs and not from a grant from the Crown and that the doctrine of terra nullius was not applicable to Australia at the time of British settlement in New South Wales. This has shaped modern Australia, and the significance of this judgement and Justice Gaudron's contribution in this respect continues today. It is an incredible legacy.

Mary Genevieve Gaudron was a trailblazer. She understood and accepted this. But it was her fervent wish that, in her lifetime, women's achievements in the legal profession would be characterised not as trailblazing but as business as usual. In her swearing-in speech in 1987 she said:

Because I believe that too often we emphasise difference at the expense of common cause, I would wish that the day had arrived when the appointment of a woman to this Court was unremarkable.

Well, the current High Court benefits from three out of seven justices being women. Thanks to Justice Gaudron, having women on the High Court is no longer something that is nice to have; it is something we expect. I extend my deepest condolences to Justice Gaudron's family and to the legal profession. May Mary Gaudron rest in peace.

It is always a pleasure to follow the member for Sturt, who, like the person we are honouring tonight, is also a trailblazer, and I commend her for her speech and her fine and eloquent words. Certainly we are marking the death, but also very much the life, of a remarkable Australian, a powerful woman. The member for Sturt and many other women have drawn great inspiration from this fine lady.

Mary Genevieve Gaudron was born on 5 January 1943. She saw first light in Moree, at the time of a great heatwave in inland Australia—not uncommon for western New South Wales. And to think that from those very humble beginnings she elevated herself, despite many obstacles, adversities and hurdles, as we've heard, to the positions that she held. It is something quite incredible. It says a lot about her indomitable spirit. It says a lot about the character of this fine person. It also shows that it doesn't matter what your postcode is in Australia; you can be anything in this country, the lucky country. It takes perseverance. It takes, in her case, kicking in that glass ceiling. It takes a little bit of luck, a lot of determination and a lot of intellect.

She won a scholarship to the University of Sydney, graduating with the university medal in law. That was perhaps one of the first of many amazing achievements. At 27 she became the youngest person to appear unled before the High Court of Australia, in O'Shaughnessy. In 1972 she became the first woman appointed to the New South Wales Bar Council. At 31 she became a deputy president of the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. In 1981 she became the first female to serve as Solicitor-General for New South Wales. Also that year she became the first woman in New South Wales appointed as Queen's Counsel. In 1977, at just 44 years young, she became a justice of the High Court of Australia. She served on the High Court until January 2003, and she later served as president of the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organization in Geneva.

All that is quite exceptional, and we know that. But, aside from her amazing career in silk and her incredible achievements in the legal profession, she never forgot her country origins. She was a mother, she was a friend to many, and, of course, like all of us, she loved family; she did. The difference that she made in our country was profound then, but, many, many years into the future, the work that she did and the achievements that she accomplished will make a difference—long into the future.

She believed that equality before the law had to have a practical and meaningful effect, and she lived that to the nth degree. As a junior barrister, she argued the equal pay case for the Whitlam government in 1972, and that would have been pretty difficult back then. That would have been very, very tough. She helped establish the 1979 maternity leave standard while serving on the commission, and bravo to her for that. She considered both achievements amongst her proudest. We've heard about Mabo, but there were many others as well. In Kable she helped establish limits on state parliaments using state courts in ways incompatible with the independence and integrity of the Australian judicial system. That all sounds very legal and complicated, but she found a way. She forged through, because that was this incredible Australian.

As I've said, and as we've heard from the member for Sturt, she broke barriers for women. Her appointment to the High Court in 1987 meant that women's voices were finally represented in Australia's highest court, and that is special. She demonstrated that the legal system is stronger when it includes perspectives previously excluded from positions of power, and I think we could say that about this place too. I think we could. Her career helped pave the way for many women who have since been appointed to Australia's superior courts. I could also say, as we've heard from the member for Sturt, that she probably didn't realise the women, particularly, she was influencing. She probably didn't realise that she was providing that spark, that inspiration, to many young women to try to be the best that they could be. She effectively forged a path that other women could follow and did.

Her journey from Moree to the High Court is not only a story of breaking barriers for women; it is a powerful example of the contribution that regional Australians can make at the highest level of national life. Vale to the Hon. Mary Genevieve Gaudron. May you rest in peace, and may your family and wide circle of friends find comfort in your many incredible achievements.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 19 : 28