I rise to mark the passing of the Hon. Justice Mary Gaudron KC, one of the most significant Australian jurists of her generation and a person whose life changed both the law and the legal profession. Justice Gaudron has rightly been remembered for breaking barrier after barrier. She faced sexism throughout her university studies but graduated with first-class honours from Sydney University and took the University Medal in Law. She did this while also having had her first child, Danielle, the year before her graduation. She was the first woman appointed to the New South Wales Bar Council. She became the first woman Solicitor-General of Australia. In 1987, at the age of 44, she became the first woman appointed to the High Court of Australia,

But Justice Gaudron should not be remembered simply because she was the first woman to occupy those offices. She should be remembered for what she did with them, for the contribution she made to the law itself. Her Honour's work was distinguished by a deep and sustained concern with equality before the law. In Street v Queensland Bar Association, her judgement helped give real content to the Constitution's protection against discrimination based on state residence. Her Honour's thinking about equality recognised something that now seems straightforward but was not always treated that way by the law: that treating people identically does not necessarily mean treating them equally.

And of course there was Mabo. In their joint judgement, Justices Deane and Gaudron confronted directly the dispossession of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. They described that dispossession as 'the darkest aspect of the history of this nation'. Those words have endured because they expressed with unusual clarity the responsibility of the law to acknowledge the truth of our history.

Her Honour's contribution extended across constitutional law, criminal law, industrial law and the law concerning discrimination. Former associates came to refer to her with some affection as 'the queen of chapter III'. I had the honour to appear before Justice Gaudron in the High Court on several occasions. Her Honour was known as a rigorous, exacting thinker—someone who reasoned methodically from principle. She respected precedent but never let it stop her from questioning whether a law that looked fair on paper actually worked fairly in practice. Her Honour's former associates have recalled a habit that says something about the care she brought to her work. When travelling, she would send draft judgements back to chambers with a dot placed above every single word, indicating that she had considered each one.

Beyond this, Justice Gaudron was known for her sharp, irreverent sense of humour. A particular exchange has stayed with me from the judge's pension case, Austin v The Commonwealth of Australia, in which I appeared in 2002. The case concerned taxation of the pensions of state judges, and counsel was presenting actuarial calculations that assumed that women judges lived longer than men. Justice Gaudron questioned this in an exchange with counsel. Wisely, counsel accepted Her Honour's point, noting that women judges work just as hard as men and so likely die just as fast. Justice Gaudron, in response, quipped, 'Because they work twice as hard, they probably die twice as fast.'

I was very pleased that Justice Gaudron was present at the High Court in October 2022 when I, as then Attorney-General, welcomed Justice Jane Jagot to the court. On that day, for the first time since Federation, women formed a majority of the High Court. Thirty-five years earlier, Justice Gaudron had sat on that bench as the only woman. Those two moments tell us something about how much our legal institutions have changed. Justice Gaudron helped make that change possible by demonstrating beyond argument that the barriers that had kept women from positions of leadership in the law had nothing to do with ability.

Justice Gaudron gave Australia 16 years of distinguished service on its highest court and a lifetime of service to the law. She leaves an enduring body of jurisprudence, generations of lawyers who have followed the path she first trod, and a legal profession profoundly reshaped by her presence. I extend my condolences to her family, her friends and all those in the legal profession who knew and loved her. Australia is richer for her life and service. I and many others will mourn the loss of Mary Gaudron.

I thank the member for Isaacs for his tribute to Justice Gaudron. They were fine words and entirely appropriate from a KC of his distinction. I rise today to pay tribute to the Hon. Mary Gaudron KC, who was a remarkable Australian lawyer, jurist and trailblazer. Much will rightly be said about the fact that Mary Gaudron was the first woman appointed to the High Court of Australia. Her appointment in 1987 was indeed historic, but perhaps an even greater testament to her life is that her legacy cannot simply be reduced to her being the first woman to sit on our nation's highest court. She was undoubtedly one of the most consequential jurists of her generation.

Before entering this place, I practised as a solicitor and was admitted to the Supreme Court of Queensland and the High Court of Australia. But, as I studied at university between 1997 and 2002 during what were the final years of Justice Gaudron's service on the High Court, I never had the distinction of appearing in that place before her. So I remember her not simply as a figure from Australian legal history but from the judgements we studied at university. For a young law student the names Brennan, Toohey, Gaudron, Gummow, McHugh and Kirby became very familiar indeed, and I can still remember reading judgements bearing that familiar formulation—Toohey, Gaudron and Gummow JJ—as we tried to understand the court's reasoning and occasionally simply tried to understand what Their Honours were actually saying. There is something rather poignant now in reflecting that these cases that we were studying as contemporary law have become part of Australian legal history, and Mary Gaudron played a remarkable part in making that history. Her name appears on some of the most consequential decisions in Australian law.

In Mabo v Queensland she joined Justice Deane in a judgement that confronted the legal and historical consequences of the dispossession of Indigenous Australians. She sat in Dietrich v The Queen, which profoundly influenced our understanding of the requirements of a fair criminal trial. She was part of the court in both Australian Capital Television and Nationwide News. They were foundational cases that were concerned with the implied freedom of political communication, which is a constitutional principle of particular relevance to every one of us who serves in this place. Particularly for a Queensland lawyer her time on the court encompassed the Wik Peoples v Queensland, which was another decision which fundamentally shaped Australian law. These were not questions at the margins. They concerned some of the most difficult questions our highest court can be asked to determine: the limits of government power, equality before the law, the requirements of a fair trial, freedom of political communication, Indigenous rights and the proper interpretation of our Constitution. Justice Gaudron brought to those questions a formidable intellect and a deep concern for the practical operation of the law upon individuals.

Her own story was equally remarkable. She entered a profession in which women were still too often treated as outsiders and rose to its very pinnacle. In doing so she did not simply occupy a seat that no other woman had occupied before her. She demonstrated beyond argument that women belonged at the very highest levels of the Australian legal profession and the judiciary. For generations, Australian law students who followed—including me and my wife, Lauren, who is also a practising lawyer—Mary Gaudron became part of the law we studied. For generations of lawyers, her judgements became part of the law we practised, and, for our nation, the principles she helped articulate remain part of the law by which we are governed. This is an extraordinary legacy of public service. I extend my condolences to her family, her friends, her former colleagues and the entire Australian legal community, who will deeply feel her loss. May she rest in peace.

Like so many in this place and around our great country, I was incredibly saddened to hear of Justice Mary Gaudron's passing. While I never had the opportunity to meet Justice Gaudron, she was a constant presence in my life during my university days as I read through her judgements and discerned her insights while admiring her legal wisdom. Justice Mary Gaudron left a considerable mark on Australia's legal profession and paved the way for generations of women to embark on careers in the law, including ones that involved sitting on the bench of the highest court in this land. A daughter of regional Australia, Justice Gaudron grew up in Moree. While many know the famous story of her receiving a copy of the Constitution from HV Evatt and her declaration that she would one day be a lawyer, it is also important to recognise that her experiences and background enabled her to develop an understanding of inequality and injustice that would go on to define her time as both a legal practitioner and a justice of the High Court of Australia.

Justice Gaudron's achievements in legal practice deserve considerable recognition, and even more so in many instances where she was the first woman or amongst the first women to achieve these many milestones. She was the second woman to be awarded the University Medal in Law at Sydney University. She was the first woman appointed to the New South Wales Bar Council. In 1974 she became the youngest person at that time to ever serve as a Federal Court judge. Justice Gaudron was the first woman to be appointed a Queen's Counsel in New South Wales and, of course, the first woman to sit as a justice of the High Court, as well as its fourth youngest. What makes many of these achievements even more remarkable is the way in which she blazed her own trail to reach them. She was denied clerkships. She was denied the opportunity of a room in barristers chambers, and even service in a bar, on the basis of being a woman. And, in accordance with the regulations of the time, she had to give up her job in the Public Service when she got married.

Justice Gaudron was involved in many of the most important cases in our nation's legal history. During her time on the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, she was involved in the case which laid down award standards, allowing for a year's unpaid leave for full- and part-time workers—the foundation on which maternity leave and paid parental leave have now been built. She also argued landmark equal pay cases in 1972 which determined that women should receive equal pay for equal work. As a result, the pay for work was assessed on the basis of the contribution to the workplace or industry rather than the resemblance to traditionally male roles.

She was a High Court justice when the historic Mabo decision, which established native title and overturned terra nullius, was heard. Justice Gaudron was part of the majority that acknowledged, alongside Justice Deane, that historical treatment of Indigenous peoples was 'the darkest aspect of the history of this nation' and that 'the nation as a whole must remain diminished unless and until there is acknowledgement of, and retreat from, those past injustices'. In judgements for the case of Nationwide News Pty Ltd v Wills, as those opposite have mentioned, Justice Gaudron stated that a free society governed by the principles of representative parliamentary democracy may entail freedom of movement, freedom of association and freedom of speech, affirming the implied freedom of political communication.

Justice Gaudron was perhaps most noted for her contributions to criminal law and jurisprudence. She was an unmoving champion of the right to a fair trial, describing it as 'fundamental to our system of criminal justice'. In Dietrich v The Queen, a judgement highlighted that the expression 'fair trial according to law' is 'not a tautology', recognising that fairness in the courtroom is not necessarily one and the same with legality or strict compliance with procedure—a principle that applies to the work we do in this place, as well. A legacy like that left by Justice Gaudron is one that most people could only ever aspire to leave behind. Such is the remarkable nature of Justice Mary Gaudron's life and service to our country. She was an individual who firmly believed in the power of the law to improve people's lives, something that should inspire all of us in this place.

I thank Justice Gaudron for paving the way for legal students across the country and for future generations of women looking to embark on legal careers. I send my sincere condolences to Mary's family and loved ones. May Justice Mary Gaudron rest in peace.

Vale, Mary Gaudron—a trailblazer; a feminist; a fierce advocate for workers, for women and for justice for First Nations people; and, for much of my life, a personal hero of mine.

I am one of nine children—three boys and six girls. We were a political household, and my dad, Mick, loved nothing more than a good family discussion. He would run them like debates in this chamber. He would be speaker, and we would all be allocated a seat and given five minutes to contribute. Everyone had to have a say—you couldn't get out of it—girls and boys alike. Mum was exempt from this, because she was a bit like the Leader of the House, stepping in every now and then, when things went awry. Dad took it upon himself to keep us aware of the world around us, and he was determined that his daughters would be as involved as his boys. I was a bit shy for his liking and not so confident, and I remember, a few years before he died, he told me about Mary Gaudron—a wonderful woman, he said. 'Geddy, learn about her, and I think you'll learn from her.'

Mary Gaudron had recently helped establish the right to unpaid maternity leave for Australian workers. Dad told me about that and other things about her, and it sparked a lifelong admiration of mine for Mary Gaudron. Maternity leave, albeit unpaid, was a profound step towards women's economic equality and part of a long road that ultimately led to paid parental leave—a road we are still travelling as we continue to expand those rights to six months paid leave today—and that was just one chapter in an extraordinary life.

Mary Gaudron was born in Moree in 1943 into a working-class family. One of my favourite stories about her comes from when she was just eight years old. The legendary Doc Evatt was visiting Moree, campaigning against the Menzies government's attempt to ban the Communist Party. When Evatt began talking about the Constitution, little Mary put up her hand and asked, 'Please, sir, what's a constitution?' Evatt explained that it contained the laws by which parliaments were governed. Gaudron asked if it was something like the Ten Commandments. Evatt later sent her a copy in the mail, and Mary Gaudron, who had been expecting two stone tablets, like the Ten Commandments, was apparently bitterly disappointed when a little pamphlet arrived instead. I just love that story. Ultimately, it sparked her interest in the law, and she became a lawyer. The fact that women simply weren't expected to do that in those days did not concern her one bit.

Mary Gaudron grew up witnessing the appalling racism experienced by First Nations people in Moree. Years later, she recalled that Aboriginal people could not ride the bus across town, swim in the municipal pool or sit freely in the local cinema. Aboriginal children were denied the same education as white children, and Aboriginal people who needed hospital care were segregated. She said it was absolutely impossible not to understand that some people were treated as though they were more equal than others. She carried that understanding of injustice throughout her whole life.

Gaudron knew that discrimination personally—herself. When she tried to obtain articles of clerkship, distinguished lawyers patiently explained that they simply did not employ women. After finally being admitted to the bar, she tried to buy a room in a barrister's chambers in Sydney and was repeatedly knocked back for the same reason. So Mary Gaudron did what she would do throughout her career. She just kept going. In 1972, she became the first woman appointed to the Council of the New South Wales Bar. That same year, she argued one of the great industrial cases in Australian history: the equal pay case.

Gaudron helped establish a principle that generations of women have continued fighting to make real: women's work is not worth less simply because women do it. That principle has shaped my own life enormously. As a nurse and later as Federal Secretary of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation and President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, I spent decades fighting not only for better wages and conditions but for care work and the care economy to be properly valued. Nursing isn't worth less because it has historically been women's work. Neither is aged care and neither is early childhood education. Today, when I see women in those sectors winning significant pay rises after decades of undervaluation—well, I think about Mary Gaudron.

She went on to become the youngest ever deputy president of the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, in 1974. There she helped establish the maternity leave standard that first brought her into my life. Then came more firsts: the first female solicitor-general in any Australian jurisdiction, the first female Queen's Counsel in New South Wales, and—in 1987, at just 44 years of age—the first woman appointed to the High Court of Australia.

But Mary's legacy cannot be measured simply by counting the doors she walked through. What mattered was what she did once she got inside—the landmark Mabo case. Mary joined Justice Deane in confronting the lie of terra nullius and described Australia's treatment of First Nations people as 'the darkest aspect of the history of this nation'. They wrote that our nation would remain diminished until there was acknowledgement of, and retreat from, the injustices of the past. These words still carry enormous weight.

Mary also understood something many trailblazing women know intimately: sometimes getting into institutions built by men requires women to suppress the very things that make them different. In 1997, she reflected that women of her generation had learned to navigate rules and traditions created almost entirely by men for men. 'We became honorary men,' she said, 'and they thought that was equality.' Mary knew we should aspire to something much greater than that—not simply allowing women into institutions unchanged but changing the institutions themselves, something I'm proud to say the women of this and previous Labor governments have done with gusto.

After leaving the High Court, Mary took that lifelong commitment to workers' rights onto the international stage through the International Labour Organization. That chapter of her life meant a great deal to me too. I was incredibly proud to work with the ILO during my time as president of the ACTU, including as a member of the ILO's governing body. Its mission—defending workers' rights, supporting trade unions and advancing dignity and safety at work across the world—reflects so much of what Mary stood for.

When I look back over my own life, I can see Mary's influence woven through it. I was lucky enough to have women like Mary Gaudron ahead of me, women who walked into rooms where they were told they didn't belong, women who refused to accept that women's work was worth less, women who challenged racism and injustice, and women who proved that you could reach the highest institutions in this country without forgetting the people those institutions are there to serve. The Prime Minister rightly said that Mary didn't just open doors for women; she tore them off their hinges, and generations of Australian women walked through the space she created. I am so lucky to be one of them.

I hope that in some small way, through my own fights for workers' rights and women's equality, and by continuing to use my voice in great institutions like this parliament, I can do for the women coming behind me a tiny fraction of what Mary did for my generation, because that is the responsibility that comes with being given a path that someone else has fought to create. You make it wider. You make it easier for the next woman to walk down. And where there are still doors closed to her, you help tear those hinges off too.

My dad was right all those years ago. Mary Gaudron was a wonderful woman worth looking up to and worth learning from. I did it then; I do it now. And I always will. Vale, Mary Gaudron.

It's my privilege today to add my voice and the voices of Warringah to this condolence motion for the life of the Hon. Justice Mary Gaudron KC, a legal titan and trailblazer who shattered the glass ceiling not only for women in law but for all those who had been told not to do a man's job. Mary Gaudron did not simply practice the law; she reshaped who could work inside of it. From her upbringing in Moree, her path to the High Court was not the same well-worn one that many had taken before but one marked by perseverance in the face of rejection and discrimination.

Many of my parliamentary colleagues have risen to recount Justice Gaudron's achievements, but their scale and importance make them worth repeating. Earning a scholarship to the University of Sydney, Justice Gaudron studied her law degree part time in order to support herself and her family. Her drive to succeed was unmatched. She sat her fourth-year exams while nine months pregnant before going on to top her class in the final exams. She was the first part-time female student to win the University Medal, where reportedly the vice-chancellor had proposed giving the medal to the male student who had come second, as Justin Gaudron would not be able to put the medal to good use as a wife and mother. Of course, Justice Gaudron did. In fact, she made excellent use of that medal.

After being initially told by multiple firms that they wouldn't hire a female clerk, she joined the Public Service. She worked there until she got married, leading to her being forced to resign from the Public Service due to the marriage bar forbidding married women from working in the Public Service. Despite this, Justice Gaudron met every closed door and discriminatory action and rule with distinction and determination. She was called to the bar in 1968 and became the first woman appointed to the New South Wales Bar Association in 1972. She was the first woman to take silk in New South Wales. When chambers refused to rent her a room due to her gender, it did not stop her from rising to be the youngest Federal Court judge of her time. Of course, in 1987 she was appointed as the first female justice of the High Court of Australia.

It's hard, I think, today in 2026, for many young women to contemplate the discrimination that Justice Mary Gaudron faced simply because of her gender. I think too often we take for granted the changes that have occurred, the equality and the opportunities that are open to us. It is because of the fight and the determination of so many incredible women that went before us. It's why it's so incredibly important that we remain vigilant. We know the rights of women are being wound back in many places around the world. To be true to the legacy of giants like Justice Mary Gaudron, we absolutely must raise our voices and make sure those gains are not wound back.

Personally, as a female barrister, I walked in the footsteps of Justice Gaudron. When I was studying my law degree, I did so taking my newborn son into law lectures, and I wasn't barred from the opportunity to learn or to be qualified. I wasn't barred from that opportunity. It is because of people like Justice Mary Gaudron, who had shown the world that a woman could be a mother and have a successful law career. She knew the importance of whether she succeeded or failed, stating that she would give no-one a chance to say, 'We tried a woman once, and it did not work.' I think that's a burden and a responsibility many of us carry because it's too easy to then have gains wound back and prejudice rise. We are seeing that today. We have to be vigilant. We are seeing that today in the modern world, where the manosphere and so many areas are trying to win back women's rights. So, as we gather here, it's good to take note of some of the progress. Today, three of the seven High Court justices are women, and it is certain to say that appointing a woman worked.

I would like to share my condolences with Justice Gaudron's loved ones and those who knew her. Australia is still grappling with gender equality, but the path Justice Gaudron cleared has shown us that women can not only match their male colleagues but be better in many instances. That is good because a rising tide lifts all ships. When we all are pushed to give it our best, to do our best, to be smarter, braver, more caring, we will all benefit. On behalf of Warringah, I would like to thank the Hon. Justice Gaudron for making this world a better and fairer place.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 13 : 14