Brandis, Sen George

Senator BRANDIS (Queensland—Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (15:38): There can be few who have served the people of Australia with greater distinction, in a variety of fields, than Sir Zelman Cowen. He was a scholar of international eminence, a public lawyer with few equals in his field, a university leader on two continents and, most importantly for us, the 19th Governor-General of the Common­wealth, who brought the balm of his wisdom and moderation to a particularly difficult passage in our national life. Zelman Cowen was born in Melbourne on 7 October 1919—by a remarkable coinci­dence, the very day that, elsewhere in the same city, Alfred Deakin died. He was educated at Scotch College and the University of Melbourne, where he enjoyed a brilliant academic career, graduating with the highest honours in arts and law. He won the Supreme Court Prize, the prize awarded to the law school's best graduate, in 1940 and, in the same year, he was elected the Victorian Rhodes Scholar for 1941. When he gave a moving eulogy at Sir Zelman's state funeral on December 13 last year, the current Warden of Rhodes House, Professor Don Markwell—one of the many distinguished Australians to whom Sir Zelman had been a mentor over the years—delved deep into the Rhodes archives to unearth the reference which Professor George Paton, then Professor of Jurispru­dence at the Law School, wrote in support of 20-year-old Zelman Cowen's application for the Rhodes Scholarship. It gives us an early and accurate foretaste of the man he would become. Professor Paton wrote of him: His academic record … is one that has rarely been equalled. It is frequently the case that those who do brilliantly in Arts do not show quite the same aptitude for law, but Mr. Cowen shows the same skill in both fields. His mind is very keen and remarkably mature for one of his age. … … … He has a rounded personality, broad interests and cultivated tastes … He has great energy and … intellectual integrity … … … … He has the assured courtesy of a much older man, and, while he has no reticence in urging his own opinions, I have found him both respectful and willing to abandon his point of view, if its weakness could be shown … … … … In short, I feel he has that quality which would benefit most from a period at Oxford. I have written many of these testimonials for the Selection Committee, but this is the first time that I can write for a candidate who has that intellectual flair of which great things can be predicted. Because of the war, he deferred taking up his scholarship until 1945, and in the meantime saw service in the Royal Australian Navy, working in naval intelligence. He then went up to Oriel College, Oxford and read for the BCL. In 1947, he was awarded the Vinerian Prize—the Olympic gold medal of legal scholarship, awarded to the top BCL student of his year—and was appointed a fellow of the college. He would later be awarded the exceptionally rare honour of DCL, Doctor of Civil Law. In 1950, at the unheard-of age of only 31, he was appointed Professor of Public Law and Dean of Melbourne Law School at his alma mater, the University of Melbourne. He held that post for the next 16 years, combining the development of one of Australia's best law schools with significant contributions to legal scholarship. His magnum opus, Federal Jurisdiction in Australia, belongs to those years. He also collected and published a series of essays which he had written when at Oxford in collaboration with his friend Peter Carter. Cowen and Carter's Essays on the Law of Evidence was still authoritative 30 years later, when I did my BCL. His long biographical essay on Sir John Latham, which remains the only significant biographical study of that insufficiently appreciated Australian, and his authoritative biography of Sir Isaac Isaacs, our first Australian born Governor-General and something of a hero for Sir Zelman, also belong to that period. He was a frequent participant in public discussion, as a champion of worthy causes. He opposed the 1951 referendum to ban the Communist Party because of its potential impact on political freedom. He was active in support of the 1967 referendum on the recognition of Indigenous Australians. He campaigned against the death penalty. He became well known to the broader public, beyond the university, as a broadcaster—then a rare occupation for a professor. His judicious commentary on current affairs in a radio program called 'Notes on the News' began in the 1950s and ran regularly on ABC Radio for many years. In 1969, when he delivered the Boyer Lectures, he took as his topic 'The Private Man', one of the earliest Australian contribu­tions to what is now sometimes called privacy studies. At various times during this period, he was a visiting professor at the Harvard Law School, at the University of Chicago, which offered him a permanent chair, and at several universities in the British Commonwealth. He was consulted on, and was the principal draftsman of, the constitutions of several of the newly independent British colonies. In 1966, Zelman Cowen became the Vice-Chancellor of the University of New England in Armidale. Then, in 1970, he was appointed as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Queensland. It was there that I first came to know him. His vice-chancellorship coincided with a very difficult period for the university. Sir Zelman found himself standing between a belligerent student protest movement, at the height of the Vietnam War, and a state government led by a Premier who had little interest in universities and little sympathy for freedom of speech. Relations between the Vice-Chancellor and the then Mr Bjelke-Petersen were, to say the least, difficult. It is a credit to Sir Zelman Cowen's leadership that he was able to prevent the student protests from becoming violent, as they did in some other Australian universities. The climax of that tension occurred on 30 July 1971 when, at some personal risk, Sir Zelman addressed a crowd of some 5,000 student protesters in the Great Court. Standing beneath the great lapidary inscription which proclaimed, in Disraeli's words, the university to be 'a place of light, of liberty and of learning', he was able to win their confidence and calm their anger. He would later describe it as the speech of his life. It was a classic instance of the triumph of reason over passion, of moderation over belligerence. I have no doubt that one of the main reasons Sir Zelman prevailed that day is that the students knew that he respected their right to protest, so long as that protest remained peaceful, and that he would defend both their freedom of expression and the independence of the university. They trusted his good faith and they were won by his integrity and his appeal to their better instincts. He is remembered to this day as one of the University of Queensland's greatest ever vice-chancellors, during which it grew into the first rank of Australia's universities—a position which it maintains to this day. So when, in 1977, the government of Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser was looking for the best person to succeed Sir John Kerr as Governor-General, Zelman Cowen was a perfect choice. He was respected and trusted by both sides of politics. He had never been a political partisan, though he left no-one in any doubt that he was a humane and enlightened liberal, in the classical and best sense of that word. Don Markwell described the liberal values of which Sir Zelman Cowen was a beacon in these words: … individual liberty under law, including the rights to privacy and to free speech in a civil and tolerant society; the rule of reason, with a preference for moderation, collegial leadership and consensus-building, and even-tempered public and private discourse, with disagreement without rancour; uncompromising and scrupulous integrity; and education—in a college, a law school, or the wider university—that both broadens and sharpens the mind. Sir Zelman spoke of democracy as depending upon 'a fragile consensus', and it was that fragile consensus he sought to restore, in particular by reaching out to the Labor Party, which had yet to come to terms with the resolution of the 1975 crisis and seemed almost estranged from the constitutional polity—certainly, from the office of Governor-General. Another of Sir Zelman's many protege, Steven Skala, who also delivered a eulogy at his state funeral, caught the quality which Sir Zelman brought to the office of Governor-General—as to every other phase of his glittering career—in these words: To understand how— he— achieved this, we should remember his authenticity. He was an exemplar of decency, unfailing courtesy, generosity, openness to reason, grace and constancy. He afforded everyone their dignity. His life’s work, in public and in private, reflected the deepest concern for the dignity of every person. When Sir Zelman left the office of Governor-General in 1982, the strong emotions of 1975 were, if not forgotten, nevertheless a thing of memory. The emollient style of Sir Zelman was, I believe, one of the principal reasons why that was so. Retirement from the office of Governor-General did not see the end to Sir Zelman Cowen's career. He returned to his other alma mater, Oriel College, which appointed him as its provost. His provostship coincided with my own time in Oxford and I renewed my acquaintance with him. He was, as ever, a liberalising influence and a force for good. Oriel was, at the time, the last Oxford college to refuse to admit women; under Sir Zelman's influence, it became co-ed. Such was the respect in which he was held in the United Kingdom that he was much sought after for high appointments. It was during those years that he served as chairman of the British Press Council. But Australia was always his home, and it was to Melbourne that he and Lady Anna returned for good in 1990. He renewed his active involvement in Australian public life in a variety of ways. He served, for several years, as the chairman of Fairfax newspap­ers. He was instrumental in the establishment of the law schools at both Griffith University and the Victorian University of Technology. Although he had not always held that view, he became convinced that it was time for Australia to become a republic, and advocated that cause in the 1999 referendum. He continued to be a mentor to talented young Australians. In particular, Joshua Frydenberg, now the member for Kooyong, became a particular protege and close friend, and Sir Zelman discreetly encouraged him in his political career. We remember Sir Zelman Cowen with affection and gratitude. He was both a good and a great man—qualities often not comb­ined within the same person. He excelled in everything he did. He occupied his variety of very high offices with distinction and grace. He saw us through one of the most difficult times in our nation's story. He was generous, temperate, moderate, liberal and wise. There have been few greater Australians than he. The opposition supports the condolence motion moved by the Leader of the Government in the Senate and extends its sympathies to Lady Anna Cowen and the family of Sir Zelman Cowen.