Role she was born to play
WHEN she was called to the bar at just 21, Australia’s first female High Court chief justice received a congratulatory telegram from her brother, welcoming her to the acting profession.
“Thank you, dear brother, but we write our own lines,” she retorted. Susan Kiefel’s brother Russell wasn’t at the High Court in Canberra yesterday to watch his sister make history as the first woman to fill the highest judicial role in the land.
The film and stage actor died suddenly in November, just days before her appointment was announced.
“I know it is a great sadness to your honour,” AttorneyGeneral George Brandis said as he paid tribute during her swearing- in ceremony.
He recalled acting as her junior when “blokey” clients, concerned about her gender, expressed reservations.
She soon had them eating out of her hand.
Hers was a great Australian story to inspire men and women alike, having gone from a “restless teenager” who left school at 15 to the 13th chief justice of the High Court.
“It has been a feature of Your Honour’s story, as it is of today’s ceremony, that you have at several crucial steps in your career been the first woman to occupy a particular office,” Senator Brandis said.
“But your success has had nothing to do with your gender and everything to do with your intelligence, diligence and skill.”