Chamberlain defender sang for his supper
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday August 22, 2009
JOHN PHILLIPS 1933€“2009JOHN PHILLIPS, a poet and playwright who loved to act and sing at private soirees, was better known as the defender of Lindy Chamberlain and, later, as Victoria's chief justice.Phillips, QC, defended Chamberlain at trial in Darwin when she said a dingo had taken her baby, Azaria, at Uluru in 1980. A jury convicted her, of murdering her baby but she was cleared by a royal commission.Phillips's experience in finding a laboratory prepared to help the defence in the trial led him to push for the establishment of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, a lasting legacy available to both the prosecution and defence.John Harber Phillips, who has died in Melbourne at 75 of complications after being in remission from cancer, was born in that city to Muriel and Anthony Phillips. He was educated at the Presentation Convent in Murrumbeena and De La Salle College, Malvern, before taking an honours degree in law at Melbourne University.Along the way he worked as a newspaper boy, gardener, cleaner, cook and grape picker. After completing his law articles he became a solicitor in 1958. In his first case he defended a waterside worker charged with stealing shoes. The man had run from the shop wearing two left shoes, but was caught €“ and convicted.Phillips went on to develop a reputation as a barrister with a devastating cross-examining technique. Contemporaries attested that his engaging smile so disarmed witnesses that they did not realise they were filleted.A sense of humour lurked just below his courtly, courteous manner. Despite his 1950 Silver Dawn Rolls-Royce, Phillips never lost sight of his beginnings. This was reflected in his initiative as chief justice in developing a model for a pro bono secondment scheme. Earlier in his career he had worked pro bono in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory.He married Helen Rogers in 1962, led the defence in a number of prominent criminal cases and took silk in 1975. Before heading the Supreme Court for 12 years, in 1983 Phillips was appointed Victoria's (and Australia's) first director of public prosecutions; between 1984 and 1990 he served as a justice of the Supreme Court; and in 1990 he began a 12-month stint as the transformative chairman of the National Crime Authority, when he also held a commission as a Federal Court judge.As Victoria's chief justice from 1991 he oversaw a significant expansion and reorganisation of the state's peak court, including making its workings more open to the public. The Court of Appeal was created, computer technology was introduced in the courtroom and administration, and women were appointed judges of the court for the first time. He had long supported women in the profession, and he saw the historic first sitting of an all-female full court just before he retired.The arts played an important part in his life. Besides legal judgments, he wrote extensively on the law, and other books, plays, and poetry. He loved music and opera. Legend has it that he practised his scales and singing in his chambers; he gave a solo performance at a gathering of the Council of Chief Justices of Australia and New Zealand; its formation was another of his trailblazing moves as chief justice.His love of Italian arias was especially appreciated by women lawyers €“ he was patron of Victorian Women Lawyers €“ whom he serenaded, accompanying himself on piano, at their annual Christmas gatherings.He was patron of Court Network, a support body for victims of crime and their families. Another initiative was to form "sistership" relations with equivalent courts in Japan and France.The year after Phillips retired from the Supreme Court he took on the role of professor and provost of the Sir Zelman Cowen Centre at Victoria University; he had been visiting professor of advocacy at Monash University in 1988-89. And he was deeply involved with the Greek and Italian communities.His legal books, Advocacy with Honour and The Trial of Ned Kelly, as well as the jointly written Forensic Science and The Expert Witness, are well read. He wrote four plays, By A Simple Majority €“ The Trial of Socrates, Conference with Counsel, The Cab Rank Rule , and Starry Night With Cypresses: the Last Hours of Vincent Van Gogh, and a drama, An Irish Tragedy. The poet in him was revealed in Wounds, Lament for an Advocate and the biography of the Australian poet John Shaw Neilson.John Phillips is survived by Helen, son Nicholas and his partner, Janet, daughter Andrea and her husband, Mark, son Tim and his wife, Sophie, and seven grandchildren.
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald
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