<
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/jun/08/high-court-justice-us-style-judge-stacking-australia-culture-wars>
"High court justice Robert Beech-Jones started his speech at a Townsville
resort and casino last month with a joke.
“I was not really sure what to talk about. So I picked up the conference
brochure and discovered that I was talking about contemporary issues and the
high court, which is not a bad place to start,” he told the North Queensland
Law Association Conference.
“I also realised that I was speaking at 9am on a Saturday morning after an
organised gathering at a local bar. So I decided the best approach was to start
you off gently but maybe wake everyone up with something a bit pointier towards
the end.”
By the end of his speech, those gathered at the Ville Resort‑Casino were
certainly awake.
Beech-Jones spoke of Sir Samuel Griffith, a former Queensland premier and chief
justice, who also became the first chief justice of the high court early in the
20th century.
Griffith had been “remade and repackaged”, Beech-Jones told the crowd, and a
society which bears his name had turned him “into a warrior in the 21st century
culture wars”.
“To use postmodern language, Sir Samuel Griffith has been culturally
appropriated; specifically, appropriated for the ideological and political ends
of others,” Beech-Jones said.
On Beech-Jones went, saying the Samuel Griffith Society promoted the “ominous”
formation of student chapters on universities; that its founding was marked by
a borderline “obsession” with the Mabo native title case, including by hosting
speakers who had said “Aborigines are a pretty incompetent lot”; and implying
that while the research it promoted in relation to the constitution sounded
“entirely reasonable and fairly innocuous”, it was anything but."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
