ST DAVID'S CATHEDRAL
HOBART,
TASMANIA
MEMORIAL
SERVICE FOR JOHN BRUCE PIGGOTT CBE
The
Hon Justice Michael Kirby AC CMG*
Bruce Piggott was a stirrer and shaker. That
is why we always got on well together. He was
invariably ahead of his time - far ahead of most
lawyers. My second last exchange with him was
about the republic. At the age of 86, Bruce
had embraced a new cause. I tried to argue rationally
and calmly and then emotionally and noisily with him.
Impertinently, I reminded him that he was a Commander
of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
But Bruce would not be moved. He was never a
sentimentalist or a devotee of the past for the past's
sake. We honour a famous son of the law, of
Tasmania, of Australia. But beyond that we honour
a human being whose spirit was big enough to reach
out to disadvantaged people in Australia and far away.
With Audrey, Bruce's daughters and sons, grandchildren
and great grand children, with their extended family
and with all who mourn his passing, we come together
to remember a very special man.
Bruce was a person of apparent gentleness and diffidence.
But how misleading exteriors can be. Behind
that veneer lay a steely determination. He was,
like Rumpole, full of poetical quotations and operatic
allusions. Yet he was a hard-nosed lawyer who
established a leading firm of solicitors with a strong
commercial practice. In the legal profession,
he was surrounded by generally conservative colleagues
whom he charmed and led. But he was always a
man brimming over with ideas for reform of the law
and the righting of wrongs - many of those ideas
radical and challenging. Long before it became
fashionable, Bruce Piggott championed the rights of
women. His very last exchange with me was a
letter concerning the oppression of Australians on
the grounds of their sexuality. So far as that
discrimination was concerned, Bruce was agin' it.
He was a child of tomorrow, completely devoid of irrational
prejudice or cruel discrimination. What a model
for us all in a man of great years whose life had
virtually spanned a century.
Bruce Piggott, born in 1913, was a child of Hobart
in the early years of the twentieth century.
He remembered the turnip fields and the milking cows
near the centre of town.
He attended Hutchins School and the University of
Tasmania. In the period immediately after the
Second World War he helped organise the United Nations
Association, the Institute of International Affairs
and the National Theatre and Fine Arts Society of
Tasmania. His restless spirit then took him
into the organisations of the legal profession where
he rose to be President of the Law Society of Tasmania.
Not content with a single term he was summoned back
to service a decade later - a rare accolade.
In between, he was elected President of the Law Council
of Australia, the peak national body which represents
all lawyers throughout our continental country.
As a result of that service he became involved in
many international legal bodies including Lawasia
which he helped to establish. Fortunate was
Australia to have his civilised,
enlightened voice
as its representative in the International Bar Association,
in World Peace Through Law, in Lawasia and in activities
of the United Nations.
I came to know him well when he was serving as Chairman
of the Tasmanian Law Reform Commission in the 1970s
and 1980s. Bruce Piggott threw himself into
the fray.
He was always willing to respond to a new challenge
in life. He was a child of the era of Australian
nation-builders. Instead of looking on a young
judicial reformer from Sydney as an upstart, he embraced
active cooperation. Never once did I feel that
he closed his mind to new concepts of justice for
all.
We kept in close touch when he became the Chief Judge
and Chairman of the Nuclear Claims Tribunal in the
Marshall Islands just a decade ago. His career
was a dazzling outreach of a gifted lawyer with a
fine mind not satisfied with law alone but committed
to social justice and to the vision of the United
Nations - peace and security built on human rights
and economic justice for all. My admiration
for Bruce Piggott stemmed especially from his absolute
refusal to give up a just cause simply because others
thought it completely hopeless or naively unattainable.
To Bruce that was simply part of the challenge.
There are many present who would speak of Bruce as
the man, the family head, the professional lawyer,
the colleague, the neighbour, the close friend.
Each of us who knew him remembers his gentle whimsical
voice. But when, in the future, images of Bruce
come flashing into my mind, they will not be those
of Bruce the judge, the law reformer, the professional
representative or the practising solicitor.
Instead, it will be:
-
Of
Bruce and Audrey together in their lovely home
in this most beautiful Australian city, loving
companions, proud of the children, grand children
and great grand children and lovingly supported
by each other to the very end.
-
Of
Bruce escorting my mother and me through the Royal
Botanical Gardens, pointing to this plant or that
flower and describing where they came from and
how they could be struck from the smallest cutting
illicitly and probably illegally procured by my
mother, Bruce turning a prudently blind eye.
-
Of Bruce at a meeting
of hard-nosed lawyers launching with a quizzical
smile into a highly pertinent quotation from Shakespeare
or Wordsworth or from the great Australian poet,
Kath Walker, Oogeroo of the Nunuccal. With
Bruce this was no affectation. It was the
beauty of the English language turned to good
and telling account.
-
Or
of Bruce the internationalist, puzzled by the
occasional parochialism of his country and of
his profession, reaching out with a love of humanity
that truly circled the earth.
It is a great sadness that he suffered so much at
the end. But it is a blessing that he died at
home, with his family, after a minister of religion
prayed with him for peace. Two years ago I was
with my mother at such a time. I told her (as
Bruce Piggott could surely be told) that the good
fight had been fought valiantly and that it was time
to let go. After such a giving life, Bruce now,
at last, is at rest.
One of his favourite poems was the Song of Hope
written by the Aboriginal Australian Oogeroo:
"Look
up, my people,
The
dawn is breaking,
The
world is waking
To
a new bright day,
When
none defame us,
No
restriction tame us,
Nor
colour shame us,
Nor
sneer dismay.
See
plain the promise,
Dark
freedom-lover!
Night's
nearly over,
And
though long the climb,
New
rights will greet us,
New
mateship meet us,
And
joy complete us
In
our new Dream Time.
To
our fathers' fathers
The
pain, the sorrow;
To
our children's children
The
glad tomorrow."
As a Justice of the High Court of Australia, as a
lawyer, as a fellow citizen and as a friend, I honour
Bruce's memory. And I honour the family and
friends whose lives he brightened and who will never
forget him.
