Born at the Right Time Read online

  In my view, the Dean of a faculty mainly undertakes bureaucratic work to keep the Faculty’s teaching, assessing and research running smoothly. Of course, much of this work is routine in nature. However, one area in which I believe the Dean can and does make a difference is in the hiring of academic staff.

  To the best of my memory, I was the first Dean of Law at Sydney who was married to a member of the academic staff. Of course, we had been husband and wife and co-parents for a long time, and our marriage was hardly a talking point. However, Mary did feel rather constrained with me being the Dean. She had to keep virtually silent during Faculty meetings, wary that anything she said might be misconstrued as me putting words into her mouth. Anyone who knows her would readily appreciate that it would not be possible for me, or for anyone else for that matter, to act as a type of ventriloquist with respect to Mary.

  For a number of years, the University of Sydney Law Faculty had run a winter school on Chinese law, which was taught at the East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai. In late 2003, I travelled to Beijing and Shanghai to visit this university, to examine the facilities and to meet with the teachers in the program.

  I believe that the senior members of the prestigious East China University of Political Science and Law were a little taken aback by my blindness. Even at this present time I am not aware of a blind person being Dean of a university Faculty in China. I kept thinking that they were watching every move I made. At one meal it appeared to me that two young women were stationed near my chair to assist me with anything I might need.

  In 2004, our dear friend Chau Murray gave Mary and me a little book titled The Miracle of Mindfulness, by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. After reading this small volume, I became more interested in Buddhism generally, and especially in Nhat Hanh’s engaged Buddhism, which he developed during the Vietnam War.

  Thich taught me the importance of breathing. According to him, breath is the bridge between the mind and the body. Consequently Buddhist philosophy has been added to my Christian tradition and it has strengthened my daily meditation. I read Thich Nhat Hanh’s books pretty constantly, and he is in my prayers for he is now rather elderly and very ill. During difficult moments in my Deanship, calm breathing and meditation quietened my spirit.

  In 2005, I travelled to the European congress of the International Society for Labour and Social Security Law, which was held in Bologna, Italy. I wasn’t 100 per cent well and Mary didn’t have time to travel with me, so she asked our daughter, Kate, who was then thirteen, to go with me.

  Kate’s maturity really shone through. She guided me with great aplomb on and off planes and trains, and in and out of buildings. Like Mary, Kate has a real gift for finding good, clean restaurants. On occasion as we passed a restaurant, Kate would say, ‘No Dad, this one doesn’t look right.’ The previous year, in 2004, Kate commenced her high-school years, which culminated in her completion of the International Baccalaureate at the end of 2009. Kate’s marks were very high, and so at the beginning of 2010 she enrolled at the University of Sydney to read for combined Arts and Law degrees.

  In 2005, I was approached by the Young Lawyers of New South Wales asking if I would give my name to a labour law speaking competition. The students said they wished for the winner of the competition to be awarded the McCallum Medal. I could hardly believe this, but the Young Lawyers were very serious and enthusiastic. I’ve always been close to my students, and in and out of the classroom I try to listen deeply to their words and to comprehend their various viewpoints. This is extremely important given the political and economic terrain of our labour laws. On the evening of Friday, 14 October 2005 I went to the first McCallum Medal Competition, which has been held on an annual basis ever since.

  This year—2005—was also the year when I, and the rest of Australia, was faced with a radical plan by the Howard Federal government to change the way workers were treated, in a proposed Bill that became known as Work Choices. This Bill struck at the precepts of fairness and collectivity that I had grown up with, such as arbitration, Higgins’ Harvester Decision, notions of equality and sharing gains in productivity across the nation. The Australian people were correct to be worried about it.

  In November 2005, the National Press Club in Canberra wished to organise a debate on Work Choices between the federal government and the federal opposition. The government did not wish to provide a spokesperson at this venue, and the Press Club didn’t simply want to give the opposition a platform to make partisan comments. So, I was asked whether I would be happy to speak at a National Press Club lunch on 16 November. This was a truly extraordinary happening, and of course I said yes.

  Mary and I went to Canberra. National Press Club luncheons are televised live, so there I was with a live audience answering questions from the press. It was an unforgettable forty-five minutes. After I was introduced, I could hear the silence all around me and I knew it was time to speak. As I spoke I could smell our lunch, which was being cleared off the tables. At the end I was a little shaky, but also rather hyped up by my toing and froing with the journalists.

  While I was wrestling with Work Choices, Gerard completed year twelve at the close of 2005 and received good marks. In 2006 he entered the University of Sydney, where he commenced his studies for a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences degree. But after close to two years, Gerard realised that university was not for him. He left to begin his career in elite sport, surfing and personal training. He also moved to the Northern Beaches to be closer to his beloved surf.

  I must confess that it took me several years to truly comprehend his passion for physical activity and especially for surfing. While I have felt the waves in the shallows, of course I am not able to visualise their depth and power. It wasn’t really until I read Tim Winton’s novel Breath that I began to understand the magic of surfing and the splendour of the waves. I found Tim Winton’s descriptions of the surf and of surfing to be very evocative, and they helped me better understand Gerard. I think that my blindness, coupled with my sedentary career, has meant that I have lived much of my life more inside my head than inside my body.

  A personal highlight for me during my Deanship was being designated as an Officer in the Order of Australia, which is known as ‘AO’ for short. I am especially humbled by its citation, which reads: ‘For services to tertiary education, for industrial relations advice to governments, for assistance to visually impaired persons and for social justice.’

  The AO was bestowed upon me at a ceremony in Government House on 9 May 2007 by Professor Marie Bashir, then Governor of New South Wales. I was only able to obtain three tickets, so my guests were darling Mary, our eldest son, Gerard, and my surrogate mum, Lois.

  Former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam occasionally came to Law School functions. At one late afternoon seminar not long after my AO, I heard Gough say in his booming voice, ‘Officer, Officer.’

  ‘Do you mean me, former Prime Minister?’ I asked. Gough answered that because his government had established the Order of Australia, he was entitled to call me ‘Officer’.

  For all of my career I had largely steered clear of blindness organisations, perhaps because I didn’t wish to be typecast as a blind lawyer. Rather, I liked to think of myself first and foremost as a lawyer—who happens to be blind. Now, nearly a decade after my profound emotional awakening in 1994, I decided to get involved.

  Since the early 1980s, a series of print-handicapped radio stations have operated in Australian capital cities. The role of these radio stations is to read out over the air newspapers and magazines for blind and other print-handicapped readers. They are mainly staffed by volunteers. Before I was able to retrieve newspapers from the internet, I listened to print-handicapped radio each morning to get the latest news from the print media.

  In mid-2003 when I was visiting Sydney’s Radio 2RPH, our local print-handicapped radio station, it was suggested to me that I should consider chairing its Board of directors. I was elected as Ch
airperson that September. Several years later, Mary joined the 2RPH Board.

  My friend Graeme Innes has been blind since birth, and is a lawyer and a strong campaigner for the rights of persons with disabilities. Graeme had been a leading force in bringing together several state-based blind organisations to create Vision Australia, of which he was Chairperson of the Board of Directors, which has become Australia’s largest blind-welfare organisation.

  In late 2005, Graeme was made Disability Discrimination Commissioner and became part of Australia’s Human Rights Commission. Due to his need to be independent from other disability organisations, Graeme was required to relinquish his Chairperson’s role with Vision Australia, and he called to ask me if I would take up his New South Wales slot on the Vision Australia Board. I said that my duties as Dean of Law kept me busy enough and I suggested that he look for another person. After speaking with Mary, however, I agreed to his request. So, at the beginning of 2006 I took up my position on the Board under a new Chairperson. In December 2006 I became one of the two Deputy-Chairpersons of the Board.

  During my time, Vision Australia expanded its reach by bringing into its fold other blind organisations. In particular, Seeing Eye Dogs Australia became part of Vision Australia, which means that we now train our own dogs to guide we blind on our daily travels. I have thought from time to time about getting a seeing-eye dog, but so far I am content to use my white cane and mobile phone apps to find my way around.

  The blindness scene today is very different from when I was growing up. When I was at blind residential schools, there were a number of us children who had been born premature and who suffered from retrolental fibroplasia, but these days, RLF is a rare condition, and overall there are now far fewer blind children than there were in my childhood. Of course there are a small number of children who are born blind. There are also accidents and eye diseases that cause blindness. However, loss of vision and blindness are diseases of the aging. In other words, as we age, our vision and our hearing often diminish. This is why most of Vision Australia’s clients are seniors who have low vision or who have lost their sight. Vision Australia supports these clients to modify their homes and to continue with their lives.

  As a person who is very used to being blind, I am sure that it is rather frightening to lose sight in one’s senior years. After all, I am now a senior and I have noticed a reduction in my hearing, but if I do need help I hope that hearing aids will do the trick.

  A year before the end of my five-year term as Dean, I wrote to the Vice-Chancellor saying that I did not wish to be considered for a second term. While being Dean of such a world-acclaimed law school had been a real honour, I found my time at the helm to be quite stressful. My term had coincided with many significant changes and achievements—none more notable than supervising the Faculty’s move from its traditional home in Sydney’s CBD to the new Law School on the university campus—and I felt that a second term would not be able to compete with that.

  There was still so much to do before my time as Dean would end. In late 2006, I received an offer from Harvard Law School. Would the University of Sydney Law School be interested in conducting an exchange program? I said that this was a superb idea. After some discussion, the Faculty agreed that it would be a real coup, for no other Australian law school had such a prestigious student exchange.

  In February 2007, Mary and I visited the Harvard Law School. We met with Dean Elena Kagan and we both signed the exchange agreement. Previously, Dean Kagan had worked in the Clinton White House. Later, in the Obama Administration, she became Solicitor-General, and in 2010 she took office as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

  The following month, a team from the University of Sydney won what could be described as the Olympics for law students—the Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition. A moot is a mock court hearing, where a hypothetical case is argued by students. The moots are presided over by more senior students, staff members, practising solicitors and barristers, and even by judges.

  The University of Sydney Law School has long participated in this international competition. Each year, teams of mooters from Australia’s law schools moot against one another in Canberra in the field of international law, with the winning and the runner-up teams sent to Washington to compete in the international section of the Jessup competition. Over the years, Australian law schools, including the University of Sydney Law School, have done rather well and have won the Jessup trophy on a number of occasions. When Mary was a student at the University of Melbourne Law School, she was in the team that won in Canberra in 1982 and went to Washington; but they did not win the international competition. In March 2007, when our University of Sydney team won the international competition, the entire Faculty celebrated this super achievement.

  Friday, 28 September 2007 marked the last official day of my Deanship. The walls of the new law building were up and it was almost at lock-up stage. There had been a Faculty farewell, and our dear friend Margaret Beazley, who was then a Justice of Appeal and is now Governor of New South Wales, gave a truly memorable speech. On that last Friday, I cleaned up the Dean’s office. At about 4.30 p.m., Mary came to collect me. I gave Sally Spence, my secretary, a hug and thanked her for her help and friendship and then we were off home.

  I jumped into the bath, felt secure in the warm water and thought to myself, ‘Well, it’s over and I think I have done a reasonable job.’ I was physically and mentally exhausted after five turbulent years. Throughout my life, lack of vision has meant that it takes me longer to complete so many tasks, whether they be in the home or at the office. The day-to-day pressures were significant and I am pretty sure that the job aged me just a little. I don’t think my colleagues realised the toll the Deanship had taken on my body and mind.

  Given my state of exhaustion, I decided to retire from the University of Sydney at the end of my Deanship on 30 September 2007.This meant giving up my tenured professorship, but it was agreed that I would take a three-year post-retirement contract, which meant that I would remain a full-time professor until the close of 2010.

  A few weeks later I was in Canada, receiving the Queen’s University Alumni Award. This was where I had studied postgraduate labour law when I was in my mid-twenties, and it was extraordinary to be back among friends and to receive this great honour.

  Mary continued her academic work, and in 2007 she applied for promotion to a full professorship. It is usual for Deans to sit on professorial promotions committees, but in this instance I could not do so, and I asked a senior colleague to head the committee. Mary was able to let her dad know, just before his passing, that as of 1 January 2008 she would be Professor of Public Law, University of Sydney.

  Mary’s father, Professor Gerard Crock, passed away peacefully on 23 December 2007 after battling lung cancer over many months. One of many special memories was in December 2006 when the entire family—children, spouses and grandchildren—gathered in northern Victoria to celebrate Gerard and Jacqueline’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. Although it was uncomfortably hot, around forty degrees, we all had such fun.

  In so many subtle ways, Gerard had supported Mary and me as a couple, as parents and in the development of our careers. He not only successfully raised a loving family with Jacqueline, but his ophthalmological work protected and restored the sight of thousands of people.

  When our parents die, we know that they are from the previous generation. However, when a sibling passes away, it is a strong reminder of our mortality. My brother Max suffered from lung cancer for many years, and by August 2007 it was clear that his time with us was coming to an end. I remember flying down to Melbourne to be with him. By then, Max was connected to an oxygen hose, but he could still move around the house. We knew that it was likely we wouldn’t see one another again, so we had a big hug and wished each other well. Max passed away a week later.

  After a break of several months I returned to the Law School in February 2008. I continued my research int
o workplace health and safety laws, and I also taught Public Law and Administrative Law to law students, as well as workplace health and safety law in the postgraduate program. It was good to be relatively free of administrative duties and to focus upon teaching, which has always been my first academic love.

  15

  The United Nations

  Saturday, 3 May 2008 was our twenty-second wedding anniversary. I woke in our big queen-size bed alone, because Mary was in America at an immigration law conference in Miami. Of course I was delighted that Mary was engaged in interesting work, but at the same time I felt lonely and perhaps a little sorry for myself.

  I had to admit that I didn’t like being apart from her. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, not being with your loved one is like being half of a pair of scissors. I very much felt that I was half a pair on that autumn morning.

  Listening to the news on the radio, I learned that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) had finally come into force. As I chewed on my morning muesli, I had no idea how much that UN convention would impact my life over the next eight years. About six months later I would find myself standing for election onto that historic UN committee.

  Before then, Gerard Menses, then CEO of Vision Australia, asked me as a Vision Australia Board member and somewhat prominent blind person whether I would come to the World Assembly of the World Blind Union 2008. I was reluctant, for I was still feeling a little tired after my period as Dean of the Sydney University Law School. However, Gerard was persistent. He said that he would come up to Sydney from Melbourne and sit beside me flying to and from Geneva.

  On occasion, we blind people find it awkward to travel with people who are not comfortable in themselves or who are not attuned to our needs. In fact, I and Maryanne Diamond, my old friend and fellow St Paul’s School for the Blind alumna, who was about to be elected the President of the World Blind Union (WBU), have a secret test we apply to people: we say to one another, ‘Would you travel with her or him?’ Gerard is comfortable in his own skin and has always been attuned and helpful to me and to other blind people. He has never made me feel embarrassed. If I needed to find a toilet in a strange place, he would unobtrusively assist me, and if I wanted to know whether my shirt was clean or whether I had put on the right coloured tie he would quietly inform me.