This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
Don’t look now, but a gang of muscle-jawed lawyers long ago left the law, took to politics and has run the country for the past ten years.
In my youth, said his father, I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw
Has lasted the rest of my life.
– Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.
Don’t look now, but a gang of muscle-jawed lawyers long ago left the law, took to politics and has run the country for the past ten years.
Prime Minister John Howard, a former Sydney solicitor, is the long-standing leader of this gang-in-government. The only good news is that, as a result of the PM’s recent revamping and re-shuffling of his ministry, the number of lawyer/ministers is dropping. Before the 2004 election the 30-member ministry contained 19 lawyers. After the election there were 15. Now there are 13. This the result of the ministerial departures of Senator Robert Hill, a barrister and solicitor, and Senator Ian Macdonald, a solicitor.
Lawyers in the PM’s new line-up may no longer argue youthful legal points with their spouses, but they may still bring into the executive government of Australia what lateral philosopher Edward De Bono calls “adversary lawyer-style of thinking”.
Several of Mr Howard’s legal team were solicitors or barristers before entering politics. Few have recent legal experience, some with law degrees never practised but all will tend to employ in government a long-lasting legal mind-set acquired in their youth, and in some cases, honed in practice. Combine that with a professional politician’s mind-set, and there is reason for concern.
The PM and I once agreed to disagree on whether someone with a law degree could be called a lawyer. At a picnic on Norfolk Island, I mentioned to him that, as an occasional columnist, I had kept the nation informed on how his ministries overflowed with lawyers.
"I’ve seen your articles," he replied. "But Tony Abbott isn’t a lawyer."
"Tony Abbott was in my class at law school," interrupted a local solicitor-politician, before a friendly three-way discussion ensued on law degrees and lawyers in politics.
Meanwhile I’m still counting legal heads. Mr Howard’s inner ministry, where the important decisions are made, is swamped with lawyers- and the re-shuffle made no difference. At one time a frightening 14 of the blighters held briefs in the 17-member cabinet. Including the PM himself, ten lawyers still rule.
With Senator Hill gone , the PM’s current legal colleagues in cabinet are barrister Peter Costello, former New York attorney Helen Coonan, Rhodes Scholar and lawyer Tony Abbott, barristers and solicitors Kevin Andrews and Peter McGauran, solicitors Phillip Ruddock, Nick Minchin, Amanda Vanstone and newcomer to the inner circle, Julie Bishop.
Interestingly, two of cabinet’s non lawyers are Deputy PM and Trade Minister Mark Vaille, a former NSW stock, station and real estate agent and auctioneer, and Minister for Environment and Heritage Ian Campbell, a former commercial and industrial property consultant.
Otherwise the lawyers making up the full ministry are barristers and solicitors Eric Abetz and Chris Ellison and solicitor Joe Hockey.
Of 12 parliamentary secretaries, often seen as ministers-in-training, four are lawyers: Christopher Pyne, Senator Sandy Macdonald, Yale University graduate and Fulbright Scholar Greg Hunt and the newest legal face: Rhodes Scholar Malcolm Turnbull.
Kim Beasley’s opposition front bench may have some quality legal members, but with ten out of 30, they are clearly outnumbered, but not necessarily outgunned, by the Howard gang. The Labor lawyers are Simon Crean, Robert McClelland, Stephen Smith, Kelvin Thomson, Penny Wong, Lindsay Tanner, Mark Bishop, Julia Gillard, Nicola Roxon and Joe Ludwig. Only two of Labor’s ten parliamentary secretaries are lawyers: Kirsten Livermore and Peter Garrett.
Lawyers have always been in politics: 40 in the English parliament of 1422, 60 in the House of Commons in 1593, 75 in the Long Parliament of 1640 and so on. In the first Commonwealth Parliament in 1901, an extraordinary 27 per cent of the our nation’s new pollies were lawyers, and ever since lawyers have been Parliament’s largest professional sub-group. In the current Parliament one in five members of the House of Representatives is a lawyer, while one in four of our Senators is a lawyer.
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” was Shakespeare’s guide to good government – later replaced by the more civilised approach of philosopher Edmund Burke: “For my part, I wish the country to be governed by law, not by lawyers.” But it may be too late for either civic aspiration to be taken seriously in federal politics.
Certainly Australia’s major political parties have always considered their legally qualified members to be suitable election candidates, consequently lawyer politicians have frequently become our political leaders. When Mr. Howard became our 25th Prime Minister, he was also the 11th lawyer to hold that office. Several opposition leaders, who never reached the Lodge, were also lawyers.
Lawyer-Minister Joe Hockey once confirmed to Lawyer’s Weekly the overlap in legal and political skills: “The legal profession involves analysis of legislation and the understanding of policy. These are very similar things to what MPs have to deal with. The debating skills of a barrister are also very similar to the work of a parliamentarian.”
Hockey’s ministerial/legal colleague Amanda Vanstone suggested to the same journal that a sense of justice drew lawyers into politics. “Law gives you a concept of fairness and equity,” she explained. The Senator, once praised by Mr. Howard for her “guts and pluckiness”, revealed her view on the result of studying, if not also practising, law: “Fairly well developed concepts in marshalling the arguments one way or the other.”
Sounds like eminent qualifications for a Howard Government ministerial appointment.
By Tim O’Dwyer, lawyer.*
