Tom Hughes (1923-2024)
Tom Hughes was the stuff of legend and it’s not hard to see how the man who had been John Gorton’s Attorney-General from 1969–1971 and went on to become Malcolm Turnbull’s father-in-law should have been such a striking figure on the Australian political and legal scene. There’s the memory of one of the warlords of the Liberal Party, a close associate of Malcolm Fraser, saying of him, “He had a very high manner. Not high camp. Just high.”
That was there throughout this extraordinary career. Early on in 1964, that old reprobate Hal Porter found himself in an all but impossible position in the state of Tasmania suing someone for attacking one of his books in a negative review. Hal Porter was told he didn’t have a chance, there was no precedent for what he was trying to do but if there was any hope to be had in this hell of a situation he should enlist the services of the young Sydney barrister, Tom Hughes. Hal Porter said he was extraordinary, that he had the gleam and glamour of Robert Donat in the film of Rattigan’s The Winslow Boy. And on top of that – and in defiance of all the odds – he won.
Years later, having taken silk, in 1961 Tom Hughes found himself not only a Liberal member of parliament but the Attorney General in John Gorton’s government back in the all-but-forgotten days when the Coalition had a leftwing of politicians such as Don Chipp and Jim Killen who were close to the Prime Minister and shared his latitude and feeling for liberty.
Tom Hughes found himself in 1970 during the Vietnam War having his house in Bellevue Hill being invaded by young lefty students who supported resisting the draft. It was an alarming incident and with almost parodic national spirit he defended his home and hearth with a cricket bat. One of his targets brought charges but they were dropped. Later though as attorney Tom Hughes introduced reforms that strengthened the right to dissent.
His daughter Lucy Turnbull is on the record saying her father deplored the loss of Old Parliament House where Liberal and Labor politicians had to admit to a degree of comradeship because they were physically so close to one another.
Take this a step further and you may detect a precedent for Hughes’ son-in-law Malcolm Turnbull and the possibility of a politics beyond Labor and Liberal dogmas in the atittudes of his father-in-law.
It was certainly striking in 1984 when Lionel Murphy who had been the Attorney General of Whitlam – who Tom Hughes had learned to respect – was not only appointed to the High Court but found himself accused of corruption because of his famous question, “Now what about my little mate?” It was interpreted as an illicit request for a favour from a man whose loyalty should have been to the highest court in the land.
By this time Hawke and Keating were in power and there seemed to be limited sympathy for Murphy. Then Tom Hughes, former Liberal attorney, said he would appear for his Labor opposite number. There he was on the news, announcing that he had sought leave to appear before the bar of the Senate. A reporter asked how this would serve “his client’s interests.”
'Tom Hughes was a lawyer’s lawyer with a fundamental belief in justice and an instinctive belief that he could use his own dramatic and forensic aptitude to serve it.'
“I’m not thinking of my clients’ interests,” Tom Hughes snapped back, “I’m thinking of the state of justice in this country.”
They wouldn’t let him appear before the bar of the Senate – nevermind the high office – Snappy Tom (as they called him) had occupied but it became clear that the Murphy case had become a question of honour for Tom Hughes.
One of the sequels had a certain grandeur. Richard Carlton of the ABC reported it a bit like this. Lionel Murphy had met with a guilty verdict and now there was an appeal. Into the court came Sir Maurice Byers, the Solicitor General of Australia with, as Carlton said, his almost hippie length hair and behind him as his junior came – and Carlton could not resist the heraldic roll call of names – Thomas Eyre Forrest Hughes. Just in case no one was failing to get the point of the rhetoric Carlton said, “And it’s a long time since he appeared as anyone’s junior.”
Byers and Hughes told the appeals judges that the previous verdict was wrong in law and if he upheld it he would be deemed wrong in law.
It was an intensely dramatic moment though Murphy was to die not long after despite the support of Tom Hughes and other figures like sometime premier Neville Wran.
But Tom Hughes was something else. He was born in 1923 and died two days after his 101st birthday. He had a dazzling career at the bar and must have been an immensely formidable figure to encounter. His background was Catholic establishment and his brother Robert the art critic of The Art of Australia, The Shock of the New and that masterpiece about the convicts place in our history, The Fatal Shore, explained, “Very establishment but not rich.”
Tom Hughes was educated at Riverview and interrupted his education to fly as a pilot for the RAF in what he described as a modest contribution to the war though the French awarded him the Legion of Honour. His father was Lord Mayor of Sydney and pro-conscription during the First World War unlike the large section of Catholics led by that turbulent priest Archbishop Daniel Mannix of Melbourne. But the legend of Tom Hughes’ father doing aeronautic battle with the Red baron, Richthofen, is a vivid detail in the nothing if not distinguished career of his son, Tom Hughes.
He was fifteen years older than his brother Bob and it was he who came to see the budding art critic when he was accused of plagiarism in his poetry (Robert suffered from involuntary total recall) but they got on better as the years passed and they had a strong histrionic side.
When Tom Hughes in the late 80’s appeared against Warwick Fairfax who was in the process of destroying that newspaper’s history, he was merciless. He deliberately used a vocabulary which his witness would not understand. “You are a neophyte,” he thundered, and when young Warwick could only come out with some equivalent to “please explain” Tom Hughes said, “You are a novice, a virgin, a know nothing.” It must have been terrifying.
Julian Burnside S.C. tells the story of what it was like to appear against Tom Hughes – nearly three decades his junior – in a case where Burnside was appearing for Rose Porteous and Hughes was appearing for Gina Rinehart. It was one occasion where the lustrous Filipina who had married Lang Hancock succeeded in wrong footing the most highly ranked barrister in the land.
“Now Mrs. Porteous,” Tom Hughes said, “In relation to these screes.” Rose Porteous said, “No, not screes, Mr Hughes. Scree is already a plural.” It was so confident – and she was right – that Tom Hughes lost his words and stammered before he got his self-possession back, “Ah, yes, to be -er… sure. Well, er, with this scree.” And on they went.
But Tom Hughes was the man you would want if you were fighting for your life though he said to Geoffrey Robertson on one of his Hypotheticals, “It took a Melbourne jury an hour to convict one of my clients” as if he were talking about the inhabitants of Mars.
He was there during The Spycatcher trial when Malcolm Turnbull beat the Thatcher government represented by Britain’s attorney general Sir Michael Havers and he was there all those years later after his brother Robert had the accident that put him in a wheelchair because of the confusion of the wrong side of the road.
In the early days when Malcolm Turnbull was courting Lucy Hughes he left flowers which Tom Hughes thought had been left for him and remarked on what a charming young man he must be.
He fell out with the Church but returned to it. And he never wavered in his faith in John Gorton.
From the pulpit of Saint Andrews Cathedral he denounced Malcolm Fraser who was sitting in a front pew. He referred to Gorton, quoting Chaucer, as “a very perfect gentle knight” and made it clear all those years later at what he considered Fraser’s treachery effectively handing the Prime Ministership to Billy McMahon.
Early on his campaign for parliament was handled by a very young and stylistically very different John Howard but they remained friends.
Tom Hughes became more and more attached to the land and his brother Bob was funny recounting the story of his rage at a gay ram who Tom Hughes swore he would shoot, though in fact, his animals brought out the depth of his affection.
Young women who tended to him in his later decades said he would just sit and graze, though he remained active at the bar into his eighties.
Bret Walker showed him his line of argument for the appeal trial of George Pell and Tom Hughes, who must have been in his nineties, offered to appear for him.
He is remembered with affection, sometimes with awe. When Abbott toppled Turnbull, Tom Hughes said it was like putting the bull in charge of the china shop, though he later apologised.
He said Gorton was a knight but he was a bit of one himself. He was one of nature’s warriors but he observed a code of honour that burned brighter than conventional allegiances. I remember a famous lefty who made it into parliament – a true 60’s type – heard the news that Tom Hughes had turned 100 and his whole face lit up with delight.
We forget too much of our past, too soon. Malcolm Fraser, who offended against everything Tom Hughes thought true and honourable, became a more liberal, a more Whitlamite figure than anyone would have predicted. Manning Clark says in later editions of his short history how Fraser was torn between Machiavellianism and idealism. Tom Hughes is different, a lawyer’s lawyer with a fundamental belief in justice and an instinctive belief that he could use his own dramatic and forensic aptitude to serve it.
Peter Craven is a literary and culture critic.