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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-11-02 Daily Xml
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Elliott Johnston AO, QC Oration

The Hon. I. PNEVMATIKOS (15:05): My question is to the Attorney-General. Will the minister inform the council about this year's Elliott Johnston AO QC Oration?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector) (15:05): I thank the honourable member for her question. I know many people who have practised law in this state have been grateful for the trailblazing work that Elliott Johnston did in this state. The Elliott Johnston Oration honours the original red silk, Elliott Johnston AO QC, who was an inaugural staff member of Flinders University and a founding partner of Johnston Withers Lawyers in this state. Flinders University has been honouring this legacy with an Elliott Johnston Oration since 1998.

On 1 September 2022, I was privileged to give the opening address at this year's Elliott Johnston Oration and to introduce the keynote speaker, Leanne Liddle, Northern Territory Australian of the Year for 2022, Director of the Aboriginal Justice Unit in the Northern Territory and a member of the advisory commission into incarceration rates of Aboriginal peoples in South Australia.

Before I speak about Leanne Liddle and her powerful speech Red Silk, Black Voices, I would like to say something about Elliott Johnston and the important role he played in South Australia. Elliott and Elizabeth Johnston were lifelong activists and social reformers. After Elliott Johnston's controversial rejection for appointment as Queen's Counsel, his appointment in 1970 by the then Dunstan government was at the time talked about as the highest public office attained by someone who was known to be a member of the Communist Party. The long shadow of the red scare at the time meant that there was much consternation about Elliott's political status within the legal community in South Australia.

Elliott Johnston was an intellectual who studied in China, visited Soviet Russia before the fall of Stalin and, I am informed, sat a few feet from Pablo Picasso at the 1950 Peace Congress in Warsaw. Elliott Johnston was committed also to improving the rights of injured workers by pursuing compensation cases through the courts, setting new standards and winning the respect of the profession also as an outstanding criminal lawyer.

The accumulation of all his efforts and the esteem he was held in culminated in being offered in 1983 a position on the bench of the Supreme Court of South Australia. A condition of the appointment meant that Elliott Johnston had to relinquish his political party membership, which I am sure would have been difficult, given his advocacy and his views in the area.

Perhaps the role that I think Elliott Johnston's legacy has resonated most powerfully, and certainly with me, was his role as a commissioner in the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. His fierce and unwavering resolve in that position led to 339 recommendations being made. As the keynote speaker, Leanne Liddle, recounted in her speech, entitled Red Silk, Black Voices, the approximately 500 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have died since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody's final report was published in 1991 shows there is still a long way to go.

I am proud that Leanne Liddle, who delivered the keynote speech, has been appointed as part of the advisory commission tasked with identifying strategies and ways incarceration rates of Aboriginal people in South Australia can be reduced. I am pleased that Ms Liddle has taken up this position, given the outstanding work that she has done in the Northern Territory tackling some of these problems.

I want to finish by commending Flinders University for the continuing honouring of Elliott Johnston's legacy and also the keynote speaker, Leanne Liddle, for her tireless advocacy, and all of those who have contributed in this area.

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