Putting the Queen back into Queensland

Long may she reign over us ... Down with SCs ... Queens Counsel make a happy and glorious return to the Queensland Bar … Tory AG and bar hatch exciting plan to turn back the clock … Jubilee celebrations send bar boys troppo 

Ideas Man: Queensland's attorney general Jarrod Bleijie

IN a headlong grope to find a more glorious past, Queens Counsel are on the way back for Queensland barristers. 

The new attorney general, Jarrod Bleijie, 30, who is well to the right of the shop spoon, has sought the bar's response to his innovative suggestion. 

The bar council took about four seconds to embrace the old model for the silkiest of silkies, and in the process made it pretty clear that QCs should never have been done away with in the first place. 

In a circular today (June 6) to the rank and file, chief barman, Roger N. Traves, said that new appointments will have to be by letters patent and only on the recommendation of CJ Daphnis de Jersey.

The existing protocol, whereby the bar puts forward names to the CJ, is to be maintained. 

Excitingly, senior counsel can trade in their nylon gowns for real silk ones and convert to QCs. 

The whole thing is a ludicrous piece of posturing, egged on by the AG. 

Bleijie's other radical initiative since coming to office was to stamp out the Crown solicitors' preferential briefing policy for women barristers, which had been introduced by Labor AG Cameron Dick. 

Traves came up with three compelling reasons for a return to Queens Counsel: 

• The desirability of having one category of top-notch barrister; 
• Greater public recognition of the position of QCs; 
• Desirability of distinguishing QCs from special counsel and senior counsel in solicitors' law shops.

Maybe, there's the possibility that QCs can charge more than SCs. 

Of course, two categories of senior counsel would persist because not everyone would want to embrace the monarchical post nominals - a point that was made by a minority faction at a meeting of the council on June 4. 

It was also argued that the bar should avoid taking a position on what essentially is a cornstalk political gesture.

The only other bars that have retained the flourish are in the boondocks of SA, NT and NZ. 

It seems to be a bit of High Tory policy, because the NZ National Party government announced in 2009 that QCs would make a return to the Land of the Strangled Vowel. 

The Queensland bar's motion in support was hedged with some clumsily worded and puff-ball "conditions": 

MOVED: The President 

SECONDED: Vice-President

1. That the Bar Association of Queensland gives in principle support to the reintroduction of the office of Queen’s Counsel.

2. Recognising that the proposal is in its early stages and that much will depend upon its final form, that the President inform the Honourable the Attorney-General that the Bar Association would regard as critical to any firm proposal:

a. That the integrity of the existing process of appointment is maintained;

b. That the essential features of the present process (save as it may be from time-to- time altered by the Bar Association and the Chief Justice) be maintained, recognising that the ultimate act of appointment will involve some change;

c. Thus, that the existing Protocol (and the Protocol as, from time-to-time, it may by the Bar Association and the Chief Justice be determined to be) for the Appointment of Senior Counsel is recognised as an essential part of the process of appointment of Queen’s Counsel;

d. The process of consultation and recommendation remain within the control of the Bar Association and the Chief Justice;

e. There be appointed to the office of Queen’s Counsel all and only those counsel recommended for appointment as Queen’s Counsel by the Chief Justice;

f. Consistently with recognising the integrity of the existing system, all present Senior Counsel be appointed Queen’s Counsel upon request;

g. The relative seniority of Counsel is maintained; and

h. The Bar Association has a reasonable opportunity to consider any more detailed and the final proposal.