Philip Selth - obituary

Richard Ackland reflects, far too briefly, on the life of Philip Selth ... Former executive director of the NSW Bar Association ... Networker extraordinaire ... Historian, administrator and consumer of Japanese food ... An unexpected friendship  

Executive Director Selth at the bar table (snap Mark Tedeschi QC)

Philip Selth OAM has died. He had pancreatic cancer, the same cancer that killed his father. 

In 2016 Selth retired as the executive director of the NSW Bar Association, a trying job that for 19-years required him to hold the hand of the bar council and to work with no natural light in the association's below-stairs administrative HQ in Phillip Street. 

He came to the job from the ANU, where he had been pro-vice chancellor in charge of planning and administration. 

He'd been administering things all his working career - in the Queensland and Northern Territory public service, at a senior level in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, the New Zealand Ombudsman's Office and the Commonwealth's AG's department. 

It all began with a graduate clerkship at the department of Excise and Customs, at a time when the minister was Senator Lionel Murphy - a man with a keen interest in the quality of pornographic films being imported onto our unsullied shores.  

Someone told me at the time he arrived at the bar association that Philip Selth might have been an ASIO agent. Who knows - although it's unlikely given his lefty world-view and his easily riled reaction to Tony Abbott, Trump and assorted law and order freaks. 

Our relationship at first was stand-offish. After all, here was a Nosy Parker from the fourth estate writing impudent things about the most saintly profession on earth. It soon became apparent that he wasn't entirely in disagreement with a lot of the barbs, jabs and exposés published by Justinian. 

Occasionally, by email he would suggest a correction or amendment to a story. Then the emails morphed into dates, usually at Japanese restaurants in town. We started running into each other at conferences and jamborees and before long I was getting his recommendations about what books to buy.

It dawned that here was a widely-read humanitarian. To top it all, he was born in Tasmania. 

In unexpected corners of the continent, you could meet people who knew and had worked with Selth - a massive underground network of contacts and aficionados. He was never engaged in one thing at a time - there was always something else going on, whereby he gave the impression of someone who was both constrained and bursting. 

On his retirement he fell onto Justinian's Couch for a searing interview where he revealed that the work of which he was most proud as executive director was the introduction of BarCare and the development of the legal profession uniform barristers' rules. 

There was much else. His consuming interest was history, lawyers and war. For the Australian Dictionary of Biography he crafted biographies on Eric Miller QC, Kevin Murray QC (a bullnecked barrister and soldier) and explorer and gold miner Joseph Leahy. 

Papua New Guinea was a particular fascination, luring him into researching the life and times of former patrol officer Lieutenant John Joseph (Mangrove) Murphy, court-martialled on a charge of giving secrets to the Japanese while in captivity. He was acquitted after some powerful advocacy by his cousin, Eric Miller. 

As Selth's illness progressed he was still working on books about PNG's World War 11 coast-watchers, Japanese war crimes on Ambon, plus sorting out Ian Barker QC's papers and writing his story. 

Over 19 years he was witness to enormous changes at the bar, with the size and geographic dispersion diminishing collegiality and depriving young barristers to more frequently be on their feet in court. 

Managing assemblies of barristers must have been in his blood, for after his two decades in Phillip Street he went on run the Australian Bar Association. He also had his paw somewhere in the intestacies of the Law Council as an alternate bar association director. 

When asked why, if barristers were so independent, they needed an association at all - he answered: "Because administrative and political skills are not mandatorily attached to practising certificates." 

There are members who have a stinging recollection of his "rules is rules" approach. At the same time Arthur Moses, former president of both the NSW bar and the Law Council said that after Selth retired he "benefited from his advice on critical issues that I had to confront".  

"Philip had a big heart and was very loyal and protective of his staff who at times were subject to unfair attacks for undertaking their roles , especially in the investigation of professional conduct complaints. I will miss his friendship. 

He was a giant among administrators of the legal profession in Australia." 

Does any of this mean we should forgive him his taste in films - a favourite being Cat Ballou - and in music - The Seekers' The Carnival is Over? 

He leaves his wife Frances, who has had a long-term illness, and his son Alexander.