From a life in law

Born in 1938, Michael Kirby soon concluded that his place of birth, Concord, was particularly blessed. In the Anglican church he was taken to by his father, the priest would pray 'Oh God, who art the author of peace and lover of Concord…'

Griffith University law professor A.J. Brown's book is rich in anecdotes and photographs. These and Kirby's letters and speeches are a treasure trove, indicative of an unusually meticulous man well aware of his destiny. Known never to be without a camera, Geoffrey Robertson once reprimanded him for behaving like a tourist.

One delightful - and revealing - photograph shows Kirby at 13 wearing a cope and blessing his dog Moppy. Two years earlier - at 11, mind you - this very serious boy declared he would be either a bishop or a judge. He later considered a political career, but realising he had left his run too late, conceded that he looked on politics 'as a monk looks on sex - with nostalgia'.

A man of principle, Tony Abbott said Kirby might have been the 'only really straight politician.'

I was once asked to introduce Kirby to an audience of eminences at Sydney University's women's college. I began with the old adage that a man who is not a socialist before he is 30 has no heart; and a man who is still a socialist after that age has no brain. (I was sure Kirby would enjoy that knowing the original version by François Guizot was about republicans, not socialists).

The point I made was that Michael Kirby cannot be categorised – he is unique, or as lawyers say, sui generis.

High Court judges are sometimes hard to categorise, none more so than Kirby. A stylish man with a strong respect for tradition, he must have loathed the ugly robes adopted in the Eighties by the activist Mason court. Adrian Deamer said they make the judges look like American funeral directors.

Kirby's often dissenting opinions, thorough, well-documented and never obtuse, demonstrate independence, not radicalism.

Take WorkChoices. A centralist would have delighted in giving the widest interpretation to the corporations power, of which Kirby had long been a notable proponent. But, alone save for Ian Callinan, he declared WorkChoices invalid. With elegance and, some would protest, Jesuitical ingenuity, he did so without abandoning his long-declared love for the corporations power.

Probably the best example of the futility of trying to categorise Kirby is his strong attachment to the constitutional monarchy. He would rightly say that there is nothing inconsistent with being a progressive and a monarchist - after all, so were the greatest leaders of the Australian Labor Party.

His loyalty to the throne is unusual in the elite circles in which he moves. Kinder souls treat this as an eccentricity. Tony Fitzgerald declared Kirby's appointment to the Federal Court long overdue, explaining that all minority groups should be represented there, 'even monarchists'.

While progressive, Kirby is a great respecter of tradition. He was one of the founders of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, which grew out of a Liberal party group convened by Peter King and was broadened by the inclusion of men like Kirby and Doug Sutherland.

Kirby and Lloyd Waddy worked closely together on building ACM into the formidable force it was to be against the Keating-Turnbull juggernaut. Kirby's great contribution, the ACM charter, remains a rallying call for Australian monarchists.

Brown describes Kirby's public stance against the republican campaign as 'a dangerous double game'. This became clear when a vacancy arose in High Court in 1995. Kirby was an obvious choice, but for his opposition to a republic.

Michael Lavarch and Gareth Evans argued that appointing Kirby would have the advantage of taking the most credible and rational monarchist out of the debate, a point which that passionate republican Paul Keating accepted. While it did not stop the referendum landslide against a republic, the appointment enriched the High Court.

If he then no longer publicly espoused constitutional monarchism, Kirby soon elected to take his initially controversial role as the nation's leading gay eminence.

There is little shock value in 'coming out' these days. Most acquaintances probably know it, although many would prefer not to acknowledge it. And few examples create much interest, with two exceptions. First, the private lives of the glamorous and youthful are always, if not of legitimate public interest, interesting to the public. The second exception are those prominent in any campaign, which by any definition Kirby certainly is.

Now that equality and non-discrimination have been achieved, his current campaign is to capture the intrinsically heterosexual institution of marriage. Just as Kirby would most definitely not be one of those who support same-sex marriage simply to undermine the institution, he would understand that few serious opponents can be simplistically dismissed as merely homophobic.

The book brings out the fact that Kirby is a prolific communicator, which has raised many a judicial eyebrow. The late Roddy Meagher - another remarkable judge - tells the story, probably apocryphal, that Kirby was once telephoned from Africa and invited to a conference to speak on the subject of breastfeeding. His Honour duly went to Africa and delivered an excellent paper to an audience which seemed increasingly surprised, indeed confused. It subsequently transpired that Kirby had been invited to deliver a paper not on breastfeeding but on press freedom; the differences in accent and the vagaries of long-distance telephone communications had resulted in this slight error.

Kirby is a principled man. He was no doubt greatly distressed by the notorious allegations made against him in Parliament by Senator Heffernan. When these proved unfounded, Kirby's reaction in so many ways summed up the man. Instead of hostility, or the pleasure of glacial judicial silence, he offered the Senator the hand of friendship.

Principled, thoughtful, determined, opinionated and a believer in his own destiny - this book captures all sides of a remarkable man; it is a truly excellent study