Gareth Evans, above,on another occa ion,speal
His father might have ended his days as a countrypublican in the colonies but he had begun them as aschoolboy at Charterhouse, and his father's brother,Sir George Hamilton Evatt, became Surgeon-Generalin the British Army. The Evatts, in fact, wereAnglo-Irish Protestant gentlemen given to producingsoldiers for the crown and parsons for the establishedchurch. Dr Evatt's mother was also of Irish-AngloAustralian Protestant stock and, by all accounts, aformidable lady who demanded much of her sons andgave them a solid grounding in evangelical Anglicanism.A strong streak of puritanism was to mark Evattfor the rest of his life. In his mid-twenties he marriedthe daughter of a wealthy American.Given that background and his own intellectualbrilliance, it is not too surprising that the young Evattdid not lack confidence. This could show itself inunimportant ways: outraging the Rugby Union gentlemenby bringing Rugby League into the university,for example. (He even flirted with proper football,visiting Melbourne in 1910 with a Fort <strong>Street</strong> team toplay what was then called Victorian Rules.) It couldshow itself in more important ways, as in 1927 when,after one term in the State Parliament, he publiclydamned his leader, Jack Lang, stood successfully asan independent and was expelled from the Statebranch of the Labor Party complaining of Communistinfiltration.In a prize-winning undergraduate essay whichwas later published, Evatt argued that in Australiathe party differences were minimal: Whig liberalismhad triumphed completely and rightly. In his view,however, there was a division, and it is worth quotinghis youthful description of it: a division 'correspondingto that of minds conservative by nature andminds progressive by nature'. He continued:In all domains of life and art we find one classdesiring to press forward, to experiment, to find inany change a bettering of present conditions, and asecond which clings with veneration to whatever istraditional and ancient, and which distrusts thedangerous and unnecessary proposals of what appearto it a shallow empiricism.There is not much doubt about the side of thedivide on which h e saw himself, but it remains thathe supported conscription in 1916 and, in his essay,he questioned the Labor pledge and Labor caucus solidarityas inimical to true liberalism. Nor was h emuch taken with the notion of employm entpreference for trade unionists.ITIS ALSO TYPI AL OF EvATT that, apparently not fullyextended by the High Court's demands, he turned tohistory in the 1930s with two pioneering books-onedefending Governor Bligh, till then generally seen asa tyrant properly deposed, and the other a defensivebiography of W.A. Holman, generally seen in the Labormovement as a 'rat'. That other great rat in Laborlore, Hughes, was also admired publicly and privatelyby Evatt.Evatt had a brilliant legal career by any standards.From the University of Sydney, he graduatedwith a BA (triple first), obtained an MA (first) and tooka doctorate in laws (which later became hispath-breaking study of the reserve powers,The King and his Dominion Govemors). In1916 he became Secretary and Associate tothe Chief Justice of NSW, Sir William Cullen.He went to the Bar in 1924 and took silkfive years later. In 1930, at the age of 36-theyoungest-ever appointee, and likely to remainso-he was placed on the High Court by theScullin Government. There he served for thenext decade, before succumbing at the age of46 to the siren song of politics- leaving theCourt younger than the age nearly every otherJustice has arrived.As Commonwealth Attorney-Generalafter 1941 he went back frequently to theHigh Court as an advocate-even arguing forthe Government before the Privy Council inthe Bank Nationalisation Case at the sametime as being President of the UN GeneralAssembly in 1948.On the High Court bench, one of Evatt'smost distinctive qualities as a Judge was hisconcern with social consequences and civilliberties; in his own words, h e 'alwayssearched for the right with a lamp lit by theflame of humanity'. His models were Holmesand Cardozo in the United States and LordWright in Britain.The best known example of this wasprobably his dissenting judgment in Chesterv Waverley Corporation-the 'nervousshock' negligence case in which he eloquentlytook the part of the mother whose childhad been drowned in a Council trench, andin which his statement of the law came soonto prevail. In constitutional cases he camedown on the side of the States, more oftenthan the Commonwealth Labor politicianswho appointed him would have liked, althoughmore for reasons of legislative efficacyrather than any conceptual'States' rights'perspective.That he saw legislation as a medium forsocial reform, and had been a member of areformist State Government when the FederalBruce/Page Government was conservative, mayalso have coloured his views.Certainly no Commonwealth power enthusiastcould quarrel with his interpretation of the externalaffairs power in the Burgess case-which eventuallybecame orthodoxy in the The Tasmanian Dam casein the 1980s.Probably theclosest he cmneto a friendship inthe 1ninistry waswith Ja ck Beasley:it is somehowtypical of Evattthat he shouldcultivate Beasley,who rejoiced inthe nicknmne of'Stabber Jack 'and had beenone of the Langgroup whichbroughtdown theScullin LaborGovernment in1931-another'rat'.VOLUME 5 NUMBER 8 • EUREKA STREET 27
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