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MARGARET SLATTERY 1922–2015
JOHN SLATTERY 1918–2014
Some public figures are known as couples. So it was with John and Margaret Slattery. He was a State Supreme Court judge and royal commissioner. She campaigned for educational justice for Australia's independent school children. Their paired energy powered a generous and fruitful relationship. They gave public service well into their 70s and 80s.
After 18 years on the bench, John retired in 1988 at 70, then the compulsory age. That night he and Margaret attended a Bicentennial State dinner for the British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. The Chief Justice, Sir Laurence Street, and the Minister for Health, Peter Collins, approached John to head a royal commission into alleged abuses at Chelmsford Private Hospital.
John conferred with Margaret. Many couples aged 70 and 65 would be longing for a quieter life. But for this couple, "yes" was their default answer. Would the appointment have an impact on Margaret's political work? No, it wouldn't. John volunteered that night.
John's Chelmsford Royal Commission revealed the ugly truth about aspects of private psychiatry in NSW. It recommended sweeping reforms. They became law.
Margaret continued her work as secretary of the Australian Parents Council, holding public meetings, listening to parent groups and leading delegations to the then prime minister, Bob Hawke, and the then Opposition leader, John Howard.
John kept saying "Yes". To accommodate his continuing judicial service the State Parliament passed what became known as "the Slattery Act": legislation extending the judicial retirement age to 75. He presided over his last public special commission of inquiry in 2003, at 84. At about the same time he monitored the conduct of an ICAC public inquiry, because ICAC's own investigation was being questioned.
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John Slattery was born on his family's dairy farm in Lambs Valley on the Hunter River, on August 4, 1918, the first of four children to John Slattery and his wife, Alice (nee Moran). The Slattery family had settled in the Hunter Valley around 1848, refugees from the Irish potato famines, and the Morans were descendants of Irish convicts who had settled there in the 1830s.
John might well have carried on the family business but his Aunt Janet, a teacher, organised a place for him at Waverley College. After he left school at the Intermediate, the Christian Brothers coached him through the leaving.
Margaret Miles was born August 14, 1922, the second of three daughters to Harry Miles, an entrepreneurial engineer and an Anglican, and his wife, Rita (nee McGlinchey), a Catholic, and grew up in Chester Hill. The Sisters of Mercy educated her up to the Intermediate. Echoing John's break, her aunts Nell and Elsie, who owned and ran a girls school called Normanhurst, in Ashfield, pleaded with her parents to allow her to matriculate. She did, but war disruptions forced her to abandon study for her arts degree.
The Miles family owned two tennis courts and Margaret played all her life. The sport honed her future political skills, teaching her to be courteous but deadly. In 1943 Margaret's elder sister, Rita, did exactly what every older sister is supposed to do. She introduced Margaret to an eligible bachelor, John Slattery.
By then John had graduated in law and was the associate to the Chief Justice, Sir Frederick Jordan. They first met at White City Tennis Courts. She won the tennis, but he won the girl and they married in 1946, the year John went to the Bar.
Their family life was a cameo of middle class 1950s and 1960s Australia: a daily battle to civilise and educate four children but sprinkled with plenty of fun. On Saturdays the parents attended Royal Randwick. On Sundays the whole family attended Mass, followed by a roast, a barbecue or a picnic.
John was appointed to the Bench in January 1970, sitting in Common Law. His appointment attracted a now quaint controversy. No Catholic had been appointed to the State Bench for years. Amazingly, the Liberal Government had received complaints about this. So in 1968 the Attorney-General, Ken McCaw, famously declared in Parliament, "The next one will be a Catholic." And so he was.
The year John retired as Chief Judge at Common Law, 1988, was also the year the State's first Catholic Chief Justice, Murray Gleeson, was appointed, but without any of the 1968 controversy.
John Slattery's judicial style was simple and effective. He applied a veritable force field of courtesy and reason to subdue the anger, greed and the various forms of barbarism and madness that bring people into courtrooms.
He never sought the mantle of the hero judge. But that did not stop him receiving admiring fan mail from jurors and the wider public, especially after his bigger trials. He was deluged in 1992 after he tried and sentenced Dr Victor Chang's murderers.
Margaret was active in establishing an intra-court family support group under the patronage of Susie Street, and later Robyn Gleeson. The group rather enjoyed its name, "the Common Law Wives".
But she had an unconventional career for a 1970s judge's wife. Encouraged in 1969 by a Jesuit priest, Father Greg Jordan, she became the national secretary of the Australian Parents Council. Fierce class, party and religious debates then raged over the issue of state aid to independent schools.
Margaret's APC stood for one core policy idea: that all non-government school parents had a right to receive a percentage of per-student government expenditure in state schools, when choosing where to educate their children. Her parents' differing religions helped her mould a strictly non-denominational APC to transcend sectarian fighting for funds.
In the Whitlam era, she persuaded a wavering Catholic hierarchy not to accept purely needs-based funds for non-government schools. Little wonder that when Gough Whitlam greeted John, his old friend from the Bar, with a twinkle he would often ask after Margaret: "How is that most formidable woman?"
She had uncommon courage. This was no more evident than when she took the APC's case to the public. With rudimentary media training she appeared in 1971 on the ABC's Monday Conference. She didn't flinch when one hostile audience member asked her whether she would back his right to send his son to a Communist school. Her answer turned the debate. "Of course," she replied, "whilst the Communist Party is legal in this country I will defend your child's right to Government education funding". And with a Thatcher-like touch, she added, "And sir, you are most welcome to join the Australian Parents Council."
Margaret Slattery profoundly believed that by adhering to principle the APC could effect major funding changes. It did. In 1964 the non-government sector received a tiny sliver of the Federal Government's schooling budget. By 2015 Federal, State and Territory Governments accounted for 57 per cent of all funds to the non-government school sector.
The Slatterys did eventually retire. High Australian, Imperial and Papal honours by then had recognised their work. They then turned their energies to their family and charities.
Michael Slattery
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