The Hon Justice Ann Ainslie-Wallace

May I too acknowledge and pay my respects to the Gadigal people of the Eora nation on whose land we meet and to their elders past and present.

Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, Dean of the Faculty of Law, University Secretary Mr Patterson, Professor Lockyer, who represents the Academic Board, graduates, families and friends and those who I hold dear. May I congratulate you, the new graduates, on this occasion that recognises a very significant achievement by each of you.

It’s a thrill that’s shared by those who have supported you through your journey of study, as we have heard tonight. I wish that in 1978 when I graduated we could have had shout-outs; it would have made it a much more thrilling occasion. But those who have supported you have sacrificed their time with you, and this is as much a thrill for them I think as it is for you. And to all of you, I extend my warmest wishes.

I have called this address Professional Practice and the Moral Squint. The somewhat obscure title comes from Robert Bolt’s marvellous play, A Man for All Seasons, which concerns the English King Henry VIII’s attempt to have his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled so that he could marry his second, but as some of you would know, not his last, wife Ann Boleyn. As some of you would also know, it didn’t end well for her, Ann Boleyn, because she was beheaded, but that’s a story for perhaps another day.

Before I get to the actual topic of tonight’s address, if I can, I would like to give you just a little bit of historical context. So, Catherine of Aragon was married to Henry VIII’s brother when she was a very young girl. After his brother died, Henry decided that he would marry Catherine of Aragon and swooped in, but as she was his sister-in-law, he needed approval or dispensation from the Pope, because to marry your brother’s wife was said to be against the Bible’s teaching.

Anyway, he got permission from the Pope and the marriage took place in June of 1509. All was going well, but after 18 years of marriage to Henry, Catherine hadn’t managed to fulfil her most important duty, which was to bear a son who would be Henry’s heir to the throne of England. Things were a bit shaky. Henry needed a male heir, and he believed that Ann Boleyn, with whom he was infatuated and who was, by all accounts, gorgeous, was the woman to give it to him.

But how to get rid of Catherine? Henry decided that the reason for his lack of a male heir was because he had defied biblical teachings by marrying his sister in law, and you lawyers will appreciate, carefully ignoring the papal dispensation that he had earlier received. He argued that approval should never have been given and that his marriage was cursed by God. He claimed that the only way he could have a male heir would be to annul his marriage to Catherine, and the fact that Ann Boleyn was waiting in the wings looking lovely was a further incentive, you might think.

So, Henry attempted to convince the Pope to give him an annulment of his marriage, and he asked Cardinal Wolsey, a very senior church man and advisor to the King and counsel to persuade the Pope to give Henry an annulment. It didn’t go well. The Pope refused to annul the marriage. Henry was furious, and he passed the Act of Supremacy which declared him as the supreme head of the church in England, which gave him superiority or supremacy in the church greater than the Pope. He later passed another law requiring citizens to swear an oath recognising his supremacy in the church. One of the King’s most important advisors, a member of his privy council, a prominent lawyer, Thomas Moore, refused to swear the oath because, as a staunch Catholic, he didn’t accept that the King could give himself greater authority than the Pope. The King was determined that Thomas Moore would take the oath, but Moore refused.

So, back to the play. In this particular passage of the play, Cardinal Wolsey is trying to persuade Thomas Moore to swear the oath, even though Thomas Moore doesn’t believe that to which he’s being asked to swear. Wolsey says to Moore, ‘You’re a constant regret to me, Thomas. If you could just see the facts flat-on without that horrible moral squint, with just a little common sense, you could have been a statesman.’ And it’s the moral squint, More’s insistence in doing the ethically right thing, that I want to discuss very briefly with you this evening, and in particular, in the context of practising our professions through the prism of ethical constructs.

What is a professional? Historically, the word derives from middle English to mean professing one’s vows, and according to that impeccable source, Wikipedia, over time the word became used in relation to people specialised in their trades and crafts who professed their skills to others and who vowed to perform that trade to the highest standards. Those of you who have graduated have satisfied the educational requirements of your respective professions. Your training and education, culminating in this degree, will allow you to hold yourselves out as people with specialised knowledge in your particular area as professionals.

Is there more to being a professional than having experience and being skilful? Of course there is. The privilege of being able to profess certain expertise, a professing that asks members of the community to rely on your expertise, comes with the obligation of practising not only to the highest possible level of skill and care but practising ethically, striving for the highest level of integrity. The Professional Services Council define a professional as a disciplined group of individuals who adhere to ethical standards. So, it’s not only the specialised education that you’ve completed that sets you apart as professionals, but the adherence to the ethical standards of your profession.

Those of you on the brink of your professional careers have, in the course of your studies, discussed the ethics of your particular profession. No doubt, in your mind, there’s a bright line about what is right, what is ethical and what is not. You might think, how hard can it be to practise ethically? I wonder whether what is clear and obvious to you now is in fact far less clear when you’re in the maelstrom of professional practice being pulled from one side to another by competing authorities and interests. We read in newspapers, in reports from professional disciplinary bodies and in many other sources about highly-skilled professionals who have failed to practise ethically.

There’s often no doubt that that person was highly skilled, highly talented in his or her chosen profession, but who has breached the trust placed in him or her by the public. I would like to suggest that each time a professional fails to practise within an ethical construct, it brings the reputation of that particular profession into question, and people outside of that profession begin to wonder whether they can, in fact, put their trust in the members of that profession.

I would also like to suggest that at the end of your professional career, if you can look back and be confident that you have exercised your skill to the best of your ability and to the highest ethical standard that you could, you will be rightly proud of your achievements and you will have fulfilled your obligation to the community who have placed their trust in you. You must work out for yourself how to address these moral and ethical dilemmas which, trust me, will arise throughout your careers.

And so, having perhaps posed more questions than I’ve answered and maybe brought obscurity where before there was clarity, can I leave you with two pieces of information? The first is that Thomas Moore was tried and executed for failing to take the oath, proving that it’s not necessarily a fairy-tale ending if you do the ethically right thing. And secondly, I want to leave you with this quote from Thomas Moore himself. He said: ‘If honour was profitable, everybody would honourable.’

You have before you an exciting and challenging time as you take that skill and learning that you have into the world and you begin your professional life. Please don’t forget the moral squint. Thank you