Two Knights of Australia

Sir Zelman Cowen and Sir Ninian Stephen: each a lawyer by training, with a highly distinguished career in (respectively) academe and the judiciary, thereafter consecutive governors-general of Australia, and other things after that, both appointed to the governor-generalship by Malcolm Fraser—yet men with entirely different backgrounds, personalities and styles, and now with dissimilar books to record their lives. One is an autobiography, the other a tribute in the form of a collection of essays on the subject’s achievements. The books are so different in genre, purpose and structure that it is impossible to compare them, so I shall discuss each in turn, drawing one or two comparisons along the way.

These men carry their honours lightly, and perhaps it’s unimportant (certainly to them), but neither book mentions the chief honours bestowed on its subject—Sir Ninian has more knighthoods than any other Australian in the nation’s history, including the highest of all, the Garter, two Grand Crosses (GCMG, GCVO), the ultra-rare AK, and a KBE (plus a KStJ). In those stakes Sir Ninian beats Casey and Hasluck, with Sir Zelman up there too with an AK, a GCMG, a GCVO, and a Kt (plus a KStJ)—a pointer to something, but not mentioned in these books.

Autobiography, recounting one’s brilliant career, is a hard form to get right. Sir Zelman Cowen’s autobiography avoids the perils and engages the reader by its modest tone and simple, straightforward narrative style. One or two sections could have been shorter (Oxford 1945–50, given fifty-five pages), others perhaps a little longer (the governor-generalship, 1977–82, thirty-two pages—is the governor-generalship less important than the student’s career at Oxford?), but then this is the autobiography of an academic lawyer and it demands of the reader a strong interest in university life. The author’s files are obviously in superb order and his memory is still sharp. The book is in large part a celebration of friendships, and this gives it warmth, even at times a moving quality, particularly in its accounts of the friendships of childhood and youth.

The first chapters are the most interesting and evocative. Zelman Cowen was born on October 7, 1919 (the day Alfred Deakin died) in St Kilda to Jewish parents whose family backgrounds were in White Russia (Belarus). His father was a commercial traveller and later a successful businessman (Pacific Oil) who is firmly in the background in this narrative, for the mother dominated the home, an ambitious woman with confident looks. Before he had any idea what he wanted to do in life she had made up her mind he would be a lawyer (though there were no lawyers in the family, not even a university graduate), and not any old lawyer but a KC. She would relate to him, with approval, the story of how Isaac Isaacs’ mother had come with him to select a barrister’s wig and told the shop assistant, “We’ll be back again to buy a judge’s wig.” Looking at the photographs of Cowen’s parents I was drawn to the father, a genial-looking man with a wry grin and a taste for well-cut suits, elegant silk pocket handkerchiefs and good cigars. Unsurprisingly, over the years he gradually withdrew into himself.

Outside the home, Cowen’s early years centred on schools in St Kilda and later Scotch College, and also the local synagogue where Rabbi Jacob Danglow presided. Danglow was a kindly man who supported Zelman’s application for entry to Geelong Grammar, but when it came to Bar Mitzvah parties he could not attend them all, and was unable to attend Zelman’s. There was consternation. Mother exploded (as was her way), making it clear to Danglow that he would attend and preside or the Cowens would transfer their synagogue membership to the Melbourne Hebrew Congreg-ation. Danglow was a self-respecting man, not cowed by that sort of threat, so the Cowens left his fold, though (to his credit) young Zelman himself later returned to worship there.

The chapter on Cowen’s student days at the University of Melbourne provides much of interest in his recollections of professors, lecturers and students. His student politics were 1930s mainstream-left and he never dissented from that line, unlike his contemporary B.A. Santamaria, for example. We get the impression that almost everyone at the university held the same views, so it comes as a great surprise to be told that in the famous debate on the Spanish Civil War it was Santamaria’s motion, “That the Spanish [republican] government is the ruin of Spain”, that was carried. Sir Zelman’s explanation that “the Catholic ‘tribe’ had the numbers” seems unconvincing given that Catholic students were a minority. Cowen took a prominent part in revues and the student union but his interests were always principally academic and his outstanding results reflected intense application to his studies.

Sir Zelman’s attitude to the law school’s use of professional men from outside as lecturers is interesting:

“it was seen as appropriate … that men … with working experience in the fields in which they lectured should impart instruction that was practical and attuned to the ‘real’ world. For those who saw the matter in this way, the system was best calculated to serve the interests of legal practice. I doubt very much whether it was right.”

Elsewhere he obviously disbelieves one of Owen Dixon’s former associates who wrote to Dixon saying that Lord Denning had told him that the reason the Dixon court was so good was that its members had been trained in a school in which professional lawyers (including men who later sat on the High Court) took part in the lecturing. But why should a dean of law not employ, for example, a prominent QC to lecture on equity if that QC has written a set textbook on equitable remedies? Or someone of evident ability to lecture occasionally on constitutional law (a young Learned Hand, Dixon or Denning—even, at a lower level, a young Latham or Evatt)—might it not prove stimulating? In any case Sir Zelman Cowen’s law school at Melbourne was (like its American models) a strictly academic affair.

A fascinating chapter is devoted to Cowen’s period of war service. He was in naval intelligence, and writes a graphic eyewitness account of the Japanese aerial attack on Darwin. He had been intrigued from childhood by aeroplanes and had followed with intense interest the London-to-Melbourne Victorian Centenary Air Race in 1934. He knew the specifications of the individual planes. Eight years later he watched awestruck as 188 carrier-based Zeros and other attack planes screamed out of the sky over Darwin:

“I remember early morning talk in Naval Headquarters about unidentified aircraft; suddenly the warning sounded, and we streamed out to the trenches. I looked up and saw the sky filled with formations of planes. I watched as the dive bombers swooped in attack on ships and installations. The chatter of machine-guns sounded very close.
“I have a vivid memory of the old ‘star-crossed’ American destroyer Peary, ablaze from stem to stern, going down with a gun still firing and with heavy loss of life. Then there was the destruction of the Neptuna loaded with explosives; as Douglas Lockwood wrote a quarter-century later, ‘the terrible explosion shook the entire town and will never be forgotten by those who heard and saw it’. I remember the further shock of the second raid, as the fifty-four land-based bombers attacked the RAAF station with devastating effect.”

He mentions too the panic, disorder and looting among the conscript militia troops, the failure of leadership and control, the absurdly false figures put out by the government on the impact and casualties of the attack.

On one occasion Cowen had to report on the intelligence reading of the situation in Japanese-occupied Rabaul harbour. Everything indicated there was no build-up of shipping there, just a lot of barges. That morning a B24 Liberator had flown over Rabaul harbour and reported a build-up of shipping.

“He’s wrong,” Cowen told General Kenney, commander of the United States Fifth Air Force.

“Son,” Kenney replied, “have you been to Rabaul today?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, he has. And what if, as a consequence of what you say, we do nothing? What happens if we are wrong?”

Cowen went away bloodied, but next day he had in his hands the photographs taken by the B24 and they backed him up. The commander of the Seventh Fleet, Admiral Carpender, who had presumably witnessed the scene with Kenney the previous day, told Cowen: “Give it to him, son.”

In mid-April 1943, following the breaking of the Japanese codes, Cowen had foreknowledge of the attack by P38 Lightnings (“which had the necessary range”) on the aircraft carrying Admiral Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, to Bougainville, “and followed the unfolding of this drama”. This entire chapter is full of interest.

After the war Cowen and his young wife travelled to Oxford to take up the Rhodes Scholarship he had won a few years earlier. This period of study (for the BCL) was made more intense by his acceptance of a fellowship at Oriel, which involved teaching duties. It was at this time that he began to form important international friendships and professional connections, though the chapter is more about the personal side of these friendships than their influence on Cowen’s approach to the law. While this detailed homage to a whole host of friendships gives the book a feeling of warmth and intimacy, a lot of readers will be tempted to scan rather than read these sections.

In 1951 Cowen took up the chair of Public Law at the University of Melbourne, quickly became dean, and at once began putting his special impress upon the law school. In doing so he was much influenced by his growing knowledge of the workings of American law schools and in particular that of Harvard, where the great Erwin Griswold presided. Cowen had met Griswold shortly before coming to Melbourne and a correspondence developed between them. Griswold was a tough, difficult, determined man who drove his colleagues and students hard. It was next to impossible to establish an intimate friendship with him, and Cowen never really did. In 1952 Griswold invited Cowen to come to Harvard as a visiting professor for the 1953-54 academic year. Griswold’s purpose in doing this was deliberate and entirely professional, like everything he did: to assist the Melbourne Law School by opening its dean of law to the influences of the greatest law school in the United States. That was the one and only point of it. Later he would be extremely upset when Cowen told him he was considering the offer of a permanent position in the Chicago school: the agreement between them, Griswold made very clear, was that Cowen should apply what he had learned at Harvard to the teaching of law in Australia.

Cowen’s account of the family’s arrival in Boston offers an excellent insight into the natures of both men, and one feels for each of them in different ways:

“We were three: Anne, our only child Simon, then not quite two years old, and me. Erwin Griswold had invited us to stay with him and his family overnight, or at least until we could move into our own rented apartment in Cambridge; and he came to the railway station to meet us and drove us to his home, where we spent the night. Simon was disturbed by the unfamiliarity of his surroundings and cried continuously and loudly during the night. We struggled with the situation, and early morning found me on a landing with Griswold as he came out of his bedroom. I asked if he and his household had got any sleep. He responded with one word, ‘Some’. I wished ardently that the earth might open up and swallow me or, more within the realms of possibility, that I might be somewhere else, preferably back in Melbourne.”

Cowen’s account of his years as dean of law at Melbourne (1951–66) reads like an almost continuous series of international tours and he frankly admits that he was away from his university a great deal, too much perhaps.

In September 1965 he received a letter from the Chancellor of the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales, pointing out that the vice-chancellor there was retiring at the end of 1966 and that the university was undertaking an extensive search for a replacement; Cowen’s name had been mentioned: did he wish to apply? Cowen wrote back that, yes, he wished to be considered as a candidate. He knew next to nothing about the University of New England, a small and relatively remote institution, but sent off his curriculum vitae. He learned in early 1966 that his application was being recommended by the appointments committee, and the offer was confirmed in April. He then announced it to his colleagues, who were shocked “that a man whose background was so urban and whose interests were specifically professional should have made such a move, and indeed (although they might not have known it) on the basis of so little contact or knowledge”.

Cowen says that even now he doesn’t know why he took the post after spending just one day at Armidale, but mentions the attraction of “something new” and “the challenge”. One wonders whether prestige had anything to do with it, but what little prestige could there have been in going from dean of the Melbourne law school to vice-chancellor at Armidale? It seems odd, especially when one considers that in those days vice-chancellors mostly stayed where they were first appointed. Perhaps Cowen intended to use it as a stepping-stone, though he does not mention this possibility.

There was next to nothing in the way of a challenge at Armidale, but there were serious challenges in the next position Cowen took up after only three years in the backwoods. During his tenure as vice-chancellor at the University of Queensland (1970–77) that institution was rocked by violent student protests, and in confronting these and standing his ground Cowen showed courage and a natural authority. Extremists repeatedly besieged and threatened him at the university and even attacked his home—offensive items arrived in the mail, stones were thrown onto the roof and sand was dumped in the driveway—so that his family felt under threat too.

Cowen’s moral courage in refusing to negotiate or compromise with these elements was probably remembered by Malcolm Fraser when he was looking for a replacement for Sir John Kerr in 1977, for Fraser had himself been bottled up by student radicals at Monash University in 1976 and later recalled the demeanour (so different from Sir Zelman’s under like circumstances) of Monash’s acting vice-chancellor on that occasion, W.A.G. Scott—“He was ashen,” Fraser told me. Cowen’s response when something very similar had happened at Queensland University to a speaker from the South Vietnamese embassy was to discipline the students found guilty: he suspended two of them for an entire academic year and simply ignored the further protests this provoked. He records how

“One incident of defiance during the bleak days of confrontation gave me particular pleasure. A number of students had entered the administration building and refused to leave. I came to speak to them. Standing beside me was the Registrar, ‘Smiling Sam’ Rayner; the presence of this tall and formidable man was reassuring to me. The student leader said, ‘We have some non-negotiable demands.’ Sam responded, ‘I have one non-negotiable demand. Get out!’ They did.”

Sustained personal abuse, anti-Semitic taunts, being called a “bourgeois dog” and a “tool of capitalism”—he was probably subjected to more of this kind of childish thing than any other vice-chancellor of the time (the early 1970s), and though it had an effect on his health and that of his wife, he never contemplated resignation.

Sir Zelman still has no idea why Fraser selected him as Kerr’s replacement, but he had no hesitation in accepting the invitation. It put him in the bad books of some of the more left-wing of his former academic colleagues, for although the Fraser government was re-elected in 1977 with just as devastatingly wide a margin as it had won in December 1975, and perhaps particularly for that reason, there was still much bad feeling in wide sections of the community towards Malcolm Fraser personally for having precipitated Kerr’s dismissal of the Whitlam government in November 1975. Cowen saw the chance to act as a healer of these divisions and as a restorer of respect to the office of governor-general.

His swearing-in as Governor-General took place on December 8, 1977, and he arranged for his mother, paralysed and speechless following a stroke, to be present at the ceremony. How much this aged admirer of Sir Isaac Isaacs understood of what was going on nobody knows, but it was a nice gesture to her and typical of the sensitivity and thoughtfulness of her son, whom she had done much to encourage from such an early age.

Sir Zelman is critical of Fraser for failing to consult him sufficiently on issues on which a governor-general could have expected to be consulted. A number of examples are provided. Cowen was not one of those who conceived of the governor-general as a cipher, indeed his view of the office was quite robust, as was Sir Ninian Stephen’s after him. If Australians ever vote to have an elected president (the only kind they will want anything to do with) they will not want a mere cipher in that role, no matter how much some constitutional lawyers may dream of effectively neutering the office. In regard to the weekly meetings of the Executive Council, where the governor-general presides, advised by his ministers, Cowen points out that he

“could and did play a significant role by requiring ample and adequate explanations for what was proposed. I asked questions in advance of council meetings and raised questions with ministers during the meetings, so that they could take into account my doubts, questions and concerns before tendering advice to me.”

But Cowen did not see why he should restrict his careful oversight of ministerial actions within these bounds:

“Outside the ambit of Executive Council meetings, I also received a variety of communications directly from ministers. In these cases, I raised questions about procedures concerning subjects as varied as parole board matters and resignations from the armed services.
“One such matter was the appointment of the first Commissioner of the newly formed Australian Federal Police, Sir Colin Woods, in May 1979. Sir Colin’s appointment was announced by the Minister for Administrative Services without reference to the Executive Council. I raised this with Malcolm Fraser, requesting that the correct procedures be followed in future. He assured me that this would not happen again. I think that my attention to detail was—at first—not always appreciated by government departments. However, in the long run it might bring about an improvement in the quality of explanatory material laid before the Executive Council and beyond. A vigilant and enquiring Governor-General comes to be recognised as such in the departments with the responsibility of preparing the business of government.”

Sir Zelman elsewhere says he has come to accept that a democratically elected president is preferable to the present system of an appointed governor-general under the Crown, Such a president, of course, will have more popular authority in his office than the prime minister, who is not elected by the people to his office, and that is likely to make for interesting times sooner or later. Sir Zelman also touches upon the governor-general’s role as commander-in-chief, which he evidently enjoyed: “The role of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces has been examined by constitutional authorities to measure its substance, and the better view is that it is ceremonial.” If there is more than one view, one would be interested to know what the other view is.

After less than four years in the office, Sir Zelman told Fraser he wished to resign in order to take up the position of Provost of Oriel College, Oxford, which had been offered to him. Fraser “said that this was not as he wished; that stability had been achieved in the office, and it was his wish that I should continue in it for a substantial period; a further three-year term was suggested”. Cowen took time to consider this, but the pull of academe proved stronger than the enjoyment he had experienced in the office of governor-general. In 1982 he retired and Sir Ninian Stephen was appointed in his place.

Cowen filled the Oxford position for eight years, also serving during that time as chairman of the British Press Council. He returned to Melbourne in 1990 where, among other things, he was chairman of the John Fairfax newspaper group from 1991 to 1994, a post some constitutional lawyers of a narrow cast of mind would chide him for accepting, though the same critics would like the office of governor-general to be little more than ceremonial.

A very different sort of book is Sir Ninian Stephen: A Tribute, a collection of essays on distinct phases of an outstanding life that was not the achievement of driving ambition—as Cheryl Saunders rightly says, “he is much more devoted to his wife Valery and to his family than he is to any sense of personal fulfilment from high public office”.

Sir Ninian long ago dismissed the idea of writing an autobiography, which is characteristic of him, but it’s a shame given the high interest of some of his recent experiences including chairing the Northern Ireland peace talks and serving as foundation judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Of course he would have been constrained in what he could say about his role in either of those positions. There is nothing in this book on his interesting childhood, which included a period of education on the Continent just prior to the Second World War, nothing on formative influences, no family background, no possibility of knowing the inner being of the subject, who is described purely from the outside.

Most of the essays are written by academic lawyers and two or three verge on the patronising, as if they were situating themselves above the realm of their subject. Whatever is going on beneath the surface in the following passage, it’s not particularly subtle (Cheryl Saunders, preface):

“One final intriguing observation is the universal respect Sir Ninian elicits—to the point where it appears that he is beyond public criticism. Even in the context of the politically challenging role of chairmanship of the Constitutional Centenary Foundation, for example, the protagonists stopped short of publicly criticising Sir Ninian. One fundamental, even if partial, explanation for the respect Sir Ninian attracts is that he is no revolutionary. Sir Ninian is rarely ‘out on a limb’ on any politically sensitive issue and, consequently, avoids the sort of offence that might preclude him from future appointments by governments of any political persuasion. Some might, therefore, accuse Sir Ninian of ‘fence sitting’ in failing to articulate a position on politically sensitive issues. On the other hand, his refusal to enter public debate on sensitive issues has often enabled him to contribute in ways that otherwise may not have been possible. Australian society needs those who will publicly agitate for change. But it also needs those like Sir Ninian, who hold back from the fray and thus are able to make significant, substantive contributions by more subtle means, with equal, perhaps more effective, results.”

“It appears that he is beyond public criticism”; “the protagonists stopped short of publicly criticising Sir Ninian”; Sir Ninian is “rarely [never?] ‘out on a limb’ on any politically sensitive issue”; he “avoids [deliberately avoids?] the sort of offence that might preclude him from future appointments”, appointments “by governments of any political persuasion” (clever him); hence “Some might accuse him of ‘fence-sitting’ in failing to articulate a position on politically sensitive issues”. But never mind, because while Australia badly needs those who agitate for change (like certain unnamed academics?), Australia also needs those like Sir Ninian “who hold back from the fray” and are perhaps more effective that way.

Who would wish to be celebrated like this? It reminds one of that academic “celebration” of Geoffrey Blainey held at the University of Melbourne a few years ago, to which he was invited and reluctantly went for a couple of hours; “How was it?” I asked him, and he replied, “It was like a crucifixion”.

After the preface comes Sir Anthony Mason’s discussion of the subject’s years on the High Court (1972 to 1982). This is sometimes patronising too. Mason devotes just half a page to “Judicial Philosophy” and gives half of that over to a quotation from Professor Hilary Charlesworth, former associate to Sir Ninian:

“While he was personally a liberal and progressive thinker, these views are not consistently reflected in his judgments, which reveal a cautious attitude to judicial review and no particular social or political agenda or judicial philosophy. He was not obviously a supporter of states’ rights, nor of the federal government. On his retirement, he remarked that he had no burning interest in the outcomes of cases, such as might have led other Justices to seek in different ways to persuade the Court to their point of view. He rather saw his duty as to decide each case as he thought appropriate, and to let the result of the case take care of itself.”

That is, he was not a judicial activist attempting to legislate from the bench, not a man with an “agenda” or a “burning interest” in securing a particular outcome for the case, but one of those whose judicial method led him to decide each case coolly on its merits in relation to the original meaning of the Constitution or on what he conceived to be the correct principle—and, frankly, a judge who would have been somewhat out of place on the later Mason court. It is significant that (as Geoffrey Lindell points out) while Sir Ninian was a centralist by inclination, he did not seek to downplay or override the strongly federalist nature of the Constitution, and in fact his judgments tend to protect states’ rights.

Sir Anthony next considers “Style”, beginning with the subject’s urbanity and charm, observing that his was “the most mellifluous voice in the Australian legal world. The seductive quality of the voice added persuasion, even authority, to the argument which it advanced.” There was also “the air of detached impartiality and objectivity; that of a Proustian observer seemingly disconnected from the events which he describes” (no “agenda”, no “passion”). He

“sailed in the middle of the stream, avoiding the extremities of view expressed by his colleagues, as his constitutional judgments reveal … The judgments read as if they were composed by an author who had a completely open mind, one uncluttered by any preconceptions about the issues in the case.”

Mason proceeds to consider specific judgments across a wide range of law, and these analyses seem by-and-large interesting and fair.

Professor Geoffrey Lindell provides an essay on Sir Ninian’s conduct as Governor-General (July 29, 1982, to February 16, 1989). Lindell interviewed Malcolm Fraser but appears not to have asked him why he appointed Sir Ninian. The chapter tends for considerable stretches to become an essay on Professor Lindell’s interpretation of the powers of the governor-general, rather than restricting itself to Sir Ninian’s handling of the office and his view of its powers (phrases like “in the author’s view” are frequent). It is interesting that Sir Ninian, like Sir Zelman Cowen, wanted more regular contacts with ministers including the prime minister (at least weekly), and that neither Fraser nor Hawke took any notice.

Lindell provides a good analysis of Sir Ninian’s action in declining at first to grant the double dissolution requested by Prime Minister Fraser in 1983. He decides that it was a proper use of the powers of the office with reference to the relevant provisions of section 57 of the Constitution which “do not (at least explicitly) oblige the Governor-General to grant a double dissolution, but instead only provide that the Governor-General ‘may’ exercise this power”. (Generally Lindell is wary of interpreting the governor-general’s powers in any but the most restricting ways.) In this particular instance Fraser had advised Sir Ninian to exercise the relevant power and supported this advice by reference to thirteen bills which, he claimed, satisfied the conditions of section 57. Sir Ninian declined to take this advice in the first instance, writing to Fraser that

“Such precedents as exist, together with the writings on s 57 of the Constitution, suggest that in circumstances such as the present, I should in considering your advice, pay regard to the importance of the measures in question and to the workability of the parliament.”

Sir Ninian clearly thought (and rightly) that the parliament was perfectly workable and the bills not immediately crucial to that workability. Lindell points out:

“It was only after such assurances were received in a second letter written by Mr Fraser to the Governor-General that the dissolution was granted. Significantly, however, Sir Ninian made no attempt to express his own personal views about the soundness of those assurances other than to indicate that he had considered them and that ‘viewed in the context of the extraordinary nature of a double dissolution’ he was not himself in a position ‘to form a view about the particular importance of any’ of the deadlocked legislative measures; and that he was ‘now satisfied that in accordance with’ the Prime Minister’s advice he ‘should dissolve the Senate and the House of Representatives simultaneously’.”

Thus while Sir Ninian supported the independent arbiter principle “in form, his actions show that he was in substance prepared to act in accordance with the advice given by the Prime Minister without analysing the matter for himself”. Lindell thus implies that it would have been correct for Sir Ninian to have analysed the matter for himself and refused Fraser’s request definitely. Sir Ninian is quoted as saying, on a different occasion, that a governor-general is not required to accept the advice of a prime minister who has lost the confidence of the House of Representatives, which seems unobjectionable, and he also said on that occasion that he suspected “that if a 1975 situation persisted long enough, powers might have as a last resort to be exercised”.

To list some of the other chapters is enough to indicate the extent of Sir Ninian’s national and international work: Cheryl Saunders’ chapter “Chair of the Constitutional Centenary Foundation”, Kim Rubinstein’s “Chair of the Citizenship Council”, Doug Laing’s “Ambassador for the Environment”, Timothy McCormack’s “International Peace Envoy”, Sir Kenneth Keith’s “Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration”, Hilary Charlesworth’s “Judge Ad Hoc of the International Court of Justice”, Antonio Cassese’s “Judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia”, and Steven Ratner’s “Chair of the United Nations Group of Experts for Cambodia”.

Writing on Sir Ninian’s chairmanship of the Constitutional Centenary Foundation, Cheryl Saunders considers the high rate of rejection at referendum of proposals to change the Constitution, and thinks this has created “a sense of generalised despair about the possibility of amending the Constitution at all”. Why “generalised” when it is the general public who are repeatedly rejecting these proposed changes? The problem, one gathers from reading this, is that the public mind has not been properly massaged on these occasions, otherwise they would have seen the light and voted for the sensible proposals. Sir Ninian’s attitude is preferable: “May it be that the fault lies less in the [method of amendment prescribed in section 28] than in those who, over the years, have sought to put it to work?”

Saunders allows a personal correction to Don Watson’s reporting a now-obscure political slight to her to run across three pages (70–72). She was heavily involved in the Constitutional Centenary Foundation and elsewhere takes the Samuel Griffith Society to task for its having suggested that the Foundation was not entirely impartial in its attitude to constitutional change and particularly the head-of-state issue, but then much of her chapter reveals the Foundation’s preference for change in a republican direction on the issue of head of state. There are some nice words on “The Foundation’s Legacy”, but really it has none, or none of enduring importance.

Of the other chapters the most interesting are those on the Hague war-crimes tribunal and the Northern Ireland peace process, in which, though there was no substantive agreement at that stage, Sir Ninian enjoyed the confidence of all participants and won their praise for his role as facilitator.

These are two entirely different books. Sir Zelman Cowen’s autobiography is eminently readable, taking one into the private as well as the public world of its author. It re-animates long-lost times and places with a loving attention to detail that makes them vivid. It’s full of the personality of its author and is honest and unaffected. The “Tribute” to Sir Ninian Stephen, like the curate’s egg, is good in parts. When its authors obliterate themselves and write of Sir Ninian and his attitudes and approaches it’s at its best, and when one or two of them cannot refrain from centre-staging their own attitudes and approaches it’s at its worst.

Sir Zelman Cowen’s A Public Life: The Memoirs of Zelman Cowen, is published by the Miegunyah Press, $59.95; Sir Ninian Stephen: A Tribute, edited by Timothy L.H. McCormack and Cheryl Saunders, is also published by the Miegunyah Press, $65.