Robert Garran
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Portrait of Garran in the 1930s. |
Sir
Robert Randolph Garran (
10 February 1867 –
11 January 1957),
Australian lawyer, was an early leading expert in
Australian constitutional law and was the first
Solicitor-General of Australia.
Garran was born in
Sydney,
New South Wales, the only son (among seven daughters) of journalist and politician
Andrew Garran and his wife Mary Isham. His parents were committed to
social justice, Mary campaigning for issues such as the promotion of education for women, and Andrew advocating
Federation and covering reformist movements as editor of the
Sydney Morning Herald and later promoting them as a member of the
New South Wales Legislative Council.
Garran was the couple's only son, although he had five older sisters, and one younger. He was educated at
Sydney Grammar School before studying arts and law at the
University of Sydney, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1888 and a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1889.
In 1891, Garran was admitted to the
New South Wales Bar, where he commenced practice as a
barrister. Garran, like his father, was strongly involved in the Federation movement. In 1893, when the
Australasian Federal League was formed, Garran joined immediately and was made a member of the council. He was the League's delegate to the
Corowa Conference, where he was part of an impromptu committee organised by
John Quick which drafted Quick's resolution, passed at the Conference, to hold a directly elected
Constitutional Convention to be charged with drafting the Bill for the
Constitution of Australia. The plan was later accepted at the 1895 Premiers' Conference.
In 1897, Garran published
The Coming Commonwealth,
an influential book on the history of the Federation movement and the debate over the 1891 draft of the Constitution of Australia. The book was based on material he prepared for a course on
federalism and federal systems of government, which he had planned to give at the University of Sydney, although it did not attract any students.
Nevertheless, the book was popular, and soon after its publication the
Premier of New South Wales George Reid, who had been elected as a New South Wales delegate to the 1897-1898 Constitutional Convention, invited Garran to be his secretary. At the Convention,
Edmund Barton appointed him secretary of the Drafting Committee, and was also a member of the Press Committee.
Throughout 1898, following the completion of the proposed Constitution, Garran participated in the campaign promoting Federation leading up to the referendums at which the people of the colonies voted whether or not to approve the Constitution. The following year, he began working with Quick on the
Annotated Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth,
a reference work on the Constitution including a history, and detailed discussion of each section analysing its meaning and its development at the Conventions. Published in 1901, the
Annotated Constitution, commonly referred to as "Quick & Garran", is still regarded as one of the most important works on the Constitution.
On the day that Federation was completed and Australia created,
1 January 1901, Garran was made a Commander of the
Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) and was appointed secretary and Permanent Head of the
Attorney-General's Department by the first
Attorney-General of Australia,
Alfred Deakin. Garran was the first, and for a time the only, public servant employed by the
Government of Australia. Garran later said of this time that:
"I was not only the head [of the department], but the tail. I was my own clerk and messenger. My first duty was to write out with my own hand Commonwealth Gazette No. 1 proclaiming the establishment of the Commonwealth and the appointment of ministers of state, and to send myself down with it to the government printer."
In this role, Garran was responsible for organising the
first federal election in March 1901, and for organising the transfer of various government departments from
the states to the federal government, including the
Department of Defence, the
postal and
telegraphic services (now part of the
Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) and the Department of Trade and Customs (now part of the
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade). As parliamentary draftsman, Garran also developed legislation to administer those new departments and other important legislation.
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The Garran family house in Canberra, 22 Mugga Way, Red Hill. |
In 1902, Garran married Hilda Robson, together they would have four sons, Richard (born 1903),
John (1905), Andrew (1906) and
Isham (1910).
In 1912, Garran was considered as a possible appointee to the
High Court of Australia, following the expansion of the bench from five seats to seven and the death of
Richard O'Connor.
Billy Hughes, Attorney-General in the
Fisher government at the time, later said Garran would have been appointed "but for the fact that he is too valuable a man for us to lose. We cannot spare him."
In 1916, Garran was made the first Solicitor-General of Australia (the office then known as Commonwealth Solicitor-General) by then Prime Minister Hughes. Even before the establishment of this office, Garran gave legal advice to successive governments, in a career spanning ten Prime Ministers. He developed a strong relationship with Hughes, giving him legal advice on the
World War I conscription plebiscites and on the range of
regulations which were made under the
War Precautions Act 1914.
Garran accompanied Hughes and
Joseph Cook to the 1917 meetings of the
Imperial War Cabinet in
London,
United Kingdom, and was also part of the
British Empire delegation to the 1919
Paris Peace Conference in
Paris,
France. There he was on several of the treaty drafting committees, and contributed to many provisions, notably the portions of the
League of Nations Covenant relating to
League of Nations mandates. Garran had been made a
Knight Bachelor in 1917 and was made a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in 1920.
Garran attended two
Imperial Conferences, accompanying Prime Minister
Stanley Bruce in 1923 and in 1930 joining Prime Minister
James Scullin and Attorney-General
Frank Brennan, also attending the eleventh League of Nations conference with them in
Geneva,
Switzerland. At the
Royal Commission on the Constitution in 1927, Garran was invited to give evidence by Prime Minister Bruce, where he discussed the history and origins of the Constitution and the evolution of the institutions established under it.
In 1927, Garran moved from his home in
Melbourne,
Victoria to the newly established capital
Canberra, one of the first public officials to do so (many government departments and their public servants did not move to Canberra until after
World War II). He also worked within the Government to facilitate housing in Canberra for officials moving from other cities, and was involved in establishing cultural organisations in the city. In 1928 he was the inaugural President of the Canberra
Rotary Club. In 1929, he formed the
Canberra University Association in order to promote the formation of a university in Canberra, and in 1930 organised the establishment of
Canberra University College (essentially a campus of the
University of Melbourne) which taught undergraduate courses, chairing its council for its first twenty-three years. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Garran "consistently advocated the establishment of what he prophetically called 'a National University at Canberra'" which would be primarily for specialist research and
postgraduate study, in areas particularly relating to Australia, such as foreign relations with Asia and the Pacific region.
This vision was evidently influential on the establishment of the
Australian National University (ANU) in 1946, the only research-only university in the country (although in 1960 it amalgamated with the University College to offer undergraduate courses).
Garran retired from his governmental positions on
9 February 1932, returning to practice as a barrister. Within a month he was made a
King's Counsel (KC). However, he occasionally carried out more prominent work. In 1932, he was selected on the advice of Attorney-General
John Latham to chair the
Indian Defence Expenditure Tribunal, to advise on the dispute between
India and the
United Kingdom regarding the costs of the military defence of India. In 1934, along with
John Keating,
William Somerville and
David Gilbert, he formed a committee which prepared
The Case for Union,
the
Government of Australia's official reply to
the secessionist movement in the state of
Western Australia.
Garran was also involved with the arts; he was the vice-president of the Canberra Musical Society, where he sang and played the
clarinet, and in 1946 won a national song competition run by the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Garran also published translations of
Heinrich Heine's 1827 work
Buch der Lieder ("Book of Songs") in 1924,
and of the works of
Franz Schubert and
Robert Schumann in 1946.
In 1937, Garran was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG), the third time he had been knighted. Shortly after the establishment of the ANU in 1946, Garran became its first graduate when he was awarded an
honorary doctorate of laws. He had already been awarded such an honorary doctorate from the University of Melbourne (in 1937) and later receiving one from his
alma mater, the University of Sydney (in 1952). Garran served on ANU's council from 1946 until 1951. Garran's influence on Canberra is remembered by the naming of the suburb of
Garran, Australian Capital Territory, and his link with ANU is remembered by the naming of a
chair in the university's School of Law, and by the naming of the hall of residence
Burton & Garran Hall.
Garran died in 1957 in Canberra. He was survived by his four sons; his wife Hilda had died in 1936. His
memoirs,
Prosper the Commonwealth,
were published posthumously in 1958.
Garran's "personality, like his prose, was devoid of pedantry and pomposity and, though dignified, was laced with a quizzical turn of humour."
His death "marked the end of a generation of public men for whom the cultural and the political were natural extensions of each other and who had the skills and talents to make such connections effortlessly."
At his death, Garran was one of the last remaining people involved with the creation of the Constitution of Australia.
Prime Minister
John Howard, in describing Garran, said:
"I wonder though if we sometimes underestimate the changes, excitements, disruptions and adjustments previous generations have experienced. Sir Robert Garran knew the promise and reality of federation. He was part of the establishment of a public service which, in many ways, is clearly recognisable today."
However Garran is perhaps best remembered as an expert on constitutional law, more so than his other contributions to public service. On his experience of Federation and the Constitution, Garran was always enthusiastic:
"I'm often asked "has federation turned out as you expected?" Well yes and no. By and large the sort of thing we expected has happened but with differences. We knew the constitution was not perfect; it had to be a compromise with all the faults of a compromise... But, in spite of the unforseen strains and stresses, the constitution has worked, on the whole, much as we thought it would. I think it now needs revision, to meet the needs of a changed world. But no-one could wish the work undone, who tries to imagine, what, in these stormy days, would have been the plight of six disunited Australian colonies."
