Lionel Murphy - Parliamentary Career

Parliamentary Career

A member of the Australian Labor Party from an early age, he was elected to the Australian Senate in 1961, and, in 1967, he was elected Opposition Leader in the Senate. In the Senate pre-selection Convention in the Sydney Trades Hall in April 1960, with backing from Ray Geitzelt (but lacking factional endorsement) and with the luck of drawing first in addressing the delegates, Murphy won support with an impassioned but well structured and infectiously optimistic seven minute speech on the Labor Party's historical commitment to civil liberties and human rights. In 1969 Labor Leader Gough Whitlam appointed him Shadow Attorney-General, and when Labor won the 1972 election he became Attorney-General and Minister for Customs and Excise.

One of Murphy's more dramatic actions as Attorney-General was his unannounced visit to the Melbourne headquarters of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) in March 1973. This came about because ASIO officers were unable to satisfy his requests for information concerning intelligence on supposed terrorist groups operated by Croatian Australians. Murphy's concern about the matter was heightened by the impending visit to Australia of the Yugoslav Prime Minister Dzemal Bijedic. ASIO officers claimed not to be able to locate the file with which to properly brief Murphy. Murphy's belief was that though a security service was an important part of the Australian social fabric, like any other arm of executive government it must be accountable to the relevant Minister. According to journalist George Negus, then Murphy's press secretary: "Lionel had asked for the files of the six most dangerous or subversive people in Australia", recalled Negus. When they arrived, Murphy found they were of several CPA unionists and people such as CPA leader and peace movement activist Mavis Robertson... When he told Whitlam they both laughed.

Murphy's most important legislative achievement was the Family Law Act 1975, which completely overhauled Australia's law on divorce and other family law matters, establishing the principle of "no fault" divorce, in the face of opposition from the Roman Catholic Church and many other individuals and organisations. This act also established the Family Court of Australia. As Attorney General Murphy drew up a Human Rights Bill (which lapsed with the double dissolution of 1974) giving as amongst the reasons: "in criminal law, our protections against detention for interrogation and unreasonable search and seizure, for access to counsel and to ensure the segregation of different categories of prisoners are inadequate. Australian laws on the powers of the police, the rights of an accused person and the state of the penal system generally are unsatisfactory. Our privacy laws are vague and ineffective. There are few effective constraints on the gathering of information, or its disclosure, or surveillance, against unwanted publicity by government, the media or commercial organisations". Murphy also passed important legislation substantially abolishing appeals to the Privy Council, removing censorship, providing freedom of access to government information, reforming corporations and trade practices law, protecting the environment, abolishing the death penalty and outlawing racial and other discrimination. He established a systematic legal aid service for all courts, set up the Australian Law Reform Commission (and appointed Michael Kirby to be its inaugural chairman), the Australian Institute of Criminology and took the French Government to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to protest against its nuclear tests in the Pacific. The French government conducted forty one atmospheric nuclear tests at Mururoa after 1966, formally ceasing atmospheric nuclear testing in 1974 as a result of public pressure facilitated by Murphy's ICJ case.