Robert Garran - Public Service

Public Service

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) in recognition of services in connection with the Federation of Australian Colonies and the establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia, 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, 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 drafter, Garran also developed legislation to administer those new departments and other important legislation.

Garran and his fellow staff aimed for a simple style of legislative drafting, a goal enabled by the fact that there was no pre-existing federal legislation on which their work would have to be based. In Garran's opinion the approach, which was put into practice many years before the similarly principled plain English movement became popular in government in the 1970s, was intended "to set an example of clear, straightforward language, free from technical jargon." Subsequent parliamentary drafters have noted that Garran was unusual in this respect for deliberately setting out to achieve and improve a particular drafting style, and that it was not until the early 1980s that such discipline among drafters re-emerged.

However, Garran himself admitted that his drafting could be overly simplistic, citing the first customs and excise legislation (the Customs Act 1901 and the Excise Act 1901), developed with the Minister for Trade and Customs Charles Kingston, as an example of the style taken to excess. The style was also once parodied by foundation High Court Justice Richard O'Connor as follows:

"Every man shall wear –
(a) Coat
(b) Vest
(c) Trousers
Penalty: £100."

In 1902, Garran married Hilda Robson. Together they would have four sons, Richard (born 1903), John (1905), Andrew (1906) and Isham Peter (1910). At this time the family lived in Melbourne, and the boys all attended Melbourne Grammar School and later studied at the University of Melbourne, attending Trinity College there.

The Attorney-General's Department also managed litigation on behalf of the government. Initially the department contracted private law firms to actually conduct the litigation, but in 1903 the office of the Commonwealth Crown Solicitor was established, with Charles Powers the first to hold the job. The other Crown Solicitors that Garran worked with included Gordon Castle (with whom he had also worked as a drafter) and William Sharwood.

Garran worked with several Attorneys-General as Permanent Head of the Department. Garran regarded the first Attorney-General, Alfred Deakin, as an excellent thinker and a natural lawyer, and on occasion " of Deakin as the Balfour of Australian politics." He was also very much impressed with the fifth Attorney-General, Isaac Isaacs, who was an extremely diligent worker, and two time Attorney-General Littleton Groom, who was "probably one of the most useful Ministers the Commonwealth has had."

In 1912, Garran was considered as a possible appointee to the High Court, 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."