The Hon Christine Wheeler, AO, QC

IN W E st E r N Austr A l IA

leading the Way

1994

1995

Christine Wheeler AO, QC is the first woman in Western Australia to be appointed Queen’s Counsel – this is the same year she joined the Independent Bar.

Judy Eckert is the first woman to be elected President of the Law Society of Western Australia. Since then, half of the Presidents of the Law Society have been women.

the Hon Christine Wheeler, AO, QC

The first woman in Western Australia to be appointed Queen’s Counsel

The Honourable Christine Wheeler A O, QC was admitted as a legal practitioner in 1980. She served as an Assistant Crown Solicitor from 1984 to 1988, heading the Policy and Law Reform Unit. From 1988 to 1994 she held the positions of Senior Assistant Crown Solicitor and Senior Assistant Crown Counsel. In 1994, she became the first woman in Western Australia to be appointed as a Queen’s Counsel.

The Hon Wheeler sat as a Commissioner in the District and Supreme Courts of Western Australia in 1995 and 1996 and was appointed to the bench on 30 October 1996, becoming the first female Judge of the Supreme Court of Western Australia.

From 2005 to 2010, she was an inaugural judge of the Court of Appeal. She retired from the Supreme Court on 25 February 2010. Outside law, the Hon Wheeler was Pro-Chancellor of UWA from 2001 to 2005. She was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in the 2013 Australia Day Honours.

Why did your Honour choose law?

Choosing to study law was a process of elimination. I was reasonable at maths and science at school, but better at languages. I had thought I would like to be a geologist, but when the school careers officer discouraged that idea (“No ladies’ toilets! And working with all those men! Not possible.”), I took the non-science stream for the last two years. I discovered too late that, although I loved biology, I couldn’t do it at Uni without advanced maths and chemistry. Finally, a High Court justice, for whom my grandfather worked as an orderly after he retired from the navy, opined that being a solicitor would be “a nice quiet job” for a woman, so I settled on law. Luckily, my first contracts and torts lectures were fascinating, so I stayed. What is your proudest achievement?

I’ve been told by some younger women that my visibility in taking silk and in being appointed to the bench, and in discussing ways of dealing with the obstacles led them to revise upwards their own ambitions. As a career achievement, that is hard to quantify but nevertheless probably the thing I am most proud to reflect on.

What motivated you?

I wasn’t so much motivated to achieve, as to keep up. When I first started working, I had the very good fortune of spending a fair bit of time assisting in the High Court. However, the standard of advocacy there was very high, and for some time I thought that this was a standard that everyone in the profession met. Study after study suggests women believe academic and professional standards to be higher than they are, but I had some grounds for my mistake. By the time I realised this was far from the case, my work habits had been formed.

What are the challenges of being a judge that the public doesn’t necessarily see?

To remember and respect the importance of each case to the parties, even when it seems to be yet another bog-standard case of its type. Being patient with repetitive and ill-prepared counsel is another, and both of these often become more, rather than less, difficult with time. While “querulant” (obsessive and irrational) litigants are a challenge to all those who encounter them, I think the public would be surprised by the burden they impose on the courts-in money, time, and emotional reserves- and they all end up, repeatedly, before the same few registrars and judges of appeal. Has much progress been made for women having equal opportunities?

There has been much progress, but there is room to improve. The obvious illustration is the clip I watched this morning of the Queensland Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, a woman who holds an important leadership position, having to be tactful with John Coates (who was very patronising). It reminded me of the occasional male counsel who thought I would decide in his favour if he spoke loudly over me and waggled his finger at me. How has legislation in WA developed over the years in comparison with other states and territories?

Legislation goes in cycles in most states, I think. In all jurisdictions there is often a focus on passing legislation rather than providing structures and resources to deal with a problem. So, for example, youth crime is dealt with by expanding police powers and providing for more severe sentencing, or it is