Legendary Australian barrister and politician Tom Hughes dies aged 101

Legendary Australian barrister and former politician Tom Hughes, KC, has died aged 101.

Hughes, a former federal attorney-general and top silk, appeared in a string of high-profile defamation cases, including for footballer Andrew Ettingshausen and the late stockbroker Rene Rivkin, as well as being a leader in commercial and constitutional law.

Tom Hughes, KC, in 2005.

“Farewell to a wonderful father. What an incredibly long and good life,” Hughes’ daughter, Lucy Turnbull, said in a social media post on Thursday.

Hughes died at midday on Thursday, two days after his 101st birthday.

The St Ignatius’ College Riverview old boy studied law at the University of Sydney and was admitted as a barrister in 1949 after serving as a pilot in World War II. He was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1962.

Hughes was elected to federal parliament in 1963 and served as the Liberal member for Parkes and later Berowra, and as attorney-general in the Gorton government. Post politics, he resumed his professional life as a sought-after silk.

Former prime minister John Howard, Hughes’ campaign manager for the seat of Parkes, became a lifelong friend.

It was a “very dramatic campaign … punctuated by the assassination of [US] president Kennedy”, and “we had an extraordinary victory”, Howard told The Sydney Morning Herald.

Howard recalled Hughes holding a cricket bat aloft at his 100th birthday and saying, “100 not out”. He had famously wielded a cricket bat at anti-conscription demonstrators outside his home during the Vietnam War in 1970.

Howard said Hughes had achieved a “hell of a lot” in his short time as attorney-general between November 1969 and March 1971, including arguing the seminal Concrete Pipes case in the High Court, which led to an expansive interpretation of the corporations power in the Constitution.

“That interpretation has permitted the Commonwealth to control and regulate most of the business and economic life and much of the social life of Australia,” former High Court judge Michael McHugh said in 2005.

After his political career ended in 1972, Hughes “returned to the bar with a vengeance” and “built a massive practice”, Howard said.

“He retained a lively mind to the very end,” Howard said.

NSW Chief Justice Andrew Bell said Hughes was “one of the finest trial lawyers and advocates in our nation’s history” and, “quite simply, an icon of the Australian legal profession”.

Hughes retired from practice in 2013, just shy of his 90th birthday.

Hughes’ biographer, Ian Hancock, described the celebrated advocate as “probably the last of his kind”.

Then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull with grandson Jack, wife Lucy and daughter Daisy, son-in-law James Brown and parents-in-law Tom and Christine Hughes at Government House, 2015.Credit: Fairfax Media

“He taught himself watching other barristers,” Hancock said. “He had four careers: he was a farmer, airman, barrister and politician.”

Hughes was regarded as a leader of the NSW bar for about three decades, and “he certainly was charging the highest fees”, Hancock said.

NSW Bar Association president Dr Ruth Higgins, SC, said Hughes, a former Bar Association president, “made a singular contribution to the administration of justice”.

Hughes is survived by his wife, Christine, his children, Lucy, Tom and Michael, and their families.

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