Dyson Heydon: Legal giant’s career clouded by claims

Dyson Heydon’s brilliant career speaks for itself: Rhodes scholar, esteemed academic, High Court judge, corruption buster.

Former High Court judge Dyson Heydon. Picture: AAP

Dyson Heydon’s brilliant career speaks for itself: Rhodes scholar, esteemed academic, High Court judge, corruption buster.

Yet his impeccable resume now carries an indelible stain. The profession that revered his extraordinary mind has found that he sexually harassed six of their own.

Mr Heydon was a powerful figure for decades, including during the period he is said to have victimised female colleagues.

He studied law at Oxford then returned to Sydney, where he was admitted to the NSW Bar at 29.

Five years later, in 1978, he was elected dean of the University of Sydney Law School.

His formidable memory was well known among peers, as was his willingness to help them.

When judge Mark Leeming — now widely thought to be headed for the High Court — was sworn in as a judge of the ­Supreme Court of NSW in 2013, he made mention of both these traits in an anecdote from their days on the eighth Floor of Selborne Chambers.

He described Mr Heydon as “a benevolent dictator”.

“It was an extraordinary thing, but Dyson’s door truly was always open,” he said.

“I remember asking him, in a case where it was plain that my client, a public servant, had badly misunderstood the particular law she had relied on but had come to the right decision, which was ­defensible, whether there were some decisions that might assist. He said, ‘Mahla Pearlman, Sir Nigel, something by Dixon — give me a minute’, and promptly returned to my room with the whole line of authority. There were no com­puters then.

“It was and is a privilege working with him as a barrister and as an author.”

The Howard government ­appointed Mr Heydon to the Australian High Court in 2003.

He retired 10 years later at the mandatory age of 70 then oversaw the Abbott government’s Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption.

Three of the women found to be victims of Mr Heydon’s sexual harassment are represented by Maurice Blackburn, the class ­action firm with Labor links.

The firm fought hard for unions at the 2015 royal commission.

That is where Mr Heydon ­famously became embroiled in ­accusations that he had opened himself to perceptions that he was partisan by agreeing to deliver a keynote speech at a Liberal Party fundraiser.

He withdrew and carried on, despite calls for his resignation.

Mr Heydon clashed with then Labor leader Bill Shorten inside the royal commission, questioning his credibility as a witness and ­accusing him of giving non-­responsive answers when asked about a deal in which a ­building company paid $300,000 to the Australian Workers Union when Mr Shorten was in charge of it.

No adverse findings were made against Mr Shorten by the Royal Commission.

Unions called the royal commission an $80m witch hunt.