Published: 4 November 2022
Last updated: 5 March 2024
Ahead of his Colin Tatz Oration on the UN definition of genocide, MICHAEL KIRBY talks to MARK DAPIN about North Korea, same-sex marriage, his Jewish nephew – and Israel.
The Honourable Michael Kirby AC CMG, former justice of the High Court of Australia, invites me into his office with courteous reluctance.
He would have preferred to conduct our interview over Zoom, but instead I have turned up at his Macquarie Street rooms – directly opposite the State Parliament of New South Wales – with an embarrassed grin and a headful of half-formed questions.
I am here because Kirby will talk on the topic, “Is the UN’s definition of genocide relevant today?” for The Jewish Independent’s 2022 Colin Tatz Oration at Bondi Pavilion on November 14.
The Jewish Independent asked him to speak. “I never volunteer to give lectures,” he says. “I survive the requests.”
Kirby’s reception room is crammed with law books and leatherbound volumes of his speeches. He shares his inner sanctum with many more books, and an anonymous bust wearing a desk wig.
I guess all judges need a surrogate head to keep their wig in shape, but I find this one a bit distracting: it looks like a po-faced joke, staring at me through sightless eyes.
At the other end of the room, small, neat piles of papers checker the floor, as if the carpet were a recumbent desk.
Kirby is compact and composed. It is a pleasure to listen to him speak. He is understated and funny, with an ear for a deft adjective and the relentlessly logical syntax of an expert jurist.
He is the oldest child of a family whose roots lay largely in the traditions of Ulster Protestantism, but his brother, David – who was also to became a NSW Supreme Court judge – married a Jewish woman in 1972.
"I think there are many similarities between the Jewish people and the Irish people. They’re both slightly crazy. They are both very poetical."
