Part ONE • Paul Munro AM

The Hon. Justice Paul Munro AM

In July 1961 I became one of the last ‘permanent’ officers appointed to the PNG Administration—as Legal Officer. At 85, I am among the last survivors of the lawyers practising within Crown Law at Konedobu in 1960–61.

A decade or so ago, I set myself to write a piece about those lawyers. Rod Madgwick SC  had asked me if John Greville-Smith, our erstwhile boss, was still alive—The Hon. John Greville-Smith CBE: Crown Law’s Chief Crown Prosecutor, sometime Public Solicitor, President of the (PSA) Public Service Administration of PNG, and Judge of the National Court. A Vale notice in Una Voce showed that John died in 2004, his career telescoped in five sentences. We wondered whether one’s spouse will always pick out the best points of a chap’s career. We lawyers are almost universally afflicted by social underappreciation of our merits. I promised I would get something together to make amends.

I set out. I never got around to throwing more light on Greville-Smith’s contributions. I couldn’t find a copy of the ‘Stud Book’. In the 1960s the administration published a detailed list/directory of relative seniority and positions of all permanent officers. Without it, I couldn’t decipher the musical chairs of promotions within Crown Law around 1960–62.

Some high-achieving lawyers worked there, as many more were soon to join them. Their names and contributions are too easily forgotten, by me na olgeta. As Papua New Guinea (PNG) enters its 50th anniversary of independence, I hope in this memoir to snapshot a few ways in which those senior to me at that time, by their collective activities and stances, laid the foundations for features of PNG’s legal system. 

I remember most vividly (aided by hindsight and history): Parliamentary Draftsman Joe Lynch, Peter Clay, Lou Cervetto, Crown Solicitor Sid Johnson, Assistant Sec-Law Paul Quinlivan , Public Solicitor WA (Peter) Lalor , John Greville-Smith, Rob O’Regan KC, Tos Barnett, Con McLoughlin, and Dr J J Janousek . Beyond Crown Law, among the non-judicial legal giants was Jack Mattes , ASOPA’s outstanding Principal (1964-71) and lawyer, also his early mentor Hal Wooten QC , and in Canberra’s Department of External Territories (DOET), the prolific legal millstone John Ballard , and later his more constructive successor, John Greenwell .

Notably, in 1961, there were no women lawyers in PNG. No Papua New Guinean lawyers either. Not until 1968 did Joseph Aoae graduate from the University of Queensland (UQ) and be admitted to practice. Buri Kidu (UQ, 1972) and Bernard Narokobi (University of Sydney, 1972) followed. Only in 1972 did Ilinome Frank and Kubulan Los become the first graduates from the University of PNG (UPNG) admitted to practice, although both had experience as magistrates.

Mal Maritimos CBE QC recently observed:

At the end of 2023, there were about 1,400 lawyers holding practising certificates in PNG. Well over 200 of these lawyers worked for government departments or statutory bodies. A very large proportion of lawyers in PNG are sole practitioners. … PNG is a litigious country.

In my view, that should be a matter for celebration for a 50-year-new emerging nation. The lawyers listed, and many others not listed, deserve recognition for their parts in bringing that about.

In 1960–61 all legal officers engaged by the administration, resident magistrates, commissioners and public solicitors included, held positions within the Crown Law Department establishment. Crown Law Department’s head office at Konedobu was known widely as ‘The Vatican’, for a mix of reasons, not all misleading. Church and Lodge had places in that naming, but it also served to fix a key spot in the hierarchy of bureaucratic power. Infallibility, though, was disputed. Other hierarchies were not timid: the Administrator, the Supreme Court, the Commonwealth’s DOET, attorneys general and their respective ministers; locally, by no means least, sometimes gifted bush-lawyering, even cowboyish determinations by layers of regional Native Affairs/ District Administration. 

Those most familiar with Crown Law roles saw it as a happy mix of capability with occasional roguery. The roguery was glimpsed in the aftermath of separate fires on the same 1958 night in the Crown Law office and the Supreme Court. For years after, a well worn excuse for concerns about delay in hard cases was that ‘the file must have been lost in the fire.’ Allegedly, the morning after, some files were thrown on the embers.

Always colourful, Denny Kelliher wrote a single sentence response to a long-winded question from an assistant district officer. He wanted expert legal advice about which offences were best to charge villagers for helping themselves to water from his sub-district office tank. ‘Crown Law advises that the ADO should secure his rainwater supply by fitting a tamper-proof tap’. Conversely, with equal wisdom and insight, Kelliher, as Land Titles Commissioner, once rebuked an importunate Crown Law cross-examiner of a Duke of York Island elder:

Mr (John Doe), I should not have to remind you that you should know and respect that this witness is a much more important person in his community than you are in yours.

Perhaps another was at the inaugural meeting of the PNG Law Society in Port Moresby. The Chief Justice, Sir Alan Mann, gave a welcoming address to the Commonwealth Attorney General, Bill Snedden, who responded. Sir Alan explored in depth the design of a coat of arms and architecture for the Supreme Court. Snedden developed at length his insights about the Rule of Law. By this time, the assembled legal fraternity was well-primed. Sweepstakes over who had been more rivetingly dull, paid out for Snedden as narrow winner over Mann. Crown Law favourite, ‘Mr Junior’, Geoff Dabb, thanked the distinguished guests. To gales of laughter he explained in detail how the CJ and AG had each stolen his thunder, adding what he might or might not have said about both topics.

In all seriousness, putting aside its lengthy delivery, the Commonwealth Attorney General’s subject of Rule of Law was an important one as it related to the establishment of the Constitution of the new nation. I return to this in the second part half of this expose.