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Experience

The Honourable Stephen Charles AO KC passed away on June 14th 2025

Reflections on His Honour below, provided by Ms Fiona McLeod AO SC 

Stephen was a most remarkable person, I am privileged to have known him over the decades. He was fearless, impatient, with political inertia, the slow pace of accountability reform and the imperfections of the model of the IBAC and NACC, but he persisted with the work of reform and improvement of State and national bodies. He was a dear and trusted friend, a passionate advocate who lived life fully, steadfastly committed to personal and public integrity.

I first met Stephen in 1991 when he was chair of the Victorian Bar readers course where he warmly welcomed generations of baby barristers. Stephen summonsed me to a meeting in his chambers to check with me and a number of younger women barristers whether we were comfortable with the behaviour of one of his senior colleagues, who happened to be his dear friend. I was so impressed that his first priority was that we were all safe and supported, he was so ahead of his time!

I mentioned this incident when we celebrated his contribution to the Accountability Roundtable Board and I think he was quite chuffed to be remembered as a champion of young women barristers. I also said at the time that it was through his sheer determination and principled smart advocacy through ART, CPI, and the judges forum, he was responsible for the delivery of the NACC. He was such a force to be reckoned with with his calm intelligent argument and hundreds of media appearances, including the infamous head to head with Porter who suggested he was, or his arguments were, silly. I recall meetings in parliament house offices and coffee shops with anyone who would speak to us, and a dinner with Barry in the lead up to the 2019 election where we like to think we persuaded Simon Holmes a Court to adopt integrity as the third focus issue of Climate200.

We appeared before parliamentary committees into one rort or another where his 'cut through the bullshit' style gave me courage to name the grift and corruption playing out in the misuse of public funds,

Stephen remained a devoted contributor to the bar and to the Court after his appointment. For years he chaired the Chief Justice's Preliminary Evaluation Committee who scrutinised silk applications each year to make recommendations about appointment to the Chief Justice. He was the first Chair of a new process and his tenure well and truly outlived my years of participation. Each year this took hundreds of hours of referee checking and meetings, including with the CJ to pass on the Committee thinking. He was conscious that it could be an agonising process, especially for repeat applicants, and was always looking for ways to improve the process.

He was an eminent and respected jurist who guided the development of the law in this State over many years and unusual (then) for his encouragement of anxious counsel appearing before him.

I also acknowledge the critical work he undertook in inter country adoption and tackling the vile white Australia policy.

In 2016 I asked him to lead the Law Council Justice Project chapter on Asylum Seekers and had to call on his support when some wanted to abandon an entire chapter on refugees because of political sensitivities. He had such clarity of moral purpose in this and so many other things that we blew away the wobbles, and the chapter remained intact in the final publication.