Vew from the chair: Speeches of Richard WL Austin

This morning I am doing another thing for the first time-I am launching a book launcher. I am particularly pleased to have been invited to do this. First, it gives me a chance, in my capacity as Chairman of Trustees, to make the point-which I have made before and which I shall continue to make--that we see this Gallery as a meeting place for all those interested in the arts in the widest sense, and in civilised activities generally. A book launching is such an activity. Second, as launcher of the launcher, it gives me special pleasure to introduce a friend of long standing for whom I have both affection and admiration. Sir James has had a very distinguished career during which he has played many parts. He has been barrister, jackeroo, business executive, airman, author, politician and Minister of the Crown. On one memorable occasion he even out-performed Atlas. Adas, you may remember, merely held up the world on his shoulders. Sir James, single-handed, held up a Government-a much weightier burden, as events in recent days have reminded us. For his many services to the community, he was, in 1982, created Knight of The Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George-a fitting tribute to a great slayer of dragons. But Sir James is not only a man with a distinguished career behind him and, perhaps, another one ahead of him. He is also a distinguished man, which is a very different thing. I like to think that he is the kind of man that Lord Chancellor Bacon had in mind when he wrote in his famous essay on studies: 'Reading maketh a full man, writing an exact man, conference a ready man'. Sir James is, indeed, all three of these men. In addition, he has a very acute sense of history and a high regard for the English language. In short, to change the analogy, he is a true Renaissance man for our time and place. If I may, I wish to end this introduction on a note of personal reminiscence. Sir James and I once shared the same rostrum, though not at the same time. In what one now thinks of as the good old days of Melbourne, when Victoria was still the bastion of Liberalism, Mr Douglas Carnegie, father of my former boss at CRA (Sir Rod), used to give, in Cup· Week, what he called his racing launch. One year he invited me to be guest speaker. I asked him what I should talk about. 'Oh, anything', he said, 'as long as it's about racing and horses'. I strictly followed my brief and produced a learned paper which I called 'Two-year olds, Derby winners, and the Melbourne Cup'. The next year it was Sir James's turn to speak. Presumably he got the same instructions from his host. I remember listening spellbound as he spoke entirely without notes, never once faltering. It was one of the best 'after-lunch' speeches I have ever heard. But racing and horses hardly got a mention. Like all great advocates in the Rumpole tradition, he had entirely disregarded his brief. If his speech had been given a tide it would have been 'Politicians and Public Servants I have known'. I hope he will not entirely disregard his brief today. Given the subject-matter of the book he is launching and the composition of the audience, I hope Sir James will say at least a few words on the subject of 'women I have known'. Coming from him that really would be something. 108