Two University of Queensland Senators have been awarded honorary doctorates at a ceremony for UQ’s Business, Economics and Law Faculty.
The Hon Justice Margaret White was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree and Mr Gordon (Ted) Edwards received an honorary Doctor of Economics degree on Monday December 5. Justice White was also a guest speaker at the ceremony. You can listen to her speech by clicking here.
Justice White was appointed a Justice of the Supreme Court of Queensland in 1992 and has been a member of the University Senate since 1993. She was a senior tutor in law, lecturer in law at UQ from 1970 to 1982 and was admitted as a barrister of the Supreme Court in 1978. Justice White has been a member since 1993 and Chair since 2004 of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Queensland Selection Committee and member of the Australian Board. She was recommissioned in 2003 as a Commander in the Naval Reserve.
Mr Edwards moved to Queensland in 1988 to take up the position of Resident Director for the TNT Group of companies and Ansett Australia. In 1994 he retired from TNT and continued his commercial activities as independent company director, serving on the boards of publicly listed and private companies. He accepted a number of State Government and Brisbane City Council appointments and has worked in areas of social responsibility.
• Valedictorian at this ceremony was Arts/Laws honours graduate Samuel Whittington (telephone 3870 1478, mobile 0412 927 053) who was elected to the position by fellow students. Mr Whittington studied for two semesters at Yonsei University, South Korea as part of UQ`s Study Abroad program. He graduated from his Arts degree in 2002 with majors in International Relations and Asian Studies. During his University studies, he was co-editor of The University of Queensland Law Society`s magazine Obiter in 2004 (with fellow students Ryan Goss and Rhodes Scholars Nicholas Luke (Queensland’s 2006 Rhodes Scholar) and Simon Quinn (2005 Rhodes Scholar). Mr Whittington participated in the UQLS Law Revue in 2003, 2004 and 2005 including co-directing the 2004 show "TC Beirne Supremacy" with Daniel Pizzato. He has worked with the Queensland Public Interest Legal Clearing House homeless legal clinic project (from late 2002 to late 2004) and the South Asian Human Rights Documentation Centre (in April and May 2005).
• Helen Dale (nee Darville) graduated with first class honours in law. Her outstanding results throughout the law degree - which includes multiple Dean's Commendations for academic excellence, various subject prizes and the Ruthning Memorial Scholarship - are in addition to winning the University Medal for her first degree (BA Hons I 1994). She also represented the university's T C Beirne School of Law in the Manfred Lachs international moot and was an outstanding editor of the University of Queensland Law Journal. This was in addition to considerable sporting and community commitments outside her studies.
Better known for her controversial first novel, The Hand that Signed the Paper, and for winning the 1995 Miles Franklin Literary Award, Ms Dale has found that law is a more interesting and useful career than literature.
"I have found the intellectual conformity that characterises much of Australia's literary community not to be present in the legal field," she said yesterday. "Lawyers may dress and speak conservatively, but the space between their ears is their own. Many artists make much of dressing and acting to provoke, but their views are sadly predictable."
She takes up a position next year as Associate to Mr Justice Dutney of the Queensland Supreme Court.
• 2006 Rhodes Scholar Nicholas Luke, who was awarded an Arts honours degree in 2004, also graduated this year with honours in Law, but was unable to attend his ceremony. He has left to conduct research into human rights at the Human Rights Documentation Centre in New Delhi, and will take up postgraduate literature studies at Oxford next October. Mr Luke believes that humanities is a neglected area of focus in Brisbane and Australia, and wishes to play some role in drawing attention to this discipline and inspiring others to study it in future.
“I have a passion and enthusiasm for literature and would like to share this with others," he said recently.
• 2005 Rhodes Scholar and University Medallist Simon Quinn, who graduated with first class honours in Laws, after previously being awarded honours in Economics, was unable to attend the ceremony as he left in October to take up postgraduate studies in Economics at the University of Oxford.
Media: Further information Jan King, telephone 0413 601 248.
