Josiah Symon, 1904-05 federal attorney general from South Australia, clashes with chief justice Samuel Griffith
South Australian senator Josiah Symon (far right), as attorney general and government leader in the senate, with other members of the cabinet of Australian prime minister George Reid (second from left front row) and trade and customs minister Allan McLean (second from right) in 1904-05. They are pictured with governor general Lord Northcote.
Josiah Symon, doyen of the South Australian legal fraternity and elected in 1901 as one of the state’s first federal senators, had his short time (1904-05) as Australia’s attorney general marked by a serious clash with the nation’s high court chief justice Samuel Griffith.
Symon had been outstanding in convention debates and to the drafting and passage of the constitution bill leading to Australian federationin 1901. In 1900, he published the federal movement history in the Yale Review and, the next year, was knighted for his services to federation.
Standing for the senate as a Free Trader, Symon topped the state poll at the first federal election in 1901, later elected as an Anti-Socialist. Unofficial leader of the senate opposition during early parliaments, he was more interested in refining nation building legislation he regarded as being above party politics. But he was vocal in debates on customs tariff laws in 1902. He worked to make the senate an unbiased states' house and a check on the House of Representatives.
A history and literature devotee and Shakespearian scholar, Symon was a founding member of the federal parliamentary library committee from 1901 to 1904 and a1907 to 1913. In this role, he began campaigning for Australian historical documents kept in Britain to be brought to Australia.
Symon was especially interested in the passage of the Judiciary Act that founded the high court in 1903. He became Australian attorney general in the short 1904-05 coalition government under free trader George Reid and conservative protectionist Allan McLean. Former Queensland premier and chief justice Samuel Griffith was appointed in 1903 as chief justice of the high court of Australia. Symon, who never fulfilled press speculation that he would be appointed to the high court, had blamed Griffith for an amendment by the British parliament to the Australian constitution in 1900 that enabled appeals from Australian courts to the privy council in London.
Symon believed the high court should be enshrined in the constitution as “the keystone of the federal arch” and should be in the same city at the federal parliament – a reason for his push for the federal capital site to be decided quickly. The first Australian parliament sat in Melbourne with the high court from 1903. In 1904, Griffith, who had been making a two-day train trip from Brisbane to Melbourne for high court hearings, moved to Sydney and asked that shelving for his law library be installed in the Darlinghurst courthouse, where the court often sat.
Symon, described as “possibly one of the best haters in Australia”, charged the high court (with its other members Edmund Barton and Richard O'Connor backing Griffith) with ignoring the 1903 Act by deciding to sit outside Melbourne. In what amounted to a six-month vendetta, Symon queried the judges’ travel expenses, delayed them being reimbursed and refused the request for bookshelves. The issue was resolved when Symon was succeeded as attorney general by Isaac Isaacs in 1905 after prime minister Alfred Deakin formed his second ministry.
As attorney general, Symon made many contributions to the opinion book on subjects concerned the new federal administration. The contentious conciliation and arbitration bill that brought down the two previous governments was passed during his term, in 1904. Not comfortable with the party system in parliament, and inclined to be abrasive and argumentative, Symon refused to join the Fusion alliance of non-Labor groups in 1909. He stayed in the senate as an independent, without ministerial positions, until defeated in the 2013 election.
Retiring from his Adelaide court practice a decade later, he worked in chambers until late in life. He gave evidence to the 1927-29 royal commission on the constitution. In 1931, he publicly opposed high court chief justice Isaac Isaacs being appointed governor general, seeing it as detrimental to the separation of the judiciary.
