Rise2018 national conference

19/11/2018

A message from President Tim Game SC

It was a great pleasure to co-host the Rise2018 national conference with the Australian Bar Association last week. By all accounts the conference was a great success, with five specialised streams, more than 36 sessions on topics of great importance and an impressive line up of speakers and panellists, including: the Chief Justice of Australia, the Hon Susan Kiefel AC; the Hon Justice Virginia Bell AC; the Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia, the Hon James Allsop AO; the Chief Justice of NSW, the Hon Tom Bathurst AC; the former Chief Justice of Australia, the Hon Robert French AC; the Commonwealth Attorney-General, the Hon Christian Porter MP; the Shadow Attorney-General, the Hon Mark Dreyfus QC MP and the Attorneys-General of New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia; highly respected legal practitioners from around the country, including Bret Walker SC and Fiona McLeod SC; leading academics, including Professor Hilary Charlesworth; South Australian of the Year, Dr Richard Harris; journalists Julia Baird, Tony Jones, David Marr and Jamelle Wells. May I express my deep appreciation to all those who participated.

I would like to extend my thanks to the former President of the ABA, Noel Hutley SC, and the former President of the NSW Bar Association, Arthur Moses SC, for chairing the conference steering committee and for their leadership in conference planning.

Conferences of this size are an enormous undertaking and a significant amount of work, time and energy goes into organising these events behind the scenes. The conference would not have been possible without the tireless efforts and dedication of the CEO of the ABA, Cindy Penrose and the Executive Director of the NSW Bar Association, Greg Tolhurst, who have worked for over twelve months to plan this event from start to finish to ensure the conference was a quality, rewarding experience for all our delegates, and a credit to both Associations. I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank Cindy and Greg for all their hard work, indefatigable enthusiasm and commitment over the last year.

The preparation of the conference involved close collaboration between the staff of the ABA and NSW Bar Association who worked tirelessly and collegially to bring the conference to fruition. I thank them all for their efforts and congratulate them on a job well done.