‘The Disappearing Rule of Law’
Location: General Meeting to be held at the Melbourne Club.
Date: November 30, 2024
Time: 6.30 pm – 11.30 pm
Dress: Black tie
Gavin Silbert KC took degrees in Latin and Law at the University of Western Australia before undertaking post graduate degrees at the universities of London and Oxford. He was transported to Victoria on marrying a Victorian and has practised at the Victorian Bar for 40 years.
Between 2008 and 2018 he was chief Crown prosecutor. He has practised over a wide variety of jurisdictions and has conducted heavy criminal trials for both prosecution and defence with over a hundred appearances before the Victorian Court of Appeal and some fifty appearances before the High Court of Australia. He now does mainly pro bono and public interest work and has been a member of the Victorian Bar Council for the last two years.
Our democracy has been founded on the Westminster system of government inherited from Great Britain. Integral to the operation of the system has been a strict separation of powers between the Legislative and Executive branches of government and the Judiciary which constitutes an independent arm of government free of political interference. Further, the criminal justice system also presupposes an independent police force and prosecution service free of political interference.
In recent times this independence between government on the one hand and judicial, police and prosecution services on the other has become blurred such that our rights and freedoms have been diminished at the expense of an increasingly autocratic government.