1. Robert Garran served as the departmental secretary of the Attorney-General's Department from 1901 to 1932, and after 1916 held the position of Solicitor-General of Australia.
62 Facts About Robert Garran
1. 2.
Robert Garran studied arts and law at the University of Sydney and was called to the bar in 1891.
3.
Robert Garran was a keen supporter of the federation movement, and became acquainted with leading federalists like George Reid and Edmund Barton.
4.
On 1 January 1901, Robert Garran was chosen by Barton's caretaker government as its first employee; for a brief period, he was the only member of the Commonwealth Public Service.
5.
Robert Garran was considered an early expert in Australian constitutional law, and with John Quick published an annotated edition of the constitution that became a standard reference work.
6.
Robert Garran developed a close relationship with Billy Hughes during World War I, and accompanied him to the Imperial War Cabinet and the Paris Peace Conference.
7.
Robert Garran was knighted three times for his service to the Commonwealth, in 1917, in 1920 and in 1937.
8.
Robert Garran was one of the first public servants to relocate there after it replaced Melbourne as the capital in 1927.
9.
Robert Garran founded several important cultural associations, organised the creation of the Canberra University College, and later contributed to the establishment of the Australian National University.
10.
Robert Garran published at least eight books and many journal articles throughout his lifetime, covering such topics as constitutional law, the history of federalism in Australia, and German-language poetry.
11.
Robert Garran was granted a state funeral upon his death in 1957, the first federal public servant to receive one.
12.
Robert Garran was born in Sydney, New South Wales, the only son of journalist and politician Andrew Robert Garran and his wife Mary Isham.
13.
Robert Garran's parents were both devout and committed to social justice, Mary campaigning for issues such as the promotion of education for women.
14.
Robert Garran's mother "had a deep distrust, well justified in those days, of milkman's milk" and so she kept a cow in the backyard, which would walk on its own to The Domain each day to graze and return twice a day to be milked.
15.
Robert Garran attended Sydney Grammar School from the age of ten, starting in 1877.
16.
Robert Garran was a successful student, and became School Captain in 1884.
17.
Robert Garran then studied arts and law at the University of Sydney, where he was awarded scholarships for classics, mathematics and general academic ability.
18.
Robert Garran graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1888 and subsequently won the University's Medal in Philosophy when he was conferred with a Master of Arts with first-class honours in 1899.
19.
Robert Garran was employed for a year with a firm of Sydney solicitors, and in 1890 served as associate to Justice William Charles Windeyer of the Supreme Court of New South Wales.
20.
In 1891, Robert Garran was admitted to the New South Wales Bar, where he commenced practice as a barrister, primarily working in equity.
21.
In June 1893, when Barton's Australasian Federal League was formed at a meeting in the Sydney Town Hall, Robert Garran joined immediately and was made a member of the executive committee.
22.
Robert Garran was one of the League's four delegates to the 1893 Corowa Conference and a League delegate to the 1896 "People's Convention", or Bathurst Conference, a conference attended by Barton, Reid, League members, the Australian Natives' Association and other pro-federation groups.
23.
In 1897, Robert Garran published The Coming Commonwealth, an influential book on the history of the Federation movement and the debate over the 1891 draft of the Constitution of Australia.
24.
Robert Garran recorded in a letter to his family during the convention's Melbourne sitting that:.
25.
Robert Garran joked that the long work of the drafting committee breached the Factory Acts, the group often working late into the night preparing drafts for the convention to consider and debate the next morning.
26.
Robert Garran contributed a daily column to the Evening News, and had humorous poems critiquing opponents of federation published in The Bulletin.
27.
Robert Garran was the first, and for a time the only, public servant employed by the Government of Australia.
28.
Robert Garran advised that the Section could be neutered by interpreting it as no more than a grandfather clause of the right to vote of existing Aboriginal voters.
29.
However, Robert Garran himself admitted that his drafting could be overly simplistic, citing the first customs and excise legislation, developed with the Minister for Trade and Customs Charles Kingston and Assistant Parliamentary Draftsman Gordon Castle, as an example of the style taken to excess.
30.
The other Crown Solicitors that Robert Garran worked with were Gordon Castle and William Sharwood.
31.
In 1912, Robert Garran was considered as a possible appointee to the High Court, following the expansion of the bench from five seats to seven and the death of Richard O'Connor.
32.
Robert Garran worked with eleven Attorneys-General as Permanent Head of the Department.
33.
In 1916, Robert Garran was made the first Solicitor-General of Australia by Billy Hughes, who had since become Prime Minister as well as Attorney-General.
34.
Robert Garran developed a strong relationship with Hughes, giving him legal advice on the World War I conscription plebiscites and on the range of regulations which were made under the War Precautions Act 1914.
35.
Robert Garran accompanied Hughes and Joseph Cook to the 1917 and 1918 meetings of the Imperial War Cabinet in London, United Kingdom, and was part of the British Empire delegation to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference in Paris, France.
36.
Robert Garran viewed some similarities between British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and United States President Woodrow Wilson where others saw only differences, since Lloyd George " had a strong vein of idealism in his character", and Wilson could be pragmatic when the situation called for it, such as in discussions relating to American interests.
37.
Robert Garran attended two Imperial Conferences, accompanying Prime Minister Stanley Bruce in 1923 and in 1930 joining Prime Minister James Scullin and Attorney-General Frank Brennan, chair of the Drafting Committee which prepared drafts of agreements on various topics, such as merchant shipping.
38.
Robert Garran attended the eleventh League of Nations conference that year with them in Geneva, Switzerland.
39.
At the Royal Commission on the Constitution in 1927, Robert Garran gave evidence over five days, where he discussed the history and origins of the Constitution and the evolution of the institutions established under it.
40.
Towards the end of his time as Solicitor-General, Robert Garran's work included the preparation of the Debt Conversion Agreement between the Government of Australia and the governments of the states, which involved the federal government taking over and managing the debts of the individual states, following the 1928 referendum.
41.
Robert Garran concluded that it was, and the Department of Trade and Customs subsequently banned the book from being imported into Australia, the first book by an Australian author to suffer such a ban.
42.
In 1927, Robert Garran had moved from his home in Melbourne to the newly established capital Canberra, one of the first public officials to do so.
43.
Robert Garran worked within the Government to facilitate housing in Canberra for officials who needed to move there from other cities, and was involved in establishing cultural organisations in the city.
44.
Robert Garran retired from his governmental positions on 9 February 1932, a fixed retirement date on the day before his sixty-fifth birthday.
45.
Robert Garran soon returned to practise as a barrister, and within a month he was made a King's Counsel.
46.
Robert Garran was the vice-president of the Canberra Musical Society, where he sang and played the clarinet, and in 1946 won a national song competition run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
47.
Robert Garran was known to be a great lover of poetry and languages.
48.
Geoffrey Sawer, the ANU Law professor, believed Robert Garran had brought his quiet religious faith to bear in his life of service:.
49.
Robert Garran was granted a state funeral, the first given to a public servant of the Government of Australia, and was buried at St John's, Reid.
50.
Robert Garran was survived by his four sons; his wife Hilda had died in 1936.
51.
However Robert Garran is perhaps best remembered as an expert on constitutional law, more so than for his other contributions to public service.
52.
At his death, Robert Garran was one of the last remaining of the people involved with the creation of the Constitution of Australia.
53.
On his experience of Federation and the Constitution, Robert Garran was always enthusiastic:.
54.
Sir Robert Garran knew the promise and reality of federation.
55.
Robert Garran was part of the establishment of a public service which, in many ways, is clearly recognisable today.
56.
At one level, Robert Garran's remarkable career epitomises the hay day, or Indian Summer, of the meritocratic bourgeois elite born in Australia in the third quarter of the 19th century.
57.
Robert Garran was made a Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George on the day that Federation was completed and Australia created, 1 January 1901, "in recognition of services in connection with the Federation of Australian Colonies and the establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia",.
58.
Robert Garran was first knighted in 1917, and was appointed as a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1920.
59.
Robert Garran was knighted a third time in 1937 when he was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George.
60.
Shortly after the establishment of the ANU in 1946, Robert Garran became its first graduate when he was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws.
61.
Robert Garran had already been awarded such an honorary doctorate from the University of Melbourne in 1937 and later receiving one from his alma mater, the University of Sydney in 1952.
62.
The Robert Garran oration, established to honour his memory, has been given yearly since 1959.