The Honourable Thomas Eyre Forrest Hughes AO KC, former Attorney-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, passed from this life today, aged 101. Among the many blessings in my life, sharing chambers with Tom is certainly one of them. I was Tom's junior in several cases, including one successful constitutional appeal to the High Court, and I think that I was his final junior in his last brief. 

Tom is one of the greatest lawyers that Australia has produced and certainly our most distinguished and accomplished advocate. Tom was equally at home in the Privy Council, before a difficult appellate court, or before a jury, or in a suburban or rural Magistrate's Court. Tom was a product of the Jesuits, an old boy of Riverview, and he came to the law after World War II, where he had served in the European theatre in the Royal Australian Air Force. Tom was always very modest about his war service, which involved flying Sunderlands against German U-boat wolfpacks, including in support of the D-Day landings. Tom would, in due course, be made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in recognition of his war service. 

After a short time in practice, Tom took silk in 1962 and, as a man of so many abilities, he entered federal Parliament in 1963, with Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies' strong endorsement. After a brief time on the backbench (in which Tom said he was still briefed in cases, to not lose his skills), Tom became the federal Attorney-General in 1969. As the sitting Attorney-General, Tom remained an advocate and he argued a series of major constitutional cases for the Commonwealth, with his hard-won successes becoming what is now settled law. Tom left federal politics in 1972 and returned to the Bar, where he became, for the rest of his life, the pre-eminent advocate in both public and private law. Other memorials by his near contemporaries will record the story of Tom's brilliance much better than I am able to do so as his last junior, so I will just say the following of the Tom that I knew. 

Tom's work ethic was one of which the Jesuits would have been most proud, even as it scared others. Tom would work away at a case in the manner of a renaissance sculptor starting with a block of marble, with every large and small detail chiselled and shaped until what had been an impenetrably complex set of questions was answered by a series of clear and unarguable legal propositions. What was essential in an argument was worked over and over until it could be refined no more. What was not essential was irrelevant – and a needless distraction. This artisanship – this magisterial skill – was as true of Tom into his final years of practice as it would have been at the beginning. No one who ever worked with Tom on a case ever came away unimpressed or unimproved by his example. 

Tom was an always humble man, despite his many achievements, and would ask even the most junior lawyer on any case for their evaluation of his arguments and advocacy. As a Jesuit alumnus, Tom was always humble before the facts and aware that one's work, however admired, can always improve, further. My own room was across the passageway from Tom's in Sydney's Blackstone Chambers. 

When I first joined the chambers, I wrote a long note to Tom, explaining who I was and noting briefly that I was joining the Bar after naval service in the wars of my own generation. Tom very kindly and quickly took me on as his junior in a series of cases, including to the High Court and Court of Appeal. As we both started work early, we would often have a morning coffee together and discuss the affairs of the world and the law. Tom would share with me his stories of post war law and federal politics, and of his time as Attorney-General. Very movingly, Tom would often discuss his own War service with me. Tom would often speak of his friends, forever young, who were the heroic air crew lost during the War – and even decades later, he had never forgotten them. 

Tom also discussed his own relief at returning home, with every day a blessing in a life that he lived to the full. When Tom finished his practising years, he very kindly gave me some of his law library, including his constitutional and public law works, which I still have, and which use always conjures memories of Tom that I will only cherish more with time. 

Thomas Eyre Forrest Hughes was the good and faithful servant of Australian law. He was also a wonderful, kind, and generous, friend to me and to so many others. We can hope for great lawyers and great advocates, but we should be thankful, also, for such great men, too. In the words of Hamlet, from the quill of Shakespeare who Tom was given to quote, "He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again." AMDG Gray Connolly (OR 91) Barrister Coram Chambers in Sydney