COVER STORY

SAWEEKEND APRIL 8-9. 2017

OURTROOM I<ING Michael Abbott QC is the fearless lawyer you want if you're in trouble - providing you've got deep pockets. But alongside his forensic

mind, command of the courtroom, and love of a fight. he's also an expert collector of Asian art and a generous philanthropist

he first thing to know about Michael Abbott QC is not to try and message him.

"Don't leave a text," snaps Abbott when we make contact, more abrupt than rude_ "I've got 900 of the things in my

phone. I never read them." Adelaide's most formidable barrister

doesn't need to check his phone; people who need to track him down usually do_ For 50 years criminals and public figures have sought Abbott's help when their lives threaten to fall apart.

The list is long but his clients include former federal MP Mary Jo Fisher on a shoplifting charge, Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis during the inquiry into the Gillman land deal, notorious Family murderer Bevan Spencer von Einem who killed Richard Kelvin, the son of newsreader Rob Kelvin, and disgraced Labor MP Bernard Finnigan whose 12 child pornography charges Abbott steered down to one.

He is fearless, brilliant, up for the fight and operates from the usually correct assumption that he is the smartest person in the room, including the judge.

"He's a ruthless barrister and old school; he will stretch the boundaries of what he can do to win cases," a fellow QC said. "He's also very courageous. Not many others have the guts to act the way he does."

Another QC, David Edwardson, says Abbott was tough and exceptionally committed, and was probably the hardest­working barrister at the bar.

"Michael is driven," Edwardson says. "It's the intellectual challenge. He loves the adversarial system that we work in. He's certainly up for a fight."

Frequently photographed walking in and out of court, Abbott is a private man who rarely gives interviews. What's in it for a QC who commands up to $10,000 a day in court to talk to the press? Yet at his house in Bali on a trip that included signing a memorandum of understanding in Jakarta as chair of OzAsia, he is engaging, even charming.

He is a fascinating individual, a lone wolf with a circle of friends and interests that goes way past the law. He has no time for Adelaide's legal mutual admiration society whose members drink wine and talk about the latest High Court appointment.

He is a man apart with a grand passion for Asian art that began in the 1960s when the former St Peter's College student was fresh from a law degree at Adelaide University. He took a trip to Indonesia where the now defunct Pan Am airline was offering cheap accommodation at the newly opened Bali

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WORDS PENNY DEBELLE MAIN PICTURE NAOMI JELLICOE

Beach Hotel. Back then there was no Kuta, no Seminyak, no Canggu, few tourists and no western food. The young Abbott stayed at the Dutch colonial Denpasar Hotel then found his way to Sanur, a small European enclave on the southeastern side of the largely Hindu island.

"There were a few painters in Ubud but that was it," says Abbott, who five decades later enjoys with wife Sue Crafter a beautiful tropical villa with large verandas furnished with daybeds, set behind discreet, heavy gates in a patrolled Sanur street. "Sanur was a lovely place then; small, quiet, seaside," he says, "nothing like it is today."

He bought the expatriate villa once owned by an oil executive through an intermediary about a decade ago when it was so rundown there was bougainvillea growing through the windows and into the house. They restored it and filled it with textiles and art, the fruits of a lifetime of collecting.

When he first came to Bali, a wave of revenge massacres was underway among the Balinese and the doorman at the Denpasar boasted to him of having killed U people. The killings were part of a wave of Indonesian massacres based on communal tensions, some politically motivated, that in the mid-1960s spread from Jakarta through Java and Bali. "You just didn't believe it but you didn't know," Abbott says. "The bloodletting was going on at night and people were being charming by day."

He loved tlie place anyway and was looking for a way to engage with the Balinese people beyond the superficial encounters of a tourist. An eccentric aunt in Adelaide had encouraged him to spend money on Chinese and Japanese art - mainly Chinoiserie and trade art - from an Adelaide antiques shop and his interest was already piqued.

"I started collecting Chinese trade ceramics, the imperial type traded through Southeast Asia," he says. "These were not things with six-character imperial marks on the bottom; nonetheless they had a sort of rustic simplicity that I thought was quite beautiful."

He has a magpie complex, a compulsive interest in buying and collecting random objects that take his fancy. This included in the late 1970s three Ferret Scout cars, armoured mini-tanks stripped of their weaponry, that he bought with a friend and kept in North Adelaide. "I bought them at an army auction on a whim," he chuckles. "They were not meant to be going but I managed to get two of them going."

He took one to Motor Vehicles SA to get it registered but there was no category for a British armoured military vehicle so they let him register it as Rolls Royce tourer because of its engine.

"They were going cheap," he says, as if that explains it.

He started collecting Asian ceramics and sculptures and his interest moved to textiles which thrilled him more because of their culturally rich links to the Balinese, Indonesian and later Indian communities. Textiles are inherently tied to rites of passage like birth, death and marriage and can signify

status, caste and religion. Then you could tell a lot about a person including their age, sometimes their occupation, and their caste from the traditional clothing they wore.

"Obviously in Bali they are dominantly Hindu so it was Hindu textiles but on other islands they could be animistic or Muslim or both, or show traditions from India or China or both," he says. "I became fascinated and it was a wonderful way of meeting people."

He travelled widely through Indonesia, learnt Bahasa in

which he is fluent and began collecting ikats - fabrics

whose threads are dyed before being

intricately woven -from Sumatra and the Lesser Sunda Islands east of Bali, and batiks from Java. While building a reputation for fearless advocacy

in Adelaide, he would get away

when he could to find more textiles whose

value was unrecognised, and which he adored.

"They were beautiful, items of beauty,"he says. "It's not likeiwas

collecting stamps, you don't look for a full set."

It ignited a lifelong commitment to art philanthropy. In Bali he was known as the Australian .who paid good money for old textiles and the islanders sought him out with family items to sell.

He would bring them back to Adelaide where he filled his house, gave some away then started donating mainly to the Art Gallery of South Australia, which through curator Dick Richards and later James Bennett amassed a valuable collection.

The pieces were displayed in exhibitions including the 2006 Crescent Moon: Islamic Art and Civilisation in Southeast Asia, which was the first major international exhibition to focus on the region's Islamic art, and in 2011 Beneath The Winds: Masterpieces of Southeast Asian Art.

In 2002 he became chairman of the Gallery and held the position for U years, he assisted James Bennett with the book

Speaking With Cloth (Cerita Dalam Kain) about his donation of Janian Textiles to the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, and has donated art valued at $6 million to the Galley whose Southeast Asian collection is held in the Michael Abbott Gallery. He chairs the Adelaide Festival

ADVEOlZOl WE • V1

"You can't, like a doctor, say'I'll take Fridays off and playgolf', not that I play golf."

Main picture, Michael Abbott QC with wife Sue Crafter and dog Duduk in Bali: bottom left, in asitting of the Supreme Court in Adelaide; andAbbott drives the author. sitting at left. and his family in

an ex-Army Ferret mini-tank in 1977

Centre Trust which this week launched Her Majesty's Theatre Renewal Project to raise $3 million to complete the theatre's renovation.

He made his personal mark on the history of

textile collecting by recognising the

significance of the voe stamp on fabrics he found in Bali. It was the mark of the Dutch East

India Company which had a monopoly from

1603 to 1810 on trading Indian textiles to

Indonesia in return for spices. He was coming

across old fabrics bearing their stamp and

became convinced they were at least 200 years

old. "I couldn't work it out; they had to be quite old

to even be here," he says. "People said I was nuts

but I thought they were genuine because no one

is going to go around faking Dutch East India

stamps on old cloths like this. So I persevered

and collected a lot."That important collection is now at the

National Gallery of Australia in Canberra and in

Indonesia these days there are virtually none of

them left. Abbott, whose pool at Sanur is

surrounded by basalt statues of the Hindu god

Ganesh, has now become interested in Balinese

art, including the harder-to-love teak pieces that

started flooding on to the tourist market in the

1980s."I find them . .. interesting," he says. "They're

part of a progression."In the 1970s he acted for a legal colleague who

fell foul of customs in Darwin over a small

wooden statue that was seized because, as the

customs officer said, "it was showing its thing".

Abbott says the statue was an innocuous example

of tribal or primitive tourist art and he called the

then curator of tribal arts at the South Australian

Museum to explain there were much bigger and

better examples on display on North Tee."The prosecution case on indecency or

obscenity was a joke and consisted of measuring

the statue and suggesting to our expert that the

disproportionate size of the penis compared to the

height of the statuesomehow meant it was indecent or obscene," says

Abbott. Abbott knew he had won when the magistrate

asked rhetorically what emotions were

reasonably aroused when he looked at the

offending statue, then answered "envy". The Bali

statue case stayed on as a precedentin indecency and obscenity prosecutions for years.

Now in his 70s he is necessarily coming to the

end of an outstanding career and his work is

winding down as he blocks out more time for

other things. But he makes very clear he is not

working part-time; a does barrister'snot permit

work that kind of scheduling."I am doing less but when I am working on

cases, I'm working full-time," he says. "You can't,

like a doctor, say TU take

Fridays off and play golf. not that I play golf."

SAWEEKEND APRIL 8-9

His reputation as the QC you seek when you're in big trouble, and the one you don't want on the other side, is unchallenged, even if Edwardson says Abbott has mellowed at least a little. Former Premier Mike Rann brought him in to sue Channel 7 over claims of an affair by former Parliament House waitress Michelle Chantelois, which included an allegation they had sex in Rann's parliamentary office. Seven settled out of court, with an apology. One of the "ship of shame" eight, Mark Wilhelm, hired Abbott to defend him against a manslaughter charge over the death of Dianne Brimble; it was dropped. He also represented the unpopular board of the State Bank and Beneficial Finance for two years during the State Bank Royal Commission.

"People don't come to me and say 'I'm guilty, get me off and if they did I wouldn't act for them," Abbott says. "If they came in and said that, they are not the sort of clients you want to act for. They want to draw you into their world. I'm not prepared to do that."

Many of his clients are nevertheless unsavoury characters accused of unspeakable things and there is a popular view that barristers like Abbott should reject the vilest offenders on principle. "I think it's an unfortunate question to say 'do I have any scruples? Of course I have scruples," he says, bridling over the phrasing of the question.

Abbott does knock clients back but not because he is outraged by what they are alleged to have done. He operates by the cab rank principle that says a practising barrister is obliged to take the next case that comes their way, providing they have time to do it justice. But to this, he makes the exception if their crime has touched him personally in a way that may affect his judgment.

''I'm not prepared to say what would disqualify me, what matters I would not be prepared to act in, but, for example, take a situation unrelated to me where a barrister had his children interfered with by a paedophile. I might say that I cannot act for a person accused of paedophilia because I feel it too personally and I couldn't bring an independent mind to bear."

There was no barrier of this sort with Bernard Finnigan who sobbed in the dock and begged for a second chance while refusing to accept his guilt for a child pornography offence. "In the case of Mr Finnigan, he was a person who needed help and I was prepared to act for him," he says.

He best explains the barrister's ethical position by quoting the US civil rights lawyer Clarence Darrow when he was asked to explain the kind of clients he agreed to represent. "Clarence Darrow said it all when 14 SAWEEKEND APRIL g.g

he was asked the same sort of question," Abbott says. "He said the person who has committed the greatest crime is in greatest need of my services."

He still works sometimes for free, either attracted by the nature of a case or a point of law, but again will not say for which clients. Clearly there would be no

shortage of takers. In January a young man accused of stabbing to death an Old Noarlunga man in a block of public housing units at Christie Downs found Abbott at his service, free, the day after his arrest.

He still mucks in the lower courts and was the duty solicitor rostered for the Adelaide Magistrates Courts.

"Ridiculous", "unfair", Abbott thundered, claiming the evidence against the man was too slim, the prosecutors had no case and his client should be released from jail.

"These allegations are unfounded and unproven. This is a man's freedom at stake," Abbott told the court with an authority no junior lawyer could muster. He says he likes to help out -why wouldn't you, it's part of the job - so he can mentor younger lawyers who are coming through. "I go down to the cells, we need to," he says. 'Tm chairman of the Legal Services Commission so it's important you get down there and show them any problems, any issues."

Edwardson says Abbott is the best chair the Legal Services Commission has had because he fears no one and was never craving approval for a judicial appointment. Abbott mentored him and even today makes a point of having a junior barrister in court.

He commands high fees because he has a uniquely powerful weapon; a fearless forensic mind that can turn on the law itself, dismantling the effectiveness of a charge by finding chinks in the armour. He dissects the legislation and the way its power is used by those who exercise it; what they did and whether their actions fall very strictly within the confines of the law.

He gets clients off on a technicality then? "You call it a technicality," he says. "It's up

to the government to change it." Not to make light of the achievement but

his search for these weaknesses in the law and its execution is akin to the mental challenge of tackling a complicated puzzle like a cryptic crossword or Sudoku. Each case offers a new set of circumstances, and the potential for Abbott to find a mistake.

"I just think so few people look at the law," he says. "The starting point is the devolution of power to the person carrying it out, whether that be the police or some administrative arm of government."

In the case of unionist Ark Tribe, a construction worker who refused to answer questions from a federal investigator, Abbott argued the entire trial was unlawful. He didn't succeed on that point but Tribe was acquitted.

In the case of Finnigan, he argued that a third party search engine may have hijacked Finnigan's computer, or that there was no way to know that a child in a pornographic image was under 14 when the image was viewed ... not that it necessarily was viewed, or if so then certainly not for long. In one landmark case he proved that police were

Michael Abbott QC with Frank Gilford, brother

of murdered SA nurse Yvonne Gilford; and,

below. Bernard Finnigan outside the District

court with Abbott

acting illegally by enticing drug traffickers to sell drugs to collect evidence. The law as it stood made the police practice illegal and after Abbott's arguments it had to be changed.

Hidden beneath Abbott's trial record are the vast number of potential cases that don't ever make it to court. They may count as Abbott's biggesf�ccesses and explain why he is in court relatively infrequently for large jury trials - and why he has clients who quietly keep him on a retainer.

"I haven't given (trials) up, it's just that they haven't come around," he says. "I have a few in the pipeline coming up but I hope my arguments about the law will prevail and they fall in a heap." He won't dissect past cases - visiting the morgue he calls it - but says the law almost always gets it right

"I must say in all the trials I've done, I can't think of one innocent person who was wrongly convicted," he says. "I have acted for lots of people who have been convicted and I haven't regarded any of them so far as having been innocent."

The exception was Edward Charles Splatt who Abbott did not represent at trial. Splatt was wrongly convicted in 1978 of the murder of an elderly woman who was beaten, sexually assaulted and strangled. The conviction relied on the scientific examination of trace materials - paint, wood, even birdseed - although Splatt, who lived nearby, was never placed at the scene.

In the early 1980s Premier John Bannon ordered a Royal Commission. Abbott represented Splatt, who was pardoned.

It is the only case of a miscarriage of justice he can think of.

"I mean I've thought they (clients) might have been innocent or guilty but as the evidence has unfolded, at the end of the day the jury has been right," he says.

areer of such intensity comes at a �cost which includes a successful

amily life. Crafter, the honorary French consul in South Australia, is his second wife and he is typically direct about his earlier failures as a husband and father and how he managed the trade-off between family and work.

"I haven't, not very well," he says. "I think getting the balance right is all important and almost impossible."

He has a son, Tom Abbott, a criminal lawyer and associate at city firm Camatta Lempens, and a daughter, Kate, who works for Families SA.

Could he have done better? "I don't know," he says. "All I know is that many of my brethren like me don't get the balance right and family suffers. That's all I can say."

His love of Asian art is age-proof and he can see life on the other side of the law, staying in Adelaide, which he loves and where he also has a place at Port Willunga, and travelling and visiting Bali more.

He has just renewed his role as chair of the Legal Services Commission for three more years and says somewhat facetiously that he will retire when people stop briefing him.

That won't happen but there is the indisputable physical fact of age. He turns 74 this year and looks fit and trim but marathon running has all but crippled his knees. There will come a point when he steps down, maybe mid-next year when he turns 75.

then straight away hedges his bet.

'1 don't think there is much future for "I barristers beyond 75 years or so," he says,

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"I don't know ...''