User:SilasM/Lionel Murphy

This confusing text is the product of an incomplete set of subject headings, partially filled out with text, having been stripped of those subject headings by User:Clarkk "until fleshed out". Suitably rebuked, I must flesh out.

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Lionel Keith Murphy (30 August 1922–21 October 1986) was Attorney-General in the Government of Gough Whitlam, and a Justice of the High Court of Australia.

Murphy was the youngest son of William and Lily Murphy, and grew up in Sydney. In July 1954, he married Nina Morrow at St John's church in Darlinghurst, Sydney. Their daughter, Lorel Katherine, was born in 1955. In 1967, Murphy's marriage to Nina ended in divorce. In 1969, Murphy married Ingrid Gee (Grzonkowski). They had two sons, Cameron and Blake.

One of Murphy's more controversial actions as Attorney-General was his visit to the Melbourne headquarters of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation on 16 March 1973.

Murphy's visit to ASIO came about because officers of that organisation were unable to satisfy his requests for information concerning intelligence available to ASIO regarding Croation terrorist groups operating in Australia. Murphy's agitation about the matter was heightened by the impending visit to Australia by the Yugoslav Prime Minister Dzemal Bijedic. ASIO officers claimed not to be able to locate the file with which to properly brief Murphy.

Although there was, initially, overwhelming support for Murphy from the press and from Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, the tide turned dramatically. Murphy eventually faced a great deal of criticism in the press and in the Senate. For the first time in the history of the Senate, that chamber voted to censure a government Minister.

Attorney-General Lionel Bowen, acting on what he said was his belief that the Justices of the High Court were minded to take some independent action to assess Justice Murphy's fitness to return to the Court, introduced legislation for a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, constituted by three retired judges, to inquire into allegations concerning Justice Murphy.

That Commission quickly set to work, and was closed almost as quickly, as Justice Murphy announced, on 31 July 1986, that he was dying of untreatable cancer. The legislation establishing the Commission of Inquiry was repealed, and that repeal legislation vested control of the Commission's documents in the speaker of the House of Representatives and the President of the Senate. Murphy returned to the Court for one week of sittings. He died on 21 October 1986