Playwright on a high over judgment day

afr.com:

When playwright Suzie Miller took a call from her husband – new High Court justice Robert Beech-Jones – last Friday, she jumped right in.

“I suppose you’re going to tell me we have more people coming to stay,” Miller said.

On a high: Miller with and her husband Robert Beech-Jones. Courtesy of Suzie Miller

Instead, Beech-Jones shared the news – which had to stay under wraps until Tuesday – that he had been appointed the 57th justice of the High Court.

Miller relayed the story this week, having already spoken very fondly of her partner – and how he would make a good High Court judge – at a recent Lunch with the AFR.

Her praise and pride emerged during chit-chat, started by Hearsay, about how Beech-Jones was in the running to fill the vacancy caused by the looming retirement of Chief Justice Susan Kiefel.

We kept her quotes in the kitbag – the lunch tale was about Miller and how she was riding the success of her hit play Prima Facie – and it was hard to resist when Beech-Jones wasn’t doing any media.

Miller recounted how they met almost 30 years ago when working on a test case involving Indigenous youths. She’d started her legal career with Herbert Smith Freehills, but segued into the Aboriginal Legal Service (ALS) and then to the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC).

She needed a barrister to help argue the case and a colleague at the PIAC recommended someone who was “smart – and really passionate about human rights”.

“I said, ‘Oh, who’s that?’ And she said, Robert Beech-Jones. And I thought, I remember that guy because we were both at Freehills together.

“But I also remember thinking, he’s got a double-barrelled name, posh, who does he think he is. It sounded like Thurston Howell III – remember the guy in Gilligan’s