BAYSNEWS: This month we’re talking to Nicholas Cowdery.
Nick, can you tell us something about your background – where you were brought up, where you were educated, your career etc, your current status.
NICHOLAS: I was born in Sydney and lived also in West Wyalong (in central NSW), Wollongong and back in Sydney – with 4 ½ years in Papua New Guinea in the 1970s. I attended 6 schools as we moved around, the last being the only independent school – two years at Sydney Grammar School as a boarder (in the days when it had boarders). I’m a graduate of Sydney University where I was a resident of St Paul’s College.
I started working in the law while still an undergraduate and upon qualification in 1971 moved to PNG as a public defender, travelling on circuit throughout the territory (as it was then) appearing for the local people in the full range of criminal offences. The legal professional experience was unparalleled and exposure to so many cultures, languages and customs was quite an education. I came back to Sydney in 1975 to become a barrister in private practice, where I stayed until appointed Director of Public Prosecutions for NSW in 1994. I retired from that position in 2011.
Since then I have been teaching at Sydney University and UNSW, working in various organisations and on various committees seeking to improve criminal justice in the state, speaking at Probus and u3a groups, commenting in the media, writing books (three so far) and generally keeping busy. I have also continued international work through my engagement with the International Association of Prosecutors (of which I was President for two terms), the Commonwealth Secretariat and with human rights bodies in which I have had a long-standing interest. I don’t play golf.
BAYSNEWS: Even though you’re not full time in the Bays, you spend a lot of time here. Why did you choose the offshore life?
NICHOLAS: Pittwater has held a special place in my heart since my first family holiday here when I was 8 years old – and when I actually swam in the Church Point carpark (before the land was reclaimed). My father was a boatie and we had family holidays afloat on Pittwater many times. My brothers took the lion’s share of the boating gene, but I enjoy being on the water and being in the bush – so the western shore is ideal. Crossing the water is like drawing up the bridge across the moat – separating from all the aggro of life. We have been here for 33 years and enjoy all the time we can get here.
There are challenges, of course. Access, water, sewerage, the occasional falling tree. We have had two bushfires to the back gate (1994 and 2004), but we have survived and learnt how to be fire-ready and protect ourselves, with the great assistance of the RFS, Elvina Bay Brigade.
About 30 years ago I was elected to the committee of the West Pittwater Community Association (WPCA) and I have been trying to get off it since! Seriously, though, it is a pleasure and a privilege to represent this community alongside caring and dedicated colleagues and to try to contribute to its protection and advancement in positive directions. It is a special place.
BAYSNEWS: What is your idea of perfect happiness?
NICHOLAS: I’ll let you know when I experience it. Nothing is perfect in life and happiness is different things to different people. Life is all about compromises and I’m happy when I strike acceptable ones. But it’s hard to beat a drink on the deck in agreeable company – or lunch at the Waterfront Café.
And I’m pretty happy with a half century of marriage and the offspring.
When I was in primary school a teacher wrote in my autograph book: “Life is what you make it”. He was right.
BAYSNEWS: What is your greatest fear?
NICHOLAS: I don’t harbour fears – that seems to be pointless. I think it’s much better to be aware of threats (of all kinds) and try to do something about them.
Another teacher wrote in my autograph book, quoting Rudyard Kipling: “’There is none like to me’ says the cub in the pride of his earliest kill; but the jungle is large and the cub he is small: let him think and be still.” Sound advice on the flipside of fear.
BAYSNEWS: What is the trait you most dislike in yourself?
NICHOLAS: Others would probably be able to tell you about my unlikeable traits, but I don’t analyse myself in that way. If I think I have developed any trait that I think I should lose, I try to do something about it.
A former school headmaster once wrote in my annual report (probably more than once): “Must try harder”. I think I have.
BAYSNEWS: What is the trait you most dislike in others?
NICHOLAS: I’m going for three: dishonesty, violence and abuse of power. Most crime contains one or more and I have spent my professional life working against crime. Human nature being what it is, those traits will continue; but we must keep working on ways to limit the damage they can cause, not just in criminal justice but even on the international stage.
BAYSNEWS: Which person (living or deceased) do you most admire, and why?
NICHOLAS: I have had the enormous privilege of meeting personally and spending time with, among others, Nelson Mandela, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and Jimmy Carter. They were (and in Suu Kyi’s case, is/are) very different, but I admire them all for their humanity, dedication, determination, public service and contributions to justice and human rights protection. They have been able to inspire and maintain support and without that, not much can be achieved. I have also admired a few of my professional colleagues for their talents.
And I must say that I admire truly independent public servants, at the state and federal levels, who give frank and fearless advice to their political masters. I hope they are not a dying breed.
BAYSNEWS: What is your greatest achievement?
NICHOLAS: President of the International Association of Prosecutors and founding Co-Chair of the Human Rights Institute of the International Bar Association – and appointment as an Officer in the Order of Australia (AO) and Queen’s (now King’s) Counsel (KC). But I suppose I also achieved a few things in legal practice, such as prosecuting Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen and Justice Lionel Murphy – not the sort of briefs that come along every day.
BAYSNEWS:: What is your greatest regret?
NICHOLAS: The apparent inability of politicians and policy makers to make decisions in the interests of those whom they are supposed to represent. If you mean regrets about what I have done or not done: that’s for me to know.
BAYSNEWS: Which talent would you most like to have?
NICHOLAS: The ability to play a musical instrument to a good standard or to be able to sing in tune. I did learn the recorder in primary school, but that doesn’t really count. I compensated for those inabilities by stage acting in younger years.
BAYSNEWS: What is your motto or the standard you aspire to live to?
NICHOLAS: If I were to have a headstone on my grave (which I won’t) I would like someone to have put on it: “He left this place a little better for his having been here.” I think that’s all any of us can aspire to.
BAYSNEWS: You’ve had a lengthy career in the legal profession where you’ve no doubt seen the best but also the worst in humans. With regard to the latter, do you think it has changed how you view life? In other words, has it made you harder or more cynical. And if not, how do you maintain your equilibrium?
NICHOLAS: To do my job required a thick skin and an emotional bypass – and that helped me to survive. Almost daily I have seen the worst that humans can do to each other and that has undoubtedly made me harder, but I don’t think more cynical. A better descriptor is sceptical and that is not a bad principle to live by. I maintained my equilibrium by leaving the job in the office and not bringing it home. Pittwater helped with that. That approach has allowed me to continue to look for the good in things – and people – until and unless something makes me change that outlook.
Note: This Q&A was adapted from Antionette Faure’s 1886 questionnaire. It was made famous by its first contributor, Marcel Proust, and is now known as the Proust Questionnaire. Of course.