Award winner
All the business focus of the Queen’s Birthday Honours might have been on ‘rock’ stars John Langoulant and Sam Walsh but another interesting WA character caught The Note’s attention.
Port Hedland Port Authority chairman Ian Williams (pictured) was also awarded a gong.
Mr Williams was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished service to the indigenous community for establishing sustainable employment training programs in mining; the promotion of social responsibility; and as a supporter of business development.
The former Rio Tinto executive is particularly acknowledged for his involvement in the conception and founding of the Aboriginal Training and Liaison Unit to help indigenous people to gain employment at various mine sites operated by Hamersley Iron, where he headed major projects in the early 1990s.
No justice
Full marks to newly appointed WA Supreme Court’s Justice Janine Pritchard, who at her recent inception admitted bemusement that female judicial appointments still seem out of the ordinary.
In contemplating just how far society has yet to move, Justice Pritchard ventured an anecdotal example about her young child, a tennis coach and her partner, Joe McGrath, who happens to be the state’s director of public prosecutions.
The tennis coach asked the kids what their parents did and was informed that mummy was a judge and daddy was a lawyer. "No, darling. I think you must you wrong. Daddy's the judge and mummy's the lawyer,” the coach reportedly responded.
The Note reckons this says more about tennis coaches than society in general.