Guy Powles
Guy Powles (1934 – 2016) was a distinguished lawyer and legal scholar of the Pacific with a keen and active interest in promoting peace in this region.
Guy was born in New Zealand, and worked there as a barrister and solicitor until 1974, during which time he was involved with a number of community groups, such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Nga Tamatoa, and the Values Party. While growing up he had spent some time in Samoa, and returned there for two years as Stipendiary Magistrate in the mid-1960s. This stimulated his interest in the relationship between traditional and customary law, and in 1974 he left his law practice to undertake research in this area in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, completing a PhD at ANU. During this period he worked for a year for the Government of (Western) Samoa on a study of the court and traditional dispute systems.
Guy was appointed to a position at Monash University in 1978, intending to stay for four years. However he realised how much he could contribute to legal practice and constitutional development in Pacific Island states from the vantage point of a major Australian University and remained at Monash. He was an honorary Senior Research Fellow at the time of his death, supervising theses on Pacific Islands themes and continuing with research. At Monash Guy founded the Monash Oakleigh Legal Service as part of the clinical law program he helped to develop. He taught a number of subjects, including legal ethics. He developed and taught for many years a course in Pacific Comparative Law, and supervised numerous theses on Pacific topics.
All through his life Guy was involved with many aspects of the law and its development in Pacific Island states. He had a judicial appointment in the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of Federated States of Micronesia 1989-90. He had many commissions from Pacific Island governments to research and report on a number of topics, such as the Report for the Fiji Constitutional Review Commission on the place of chiefs in constitutions, comparing Pacific and African models, with particular reference to the role of the Great Council of chiefs and district chiefs in the Government of Fiji. Another project was researching and writing, in consultation with the magistrates of Papua New Guinea, a Magistrates’ Manual of Papua New Guinea, on practice and procedure for local magistrates. He served on the Nauru Constitutional Review Commission, and was engaged to advise the Tonga Constitutional Reform Committee.
After retirement from full-time work Guy volunteered one semester a year for four years at the Emalus Campus of the University of the South Pacific School of Law, the establishment of which he had been involved in, as consultant to the USP 1990-94, on the curriculum for the new school. He continued his high level of local community service: he was particularly concerned about Pacific and other non-Anglo youth in their interaction with the Australian court system and developed a number of projects to help familiarise them and their families with appropriate procedures. He helped a number of Pacific community organisations and church bodies in Melbourne with practice and procedure, and enjoyed the friendships this brought him. He always acknowledged the tremendous contribution of his Pacific Island friends and colleagues to his own knowledge of, and feeling for, the Pacific Region.
In addition to building peace and democracy through law, Guy promoted peace with the Quakers, serving as an active member of the Australia Yearly Meeting Peace Committee. He was a founding member of the Victorian Association for Peace Studies. He helped plan peace education projects of these two groups to raise public awareness of the threat of nuclear weapons. He also was instrumental, working with others, in the founding of the Herb Feith Foundation. Through involvement with the Australian Association for Pacific Studies, which he helped establish, he hoped to help raise the consciousness of Australians to the importance of their Pacific neighbourhood
Whether working as an expert advisor, or working within a group, Guy’s friendly demeanour was always encouraging and affirming. His support inspired those with whom he worked.