Robert French

Although once the President of the Liberal Club of the University of Western Australia, French's views are described as being closer to social progressive,[17] small-L liberal,[18] and moderate.[19]

French said in a WA Law Society speech in May 2008:[2]

"It is unacceptable in contemporary Australia that the legal head of the Australian state... can never be chosen by the people or their representatives, cannot be other than a member of the Anglican Church, can never be other than British and can never be an indigenous person."

Justice French is known for working for the rights of Indigenous Australians: in the early 1970s, he helped found the WA Aboriginal Legal Service.[2] He was also the first president of the National Native Title Tribunal.

At his swearing-in ceremony as Chief Justice, French specifically referred to the long history of indigenous Australia:

Recognition of their presence is no mere platitude. The history of Australia's indigenous people dwarfs, in its temporal sweep, the history that gave rise to the Constitution under which this court was created. Our awareness and recognition of that history is becoming, if it has not already become, part of our national identity.[20]

However, the 'French Testing' incident has coloured the legacy of French on indigenous issues. French admitted his 'error' when he explained the incident:

As I soon discovered, the responsibilities of an administrator trying to develop procedures to implement a legal process are very different from those of a judge required to decide a particular case about whether an administrator's decision is legally flawed. The Tribunal was judicially reviewed on many occasions. The high point or low point, depending on your point of view, occurred after I had refused registration of a claim by the Waanyi people over land the subject of the proposed Century Zinc mine in North Queensland. I refused registration on the basis that the application could not succeed because of the extinguishing effects of historical pastoral leases in the area. I took the view that observations about the extinguishing effects of leases made by Brennan J in Mabo put the matter beyond doubt. My refusal to register the claim was an administrative act in the application of a test designed to screen out hopeless claims. The decision was overturned by the High Court in North Ganalanja[2] with such moral enthusiasm that the Court gave judgment immediately and reasons later. In so doing, it described my approach as "tantamount to a proleptic exercise of federal jurisdiction". To add insult to injury, members of the Waanyi people were sitting in Court wearing T-shirts with the message "Ban French Testing". I have no doubt, in retrospect, that I was properly found to have been in error. The considerations influencing my approach were those of the administrator, the urgent need to get the process moving and to establish its credibility in the face of ongoing attacks. There was a legal bottleneck on the issue of the relationship between pastoral leases and native title which was not resolved until the decision in Wik. Many ill-prepared applications were being lodged and upon registration were entitled to procedural rights affecting third party interests particularly in relation to mining and the release of Crown land for development around regional centres. I learned a useful lesson from all of this and that is that the worldview and culture of the administrator which I had adopted is very different from that of the courts.