Susan Kiefel sworn in as first female Chief Justice of Australia's High Court

Like many other women, I was delighted that Susan Kiefel was today sworn in as Australia's first female Chief Justice of the High Court. Chief Justice Keifel used the occasion to pay her respects to the Honourable Mary Gaudron as the first female to be appointed to the High Court bench in 1987 – the year in which Susan was the first woman in Queensland to be appointed Queen’s Counsel. More than just a story for women, or even the legal profession, this is also a story of someone who, for one reason or another, left school at 15, completing her high school studies part-time while working as a legal secretary. For all those children who think they can never get there, for all those parents desperate for their child to ace Year 12, this is a great story.

Regardless of how you start, it is perseverance and hard work that make you what you are in the end. There is no such thing as a bad start or a set back from which we cannot recover if we set our minds to it.