Queensland’s first Solicitor-General

The first Solicitor-General for Queensland was Thomas Joseph Byrnes (pictured). He was born in Brisbane to Irish immigrants on 11 November 1860. As an exceptional student growing up in Brisbane, Byrnes completed his secondary schooling at Brisbane Grammar School between 1874 and 1878 after receiving a government scholarship to study there. He won a number of school prizes, including a scholarship tenable at any University in the British Empire. He chose the University of Melbourne and in 1884, he graduated in Arts and Law, with honours in both. Later that year, Byrnes was admitted as a barrister in Victoria but soon after returned to Queensland where he practised as a solicitor.

By 1890, he had built up a successful legal practice in Brisbane. Sir Samuel Walker Griffith, Premier of Queensland at that time, appointed Byrnes, a member of the Legislative Assembly, to the newlycreated position of Solicitor-General so that Griffith would be freed of the routine legal work of the government and have more time available for proposals for a Federal Constitution.

Byrnes was appointed Attorney-General of Queensland on 13 March 1893 and then Premier of Queensland on 13 April 1898. He died on 27 September 1898, aged only 37, of pneumonia after contracting measles.

There was no Solicitor-General for Queensland until 11 April 1922 when William Flood Webb, later Sir William Webb, was appointed to the position. Appointments of Solicitors-General from then until 1989 were in the Public Service, and the Solicitor-General was the head of the Crown Law Office. In 1990, GL Davies, QC, became the first Solicitor-General appointed under the Solicitor-General Act 1985. At that time, the Office of the Solicitor-General was established.