Media

Hearsay

The Australian Financial Review - 28 May 2004
By Chris Merritt

Even the best of conferences sometimes take their toll on participants. And Saturday's proceedings at the conference of the Institute of Arbitrators and Mediators was no different.

So Melbourne silk Neil Brown got to his feet and grabbed everyone's attention with this question:

"Mr Chairman, aren't there a lot of opportunities we are overlooking in the field of international commercial arbitration that we could move into?

"I was thinking about this last week when I was in Beijing at the annual conference of the International Council on Commercial Arbitration.

"They were all there: Poms, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Singaporeans , Swedes and everyone else. Even Bulgaria was there and they had actually set up a stand in the foyer where they were pushing this exciting book called 107 Years of Commercial Arbitration at the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which of course I read over lunchtime.

"It was so fascinating and absorbing that I couldn't put it down.

"It was almost as gripping as that great work by Miles Lewis, the professor of architecture at Melbourne University, called Two Hundred Years of Concrete in Australia.

"As you know, you just can't drag architects and engineers away from reading it.

"So, Mr Chairman, have you got our international relations under control and is there some way we can elbow our way in and get some international arbitration work that Bulgaria and others have got their feet on?"

Brown, who was a minister in Malcolm Fraser's government, had to make do with this reply: "What can I say after that. We are doing our best."

We gratefully acknowledge the permission from Chris Merritt and The Australian FInancial Review to reprint this article.