The Australian Women's Register

Born in Sydney to Ellen (nee) Dempsey and Alan Louvain Tait, Sally attended St Kevin’s Primary School at Eastwood and then at Our Lady Of Mercy College Parramatta. Going to boarding school at age 14, she relished the nurturing of some of the nuns, who created a community of stability, intellectual pursuit in an environment where ‘daring to be different’ was celebrated, not vilified.

Awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship to attend ANU to study law in 1967, she embraced the student politics of the late 1960s together with the drug and drop out culture of the time. Returning to Sydney, Sally left her legal studies and went bush, got married and at 23 had a baby while pursuing the hippy lifestyle.

Realizing eventually that this was not sustainable, and wanting to give her son the opportunities that had been given to her, she returned to Sydney to complete her legal studies. She became open about her sexuality in 1978 when she was 27 years old. It was perhaps the hardest thing to do, Sally says, to have the disapproval of many, including her mother, required a depth of courage in those days that steeled her for the difficult path ahead. Fortunately, she had a few wonderful male mentors in Sydney, who guided her through the often stormy waters of the male dominated profession she had chosen.

At the Attorney-General’s Department in Darwin, she was involved in some major commercial and administrative law cases that broadened and deepened her legal experience.

When Trevor Riley asked her to join the Bar at William Forster Chambers in 1989, she was well supported by the senior legal ranks of the Attorney-General’s department, Peter Conran and Meredith Harrison. They made it known that if she wanted to come back to Government, she would be always welcome.

Once at the Bar she was initially briefed mostly by local women solicitors in the Northern Territory. Her practice at the bar soon expanded to not only personal injury work, but also administrative law, family law and human rights law. In commenting on this, Sally said … ‘It was difficult to know if the male solicitors did not brief you because you were a woman, because you were a lesbian, because they didn’t like you or because they didn’t think you were any good.’ This male exclusion attitude changed after a few years as Sally started winning cases at trial.

As well as developing her practice, Sally was involved in important community and advocacy organisations. She was a founder of Dawn House, Darwin’s first Women’s Refuge, a founder of the NT Women Lawyers Association and a founder of the Australian Women Lawyers Association. She was also a founding editor of the Northern Territory Law Reports and President of the Northern Territory Chapter of the International Commission of Jurists. In this latter role she assisted with the establishment of the first Legal Aid office in Dili, Timor Leste, and was an observer at the International War Crimes Tribunals held there in during the United Nations administered transition to that country’s independence in May 2002.

As mentioned previously, pro bono work has always been an important part of her practice, in both Sydney and Darwin. The motivation has always been quite simple, Sally says; …’I developed my passion for justice mostly by seeing injustice and powerlessness and wanting to do something about it’.

In a 2010 reflection on how the arrival of women improved the culture of the NT Bar, Colin McDonald QC described Sally as a ‘pioneer’ whose arrival at chambers ‘brought a maturity, a depth and a democratic legitimacy to the contemporary life of Chambers…[as well as] a quality of life on a daily basis.’

Motivated by a desire and passion for the role of women in her profession, Sally represents the strength and determination necessary to be successful as a woman barrister and trailblazer.