Masterclass with Professor Arnold Dix

You are a barrister, scientist, engineering professor, and tunnel expert. Is there one role you have identified with the most?

Yes: I’m a problem solver—usually for the underground, and always for complex science and engineering matters.

Is there an intersection between problem solver and all those roles? Is that part of your own Venn diagram?

Yes, sure. Mind you, I’m lonely out here in this part of the Venn diagram! But they do connect. I see my role as a lawyer as helping our society to do things. And so, where traditionally people are often looking to apportion liability and mitigate the losses, I see my role as a lawyer as being an enabler, and that means enabling my dear friends who are engineers, enabling my dear friends who are scientists, enabling my dear friends who are truck drivers, who are quarry masters, who are chemical manufacturers. They intersect because I’m in the business of getting stuff done. And in that space where it’s technical, scientific, and legal – everything from professional liability to standards to duty of care to as low as reasonably practicable – all comes and crashes together in my world.

How did your journey into law start?

I never wanted to be a lawyer. In fact, I didn’t hang out with the law students at school. I always hung out with the naughty kids or the builders of things. My postgraduate research at the Ranger uranium mine raised some interesting technical and scientific issues about radionuclide and heavy metal contamination of a  World Heritage Area. Before I knew it, I was making a submission to a Senate inquiry. So here I am. I’m barely a graduate scientist, and I’m now making submissions to a Senate inquiry. [When I] went back to university, and as a not-for-degree subject in my science degree, I randomly chose legal process because I thought it would be cool, but I was not planning to be a lawyer. But I had topped the class and in fact, I even taught one class on land rights because I was dealing with the World Heritage areas [in my role as scientist]. I crashed into law almost by accident, but I was good at it.

So it was almost by necessity?

Yes, I’ve never planned on it. It wasn’t as if I was the top debater at school. Not at all. I was into building rockets. I was into building bombs – back in the days when you could – I was good at that. I could build structures. I was typical mad scientist material, but I was also really good at law once I started.

How do you reconcile your time as a barrister with all your other many roles?

I’m ruthlessly selfish and try to do projects I enjoy.  I’m very particular about the matters in which I think I could add value. If my particular combination of skills is not worth it, I don’t do it.

I’m a former partner in a law firm. I’m not King’s Counsel, and I don’t claim to be, but my trick is combining law, science, and engineering to create what I think are fair and proper outcomes. And so, I smell those sorts of matters and gravitate to them.

How did you start investigating disasters?

It started when 9/11 happened. I was a partner at DLA Phillips Fox, and my client was the rail authority in NSW. We were immediately interested in how the Americans had responded to the initial attacks on the Twin Towers and how they performed the evacuation underneath. I found myself at Ground Zero, because I had friends and colleagues who worked for the Port Authority, who’d died in the collapsed buildings. So, I had good connections that allowed me access to information about how they managed the operational situation below the Twin Towers and the damage there. I had to report that back to Australia because, at the time, we weren’t sure if there would be more attacks like that. We were building a lot of new underground infrastructure in NSW [at the time].

This time had a big impact on me; it is where my career goes “not normal”. When I came back from doing the investigation into the Twin Towers collapse, I was quite moved by it because I hadn’t been involved with death on such a mass scale before, and I felt compelled to try to use my legal skills in a more fair and equitable way.

I resigned from a partnership and instead looked at how I could help the world in a way that uses my legal and technical skills and leave the world a bit better at the end. That led me to run an inquiry for the Roads and Traffic Authority of NSW, where I got involved in the relationship between motor vehicle emissions and human health. That led me into international work and going overseas and helping other governments with their underground infrastructure and liability—quite a wild ride.

What events were you called into?

I investigated things like the Madrid bombings, the London bombings, the Hong Kong bombings, and the sarin gas attacks in Tokyo. Anywhere it was a bit miserable, you’d usually find me. A lot of times, I’m being called in where there’d been a collapse, and people were killed, particularly during construction. I’d help with the lessons learned following a disaster.

It just grew in a natural but rather weird way, which was interesting because I went from being in legal profiles, as a traditional partner in a big law firm, to now this eclectic practice where I’m going from country to country dealing with either disasters or the risk of disasters and helping, usually governments, manage the risk in their infrastructure.

Because of my work in tunnels and the standards for fire and life safety, I got a reputation for being good at fire engineering, and so then I ended up at the Lakanal House tower block fires in London. I was called there as legal counsel and got special leave to appear. Finally, Grenfell – I was there while it burned, investigating and providing advice.  And then, in Victoria, I did the coronial investigation into the Burnley tunnel disaster.

Coming to a site after the disaster happens, you get to analyse it holistically. What insights are gained from studying situations in this way?

The biggest insight I learned from that perspective is the importance of law. It’s funny because if you set your projects up correctly in terms of procurement, contractual arrangements, commercial relations, regulatory environment, auditing quality assurance, and all that stuff:  if you tune in to how people do things [in a particular country] and set up your project correctly, you’re 90 per cent of the way there.

All my years of doing disasters have taught me we don’t have to have them. Assuming it’s not a terrorist act, the science and the engineering is very advanced. But if we don’t provide an environment that encourages scientists, engineers, and technicians to behave, they’ll do a bad job. And that means things like paying them or having a mechanism to vary the arrangement so they can do the job properly instead of punishing them. It’s really funny that, in the end, the law comes right back. I see it as essential, right at the very centre of the disasters.

A defining moment in your career was your work rescuing the Silkyara-Barko tunnel’s trapped workers last November. How did that come to be?

Until then, no one knew who I was, and I liked it that way. I’d gone from being a partner in the big law firm to obscurity and being in the shadows. And I liked being in the shadows. I could just get on with it and get the job done.

But this Silkyara tunnel thing was different. I got the call for help from the chief engineer of India and the Prime Minister [Narendra Modi’s] advisor. They didn’t tell me what to do or what not to do. All they said was, ‘Could you come and give us a hand?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I can do that.’

Normally [in a case like this], everyone’s dead, or they die pretty quickly, but in this instance, there are a couple of game changers for me- one, which I didn’t realise, there were at least a few hundred news reporters on the hill opposite where I was turning up, with satellite links to all their news channels, and 1.3 billion people watching live broadcasts from the disaster. And my phone’s not working because I’m up in the Himalayas; it’s not like I’m at the shopping centre, so I don’t even know what’s going on.

I thought the best thing I could do straight away was to declare to everybody that everything was fine. That we would get 41 men out safe, and none of us will get hurt. I’m still not exactly sure how I came up with those points, and I held them for the duration of the rescue, and they’re essential.

It was looking bad, and so I just declared it’d be fine. I think just doing that created a lot of attention because I am the elected President of the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association, which is the peak United Nations body on these things.

If anybody was going to say everything’s going to be fine, you’d listen to the President of that organisation.

The downside is my organisation didn’t share the same view, and in fact, they were horrified. What the hell was I doing up in the Himalayas declaring to billions of people that everything’s going to be just fine when I know better than anyone that it’s probably not? But my view was, and my view still is, that without me doing that, they would have died because I gave everybody hope. That’s changed everybody’s perception of me. I’ve been forced out of the shadows.

In the work that you do all over the world, do you see yourself having to adapt to a new country with different cultural practices or hierarchical structures, and do you think it’s essential to do so?

It’s fundamental. When [I offer my services] I have to be one of you, whoever you are. And so that’s what I do: I immerse myself. I don’t just do it superficially; I learn about the culture and try to find out the taboos. I watch how everyone behaves. I listen to the pauses when they speak, even if I don’t know the language. I watch the body language. And I respect it. I’ve got some skills I can share, but to share them, people need to receive me, and they need not be threatened by me.

I don’t stand and push anyone’s head underwater. I’m there to help. I prefer to be an enabling lawyer, and that includes enabling teams of multidisciplinary professionals and just getting stuff done.

What skills from your other careers did you bring to law?

Respect. That’s probably the biggest one. I respect other professionals and non-professionals. I’m not demeaning of other industries, activities or trades. I think that’s what I bring to my law. Because in our cases and textbooks, in the way our judgments are written, there’s almost this godliness about them. We’ve either got the case law or the statutory law and then we can, in retrospect, make our own judgement. That’s what we do, and we need it. You need finality. But with that comes the risk of becoming arrogant and disconnected from reality. And I think my science and engineering, and the other things that I do, help remind me my job as a lawyer is to enable other people. It’s not just for the law itself. It’s to administer justice so people can get on with their life. It’s to give certainty where there’s uncertainty. That’s such a noble position to be in, and we shouldn’t betray that position to our communities because they’re entrusting us with power. We have to be careful with that. So, I think that’s what it brings to me and it makes me more grounded.

The Silkyara-Barko tunnel was your first involvement in a rescue operation. What impact did that have on you?

A huge impact. Normally, I’m dealing with death and the lessons learnt from death. Silkyara was different because we had everything to lose. It was a very different sort of case to be on because attribution for death could, and I was warned, rest on my shoulders because I’d become the public face of the rescue whether I meant it or not. And the promises that no one, including the rescuers, would get hurt were mine. My career and decades as President of the peak body and my reputation around the world in those circles where it counts – I had all of that on the line. I punted the whole lot, and this was the criticism subsequently of me – ‘Why on Earth would you do that?’ And my answer, of course, was, and is, “because if I didn’t, they would die”. That’s just how I called it, and I still believe that.

Was there a case where your niche specialisation came into play?

Many. I did the environmental licensing for the Burnley tunnels in Victoria. It was the biggest environmental case of its time in the state’s history. That’s back when I was junior counsel to the [KC], and my responsibility was all the technical stuff. I did some fascinating cases with other big infrastructure.

My science and engineering expertise was used to demonstrate the flaws. This year, I did a big mediation involving the contamination of an organic farm with the wrong chemical and got a good settlement in that. Another example is with the NFPA 130  work [which regulates material fire safety properties and potential fire hazard], we have some new technology we are thinking about deploying in the world’s underground metros. I don’t know, maybe one billion people a day use metros. [And] one sentence change here, and I get to help a billion people incrementally, and they don’t know, but I do, and it makes me feel good.

How do you spend your free time, if you have any?

I live on a farm, and I’ve lived here for 30 years.  My idea of retirement is not travelling. I’m the opposite of most people. I don’t want to see anywhere else; I’ve seen everywhere else. So, in my spare time, I repair old 18th-century air-powered brass-rated parlour organs, and I have a number of those. They’re completely worthless. You can look up marketplace [and see] everyone’s just giving them away. We’ve got to the stage where an organ that was given to your grandmother, no one wants [it] anymore because no one plays them anymore.

And you collect them?

I collect them and I like repairing them. Just because.

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