Buri Kidu

Sir Buri Kidu (8 August 1945 – 30 January 1994) was the first national Chief Justice of Papua New Guinea.

Buri Kidu was educated at Toowoomba Grammar School, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia, where he was School Captain and at the University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland (LLB, 1970). His entire professional life was spent in Papua New Guinea. He was a Legal Officer in the Department of Law (1971–72), Acting Crown Prosecutor and Crown Prosecutor (1972), Senior Legal Officer (1972–74), Acting Crown Solicitor and Crown Solicitor (State Solicitor after Papua New Guinea Independence, 16 September 1975) (1974–76), Acting Secretary of Justice (1977), Secretary of Justice and Principal Legal Officer to the National Executive Council (Cabinet) (1978–79), Secretary, Prime Minister’s Department (1979–80) and Chief Justice of Papua New Guinea (1980–93).

He was appointed a Knight Bachelor (Kt) in 1980.

Sir Buri was appointed Chief Justice in 1980 by the Government of Prime Minister Sir Julius Chan, who took office after the Government of Prime Minister Michael Somare had been defeated in a no-confidence motion in Parliament following the Rooney Affair, an early crisis of judicial independence during which the first Chief Justice, Sir Sydney Frost, an Australian, and three expatriate puisne justices resigned (see Law of Papua New Guinea).

During his term as Chief Justice Sir Buri secured independent financing of the judiciary, with a separate appropriation bill, so that its budget was not in the control of the Justice Minister from time to time. Indeed, during Sir Buri’s ten-year (plus three years) term of office as Chief Justice the superior courts of Papua New Guinea rigorously maintained an independent role for the courts vis-à-vis the executive and the legislature — a position which Lady Kidu (now Dame Carol Kidu) feels was vital in the decision of the Wingti Government to oust him as Chief Justice in 1993 when his statutory ten-year term had elapsed.

In August 1993 Sir Buri's term of office, which had by that point extended three years beyond the statutory ten years, was not renewed by the Wingti Government (when he was two years short of the age qualification to receive a pension, leaving him without an income). Sir Buri was not advised that he was to be replaced, a default which had become standard practice in the Papua New Guinea public service but which Sir Buri had laboured to ensure would not be the case in the National Judicial Staff Services — Sir Buri had sought to keep the NJSS free of political influence — and he was left to infer it from the news that a new Chief Justice other than himself had been appointed.

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