Robert Wensley

Robert Neilson Wensley was born 15 March 1945. He is a barrister of thirty-two years standing, practising principally in Brisbane and Sydney, Australia. He specialises in commercial matters, with a particular emphasis on construction and engineering law litigation, arbitration, mediation and expert determinations and negligence actions involving engineers, architects, geo-technologists and other design professionals. Mr Wensley frequently is involved in large scale matters involving, typically, matters such as design and/or construction failures, and contractors’ and sub-contractors’ claims, arising out of projects and developments involving civil engineering and road works, power engineering, resort developments and dams, transport systems, waterways, ports and harbours, mining and mineral processing, airports and CBD construction contracts. He is briefed regularly in matters involving Security of Payments legislation in NSW and Queensland.
Mr Wensley graduated Bachelor of Chemical Engineering (with honours) from the University of Queensland in 1967 and was awarded a masters degree in engineering from the same University in 1973. He was a staff member of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Queensland for some years, ultimately working as personal assistant to the Vice Chancellor, Sir Zelman Cowen, until shortly before Sir Zelman’s appointment as Governor General.
Mr Wensley graduated Bachelor of Laws with Honours from the University of Queensland in 1976 and has practised at the private bar since then. He is admitted to practise in NSW, Victoria and the High Court of Australia. He became a Queen's Counsel in 1993.

As well as appearing as counsel in superior courts in various States of Australia, Mr. Wensley has been counsel in numerous arbitrations over the last decade, mainly involving construction contract disputes. He is a qualified arbitrator and mediator, and acts regularly as arbitrator, mediator, referee or expert assessor. He is an associate member of the Institute of Arbitrators and Mediators Australia, and nominations as arbitrator, mediator or expert assessor typically are from bodies such as that Institute and individual firms in the legal, construction and engineering fields. Mr. Wensley has completed qualification courses in international mediation and arbitration with the International Centre for Arbitration (USA) and has, as sole arbitrator, conducted a significant international commercial arbitration under the auspices of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in France. In 1997, he was appointed as a referee by the Supreme Court of NSW to hear and determine a complex multiparty commercial dispute which was before that Court, and subsequently he conducted another very large reference from that Court, as referee, of a major construction dispute, involving one of the Sydney Olympic Games facilities, which involved a hearing lasting more than 150 sitting days, and in respect of which his decision was upheld by the Court of Appeal of New South Wales.
Mr. Wensley is a regular speaker and lecturer in his specialist fields. Significant papers or presentations have included a paper on the use of computer systems in large scale arbitrations (given as an invited speaker to the Centenary Conference of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators in London); a presentation with the late Professor Flemming, author of a leading torts text, on the interaction between tort and contract in construction law; papers at conferences of the Australian National Committee on Large Dams on legal aspects of the duty of care in building and owning large dams; papers on expert technical evidence to the Institute of Arbitrators and Mediators Australia and the Institution of Engineers Australia; and course lecturer at Institute of Arbitrators and Mediators Australia grading courses.
Mr. Wensley is a past Chairperson and member of the Queensland Building Tribunal, having been the senior part-time member of that tribunal between 1992 and 2000. The Tribunal (now part of the Commercial and Consumer Tribunal) is a statutory forum in Queensland for the resolution of domestic, and some commercial, building disputes, as well has having jurisdiction with respect to builder and trades licensing and building industry disciplinary matters.
Mr. Wensley is a member of the Construction Law Committee of the Business Law section of the Law Council of Australia; a former member of the Supreme Court of Queensland Litigation Reform Commission; an Arbitrator under the Queensland Sugar Industry statutory dispute resolution scheme; a former member of the LEADR senior mediators’ panel; and a member of the panel of listed arbitrators and mediators under the National Electricity Market Dispute Resolution system. Presently, Mr Wensley is an elected member of the Queensland State Chapter Committee of the Institute of Arbitrators and Mediators Australia, with particular responsibility for promoting arbitration as a means of dispute resolution.
During 1998, Mr Wensley served as an acting Judge of the Queensland District Court for a period of three months.
Mr Wensley is a part-time member of the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal, Queensland.
He holds an appointment as Adjunct Professor in the T.C. Beirne School of Law at the University of Queensland, and has taught regularly at that university in subjects such as appellate advocacy and expert evidence. Other memberships (and former memberships) include -
- elected member of the Senate (governing body) of the University of Queensland since 1978;
- former member of the Faculty Boards of Engineering and Law of the University of Queensland;
former member of the Board of The Faculty of Business, Economics and Law, University of Queensland;
- former director of Uniquest Limited (the University of Queensland’s technology commercialisation company); former director of CiTR Pty Ltd (formerly one of Queensland’s largest IT/software development companies); and director (and former deputy chair) of UQ Holdings Pty Ltd (the University of Queensland’s holding company for technology transfer and commercialisation companies);
- member of the Queensland and Law Council of Australia Computerised Legal Information Retrieval Committees;
- a senior faculty member and regular teacher at courses conducted by the Australian Advocacy Institute; a former member of that Institute’s Management Committee; and an invited participant at the first international conference on Advocacy Teaching in London in 1997;
- former member of the Council of the Women’s College within the University of Queensland; President of the Council of Kings College within that University, retiring in 2009; a Fellow of Kings College; Chairman of the Board of Fellows and Chairman of the Foundation Committee of King's College;
- senior faculty member, Australian Bar Association annual residential advocacy course and (in 2008) invited as an overseas faculty member at the UK Bar’s residential advocacy course at Keble College, Oxford;
- director of Queensland Motorways Limited, an unlisted public company owned by the Queensland Government, which operates tollways (including the Gateway Bridge and Motorway), in south-east Queensland. The company is responsible for the $1.8 billion Gateway Bridge upgrade program. Mr Wensley is Chairman of the QML Board’s Gateway Upgrade Project Committee, which has direct oversight of the upgrade project, including the $1.2 billion D & C contract.

Mr Wensley served for seven years as Deputy Chancellor of the University of Queensland. In 2006 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws by that University, in recognition of his services to the University and to law.
He lives in Sydney, NSW but maintains chambers in Brisbane and Sydney, practising in both cities as arbitrator, mediator, expert determinator and barrister.
Currently, he is involved as sole arbitrator in one arbitration, as sole expert in one expert determination and as senior counsel in numerous pieces of litigation and other matters.

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