by Liz Hogarth

The new Chancellor of the Sydney Anglican Church, Michael Orpwood QC, expects to grapple with questions concerning lay administration of the Lord’s Supper, what it means to be part of the Anglican Communion and alternative Episcopal oversight during his first months in office.
“My hope is that I can give helpful and accurate legal advice primarily to the Archbishop, but also to other organisations within the Diocese,” he said. “I have been in the practice of giving advice to Attorneys-General and other ministers of the Crown and now I have been asked to give advice to an Archbishop.”
Mr Orpwood retires this month, on his 60th birthday, as Deputy Parliamentary Counsel for the Parliament of NSW. “Many of the laws of NSW I have written every word of,” he said of his 31 years of drafting legislation. He has served the Diocese as a member of the Synod and its Standing Committee and more recently as Chairman of Evangelism Ministries. “I am looking forward to working with the Archbishop,” he said. “I am very enthusiastic about the Mission.”
Mr Orpwood is married to Margaret and has three grown-up children, one of whom, Will, is assistant minister at Quakers Hill Anglican Church. He is also a writer and the author of a biography of evangelist, Canon John ‘Chappo’ Chapman. “I am unapolo-getically evangelical and this colours all of my life,” he said.
His predecessor, Mr Justice Kenneth Handley, 69, who was appointed Advocate in 1970 and Chancellor in 1980, retired late last year in order to reduce his heavy workload. He remains a full-time Judge in the NSW Court of Appeal and will continue to serve as Chairman of Cranbrook School Council and on the Appellate Tribunal of the Church.
At last December’s Standing Committee he had a few parting words. He recalled a case, before he took up the role of Advocate, when the Diocese was sued in the Supreme Court. “I felt it was one of my roles to prevent the Diocese ever again finding itself in a position where it could be sued in the Supreme Court and lose,” he said. He also warned: “God does not necessarily bless the purely commercial enterprises undertaken on behalf of the Diocese.” He cited a number of commercial failures and added: “It is my hope that the Standing Committee will not forget these lessons of the last 30 years.”
Archbishop Jensen thanked Justice Handley for his long tenure. “I would particularly like to express my own gratitude to him for the role he has played since I became Archbishop.”
Mr Orpwood said that his predecessor’s are ‘big shoes to fill’.