About

The Hon G (Tony) Pagone AM KC – New Chambers Biography

The Hon G (Tony) Pagone AM KC has extensive experience across commercial, taxation, administrative, constitutional, public and human rights law as well as equity, wills and estate law. His commercial practice included complex and high-value disputes in revenue, banking and finance, insolvency, corporations law and regulatory matters.

Tony is also an experienced mediator and arbitrator, engaged in the resolution of commercial and taxation disputes in Australia and internationally. His judicial background and specialist expertise in complex commercial and taxation matters enable him to bring exceptional insight and authority to his work in alternative dispute resolution. Tony is also a member of Lincoln’s Inn in London and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and of the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration.

He was admitted to legal practice in Victoria in 1980, signed the Roll of Counsel in 1985, and was appointed Queen’s Counsel for Victoria in 1996. He was appointed in 2006 as a trial judge on the Supreme Court of Victoria and was the judge in charge of the Commercial Court. In 2013 he was appointed to the Federal Court of Australia and became the judge in charge of the taxation national practice area. His published decisions span a broad area of law, finance, commerce, deceased estates, migration including arbitral decisions and practice.

He retired from the Federal Court of Australia in 2018 and has returned to practice where he continues frequently to be briefed on significant issues and disputes for leading corporations and is regularly briefed for the Government.  Between 2002 and 2004, he served as Special Counsel to the Australian Taxation Office. He was also the chair of the Royal Commission into Aged Care (2019 – 2021) and was engaged by Melbourne Water to conduct a review into a significant flood on the Maribyrnong River.

He graduated from Monash University in 1979 with a Bachelor of Laws, from Cambridge University with a Master of Laws in 1983, and was awarded a Doctor of Laws (LLD) by the University of Melbourne in 2014 for his research and published work on anti-tax-avoidance provisions.

Tony maintains strong international professional and academic connections and is a Professorial Fellow at the Melbourne Law School, where he lectures in postgraduate programs. He was a President of the International Association of Judges, a former board member of the International Association of Tax Judges, and Chair of the Business Law Section of the Law Council of Australia.