commUnity + Annual Celebration of Impact

There’s so many people in this room tonight who have played a big part in my life.

This area and its people are close to my heart.

Sunshine – Brimbank - Melton

It’s where I got my real human rights education.

We’re meeting on the traditional lands of the Wurundjeri people. I acknowledge their ancestors and elders and their unbroken culture and connection to country.

SLIDE

Me in 2003.

I’m going to talk tonight about my human rights education.

Not the kind of human rights education you get from textbooks or classes.

I mean the human rights education you get from working for 19 years in community legal centres, helping and learning from people in tough situations and working with expert community lawyers and advocates.

I grew up in leafy, lovely and boring Surrey Hills studied law and arts at Melbourne University and then, after thinking about careers as a journalist or diplomat, started my legal career at one of the top corporate law firms, Mallesons. 

It was a good introduction to one part of our legal system, but it was never where I wanted my career to lead long term. After a few years I put my hand up to do a secondment to a community legal centre set up by a pioneering Attorney-General named Rob Hulls.

I was living in Kensington at the time. They asked me where I wanted to work and I said anywhere in the West. 

They rang me back and said you’ll be working at the Brimbank Community Legal Centre in Deer Park with a longtime community lawyer called Amanda George who did a lot of work with people in prison. 

I thought what does a corporate employment lawyer like me know about helping people in prison?

I soon learned, with thanks to the amazing work colleagues at Brimbank - Amanda, Belinda Lo, Charandev Singh and Colleen Bourke.

I went from level 30 in the Rialto in Collins St to a demountable site shed office on the side of Ballarat Road with a dog under my desk and a veggie patch nearby. 

There was a framed award on the office walls for the “The community legal centre most likely to be stolen off the back of a truck”.

This was in July 2003 and I was 29 and I loved it.

I learned more about human rights and the law in those first six months there than I had in all my time at law school and corporate law.

I quickly learned about the unequal access to justice in our country.

Access to justice

One of my early cases was for an elderly woman from Bacchus Marsh who had been a forced labourer for the Nazis in the Czech Republic. 

The German Government had set up a compensation scheme for affected people. An organisation in Western Australia had somehow set up service offering to help people access compensation “at no cost to them”. Their idea was they would take a cut from the compensation. But the German Government knew about these schemes and sent the compensation cheques direct to the claimants. The elderly woman banked her money and the organisation ended up suing her for maybe a thousand dollars claiming they were owed money for the service they provided. She had been served with the papers, was suffering intense stress and caught the bus to Deer Park to get help.

So I had the job of trying to help her defend a case brought on the other side of the country. I rang Mallesons in Perth and asked if they’d take it on pro bono. They said they would, but when they looked at the amount claimed they said it wouldn’t make sense for them to take it on - they looked at it as if it was a corporate matter and their fees – even when waived on a pro bono basis - would massively exceed the amount being claimed. 

I was stunned but also realised that used to be my world - where things were looked at in economic terms and billable hours.

I told them the woman couldn’t sleep at night and asked if they’d at least be our agent to file an appearance in the court while I negotiated a settlement. I did this and the woman sent me a lovely Christmas card for years after.

Sue’s story

I learned about dignity, pride and power.

I helped a woman who had been involved drugs and prostitution when she was young but had then turned her life around, had kids, got an aged care certificate and started working.

She was made permanent and got a pay rise and then the aged care agency realised they hadn’t done a criminal record check for her and asked her to complete it. When it came back – to them – not to her – they rang her and sacked her on the spot without even telling her what was on the record.

We eventually got the criminal record form which revealed a string of offences with fairly minor penalties. The last offence was more than nine and half years old. None of the offences would have shown up on the form if it had been 10 years old. But because the last offence was just under 10 years, everything showed up.

The old offences had nothing to do with her work performance and capacity so we brought an unfair dismissal case. 

We won an initial extension of time case and then negotiated a settlement in which she got some compensation and they agreed to give her job back in a few months once the 10 years had expired and she had a clean record. I was pretty happy with the outcome we’d achieved.

The 10 years expired and I called her but she wouldn’t answer.

I kept calling her and started to get frustrated. 

Finally she called me back a bit sheepishly and said thanks for what I’d done but that she was never going to go back and work for them. 

I was taken aback because I’d worked so hard to get the outcome for her and now she wouldn’t take it.

But slowly I realised that it was a good thing.

That what we’d achieved was about pride. And dignity. And putting her in a position of power.

I’ve stayed in touch with her over the years and I asked her permission the other day to speak about the work we did.

She said “Yes, and tell the people that getting my job back was to be part of the deal... Unknown to you, I never had any intention of going back … I wanted vindication.

I am a good person and hold strong morals and principles, and with your help, I wanted to shove it to the establishment...

Those people looked down on me because of my past, they had no right to fire me in the first place, then judge me with disdain in their eyes … I have more integrity in my big toe than those women who sat across the table from us.

And it's been not only 10 years I've kept out of trouble, but coming up on 20 years..”

Multidisciplinary 

legal issues and life issues intersect.

We all know that the research, and our own experience, tells us that; 

• Unresolved legal issues cause health and other social problems for people. 
• And health and other social problems cause legal issues for people.
• People often don’t identify legal issues as things that they can get legal help to fix.
• And when they do, it’s often too late or much harder to address the issue.

If we want to help people we need to help them to identify and deal with legal issues early.

And we need to see them as people, not just as an isolated legal issue that needs addressing. 

As community lawyers, we need the skills:

• To build trust and rapport with people who are often in very difficult situations
• To understand what is going right and wrong in the person’s life
• To find the pathways – legal and non-legal – to help address what’s going wrong.

We need to be flexible and find ways through our service or through referrals to address intersecting legal and other issues.

We need to use the “trust transfer” to make warm referrals and avoid people unnecessarily having to repeat information.

And we need to navigate different practice standards in different professions, managing sometimes complex rules around conflict of interest.

None of this is easy. 

Brimbank – CommUnity Plus – showed the way

Advocate and serve

I loved the work at Brimbank but the casework felt like I was putting individual band aids on a system that was failing people. 

My real passion became trying to achieve justice by fixing failing systems.

That’s why I left Brimbank to take the job at the Federation of Community Legal Centres and then at the Human Rights Law Centre.

I love law reform work but it’s critical to never lose sight of the people who are affected.

Forces for Good – advocate and serve

Yoorrook Justice Commission

I want to end by talking briefly about Yoorrook and then my new job.

Yoorrook is the first formal truth telling inquiry into historical and ongoing injustice against Aboriginal people in Victoria.

I worked for two of its four years as CEO.

The experience profoundly changed me.

Working with leaders like Aunty Eleanor Bourke, with the First Peoples Assembly and with Traditional Owners and First Peoples across the state has made me see our nation differently.

I now look differently at the Mabo decision.

Despite its undeniable importance and the incredible advocacy of Eddie Koiki Mabo and others who won the case, I don’t look at Mabo as a landmark step forward.

I look at Mabo as the very least the High Court could do to recognise what was obvious for the previous two hundred years – it was always Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land.

I look at Mabo through the lens of the Charles Perkins quote when he said “We live off the crumbs of the white Australian table and are told to be grateful.”

We can say “Always was always will be” at the start of events like this but right now what First Nations people get in land rights is what’s left over after everyone else has had their feed.

After Yoorrook, I look at farm fences, creeks choked up with invasive species, urban landscapes, street signs and place names recognising people who murdered or harmed Aboriginal people.

I look at all these things much differently.

This of course is nothing new to First Peoples – but I hope my learning can make me a better advocate for understanding and change – to help the rest of Australia to see things through First Peoples’ eyes.

Brimbank Melton area significance

Archaeological evidence from charcoal found in a hearth suggests that Aboriginal people were living at the Keilor site (now called Murrup Tamboore) near Melbourne around 31,000 years ago.

Premier Jacinta Allan – massacre site

Massacre – knowledge

Mt Cottrell – south of Rockbank – murder of coloniser Charles Frank and a worker

Militia – tracked down group of 80 Aboriginal people near Werribee River

Indscriminately fired on them

Colonial reports – 10 killed – another “killed a great many”

Governor Bourke in NSW instructed Lonsdale to investigate the massacre and apprehend and try the offenders

Lonsdale investigated – said people agreed shots were fired – no one saw anyone harmed – concluded reports were “exaggerated”

Finally, Yoorrook taught me that for First Nations people the past is the present.

That the injustice has shape shifted over time but still persists.

The massacres have ended but deaths in custody continue.

The missions have closed but the mass imprisonment is at record rates.

The assimilationist stolen generation policies have gone, the apology has been delivered but children are being taken from families, communities, culture and country at worsening rates.

Race discrimination has been outlawed but rampant inequality persists.

How do we change this?

Victoria is pointing the way – with its progress on truth and treaty and the building of self-determined First Nations leadership structures.

None of this is easy. But anything worthwhile is hard.

Priorities as President

I never expected to be standing speaking at this dinner as the new President of the Australian Human Rights Commission.

It is a deep honour to be chosen for this role.

I hope that over my five year term we advance human rights so that we move towards becoming the best and fairest version of ourselves as a nation.

In particular, I hope we can achieve three key things.

An Australian Human Rights Act. Our human rights safety net has holes in it. A Human Rights Act that will protect people’s rights in law. It will help to prevent human rights breaches from happening and build a culture of respecting rights. And it will give people and communities the power to take action if their rights are breached.

We also need modernised, effective national anti-discrimination laws and improved human rights education – to build understanding of the importance of standing up for everyone’s human rights and how doing so will make our country fairer, safer and more prosperous.

Human rights are the blueprint for a decent, dignified life for all. 

They are the key to creating the kind of society we all want to live in. 

They reflect values we all care about - like equality, freedom, respect, dignity, kindness, thinking of others and looking out for each other. 

Over my five year team, I hope to live up the values of the community legal sector and apply the things that many of you in this room have taught me about human rights.