Written by Jill Fraser
Prominent human rights lawyer, Julian Burnside QC, admits to a profound sense of inadequacy.
The permanently full guest room in the elegant Melbourne home of Julian Burnside QC symbolises everything that the human rights lawyer stands for.
The room is occupied regularly by refugees who are indebted to Burnside and his wife, Kate Durham, for making their transition from mandatory detention to freedom a little easier. The high profile silk began opening his home to former detention centre detainees in 2002 when he and Kate launched the Spare Rooms for Refugees project in a bid to help asylum seekers enter the community.
Human rights issues are high on Burnside´s agenda and pro bono refugee cases occupy a large part of his practice. But it hasn´t always been so.
Burnside started out as a blue blood corporate barrister. He has acted for Alan Bond in fraud trials, for Rose Porteous in numerous actions against Gina Rinehart, for the Maritime Union of Australia in the 1998 waterfront dispute against Patrick Stevedores, for the Ok Tedi natives against BHP and he was the Senior Counsel assisting the Australian Broadcasting Authority in the "Cash for Comment" inquiry.
His decision to provide counsel in a raft of refugee cases, most notably acting as senior counsel for Liberty Victoria in the Tampa asylum seekers litigation, was in danger of damaging his career due to public opinion at the time being strongly pro the Howard Government´s mandatory detention stance and its insistence that the Tampa refugees were not entitled habeas corpus – a legal action that allows a person to seek relief from unlawful detention.
But Burnside dismisses the fallout saying "it did not occur to me as a possibility until it had happened."
"It surprised me, but I did not for a minute consider the idea of staying silent. If I had turned aside to protect my career, my conscience would have exacted a much greater price.
"If success depends on sacrificing the things that truly matter, then success is pointless and valueless."
Educated at Melbourne Grammar and raised in a privileged household Burnside began life deeply entrenched in the mores of Melbourne´s conservative establishment.
His father, a brilliant urological surgeon, was a demanding taskmaster, instilling in him a love of language and challenging him to attain his potential. Unwittingly he also contributed to Burnside´s feelings of inadequacy, which ironically shaped his acute sense of injustice.
Burnside´s mother formulated strict house rules, which the young Burnside dutifully obeyed while watching his young brother flaunt his complete disregard for them.
"It was completely baffling to me and struck me as deeply unfair that the one who played by the rules got punished, whereas the one who broke the rules got away with it," says Burnside, now a celebrated champion of victims of societal injustice.
What he admits was a painful sense of inadequacy throughout his adolescence and early adulthood had its roots during those formative years and it was only after his brother died in a car accident that he discovered that his sibling had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and wasn´t expected to survive beyond puberty.
His parents divorced when he was young and his mother over-compensated, leaving Burnside with a burning passion for justice.
"I´ve grown up with a profound sense that I am inadequate and will never be adequate because I´ll never quite reach what I´m striving for. If you think you have been treated unfairly you are likely to feel passionate about justice," he muses. The highly acclaimed barrister opted to study law at Monash University simply because his sister´s boyfriend had done so. He maintains that it was not until he had been practising as a barrister for close to five years that he realised that the profession he had selected so casually was the perfect choice.
A significant turning point was the Maritime Union of Australia case. It surprised him that governments would act dishonestly and switched him from apolitical to political. It also persuaded him that a strong, responsible trade union movement is essential to a well functioning, fair society. In his Manning Clark Lecture, which he gave early this year, Burnside spoke of the growing divide between law and justice. He said: "Justice is one of the deepest yearnings of the human spirit, and one of the most important promises of democracy. When Law and Justice part company, we are betrayed; when Parliament makes unjust laws we are betrayed; when Justice is promised but is placed beyond reach, democracy fails."
Burnside believes that an instinct for justice is a useful but not essential attribute of an effective barrister, "which is the reason why in some instances the legal system fails in its task". The Tampa case opened his eyes to the refugee issue and the right of boat people to receive protection under the Refugees Convention.
"Yet we lock them up, sometimes for years. Men, women and children who have never committed any offense and are not considered a danger. It is profoundly wrong," he says referring to an 11-year old girl who was being detained in a cell with her family and suffered so intensely that she hanged herself with a bed sheet.
