A career in human rights and international law - WDSN

you I'm Alan Hawk the moderator for this evening's proceedings and we're very fortunate to have these two eminent people here with us tonight I was on the SP board for a number of years Australia's premier policy think-tank in defence and security and police matters and I think four years there and now I'm a non-executive director of Lockheed Martin and those two organizations sponsor this women in defence and security network so it's a great pleasure for me to be here tonight in my current capacity to be involved in this so we're going to start off by hearing from Julian and Susan about how they got to where they were the experiences that shaped them and perhaps we start with you Julian okay well firstly I congratulations for setting this up I think it's a great idea and the noise level outside suggests to me that you're all having a great time and getting to know each other and that is a huge difference from where I started though in my own career so we'll take a few minutes just to say exactly how it all started I'm a ten-pound pommy Margaret came to Australia and when I was 12 and went to university high school and then to my complete amazement got into law school at the University of Melbourne and that for me was quite a transformative experience because I also went to a residential college and I lived the whole University experience in those days you didn't have jobs you didn't have to work to pay fees there was a Commonwealth scholarship and it was it was a privileged deeply privileged environment to be in and I can't say that I really enjoyed my law I couldn't understand what it was all about I was far too young it was misery really contracts of property and torts but one day I walked into the lecture theatre of a marvelous Polish Jew called de Plaza who was teaching international law and he was talking about I always remember it the drafting of the Charter a sorry of the Covenant of the League of Nations and how inspiring this was because for them if this was to be the document that marked the end of the First World War and the vehicle it was to prevent war ever to occur again and he then described how things deteriorated in the 30s and the tanks rolled across from Italy into Abyssinia Ethiopia and he knew that the Charter had failed he then escaped actually to Australia and I remember sitting in the front row because I was a bit of a goody-goody I think and I used to my parents didn't believe in clothes very much so I had a tartan skirt from my English days and a twin sets with some pearls and I would sit there in the front row one of about five girls of 300 men at least and I saw these tears roll down his face and I thought that is the most exciting commitment to peace and the role of the rule of law in achieving world peace that one can possibly imagine and frankly it just fired my imagination I finished my law degree did dreaded articles with with a firm I couldn't get articles because no one would take me although I've had a reasonably good law degree I couldn't get articles anywhere in Melbourne and I finally went home in tears and my father who is a businessman rang his love law firm and by some miracle they Senior Partner if you can imagine in 1967 the Senior Partner of that small law firm was a woman and she said I'll take Julie and on so I got my articles finished it went to the states and did a masters went to Cambridge and started my PhD joined the University of Melbourne as a law lecturer and walked into a lectureship in international law which he wouldn't get these days I must say that so things were a little easier right so I started the academic life because I admire I've deeply admired scholarship and people who read and analyze and a lot of learn to love the law through mainly through my masters and PhD work but then there was a senior partner of a major law firm Mallesons who said to me one day over a couple of drinks too many jillion those who was it those who can do and those who can't teach and it it was like a dagger through my heart I thought I've have got to get out and be a lawyer so I joined Mallesons and I then had nearly 20 years of them in the meantime marrying a diplomat and was able to combine miraculously a legal career with with Mallesons but in other parts of the world in Singapore Jakarta Hong Kong and then believe it or not in Paris where my husband was ambassador and we had an extraordinary time there because I saw international law actually working in practice because there's a LeMat remember when my husband was there in 1996 as ambassador that was the year or the year in which the French conducted their second round of below ground testing and so he had to go to the Kate or say eight times to formally complain and I watched from sidelines what it was like to be an Australian trying to talk about the rule of law and our region and our concerns about nuclear testing in a Europe that really turned its back on on Australia and felt that Australia was naive so I that was my career really I I had three children and I built on my PhD thesis which was on theories of territorial sovereignty pretty arcane stuff as it applied to Antarctica and then built on that and did a lot of offshore oil and gas commercial work and to cut a long story short was was offered the position of the director of the British Institute for international comparative law in London which was a wonderful position because it took you it stepped you out of the normal pathways and and if we're to talk about what women can do one of the things I would strongly recommend is when an opportunity comes your way just take it and do it it did mean you know selling the house giving the dog away all of these things but we went to London I've had some time at Cambridge before that but I went to London it was a huge job but a great privilege to do it but it forced me out of my comfort zone to take on challenges of a Research Institute funding the money working with British politicians and working of course with the EU and the whole system of human rights as well as commercial law and offshore owned gas so that was a remarkable experience and it led to I think my being offered the role as dean of the Sydney Law School which again was a remarkable experience I don't know whether any of you have seen the new law school building but it was my privilege to come in as Dean just as that just as the hole in the ground was being dug and so I was able to make the transition to this glittering glass palace but it lifted morale lifted the faculty and law and and its role in an iconic University really made a huge difference so I had five years there and then to my complete surprise was rung by the then attorney Nicola Roxon to see if I would take on the role as president of the Australian Human Rights Commission and I'd have to say that for me that was a big leap because I would never have considered myself a human rights lawyer up until that time but like a lot of people of my generation when you take on a subject like international law you did it as a generalist whereas I think younger people today are more inclined to say I'm an international environmental lawyer I'm a human rights lawyer I'm a WTO lawyer or whatever it is my generation didn't do that you simply studied the subject then it grew phenomenally over that over that time very difficult to keep up with it but and that stimulated me to books but I did write one that I always wanted to write which was a book that not was not necessary Australian but international law principles and practices and that was a big effort took me four years to write it and a lot of agony but I was pleased that I did it because I wanted that generalist approach to international law that could go from the Criminal Court International Criminal Court WTO law to principles of territorial sovereignty so that anybody wants to know about international law would find it in that book but so it was a big step up for me to take this role as president and I think one of the things that I've most particularly appreciated about the role is that it's a national role when you're working with the university with the faculty or the law firm or in the various countries that I've worked in where I've been a a trailing spouse to my husband but always working was that you you tend to be in a relatively small environment whereas when you have this extraordinary opportunity to work at a national level you start to see the complexity in the richness of Australia so I've been traveling to you know up yellow dusty roads out of out of Katherine to visit a aged people's homes for Indigenous Australians Pont Ville for children intern Christmas Island three times Darwin South Australia but all over two provincial small provincial towns big cities small villages on one or two occasions I can tell you about later and getting to see this very complex country that spread out across such a vast distance where I've really found it's such a privilege and to work in the human rights area has been has been wonderful with my colleagues of course and six commissioners who deal with portfolios of sex age and disability combined now with Susan Ryan Aboriginal Torres Strait Islanders race children and general human rights so it's been a rollercoaster ride it's a very difficult environment for me to do my work in asylum seekers it's it's difficult politically and very difficult to maintain the objectivity and the quality of the research that the Commission does in the face of a certain amount of opposition but nonetheless I think I've and if I can conclude I probably go on far too long that basically to say that one of the things that's been so important to me in this job where it is difficult is to hang on to the things that I learned as a lawyer about getting your facts right the evidence right being sure that what you're saying is a fair objective and balanced statement and I think if you do that or to use the cricket analogy play with a straight back at bat as straight as you can then I optimistically believe that you can get through these difficult times to reach the right answers so it it's a great challenge for me I'm really enjoying it and I'll it remains to be seen what I can add and the fence side but I do have one out two stories I'll tell you about later thank you if you think yours is arcane I think I owe my success in the public service to the PhD on the sex life of the Australian plague locust so so Susan yes I did show Hawaii I'm just going to process that I'll be getting back to you in a sec right so I'm at a much earlier stage of my career than the wonderful Heights that these two have reached so I'm 42 I'm from Coonabarabran in New South Wales which is town many of you will have driven through and probably not stopped so from from a not very salubrious farm with a lot of sheep and wheat so not not your obvious candidate for a career in human rights law or international diplomacy and still aren't to be honest which i think is a great advantage if you if you don't come from the world I think it's easier to be critical of and to add freshness to the world but so growing up in Coonabarabran apparently I was heavily identified with Rumpole of the Bailey and Geoffrey Robertson which the only two people on television we only had one channel that I vaguely related to so and I started in year 12 I was said to wait in high school in Lismore the bright lights Lismore newest northern new south wales and started a scrapbook this sounds very sad but I did tell people because people find it extremely funny so I'm prepared to whether their scorn and derision because it is in fact true that I started to scrap full full of women that I admired and that that that little scrapbook I with was filled with people like this this woman called Mary Robinson who'd just become president of Ireland and who made the most beautiful inauguration speech and I had taped into my scrap we can imagine what the other kids thought of me by the way the president of Iceland I was very interested in Jeannine Haines being the first woman to lead a political party at that stage I was very interested in that this this lady could Quentin brass who is the sex Discrimination Commissioner of Queensland and I when I went to University of Queensland I was very lucky I did well at high school and the nuns interceded with my family and said because it was the first year they brought in hex and my family didn't want me to go to university because of the massive debt chalmers don't like that it was a very big deal for my family which is why I've been quite outspoken about the university deregulation now because we'll displayed people like me from going to university so I had a very scary nun who was my principal she had a PhD in physics of course as apparently nuns Duke she she'd drive from Lismore to Coonabarabran to remonstrate with my mother with the priest so mum was outflanked to say no sorry your daughter has done very well and you need to let it go to university so and the common sight of conversations we were having were along the lines of she really should study arts because she taught stay in English and my mother saying she's not very good at art I don't know me and me behind a clock I draw really what are you talking about here because we had no conception no one in our family had ever been to university no one had a clue what was going on so anyway I went to University of mum was right in the sense I only paid off my ex debt last year so yeah track for young players everyone also with the help they wonderfully named to help them so it does effective this investment in education but it was still the best investment I've made in my own sanity and because before that it was looking at shearing or working in a bank so I'm pretty happy my mother still wants me to come home to Kenna Bergman open practice god bless her and she allowed me to be law for the wonderful reason that someone in the family might eventually need me on a criminal matter I think was in her head I suspect she rustling or fence fixing but I can't show so I would have to do law it was such a big deal in Coonabarabran that I had two of the coatracks named after me at my school one had ever done law for kin irrelevant for and it was it was a big deal and it was very overwhelming my first lecturer at University of Queensland everybody else except for a few scattered people up the front we're wearing these jerseys because they'd all been to what in Brisbane is called GPS schools and they were all wearing jerseys and I completely freaked out because I thought oh my god there's a uniform I thought they didn't have a beautiful because like everyone's wearing these Rugby Canterbury things of Queenslanders know what I'm talking about these long-sleeve things you know of course I asked him one morning and then that was bad idea yeah so so Queen zone was still a very difficult environment I immediately joined the debating society and found nerds of my O'Neill can that would work that went very well for me I did drama and law and then I combined drama with international relations and law I'm still the only person from University of Queensland my old Dean tells me he has a honours degree in drama and international relations and my thesis was about a beautiful play by aural Dorfman and Chile called death and the maiden and it's about a truth commission process gone horribly wrong and and the basically the impact on a particular woman of of the troubles in in under the Pinochet regime in Argentina and Chile and that the concept is that that desire to think about women's rights at times of post-conflict justice has basically defined my career from then on in so at this time I discovered a woman called Hillary charlesworth who I then began to stalk which is she was she was at University of Melbourne as well and then she went to Adelaide and so I was looking for ways to get myself to this place called the Anu wherein dwelt Hilary Charlesworth and there was a that time astray Leah national internship program so there was one for defect and I was very excited so along with some colleagues in the audience we were one of the first in terms into graduating to into defect where I was mentored by very idiosyncratic gentleman called chrislam who was in the legal division and had a whole lot of new experiences with worldly and wonderful female diplomats who had a profound effect on me particularly penny Wensley Julien bird he was still terrifying actually even now I'm 42 they're still skinny but they are wonderful when Margaret Cheney and Tony's sister and I thought all one day that's that's the ticket that lot actually dee fat wasn't for me I tried the graduate program I'm not really a public servant I'm sorry Alan it's not really quite my thing so and I went did articles like you I I am I got articles and in fact they told me in the interview I got articles because they needed someone interesting to put the pressure I was I was both be from the poor rural background and interested in international law that was a debating person I was I was when they were sent to campus which I thought was very cruel because there was no one like me at Blake's at all so that I was all what they always sent out so I was through a law firm called black dolls and waldron which is not at rest they did not have any female partners at that time and it was probably not that different to TOEFL articles that you did but I had a wonderful partner he's known as Gary Rumble who who then went on to do the DLA Piper review of sexual abuse in defense of course and Dennis Pierce who was the Commonwealth's Palin was now heading up their admin team and I was incredibly well trained but I thought I'm going to find this female partner in Sydney she looks amazing and I was Elizabeth Broderick and I thought I want her I'm going to go with her so I did she was the head of the legal Technology Group now of course she's the Sex Discrimination Commissioner and she was always that way headed I believed the day I was admitted by did tell garyun Liz that they were right I did like a commercial imperative and that I was going to join the world of NGOs so I could save the world on a minimal salary they thought I was completely bonkers but were very so there were only two independently funded refugee advocacy positions at that point of time because their refugee scene in Australia was all set up for settlement services we were assumed we were a resettlement nation and so all of our services were based around that and they were mainly government-funded and really the asylum issue was only just starting to cook in the early 90s especially when we privatized the detention centers so I came into what was then it's called the National Council of Churches it's their communica body that represents all the churches in Australia they had a refugee advocacy teams now could act for peace and my job was to try to get the issue of children in detention into the media because it wasn't in 1992 and it was really tough I couldn't even get SBS to cover it so you know over my whole career it's just been a in the asylum area I'm sorry to tell you it's just been one huge travel tragedy after another we got children out of detention and the children got back in detention and we won the parts and months pay we lost the hearts and minds debate it's it's been not so exciting and in fact I when I then went to back feeds which is the peak body for the development agencies in Australia as a human rights officer and at that time I was working very heavily with the Defense Department to set up the civil military doctrine as it then was and obviously because I was a knight chill girl and did a lot of work on Rachel that was very nice to me they called me ma'am so I always liked them but we were doing a lot of work on the Pacific Solution and at that time I was the president of a NGO called Australian lawyers for Human Rights in my spare time such as it was and we were working hard to try to work with you and actually hard to deal with the caseloads on Nauru and Manus Island so the very nice regional representative for you and actually pretty much poked me um which was very early time I've been poached it's a nice experience I'd like to say it was because I had impressed him so much I think it was just really disparate Michelle Gordon they really needed more lawyers to do refugee status determination and while I was a student still I had gone and volunteered for UNHCR in a Somali refugee camp called the dog and I'd also volunteered to work for this sexual assault team in the ICTY in exile in the hague so I my poor mother put myself in even more debt got a series of exciting tropical diseases but that but that bar that field experience really made it okay for me to go and work for both AK fire any minute year after that after UNHCR I went to Parliament thinking I needed a bit of quiet when I had my first baby parliamentary library at that period was not in fact quiet there was a massive suite of counterterrorism bills and and migration bills and suddenly I was the counterterrorism expert because it was just a lot of bills going through but I really loved being in the parliamentary library I did a lot of work and very proud of there but it was actually very difficult so when you think you're taking a job because it's a quieter or gentler option to the what you think might be the harder job of you and actually I actually think the Parliament House is a harder environment than UNHCR fieldwork it was a very difficult place to be especially as a young mother it's a very difficult environment I think it still is I used to go and go and you know meet the female parliamentarians help them with their childcare give them legal advice it was a very difficult environment but very challenging and through all of this I was working on my PhD with Hillary charlesworth having successfully stopped her and made her trust me first and teaching at the at the College of Law and after a stint back attack feeds doing a lot of policy and advocacy and lobbying work I came back to academia so I've had a really roundabout career was the point of all of that a career where the topic was clear I was working on human rights international internal wherever I could but as a practitioner often and I was working on whatever I thought was the most pressing human rights issue of the day in Australia and for me they've always been sex discrimination refugee rights indigenous rights environmental issues whatever is the most challenging issue that everyone's dealing with at the time but it means that my career has been very generalist I suppose I'm what you call a generalist human rights lobbyists really and I'm really a lobbyist an advocate it just makes me quite unusual in the academic world so I write policy thing I try to get government's to do different things so some of the things I've been involved with are the ambassador for women and girls which I'm very proud of well I was that acted we also lobbied to have a c20 set up to engage civil society actors in the g20 process leading up to the Brisbane summit a little bit very hard for the office for women to be moved back into Prime Minister and cabinet I defined the rest of Australia didn't understand why that was a good thing so that didn't work as quite as well as I'd hoped and I've always worked very hard on the domestic human rights mechanisms in the ICT because I feel like you should work on wherever is happening at home of course Hillary was very important in that process so I'm still on my career journey I did have in my scrapbook that I would like to be a statutory authority one day I horrified John Falkner by telling him how interested I was in the integrity portfolios and he said no one has ever said that to me you had this thing because there was the I was in Prime Minister and cabinet for about 10 minutes on a contract and he was he was my I was in the privacy section which is fascinating such a under done area of human rights in Australia and he was our Minister and he had this thing called the integrity breakfast where we'd have all the statutory of us and all the integrity portfolios and I would have breakfast and I just loved that I do you know the integrity practiced it's had a kind of an Avengers feel to me so I've always been very interested in the checks and balances in Australia we have so few people think we have such a robust democracy we have so few checks and balances on executive discretion in Australia and the migration portfolio is more acute than most but I've had a very good working relationship with the security world in a range of areas so my a zero friend might say differently but I am sure they enjoy my work and I think it's an area I'm so pleased that this has happened because it's an area where I've been to so many so many national security forums where I've been the only woman or one of three or it's just been Jennifer Jennifer you know holding the flag or you know it's really wonderful to see these sort of events happening okay so um both of you have really touched on a theme that I think would be interested to this audience so they're on their way up the tree you're right up there you're on the way there so what would you say to them about role models about leadership that sort of thing how do they go about pursuing their career through that well I think I think leadership is enormous ly important and women have to step up to be leaders I think women have to be courageous in making decisions and stepping up to take that leadership opportunity to step back and let somebody else make the leadership initiative is something I think women have done far too much and you may think you're being a bit pushy or it may not be your personality but I think you can do it in a way which is firm and evidence-based you've got you've done your homework then I think you step up and you put your hand up and you exercise leadership in doing it my role models were relatively few and far between because they simply didn't exist but there is one that many of you will know who I admire from the first moment I ever met her was Rosalyn Higgins who was the first woman to be elected by her fellow judges as president of the International Court of Justice but she was a professor of international law at LSE and met her at a conference and I heard her speak and she spoke with such a crystal clarity because she'd done her homework she knew what she was talking about she got her ducks in a row and she went for it and I remember watching her thinking she was better than anybody else at the conference and I was very young as an academic then and I made it my business to read everything she had ever written and learnt from her the style and learnt from the way she focused her thoughts and how she managed the vast amount of evidence that lawyers have to deal with and so I think she for me was it was an enormous intellectual leader she probably be terribly embarrassed if she heard me say that but she I think has been the outstanding woman in my in my subject but I think otherwise I existed in a world of men and so you were just doing it and hoping you got it right but I did learn that you have to put your hand up I think leadership is vital leadership in the current context obviously Australian politics without strong leadership and statesmen like behavior of states woman like behavior is terribly terribly important and I'm absolutely convinced that with good leadership this country would not be taking the position that it currently does in relation to asylum seekers I'm certain morally certain that were the prime minister of the day the former government or this one to say to the Australian people we've made I think we've gone down the wrong track we can do better than this we a migrant country we can apply it we can combine a compl I with the rules of international law that doc Evert helped draft in 1945 and a 1948 when he was president of the General Assembly we can do this we've taken a wrong turn what was bipartisan is now passed and politics let's let his come back to the road that Australia taken in the 60s and the 70s and the 80s I think that with leadership we could do that and that's not happening but I'm certain that if that women need to stand up and and to use their skills in a calm and orderly way without without becoming too emotionally involved but to put your case clearly and to really demand the attention and the demand the right to lead when you know that that you've got the skills to do it but but this doesn't is not going to land in your laps is a lot of hard work to get there and a lot of knocks along the way don't always get what you want quickly but if you stick to your work stick to the quality of what you're doing then I think women are in a great position to exercise leadership and I'd love to see more and to see your generation doing it more than certainly my generation did that's lonely but what is it about Australia we're a land of migrants that they're so obsessed and against migration and refugees in particular and it showed up in all the polling before the last election what's behind that well I've thought a lot about this because you're absolutely right I mean in the middle of our children's inquiry we're looking at 82 percent of Australians agreeing with this stop the boats policy and detention of families and children so we were we were really battling against an average ordinary compassionate fair go kind of Australian still believe that these policies are the right ones so I've thought about it I think it lies in again leadership because leadership's done everything they can to vilify asylum seekers but but also I think it's there's some deeply entrenched psychological fear of invasion in Australia it's the language of the Yellow Peril is extremely unpleasant but that was the language now we don't use that anymore but I think the psychic fear continues so when we come back to leadership and the power of language is so important when you have leaders who talk about illegal unauthorized an illegal mug asylum-seekers you've got notions of jumping the queue you've got all the language of economic migrants when we know that 90 to 95 percent when assess will be judged as meeting that the definition and perhaps if I could give you one little story that that made the point to me that artists comedians are so much better than I am at explaining the point because some of you may have watched Shawn Micallef mad as hell after the baby for his case now you might remember the baby for us was born in Brisbane he and and his mother will return to Christmas Island I met them briefly trying to explain to this woman that the High Court of Australia said based on the language of the migration act that baby Pharaohs was deemed to have arrived or entered Australia by sea now the mother said but he was born in Brisbane how could he possibly have entered Australia by sea well that's what the High Court said because that's what the migration Act said but of course Shawn Micallef understood all of this and he in a very short piece said how dare baby firuze hide for nine months and his mother's womb in order to jump the queue become a and criminally claimed Australian citizenship now in one go one 30-second snap he had I think just twisted it a bit and the Australian public start to say this is insane so I think I think we need more leadership on this question we need more people speaking up but I think we have to somehow an address this deep fear the Australians have of leaky boats the people coming in to invade what we've built I think that's the thinking but leadership can overcome that with with the right language and the right vision for Australia you've already touched on some heroines and heroes that you've had from a very young age which is quite unusual but what's your views about the leadership Mentors I look I think it's not even imagine I was trying to imagine a life for myself I figured there was something out there that didn't involve sheep I had to I had to imagine it and I had no access you know these were the pre-google days folks so you know everybody that I was reading about was seemed very far away and I was mad about Samuel Johnson well that's a hardly useful frame of reference for a conveyor burn girl so you know I really had to I really had to try to will something into being you know will will a career into being somehow and you know Liz always says you can't be it if you can't see it you need to see people doing things and I think the thing I do say to younger women all the time is you think it's normal for women to be in particular positions in reasonable numbers it is not normal you know there weren't any female partners in Australia very recently there was only a female judge with a high court quite recently you know we got 2/3 now we're back to 2 there weren't any managing partners of law firms until quite recently there were very few ambassadors and female ambassadors until recently Julie which is the first female foreign minister we've ever had you know visa where you're still pioneers you are frontier women you need to understand that frontier women and things things won't flow the natural way because you're actually displacing what the natural flow was for you know at least a couple hundred of years of hundred years so you do need to understand that it's elbows out ladies and and I think for gents it's it's time to realize if things flow to you that you don't feel you've earned it's time for you to take responsibility for that and to give up some opportunities if they come your way and they'll be for your benefit because your peers are going to be the best resource you can have I mean I I put a lot of effort into you know these wonderful roles and they've all none of them have ever let me down you know Elizabeth Evan or Hilary Chatsworth never let me down always been incredibly generous somewhat startled usually by the depth of my passion very Robinson I couldn't speak when I met her but she was very nice how's Marisa - it's going one industry well you're crazy over like the Beatles and it was like that everywhere very rough it's a bleep you know you lost its all artists true but it's actually appears that are going to get you where you need to go so you need it you need to see it to bit you need to see in here and believe that Gillian Triggs is real and one day you could be like Gillian Triggs you need to see it to bit but you also need to be able to rely on the people around you right now and the people that are one step up from you because they're the ones who are going to actually be look you know the people I went to uni with I would never have believed it at the time but they're running the world you know so the people that you're at uni with your peer group are going to be because you don't understand either I didn't understand either the people who go to university in Australia are still a minority is still our elite group if you're at university if you're in the Australian public service you're already you know this strata of people so never underestimate your own privilege and power and therefore your own responsibility but I believe you can exercise personal leadership anywhere you are and it doesn't have to be as a leader of men or women either you know Gillian is both a thought leader and a leader of people but you can be a thought leader you can be the one that's ahead of the curve in your organization you can be the one who's explaining what engaging talents of women and girls is going to mean for your field there's all that because your frontier people because your pioneers there's a huge amount of opportunity that comes with that I look at the women in tech and I just think wow world is their oyster you know women who can code in a rule the world you know so so just think about I think quite laterally about the ways you can exercise leadership there's moral leadership there's integrity there's there's being a leader of people what I love about Liz Broderick is she can make anyone do anything she's extraordinary isn't she she could just influence anybody she canceled if she sees a group like you and she would be seen here on you did is to talk to a third and then a cultural change in defense yeah so there's lots of different ways so you need to be the sort of person you are if you're a you know someone who just loves dreaming big ideas then you're a thought leadership sort of person but you feel the sort of person it can work a room right no tomorrow that's something to that but because it's certainly leadership but also not being frightened to put yourselves forward and I think women are just so cautious and so modest and I have a particular example of this because a couple of years ago I was asked if I would be on the selection committee for the New South Wales silks that is those who become what used to be called Queen's Counsel at the New South Wales bar now you can imagine that is a seriously competitive environment that is very difficult and the year it was a happen chance but the year that I was on that selection committee twenty four women got up as silks whereas in previous years and since only six eight two have ever got up but what was what I became fascinated by why this is the case and I and the president of New South Wales bar associated to look at these women and the truth in relation to the twenty four was that they had waited until they were well and truly ripe for silk then they put their application in they came up they literally were ticked and through they went without over very little discussion the men by in the same group they were putting it in two or three years at least in advance of when they were really ready for it so that the people who were counseling they had to go back and say look you'll get there eventually but you've got another few years to go before you can do this and I thought that was a typically and that was two years ago and these are for really competitive able women at the bar now what it's like in the in the defense and security services I honestly don't know but I do think that that that women have got to start to say am I am I getting there and is there a value in putting my head in the ring maybe a year a little early but just to make it clear to everybody that I'm in the game I really want to get there I want this job and I'm going to be good at it and I'm going to work for it I'm going to tell you I want it and I may not get it this time around but I'm going to get it the next time and I think I think women have got to be more courageous and that's why to have a group like you coming together you can encourage each other a bit and help each other a little you might say look I noticed there's something coming up in your department you thought about it or can I help you sit down one night and sort of write up what what you're what you're good at and what you can contribute so I think we need a little bit of that as well yeah it's exactly the same in the public so that's exactly and your point there about personal leadership is really germane to the future of all of you you need to take that on board don't be backward in coming forward if you don't do it men will jump in there in front of you so I know we're supposed to have some questions from the audience but these two are staying around for drinks afterwards for a while so you can get in there either then so I wanted to turn a little bit to transparency in Australia space in the UN back in the g20 that sort of thing and what do you think about all that well can I tell you just a little story because some after the g20 you might remember that the German Chancellor Angela Merkel stayed in maybe Australia but certainly in Sydney and she gave a major lecture and I was lucky enough to go there along with a cast of thousands she was woman seriously in control of what she was doing I might add at one stage you might remember the microphone broke down and she said to the and oh I think was interviewing he said just take it away and the whole audience of about 2,000 people froze and he broke the ice by saying we'll take it away but but this is German technology but in her speech she she was a physicist came from East Germany and she had risen I thought quite a young woman and she began her speech and and and and came back to the bench marks throughout her speech of international law human rights law and the legacy of the Holocaust now of course in in Germany that is an abiding part of how they and themselves but in exactly the same week the chair of the legal and constitutional committee here in Canberra said in the committee hearings Australians don't care about treaties or international law and the reason the migration Act and maritime Powers Act amendments are necessary is to stop the High Court of Australia interfering in refugee policy and that encapsulated for me the extraordinary failure in Australia to understand the importance of international law now I've mentioned doc effort he was remarkable um he was feisty got in got under people's skin I think a brilliant man but believed in the Charter provisions he desperately didn't want a veto but had but lost on that as you know and worked with Eleanor Roosevelt's getting that language in the in the Declaration Australia from that time on has played a major role in drafting negotiating and managing the development of the contemporary human rights law that we all know about right up to the the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court so we've been big players rid big players well beyond our relatively small numerical size but great credibility for good work and for leadership but since about the time that the Rome Statute came into force we've seen a real drop-off in that we're now seeking a seat on the Human Rights Council we are president for a few more days of the Security Council and that's been a remarkable benefit for Australia that across the Labour Party can't have known at the time the Liberal Party didn't like it Julie bishops taking it talking of a leader she took that opportunity and she ran with it and she used all her skills to make that position work and in my personal view I think she's done an outstanding job so where are we I walk I mean I was invited by the Human Rights um a Commissioner for the United Nations a few weeks ago to go to Geneva very rare as you will know it Susan to pay your airfare in accommodation to do it but they wanted a genuine discussion with the committee on against arbitrary detention to know what was going on in Australia it wasn't aggressive but it was saying we simply don't understand that the country that's been so much behind all of this movement in the last 50 or 60 years can now be doing things in the indigenous area failing to respond properly to violence against women which is the second issue but furred Lee and it of course critically is the treatment of asylum see because they simply don't understand it in numerical terms or in terms of the concerns that Australians appear to have now we've also seen the last week the reportedly torture committee and the cat and that has been extremely critical and when Navi Pillay left and her report to the the council she was very critical of Australia and the new extraordinarily the new the Human Rights Commissioner al-hussein Prince al-hussein from Jordan also began his first inaugural speech with the Human Rights Council criticising Australia and talking in detail about the allegations that have been made in relation to his children and asylum seekers now that means that Julie bishops got a bit of a tough road to hoe she's got to explain how we're in this position and why we deserve as I believe we do a seat on the Human Rights Council and I think we'll get that seat but about at the same time I think that we've we've slipped in global esteem for human rights and I really believe that to be true and I say that it would pain because you know I'm in Australian I don't want to walk into committee meetings in Geneva or New York and have people criticize Australia as roundly as they are I think it's very unfortunate for Australia and not something we frankly have deserved historically but anyway that's where I think we are in the environment thank you Susan was very painful to work for you in HDR as an Australian during the Pacific Solution for precisely that reason not not not anger just genuine bafflement some of the rest of the world are you not up to you because they see our response is so incredibly disproportionate it's not that it's not that the rest of the world are angels when it comes to asylum policy it's the disproportionate nature of the response that they react to and I suppose a willingness to kind of throw things out I suppose but in almost every other place in the world there is some conception of a human rights instrument and we're very unusual in that courts are just different to most courts in the world and I think until you travel you don't quite realize what a difference that makes to the political culture I am a massive g20 nerd for reasons that might seem a bit strange to you all about six years ago I working a taxied Julie Julia Gillard had a hyatt meeting with the whole public service or her chiefs and said the g20 is our number one development / up priority for our development policy and I was the head of government relations for lack feed going is it goodness because you've spoken to no one about the g20 and what we'll be doing where we host the g20 and Olli that I better actually and I had been I used to go to all the meetings at Treasury looking at the OECD transnational Convention and all the corruption treaties and bribery and various other things and I used to go to meetings with the reports back from the world of World Bank in the Asian Development Bank and there were really very scary meetings and my weakness I think was the global economic policy kind of pieced the economic governance piece and I would suggest to all people who care about security issues you need to understand the language of economics you need to be able to not be baffled or put off by it you need to be able to navigate it and you need to understand economics in sense of it being the language of power it is the language of power you need to understand what the financial and economic trends are to be able to understand where the security dialogue is the days of security being the number one art of high politics are over so you need to understand that I mean I think geopolitics are really very important about when people are talking about strategy these days they're talking about economic strategy as much as they are security strategy so you need to have that flow to your quiver and if you don't engage you will get outflanked by economists every time I will guarantee that am i right I'm right aren't I so so this year was a huge year for us as the host of the g20 meant we got to be in the room that composed the rules for global economic governance for that one under the ears and now it hands over to Turkey and to China but at the same time we're on the Security Council it's just been Christmas for diplomats it's just been complete Christmas and of course we're going for the human rights council but also in had James Crawford elected to the International Court it's been a blockbuster year and the idea is that how to leverage that somehow now the g20 is over we're off the Security Council we may not I actually believe we may not get the Human Rights Council seat so that's my reading I think it's not going to help because we're going to be punished at climate stance I think in our inner reality so how do we then become the top 20 power we want to be and how do we use our power because power is only useful if you're doing things with it what are we going to do with it when we want in our region and we haven't answered those questions yet I agree with that but and I'm sorry we've run out of time because I've just been entranced by what you guys saying I'm going to call on Nicole seals whose government relations manager for Lockheed to move ahead of thanks to you I'm sure I speak on behalf of all the ladies and gentlemen here this evening when I give you my heartfelt thanks from the women of Defense and security network to Professor Gillian Triggs and Susan and of course Alan so a bleats in trance yet guiding just such a fantastic insight into how you know your careers have developed but also you know some of the barriers and opportunities that we may or may not grasp end up you know just thank you so much from everybody please join me you

Channel: ASPICanberra

Views: 31,559

Rating: 4.9036145 out of 5

Keywords: Women in Defence and Security Network (WDSN), Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), Lockheed Martin Australia, Dr Susan Harris Rimmer, Professor Gillian Triggs, ausdef, International Human Rights Law (Field Of Study), Australia (Country)

Id: AuA-CMuHFxw

Length: 53min 18sec (3198 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 05 2015