When the Federal Government sought to take mobile phones away from asylum seekers in onshore detention centres, law students at Macquarie University helped mount a successful legal challenge against the ban.

And in November, as refugees refused to leave the decommissioned Manus Island detention centre and faced a showdown with PNG police, the students were working to keep ill refugees close to medical treatment in Port Moresby as authorities tried to send them back to the remote Manus province.

It’s all been part of a year’s work with asylum-seeker clients for 24 legal students at the Social Justice Clinic, a pilot project set up by law school senior lecturer Dr Daniel Ghezelbash.

In its first year, the clinic has partnered with the National Justice Project and the Refugee Advice and Casework Service (RACS) to help with their pro bono caseloads, giving students real-life work experience under the clinical supervision of the not-for-profit organisations.

As testament to its success, the clinic is to become permanent, with its ultimate home to be in the Michael Kirby law building that the university plans to begin building in 2020.

Ghezelbash, who spent 18 months in the US observing how universities there ran their clinical programs before returning to establish Macquarie’s, couldn’t be prouder.

More refugees get legal help

“People who otherwise would not have got legal representation are getting it because of the students,” says Ghezelbash. “The students do real legal work that makes a substantial contribution to the work of these organisations, and has allowed both organisations to take on more clients than they would have otherwise.

“We’re adding real capacity to the sector at a time when the sector is in crisis because the funding has been cut … there was a time not too long ago when all asylum seekers would have access to government-paid legal advice and that was abolished.”

The students, who are in the third year and above of their law studies and beat more than 100 applicants to secure places at the clinic, have worked with “all permutations” of refugees, says Ghezelbash, as well as on coronial inquests into Aboriginal deaths in custody and deaths of asylum-seekers in offshore detention.

“Unfortunately, there are no happy endings on Nauru and Manus Island; largely it’s really depressing work,” says Ghezelbash.  While communication with clients on Nauru and Manus has been primarily on WhatsApp and in relation to securing them medical treatment, students have consulted in-person with refugees living in Australia who are on bridging visas and need legal help to secure three or five year temporary visas – refugees who, because they arrived by boat, will never secure permanent residency under current law.

Through the RACS partnership, the students have assisted asylum-seekers who came by plane and are eligible for permanent visas.  Although there are no outcomes yet for any of the clients, the clinic “made a substantial contribution to their chances of success,” says Ghezelbash.

Drop-in services planned for new law school

In the coming years, the clinic will be progressively expanded to include 40 students a semester across five partner organisations. Negotiations are underway with not-for-profit legal practices helping clients in areas such as tenancy and social security. The pro bono arms of commercial law firms are also in Ghezelbash’s sights.

“The plan was always to take a very broad approach to social justice lawyering so we definitely plan to move beyond the refugee space,” says Ghezelbash. “The new law school, in particular, will be very useful for us, in that I really want to ramp up the live client interaction, and part of the design of the new school is for us to have a dedicated interview room, which will allow me to bring in partners that run drop-in services.”

Offices were refitted and walls knocked down in the current law school to house the clinic, which has been a game changer for many students, says Ghezelbash.

“It’s almost unanimously touted as the best learning experience that they’ve had at university,” he says. “They really love it. It’s so much work for them, much more than expected in any unit that they take, but they really enjoy it, and we’ve had quite a number of students say it’s basically changed their career path and what they want to do with their life.”

One of the tasks of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, established in 2014, is to investigate where law, policy and practice have failed to protect children from sexual abuse in institutional contexts and make recommendations for reform. The Royal Commission recognised that appropriate and timely sharing of information between government and non-government organisations, and across jurisdictions, was essential to allow institutions to work together to identify, prevent and respond to child sexual abuse. It was not clear, however, whether the relevant legislation and policy across Australia was likely to be helping or hindering this flow of information.

Together with my colleague, Krista Lee-Jones, I undertook a detailed investigation of the laws and policies in every Australian state and territory that impact on whether institutions are allowed or required to share information when there are concerns about child sexual abuse. Our report, commissioned and published by the Royal Commission, examines information sharing arrangements in institutional contexts where children are most vulnerable: child protection, out-of-home care, early childhood services, schools, juvenile justice and extracurricular activities.

The legislative and policy frameworks around sharing information in these contexts must attempt to resolve the tension between two sets of rights: the rights of children to physical and personal integrity and protection from all forms of violence, including sexual abuse, and the right to privacy for the children and adults involved. We found that this tension has resulted in complex law and policy, which can give rise to confusion for those working in the field.

Our report identifies elements of the regulatory framework that are likely to impede the timely and appropriate sharing of information and that warrant further consideration and possible reform. These include complexity and fragmentation in Commonwealth, state and territory privacy laws, and the creation of central agency information hubs that do not allow front line professionals to use their judgment and share information laterally.

The report also identifies elements that support timely sharing of information, such as provisions that include the ‘best interests of the child principle’. Making this principle explicit in legislation helps to ensure that when a child’s right to safety comes into tension with the child’s right to privacy, or another’s right to privacy, the safety of the child becomes the primary consideration.

Our report concludes that it is possible to share information about child sexual abuse in institutional contexts where necessary in ways that are consistent with the right to privacy, but there is some law reform work needed to make this a reality.

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