 This trip back to Australia is in order for me to conduct my teaching at University of Sydney. I'm an adjunct lecturer in law on their clinical social justice program here and every time I come back to Australia I try to get down to visit the ANU and also to meet with various politicians up at Parliament House on issues often like Westpup were and more often than not about Julian Assange and his current position. I was working as a lawyer, a media defence lawyer in London and had done a lot of work with Geoffrey Robertson QC who had been my mentor in the UK practicing as a lawyer and it was through the introduction through Geoffrey that Julian became a client and I think being an Australian was an important connection there but also because I was a media defence lawyer and he was obviously about to publish Cablegate and needed advice on what that might entail. I remain a legal adviser to Julian Assange and to WikiLeaks and I continue to work with him on the various legal issues that affect WikiLeaks whether that relate to his current situation now inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in his asylum application meeting with the Australian government and making representation to them about what the Australian government ought to be doing on his behalf as an Australian citizen but also advising on the financial blockade issues. WikiLeaks is faced with a financial blockade that's wiped out more than 96% of their income. Visa, PayPal, Mastercard are refusing to transfer payments to WikiLeaks which is completely extra legal and constitutes a form of economic censorship and so we're continuing to work on that issue hoping to remove the blockade so that WikiLeaks can continue to function. I think it's inevitable now having worked so closely for the last two years that we I guess have become friends having worked through the issues that we've worked through and indeed similarly with the rest of the WikiLeaks staff that I deal with. Unfortunately I was in for dinner the night after Lady Gaga so I did not get to meet her but I'm it's fantastic to see celebrities take an interest in Julian's case because it does raise the profile of what he's experiencing and the injustices that he's suffering so I think it's very brave and admirable of her to have taken that stand to go and see him. Bradley Manning is of course the alleged source for WikiLeaks and has been held in pre-child detention now for more than two years. The UN Special Rapporteur on torture has found that he's the conditions that he had been held in amount to inhuman and degrading treatment so as everybody has said including his own defense lawyer this case makes a mockery of fair trial procedures and in particular the speedy trial protections. He's due to face trial sometime early in the next year and there's grave concerns for the way he's been treated given that he is possibly a whistleblower having revealed war crimes. Well my involvement in the West Papua issue and fighting the injustices that I saw firsthand during my time at the ANU as an exchange student working out in West Papua that was a long time before I got involved with WikiLeaks but certainly I do see a connection between the two both because of the injustices involved in both cases but also importantly why I feel so strongly about what WikiLeaks is doing is that information was released through WikiLeaks that shed a light on what's happening in West Papua and so it is so unusual to get coverage of West Papua in the media and to actually get the facts of what's going on in the ground because journalists are banned. WikiLeaks gave us information about what was going on there that previously had not hit the press and for me that was incredibly important but that's just one example of what WikiLeaks does in a much broader context. Obviously those disclosures were very important for me personally and for the West Papuan people. I think it's really unfortunate that more Australians aren't aware of what's happening in West Papua because I think most Australians are rather proud of Australia's role in the humanitarian intervention in East Timor but so few realise what's happening in West Papua which is remarkably similar to what happened in East Timor. West Papua was illegally annexed by Indonesia it remains a part of Indonesia they suffer widespread human rights abuse discrimination their lands being taken exploitation by multinational corporations and this is 300 kilometres north of Australia I do think that it has a lot to do with the fact that foreign journalists are banned so it's very difficult to get information out of West Papua and indeed even West Papuan journalists are threatened by the Indonesian military. I'd like to say the Australian government take a more constructively critical approach to Indonesia's human rights record in particular in West Papua. I think that the Australian government has been incredibly reactive and too scared to raise legitimate human rights concerns with respect to Indonesia because they're concerned about what it might do to the relationship. Indonesia is incredibly sensitive about the West Papua issue we know this from the fact that when 43 refugees were granted refugee status in this country they withdrew their ambassador so it is a very sensitive issue nevertheless Australia has to be paying attention it is completely unacceptable that state funds Australian state funds taxpayers funds are being used to train forces that are being used to arrest peaceful activists who are advocating for self-determination from Indonesia and the Australian Federal Police Commissioner said yesterday in Senate estimates that that is considered inappropriate activity and the Australian government ought to review their funding that review really ought to be taking place and that's a very easy first step. I think it's something the Australian government ought to weather. Human rights concerns are important we say that we have a human rights based foreign policy I'm not seeing evidence of that in our relationship with Indonesia the Australian government has to be strong in weathering that criticism because it's inappropriate for us in particular to be spending our taxpayers funds in funding forces who are committing human rights abuse and the Australian government ought to be taking that seriously particularly when we are campaigning for a seat on the UN Security Council on the basis of our human rights based foreign policy. There is no evidence of that in our interaction with Indonesia and that will be seen by the international community. I certainly haven't lost personal friendships and connections in Indonesia because of my work on West Papua but I think it's raised concerns for my ability to travel there and I had a visit from an Indonesian diplomat in London telling me that I would not be welcome back which is a great shame because my year in Indonesia was one of the best years of my life. I love Indonesia as a country I miss living there I had a wonderful time I think it's a wonderful country and I'm actually one of the greatest advocates for Indonesia within Australia amongst my own communities because of the misunderstandings I think that arose after the barley bombs and it's a great shame the negative reaction towards Indonesia after that because it is a wonderful country but that doesn't mean that I will countenance and can stand by and watch what happens in West Papua and in fact I think a lot of Indonesians aren't aware of how bad it is and what actually happens there and if they were they would probably do what I'm doing right now. It was already considered very controversial for me to go to West Papua at all as an ANU student and there are a lot of concerns about my safety and security while in West Papua. I went to work with a little in human rights NGO and when I was going out there I had no idea the cases that I was going to be involved in. It was one of the most exciting and challenging experiences of my life it was completely life changing to work directly with some of the most incredible human rights defenders John Rumbiak was soon was forced to leave the country the following year after I was there because he'd received death threats from the Indonesian military because of the work we were doing in raising awareness in working with human rights victims and making the world aware of what was actually happening. His life came under threat. It was an eye-opening experience in the sense that I realised that the civil liberties that we have in Australia to defend controversial clients simply do not exist. It made me a passionate advocate for the rights of lawyers to be able to do their job for the rights of controversial clients to have representation and I guess that's probably what's driven me to really to stick by Julian despite the controversies and despite the risks to myself because of that. After my year in Indonesia on the Asian studies year in Asia program because I was so unbelievably affected by what I'd seen in West Papua I found it impossible to come back to Canberra straight away and I actually deferred my degree for a year and went travelling and went and lived in London because it was very difficult to come back to the Australian community having worked so closely with West Papuan victims seeing first hand the impact of Indonesian military violence on a community and actually feeling really guilty about being forced to leave because of the Bali bomb. I felt like I couldn't finish my work there and it was impossible for me to come straight back to the ANU. I couldn't even relate to my friends after that experience but it gave me renewed a renewed sense of commitment to my studies to have had that year out and I came back to the ANU and finished my degree with flying colours because I knew after my time in Indonesia I knew what I wanted to do. It's hard to imagine what my career would be like had I not done the double degree in Asian studies and law here at the ANU and in particular had that year living in Indonesia as part of the specialist Asian studies degree. It was life changing and it changed my view on so many things about what I wanted to do with my life. I'd previously wanted to be a diplomat and I changed my view because of my interactions with American and Australian diplomats in West Papua on these cases. It enhanced my Indonesian language skills. I spoke fluently and it's very unusual for a lawyer to speak fluent Indonesian. It shouldn't be unusual but it is and it really ingrained my passion for the region, for Southeast Asia more generally but specifically for Indonesia and I think it's important in terms of cross-cultural understanding for Australians to understand Indonesia better in Australia's own interests but also in the interests of the region. For me having been to a country school on the South Coast, a government school, Paul Keating's language initiative which exposed me first to Indonesia as a 14-year-old was incredibly important in opening my eyes to the Asia Pacific region and in changing Australia's mindset that we aren't part of Europe, we're part of the Asia Pacific, this is our region and we're part of it and we ought to participate in it and part of that participation is being able to communicate. I think it's unacceptable to expect that everybody speaks to us in our language and improving that cross-cultural understanding, having more students who speak and learn Indonesian, who spend time in Indonesia, it makes it easier I think for the relationship between Australia and Indonesia on a broader level, on a political level, on a business level and it helps to remove some of those misunderstandings that arise because of a lack of cultural understanding. I think the Asian Studies law degree is a wonderful combination, it gives you a great, it helped to fuel my interest in both subjects because bringing, it was bringing together those two subjects which for me was the most interesting part. So the ability to do area studies and language studies to learn about the region and then apply what you're learning in your law degree to for example the legal and human rights problems that arise in the region is a really enriching experience. It also makes you a more well-rounded person and a more rounded lawyer I think. My knowledge of Indonesia has helped me incredibly in my career in terms of the work that I've done advocating for the West Papuan people, in terms of the work that I've done engaging in some of the big human rights cases in Indonesia, helping to provide advice on international human rights law as it relates to major cases in Indonesia. It's been incredibly helpful and I think it makes you a more well-rounded lawyer. I really enjoyed coming back to the ANU, obviously I was here for five years so there's lots of great memories of my time living here on campus, wonderful lecturers, wonderful friends and it's great to come back. So I am the Director of Legal Advocacy for the Bertha Foundation which is a newly founded family foundation. I work in London. My role for the foundation is to create a program to encourage young lawyers into public interest law work because and one of the reasons I feel so strongly about this as an opportunity and why I took this opportunity to have funding to create a program that I would have loved to have done straight out of law school because I think there are a lot of law students who like me when they're at doing their undergraduate studies took law because they knew they wanted to do something good with it, they wanted to do human rights work, they wanted to help the community but they don't quite know how to do so and what that first step is out of university and so essentially what I'm doing is to create a program to provide opportunities for students who have an interest in this area that they don't have to go to a corporate law firm, that there are other opportunities out there for them and to encourage that sense of using the law for public good and for social justice. We also through the Bertha Foundation we believe that positive social change comes about through lawyers, activists and storytellers working together so we also support independent media, documentary filmmaking and so I'm doing a lot of work with documentary filmmakers advising them on the human rights aspects of their programs and helping to develop legal campaigns to raise awareness of the issues that are highlighted in their films. For the future, well obviously my role for the Bertha Foundation I'm really excited about the opportunity to inspire the next generation of human rights lawyers, why be one human rights lawyer when you can inspire a whole new generation and so that's what I'll be working on predominantly for the next few years. If someone had sat me down and asked me at the ANU to tell them what I thought I'd be doing in five or ten years time there is absolutely no way I could have predicted where I am now and what I'm doing now. I always wanted to be a human rights lawyer, I always wanted to use my skills as a lawyer to help West Papua but I wasn't quite sure how that would all work out and so I wouldn't like to predict the future because I certainly wouldn't have predicted now to date.