Kate Eastman AM SC: Pioneering Human Rights and Driving Legal Reform

Hello and welcome to Season 3 of the Australian Law Student Podcast. I'm your host, Oliver Hammond and in today's episode I had the pleasure of speaking with one of Australia's leading human rights barristers, Kate Eastman. From being told that a human rights practice at the bar was non existent to leading landmark cases in discrimination, employment and public interest law, Kate shares her journey of resilience, advocacy and impact. We also discuss what it's like being a senior counselor assisting a royal Commission and the unique challenges of turning lived experiences into legal reform. This episode offers invaluable insights for aspiring lawyers passionate about driving change through the law. Are. You a law student applying for clerkships this year? You're not alone. Get free access to Grad IQ's Law Clerkship Toolkit, containing detailed firm profiles, clerkship lists, and CV and cover letter templates. Want to go further? The Grad IQ Academy pairs you one-on-one with mentors who've got offers from Linklaters, Allen's and Wyden case. You'll get tailored CV feedback, mock interviews, and advanced networking and commercial awareness prep. The best part? You only pay if you land an offer. Head to gradiq.com dot AU and apply now and make sure to tell them that you listen to the Australian Law Student. Thanks to Grad IQ for supporting the podcast. Thanks so much, Kate, for joining with me today. I'm very excited to have you on the podcast. You've had a lot of experience in human rights practice at the bar and when you first came, you were set on building a human rights practice, but you were told it was sort of non existent or perhaps fringe. Yet today you've had a major impact in areas like discrimination, employment and public interest law. What challenges did you face early on and were there any key moments or cases that made you feel like yes, this is possible? And looking at the pressure now, has it become easier for younger lawyers to build a humans rights practice? Well, thank you for having me on the podcast. I'm really pleased to be able to participate. And you've started with a really big set of questions here, all of us. So thanks very much. What I do call my practice a human rights practice. And when I first started out finishing law school, I really wanted to work in the area of human rights. In those days we did have one subject called human rights, but it was very much sort of focused on international human rights law and not much on Australian law. So I then went to London and studied human rights as part of an LLM at London. And I could really sort of see what was happening in the UK, which was because the UK was sort of part of the Strasbourg European Court of Human Rights, that human rights was sort of becoming more talked about in the UK and its application in the common law. And I thought, look, this is something we should be doing in Australia. So when I came back, I worked in a large commercial law firm and that sort of seemed to be really far away from what I wanted to do around human rights, but I just sort of had that driver. So there was a couple of things I did. 1 is with my very dear friend and now super famous playwright Susie Miller. We've both been in London at the same time and we thought why don't we set up an organization for lawyers that even if they work in commercial law or areas that are not traditionally human rights, but they have an interest in human rights. That we can share our knowledge, our information and our experiences about human rights, touching on the work that we do if we work in commercial law, if we work for government, whatever it might be. So setting up Australian Lawyers for Human Rights was one step that I took to start to develop a practice in the sense that I got to know people with similar interests and I got to understand sort of areas that they worked in. The other thing was that when I was first starting out in commercial legal practice, so this is very early 1990s, is there was this movement to open up pro bono work. And the law firm that I worked for set up a pro bono committee and I volunteered to be part of that committee. And then that meant that I could have some involvement with the law firm about the types of pro bono cases that we took on. And they were very open to thinking about pro bono work, not just as favours for the partners, next door neighbors or children or whatever it might be, but what might actually have an A bigger impact on the public interest and human rights cases. So that commercial law firm gave me the opportunity personally to go and work in Port Hedland on a range of cases for asylum seekers who were among the first asylum seekers to be detained in Australia. But I also got the opportunity to work at Kingsford Legal Centre. And so as I was starting to develop my practice in commercial law, I was seeing the threads or connections with human rights. And after about three years doing commercial law, I was like, OK, I really just need to be doing human rights all the time. And as a law student, I'd worked for the Privacy Commissioner and the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Quentin Bryce, as a law student. And so when a job came up at the Australian Human Rights Commission, was in the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, I just thought this is the job for me. So I applaud. I was very fortunate to get that job and it meant that I was sort of working purely on human rights matters at the Human Rights Commission. And then after about three years doing that work, the pool was then to go to the bar. And that's where people said, no, there's not a human rights bar and there's not a human rights practice. And I thought, well, I'll make one. And maybe probably as a younger person, that might sort of sound a bit like, what did you think you were doing? But to me, I thought, this is something I really want to do. And there's human rights in everything we do. Litigation is about the right to a fair trial. That's a human right. When we educate people, give people the opportunity to participate in public affairs, that's all human rights. So I really wanted to think about how to take a human rights framework and apply it to the work that I was doing and to be proud to talk about having a human rights practice rather than it being sort of seen as something a bit strange or fringe or a bit sort of not a serious type of practice. There's probably some people out there still today who think human rights is not a serious practice. But if you reflect on the impact of human rights on everybody's lives and the sorts of cases that come before the courts, there's so much human rights and being able to talk about human rights and identify them as human rights practices, that would be good, you know, a good thing. So challenges were just having that commitment to saying my practice is human rights without sort of being worried what people thought about that and and also that your practices that are not one-dimensional. So some people know me and my practice from an employment law perspective. So they would say I'm an employment lawyer. Others would know me as a sort of regulatory working in regulatory health or disciplinary matters or administrative law or education law. Is that the human rights nature of the work you can do is spread across a whole lot? There is, yeah. So I hope that sort of answers the big question. Yeah, that you've asked me right at the beginning. And I hope it's sort of a way of saying any young lawyer who wants to build a human rights practice can do so. But think about that concept of human rights quite broadly, that even if you're a tax lawyer, there can be human rights issues in tax law. Criminal lawyers have got human rights issues. So it's not a human rights practice or something else. It's building a practice that brings a right space focus to it. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing to sit down with one of The Pioneers, I think of, of the human rights practice. And I suppose were there any points along the journey where perhaps it was perhaps encouraging, like you saw encouraging signs that this was perhaps possible to become a reality? You spoke perhaps a little bit about your youthfulness at the time and the fact that you sort of the fact that there wasn't a human rights practice meant that you could build 1 and, and, and starting from scratch was something that you you sort of took on and, and used to motivate you in relation to that. So yeah. Were there any steps perhaps along the journey? Yeah, I think, I think coming back to building a community of like minded people, so Australian Noise for Human Rights and other organizations that were really interested in human rights, participating in those organizations was really helpful to me to find other people who had a similar interest, but also to learn from them about how they'd build their practice and develop their practice. And while you might call me a pioneer, I would look to someone like Justice Michael Kirby as the as one of the true pioneers because he as a judge on particularly the Court of Appeal in NSW was able to describe the issues, whether it be a cost issue or a stay issue or procedural issue, a criminal law issue through a human rights lens. And then he took that approach when he was on the High Court. And so being able to look to how the law could be applied was really helpful as well. And then also what I did notice over the time is teaching human rights in law schools really took off in the late 90s and 2000s. And so now if you look at electives in law schools, there's human rights all over the place. Like lots of people do all sorts of different human rights courses. And one of the things I was able to do as part of, you know, building my expertise in that area was also to teach. So back also in very early 90s, I started teaching human rights and civil liberties at the University of Technology in Sydney as an elective subject for undergraduate law and that also sort of sharpened up my skills as well. Is that to be able to build the practice, people had to recognise that you had the expertise and being able to say that you taught in the area as well as practised in the area was really important as well. So bit of a multi dimensional area in that. Regard, absolutely. And I think it's you're right, the the presence in law schools today of human rights laws and electives and things like that is so prevalent that yeah, it's it's almost certain that a law student is going to encounter human rights in some way or another. So thanks so much for your answer to that. We'll now change tack and move on to my second question. As senior council assisting the Disability Royal Commission, you've been at the heart of uncovering systemic failures while pushing for reform. I suppose we'd like to get to know what it's like being inside a royal Commission grappling with personal testimonies, translating them into legal findings and handling the weight of responsibility. Also, are there specific legal challenges unique to royal commissions, like parliamentary privilege, for example? And in your view, what kind of Royal Commission model works best for driving real change? Well, thank you for that question, because for all lawyers, if you ever have the opportunity to work in or for or with the Royal Commission, I'd really, we encourage anyone to take that opportunity because our royal commissions are really different to court processes. They're established by government, they appoint royal commissioners and a royal Commission has really extensive powers so it can obtain documents from people. Even if they don't want to give you the documents, you can require them to attend to give evidence. And one thing a royal Commission can do, which is really different to a court process, is that it can look at systemic and broad issues. So in a court process, people are bringing their particular dispute before a court and asking the judge to decide who's right and who's wrong in that particular court case. And the judges sort of really focused a little bit like on ancient history. So the judge has to go back and look at what happened, how did these people enter into their contract or their employment relationship, What went wrong? And then why did it go wrong? And if it did go wrong, you know who's responsible for that? So what's the outcome? So you're looking back in time in ordinary litigation, whereas a royal Commission is saying we think there's a broader public policy issue here or there's a problem that has occurred in the past and we need to find answers to ensuring that it doesn't happen in the future. So the royal Commission I was involved in as council assisting had a particular focus on violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of people with disability. And that royal Commission really had a focus on hearing very much from people with lived experience of disability about what their problems had been, what their life experience was. But really importantly, what did they think needs to change and what was their advice based on their lived experience as to what we needed to do to either improve our laws, our policies. But the really big thing that came out of that royal Commission was changing our attitudes as a community to people with disability. So to be able to take that information out of a royal Commission, the job of council assisting is it's pretty varied in a royal Commission. But one of the front facing jobs that people are aware of is where they're all commissioned, like our royal Commission. Here's evidence from people about their particular personal experiences and we felt in that Royal Commission that we really needed to expose some pretty hard and harrowing experiences so that the broader community could really see what lived experience was for people with disability in their day-to-day life. And to say that if there had been violence and abuse or neglect in their life, we need to know that, understand that, and from that we can work towards solutions. So we didn't shy away from hard things. But as a lawyer, it also means bringing a whole range of skills. It's not just giving a written legal advice as to what the outcome should be, but it's engaging with people and so really building relationships with our witnesses, consulting with a broader community. I'm really making sure that we could properly understand those experiences were quite important. So as you said, some of them are really very traumatic experiences. They were hard things to present publicly, but we wanted to do that in a way that was sensitive and trauma informed. So that was sort of part of the the real focus on the personal testimonies. One thing with the royal Commission is it's time limited, so you've got to get a lot of work done very quickly and sometimes it can be very high expectations on a royal Commission delivering. But you might have seen from our Royal Commission that we had just over 4 years to do our work and we delivered a very extensive report with over 200 recommendations. So it was fairly intense period of time for work. But as you've said, you've asked me the question about the specific legal challenges you need to royal commissions. Parliamentary privilege is one thing, and that's the extent to which what happens in the parliaments can be used in the royal Commission. And the same sort of rules that apply to the use of any evidence that might come out of a parliamentary process applies to the royal Commission. But the unique features, I think of the royal Commission is the royal commission's extensive powers to get information and to hear from people who may not ordinarily ever make their way into a court process. So the royal Commission can do that. And the other really interesting legal part of the royal Commission, and not all royal commissions have this, is to be able to take evidence in private sessions. So the royal Commission I worked in was one where people could tell their stories almost in an anonymous way so that they would share their experiences with one of the royal commissioners and that would be a private session. And from that private session, the royal commissioners could learn more about a particular issue where the person involved did not want to tell their story publicly or didn't want to be on the live broadcast or for people to know who they were. And those private sessions which are confidential and the Royal Commissions that keeps that information and identities of people confidential was a really significant part of ensuring that we could get to what some of the really serious issues in addressing disability were in our community. So Royal Commissions, a fantastic opportunity to work in them, some pretty hard work. And if you ask me about sort of driving change, it has got the capacity to drive change. But ultimately a royal Commission can only make recommendation that's really up to government or the broader community to embrace those recommendations and say we we also commit as a community and the government to those changes. So sometimes people get a bit disappointed because not all the recommendations are accepted. But when recommendations are accepted, you can really see the benefit of the community having that direct engagement and seeing change in how our laws are made and how they apply into the future. Yeah, certainly. And I think yeah, you're exactly right with lawyers who are in royal commissions. I do think that it's such a, a unique opportunity and I think that that is a an amazing opportunity to drive change in a, in a really hand in hand way with government. And so thank you so much for sharing your experience. Oh, it's my, you're welcome. And, and it's not just me. We had a really big team at that royal Commission. And one thing I would say about working at that royal Commission was just the talent. The depth of talent and commitment of all my colleagues in that royal Commission was just extraordinary. And it was just such a great pleasure working with such an amazing team of people and many of whom live with disability and I learnt so much from them. So that was just such an honour to be able to serve as council assisting. Yeah. Thanks so much for sharing your experience. We'll now move on to some standard questions that we ask all of our guests for our listeners to get to know the guests a little bit better. I'll start off with the first question. What was your favorite subject in law school and and why? My favorite subject was international law. I just loved all things international law. So and again when I studied law, there wasn't the sort of breadth and range of international law subjects on offer, but I just, I found international law was this real intersection between international relations, international politics and then how law wraps around that and the systems of the UN and then obviously all the human rights related systems. So I still have. As my first love international law. So no, no contest about that whatsoever. That's a great choice. That's. A great choice. The second question, what's 1 habit you believe is being pivotal to your success as as previously as? A law student. Well, when when I knew you were going to ask me this question, I'm like, I'm not quite sure I could sort of say success is a law student and on one level. But if I reflect back on my time as a law student and the volume of work and reading that always trying to sort of keep on top of things and not leave things to the last minute was really important. I had probably the benefit, but at the time I didn't really think it was a benefit, is that I used to have to travel by public transport to law school and that was about an hour and a half each way. So some days I might spend 3 hours on public transport, but I got all my reading done so. So I think just doing that reading and being on top of the work is really important. And the other thing for me when I look at my time at law school and I love being there, was getting involved in the life of the law school. And I know this has really changed for current law students because you have a lot of lectures online and perhaps less time at law school on campus. And so being able to be involved in that law community is really important. So I was quite involved in the Law Society and ALSA when I was at law school, and to me that really helped me learn a lot more about life, people's experiences, and to also develop some fantastic friendships and networks that have stayed with me forever, like they're still ongoing and probably will be. So I think just learning from your books is one thing, but participating in the life of the law school and the legal community is really important as well. That's great advice. With the third question, could you name a book or a movie or we've had plays in the past as well before that's been significant to you and one you'd recommend to students? This is really hard in a, in a way, in terms of recommending to students, but I think as I've got older, I've been really interested in reading biographies often of people who have been lawyers or started out as lawyers. And so I'm just, I was always been a big fan of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And I remember once when she came to visit the Bar Association, she was tiny and in that tiny person who made a really big difference to human rights in the USI found reading her biography and then more recently the films about her and back to my, you know, friend Susie Miller, who we started Australian Noise for Human rights has become super famous. You know, she's written the RBG play. And so that was one thing I thought reading both the book saying the work that RBG did and also then how that's been interpreted for the stage makes her life accessible, but it's also her her contribution to jurisprudence, which is so interesting. So that's following that life trajectory, I think is really interesting. Equally rating the biography of Sir Garfield Barwick, David Maher, right, That's fascinating. You know, that's fascinating as well. So understanding where lawyers have come from and how they become lawyers is, you know, interesting. And then my other one, because I have great admiration for our first woman on the High Court, Mary Gordon. She is and still an amazing person. You know, in terms of her thinking about the world and perspective on the world and her contribution to Australian law is that there's a biography about her. I don't think she's she was so keen on that biography being written about her. But to see how the first woman judge on our High Court came through her life experience and education is really interesting as well. And I suppose for me, because I know Justice Gordon personally is to, it's a really interesting thing when you know the person but also get the opportunity to read about their life as well. So there is a few books, but my focus is on biographies just to sort of say what have been other people's pathways and and understanding that can be really helpful as well. There's some great suggestions and I can imagine with just Gordon you could Fact Check some of the the things that perhaps were going. On you definitely, you definitely can. And she will tell you she's still very strong and forthright in her view. She will certainly, you know, tell you what the the facts have been. And she's no, she's been amazing supporter of women in the profession as of many of the Trail Blazers of women in our profession. And I, you know, I admire and look up to them, but I sort of see our generation as holding the baton and then that baton passes to the next generation. And as you know, now, like the majority of law students are women and the majority of solicitors NSW and across the country are women. We haven't quite got there with the bar. We've got a way to go on that, but I still think that looking at at women who blaze these trials, if I can use that sort of cliche, it really gives us a sense that equality and respect for our colleagues and inclusion in our profession is still so important, but it can be fragile as well. And so each generation has to commit to wanting the legal profession to be the best that it can be and inclusive in terms of representing our community. So that's what I take from reading those sort of biographies as well. It's a good reminder that it's not just someone who's done that many years ago, but it's an ongoing commitment that we should all have to our profession and our profession service to our the people in in Australia. Yeah, thanks so much for your answer to that. Did you always envision yourself practicing in the field you're in? And if not, what did you think you'd do when you'd started law school? Or perhaps but even prior to university? Well, that's sort of, I probably partly answered that question earlier and, and I mean from quite a young time it at school, I just was very interested in human rights and social justice. So if there was a way of feeling I could make a contribution professionally to human rights, that's what I wanted to do. But at law school, as I was saying, like people didn't really talk about human rights, so you couldn't really go and do a summer clocks. You put an internship at a human rights organization, so I wasn't sort of sure at law school what I would actually do, but I knew I was interested in international law or human rights, and so I've been fairly focused on that the whole time. It's not like I went to law school thinking I'd be a tax lawyer and suddenly changed. But that's really been a common thread in in what I've done. I would say like the fact that I had that in my head. That doesn't mean that, you know, you have to have a fixed view before you go into law school. I think one thing about lorries, you get such interesting cases and life experiences across the board that being open to what might interest you in law is also a great thing for us as we get to know and meet so many different people. We often see people at the worst part of their lives that going to court is probably the hardest day for some people in their lives or their families, depending on, you know, what the issues might be. And so you don't have to have a fixed view about the area that you want to work in. And probably keeping an open mind is a good thing. Maybe people would have said to me, I could have kept a more open in terms of my interest in human rights. But as I said at the beginning, I've been able to really blend that into a whole range of different areas. Yeah. Yeah. Again, thank you so much for your answer to that question. We're running out of time, so I'll move on to the last question. What's the greatest piece of advice that you've ever received? Well, I think it's probably two things. And one is never compare yourself to someone else. That you as a legal practitioner have your own responsibilities and it doesn't matter what the person next to you is doing or the person behind you or in front of you. Always have yourself as your own measure of what are your ethical obligations. What do you want to achieve and how do you want to sort of in effect run your business as a legal practitioner. So don't compare yourself to other people and don't always sort of feel then, well, they're doing something and I should be forget that. Focus on yourself. And the second is when you start law, I think you often have this sense that you've had 4-5 or six years at law school, so you've just got to get in there and achieve really quickly. Take a deep breath on that. You're going to have to be working probably till you're in your mid or late 70s. So if you've got a 50 year career ahead of you as a lawyer, you do not need to do everything in the first five years. And so I think put perspective and think about what you want to do over the longer term and that law might be a career for a short period of time. You can go off and do different things and then always come back to the law. Think about the law as sort of a longer term journey and what you learn at law school now is going to be really different to what you'll be doing in practicing law in 20-30, forty or 50 years time. So that race to try to become a partner really quickly or go to the bar really quickly, you don't need to do all of that, but to take time and to think about the long game on law and fit breaks and have time for yourself and your family during that period of time. So there's the two bits of advice. That's great advice. Yeah. I think that's important for you all to hear. So, Kate, and thank you so much for joining me today, and I wish you all the best for the rest. Of the year. Absolute pleasure and good luck with the podcast and I'm very happy to be involved. Thank you. Thanks, Oliver. Are you a law student applying for clerkships this year? You're not alone. Get free access to Grad IQ's Law Clerkship Toolkit, containing detailed firm profiles, clerkship lists, and CV and cover letter templates. Want to go further? The Grad IQ Academy pairs you one-on-one with mentors who've got offers from Linklaters, Allen's and Wyden case. You'll get tailored CV feedback, mock interviews, and advanced networking and commercial awareness prep. The best part? You only pay if you land an offer. Head to gradiq.com dot AU and apply now and make sure to tell them that you listen to the Australian Law Student. Thanks to Grad IQ for supporting the podcast.