Students, today I have with me as my special guest, Shen Narayanasamy. Shen, thanks for
joining me.
Thanks.
So Shen, you?re the executive director of ?No Business in Abuse? campaign and the human
rights director of GetUp. Can you tell our students what those jobs entail exactly?
So I work on social justice advocacy and campaigning, which means that we get to sit across media
campaigning in its traditional sense, working with members of the community, working with
the law, doing whatever we want really to try and get the outcome we want.
And how does human rights law actually inform these campaigns?
So, No Business in Abuse is a good example. No business in abuse was a corporate campaign
set up to target corporates who were involved in mandatory detention. So we used both the
solid and the hard human rights law in terms of the United Nations instruments, but we
also used soft law, which is a whole, there?s a whole kind regime of soft law around business
and human rights to inform our analysis of the offshore detention regime and to make
an argument to corporations that they shouldn?t be involved in it. So, it kind of informs
what we do but I think the immigration situation is a pretty good one for looking at the limitations
of the law because obviously, especially immigration, the law is set by parliament and there?s a
bipartisan consensus at this point in time for offshore detention, so the ability for
the law to deliver enduring benefits on its own in immigration is really limited, so what
we do is jump off law or use law to inform us. So for instance, Let Them Stay, which
is one of the campaigns we did, it actually arose out of a failure ? the High Court ruled
against the lawyers that the 267 people that were in that case in Australia had no legal
right to remain here. And so it was a loss and the campaign started from that loss.
Right, so let?s go back a bit, how did you get into law, did you always want to be a
lawyer? Did you always want to study law at uni?
No. I wanted to do something good. I mean I was quite an idealistic 16-year-old. Which
is about the age I was back then when I was choosing. And then I read the Justice Game,
by Geoffrey Robertson and he?s description of capital punishment, and decided I wanted
to be a death row lawyer, so I changed my preferences last minute.
You sure did and can you remember whether or not the stuff you learned at law school,
actually hold you in good stead for the work that you do now or did you actually have to
forget a lot of what you left at law school to do the job that you?re doing?
Well I wasn?t the world?s most dedicated student. So I think what I learnt at law school was
possibly a little limited. What I think it did teach me was a real methodology of teaching.
I think the law is really good like that. It teaches you, because you have to cross
your i?s and dot your t?s and you have to read through a judgement and understand it,
that?s kind of before dot points, judgements are often quite rambling beasts, so that way
of thinking in long form but also the really structured logical manner, I think is really
useful. Because I see that now in campaigning, I?m really structured and logical about it.
And as a student you actually went to Immigration Detention Centres ? Woomera and Baxter ? what
impact did that have on you? Seeing the conditions in which people were being held and indeed
speaking to detainees?
I think this is something that we don?t understand very well about the law and about judges actually,
is that seeing the reality of, I don?t want to say evil, but the reality of pain and trauma
caused by what the state can or can?t do is quite shocking and I think of criminal lawyers
who do that a lot, judges who sit across those cases and seeing the reality of pain is really
quite traumatising, so that burned sufficiently in me that it kind of powered a whole trajectory
but I think it can also burn in other ways. So, I think there?s a significant form of
burn-out and cynicism that can affect you in the law.
Well, you?ve been campaigning for asylum seeker rights since at least 2000, some would say
that Australia?s treatment of asylum seekers hasn?t really change much in that time, how
do you personally stay resilient, I guess, in the face of setbacks?
I think, you just have to have a dogged commitment and I think what changes about the 16-year-old
is, that you start to realise it?s a very long game of chess that you might not complete
in your lifetime.
So Shen, part of your work includes targeting corporations that seem to profit from abuse
in detention centres and also targeting those institutions that invest in those companies
that are running detentions centres, do you think that course of action is actually working?
Do you think it?s changing the hearts and minds of institutional investors?
Well, so I think, changing hearts and minds is one thing and I think what you?ve got to
ask is, is No Business in Abuse working to achieve the outcome we want to? Which was
to see reputable corporations walk away from providing systemic support to detention and
it has done that, so every single contractor inside detention is pulling out over the next
6, 7 months and this means pulling out from millions of dollars of contracts, so in that
sense it is working and I?m not sure how much it really changed hearts and minds, but it
didn?t really set out to do that. It set out to use a host of soft and hard law to convince
companies and their investors of the financial and reputational damage that they would incur
should they continue, and that worked.
Ok, so last question, our students watching this probably are deciding which area of law
to go into, there will be many who want to use their law to change the world, what bit
of advice or bits of advice would you give students who actually want to use the law
for social good? Want to actually change the way the law is currently operating in the
social justice space?
Well so the advice that was given to me was really, really good, so this is not mine,
it?s what I use and that was to get really good at what you do, so, develop professional
skills, because I think what you need to do is know that if you want to work on social
justice issues that often your clients don?t have the ability to tell you you?re not doing
a good job. So its upon you to really make sure that you have the integrity and professional
skills to deliver the kind of change you need. So, what that meant for me was that the advice
I got given was try and do a range of different legal jobs and try and get really good practical
experience and I think that?s the most important thing, if you want to do social justice law,
be good at what you do. Know that if you?re going to say to a client or in a campaign
if you?ve got to say to a client ?I will make sure you do not get sent back to Nauru,? you
can deliver on that. Because you have the most precious kind of responsibility given
to anyone which is the trust and faith of people who have very little.
Well there you go students, that?s some great advice. Be good at what you do, there will
be a whole range of area of the law that you will practice in but your clients need you
and you can change the world. Shen, thanks for joining me.
No worries.