If you would like any of the following spokespeople to speak about civil liberties at your event, please email info@libertyvictoria.org.au and we will advise you of their availability.

Michael Pearce SC

Michael Pearce is president of Liberty Victoria and practises in most areas of commercial law, especially trade practices, contract, company and property law, as well as equity and constitutional law. Before coming to the Bar, he worked for a number of years as a banking and finance solicitor. He also spent a year in the Federal Attorney-General’s Department, worked as a research assistant at Hamburg University in Germany and for a law firm in Washington DC and New York. He was the editor of the Victorian Reports from 1995 to 2003 and is currently the consulting editor.

Prof. Spencer Zifcak

Spencer Zifcak is a vice-president of Liberty Victoria and Professor and Director of the Institute of Legal Studies at Australian Catholic University. He has held appointments as Visiting Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, Wolfson College Oxford, the Faculty of Law at New York University and at the UNESCO Centre for Human Rights Education in Bratislava, Slovakia. He obtained his PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1992. Professor Zifcak researches and teaches in international law, comparative constitutional law and human rights law. He has written several books and has published more than a hundred articles in these fields. He is the legal adviser to the present political campaign for a Federal Human Rights Act. He has been principally responsible for the drafting of a model Human Rights Act.

Jamie Gardiner

Jamie Gardiner is a vice-president of Liberty Victoria and a member of the Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission. A long-time human rights activist, he spearheaded the 1970s homosexual law reform campaign, was first Honorary Life Member of the ALSO Foundation and a co-founder of the Victorian AIDS Council in the early 1980s. A graduate of Melbourne University, Jamie has honours degrees in science and in law, and a Master of Science.

Anne O’Rourke

Anne O’Rourke is a vice-president of Liberty Victoria and a lecturer in business law and taxation at Monash University. She is undertaking a PhD on the interaction between trade, human rights and labour law at the international level. She has appeared before Senate committees and spoken at public forums on topics such as torture, compliance with international conventions, anti-terror legislation, corporate social responsibility and abortion law reform. She is the editor, with Julian Teicher and Robert Lambert, of WorkChoices: The New Industrial Relations Agenda (2006).

Georgia King-Siem

Georgia King-Siem is a vice-president of Liberty Victoria and has been involved in matters across a range of areas, including commercial, contract, property, trade practices, technology, intellectual property, privilege, immigration, and constitutional and administrative law. She has considerable expertise in technology law, particularly security and information management. She is a member of the Women Barristers’ Association and International Commission of Jurists.

Julian Burnside AO QC

Julian Burnside is a barrister, human rights advocate, author and past president of Liberty Victoria. He is well known for his staunch opposition to the mandatory detention of asylum seekers, and has provided legal counsel in a wide array of high-profile cases. He represented Liberty Victoria in an action against the Australian Government over the Tampa crisis and has acted in several major cases on behalf of Indigenous Australians. He is an Australian Living Treasure and recipient of the Australian Peace Prize, and was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2009 for service as a human rights advocate.

Brian Walters SC

Brian Walters is a prominent Melbourne senior counsel and civil liberties advocate. He is past president of Liberty Victoria, and for many years served as vice-president of Free Speech Victoria. He has written and spoken widely on human rights issues. Brian co-founded Wild, Australia’s wilderness adventure magazine, a winner of the Victorian Government small business award. He is the author of the book Slapping on the Writs, which concerns the use of litigation to silence community groups. In his spare time Brian writes film scripts, and his film Jumping Jack has recently received several awards.

Dr Diane Sisely

Diane is Director of the Australian Centre for Human Rights Education hosted by RMIT University.  She is a Member of the Victorian Mental Health Review Board, a founding Board Member of the Human Rights Law Resouce Centre and a Member of the Committee for Liberty Victoria. She lead the Equal Opportunity Commission of Victoria from 1994-2004, and previously was Co-Chair of Reconciliation Victoria and Chaired the Victorian Department of Human Services' Human Research Ethics Committee.  She has extensive knowledge and experience in working with all sectors of society to further respect for human rights.  Areas of interest and speaking topics include: the application of human rights in daily life, human rights Charters and human rights education.