L4R NSW held its Annual General Meeting on Wednesday evening. We had a wonderful guest speaker in Dr Daniel Ghezelbash who heads Macquarie University’s new Social Justice Clinic. He teaches courses in administrative law, human rights, refugee law and social justice advocacy and operates a pro bono refugee law practice and is a Special Counsel at the National Justice Project. Dan is also a member of the management committee of Refugee Advice and Casework Services, the only dedicated free refugee legal centre in NSW. He has written a book Refuge Lost: Asylum Law in an Interdependent World, which examines the spread of mandatory detention, maritime interdiction and offshore processing policies from the United States to Australia and beyond. Dan spoke about Australia’s current hard-line asylum policies which could trigger a race to the bottom, with the potential to completely unravel the international refugee protection system.
At our AGM we held our election. Two new positions of Junior Vice-Presidents were added to the NSW Executive. The following members were elected as Office Bearers.
Co-Convenors (2): Jenny Haines & Shane Prince
Vice President: Mairi Petersen
Jnr Vice Presidents (2): Sabrin Farooqui & Shannen Potter
Treasurer & Social Media: Jenny Haines
Secretary: Nizza Siano
Assistant Secretary & Webmaster: Cath Crittenden
National Co-ordinating Committee Members (3): Nizza Siano, Jenny Haines, Shane Prince
Returning Officer: Chris Haviland.