1. Julian Burnside is best known for his staunch opposition to the mandatory detention of asylum seekers, and has provided legal counsel in a wide variety of high-profile cases.
23 Facts About Julian Burnside
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Julian Burnside's father was a prominent surgeon and his grandmother Dame Edith Burnside was a prominent charity worker.
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Julian Burnside then studied law and economics at Monash University, with aspirations to eventually work as a management consultant.
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Julian Burnside was selected to represent Monash at an international competition in New Zealand, in which he was named best speaker and won the Blackstone Cup.
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Julian Burnside obtained a Bachelor of Economics in 1972 and a Bachelor of Laws in 1973.
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Julian Burnside was admitted as a barrister of the Supreme Court of Victoria in 1976, and appointed a King's Counsel in 1989.
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Julian Burnside's work has always focused primarily on commercial law.
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Julian Burnside has appeared in many significant commercial cases, in particular take-over cases and trade practices.
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Julian Burnside represented some of Australia's wealthiest people, including Alan Bond and Rose Porteous.
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Julian Burnside describes this case as one of his most memorable, and has stated that it convinced him that the survival of reasonable and responsible union representation is crucial if there is to be justice in the workplace.
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Julian Burnside acted for Victoria's chief civil liberties organisation in an action against the Australian Government over the Tampa affair and vehemently criticised John Howard's Government for its mandatory detention of asylum seekers arriving in Australia.
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Julian Burnside has acted in several major cases on behalf of Indigenous Australians.
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In 2004 Julian Burnside was awarded the Human Rights Law Award by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and sponsored by the Law Council of Australia for his pro-bono legal work for asylum seekers and for his work in establishing Spare Lawyers for Refugees.
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Julian Burnside has written several successful publications on law, human rights and philology.
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Julian Burnside has been an ambassador for the National Secular Lobby since 2017.
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In March 2019, Julian Burnside announced he had joined the Australian Greens party and would run against Josh Frydenberg for the seat of Kooyong at the forthcoming federal election.
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In May 2020, Julian Burnside announced he was running for a Greens Senate seat, in a pre-selection held to replace the retiring senator Richard Di Natale.
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Julian Burnside lost the contest to Lidia Thorpe, who would become the first female Aboriginal Senator for Victoria.
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In July 2016, Julian Burnside published a blogpost in which he appeared to support statements made by Shady Alsuleiman, an Australian Muslim cleric.
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Julian Burnside wrote that Alsuleiman's remarks "appear to have medical support" and "were probably accurate as a matter of medical observation".
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Julian Burnside claimed that his comments had been taken out of context, and that he was simply, "responding to a person who had said the Grand Mufti had called for gays to be killed", which was "plainly wrong".
22.
On 8 March 2019, in a debate on Sky News with Victorian Liberal Senator Jane Hume, Julian Burnside announced that he had been a member of a Melbourne-based men's-only club, The Savage Club for 40 years.
23.
The allegation ostensibly referred to a paper Julian Burnside had given to the Medico-Legal Society in 1994.