The Honourable Nicola Roxon MP
Attorney General of Australia
Incumbent
Assumed office 14 December 2011
Prime Minister	Julia Gillard
Preceded by	Robert McClelland
Minister for Health and Ageing
In office 3 December 2007 – 14 December 2011
Prime Minister	Kevin Rudd Julia Gillard
Preceded by	Tony Abbott
Succeeded by	Tanya Plibersek (Health) Mark Butler (Mental Health and Ageing)
Member of Parliament for Gellibrand
Incumbent
Assumed office 3 October 1998
Preceded by	Ralph Willis
Personal details
Born	(1967-04-01) 1 April 1967 (age 45) Sydney, Australia
Political party	Australian Labor Party
Alma mater	University of Melbourne
Website	Official website

Nicola Louise Roxon (born 1 April 1967) is the Attorney-General of Australia. She has been a Labor member of the Australian House of Representatives since 1998, representing the Division of Gellibrand, in the inner-western suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria.

Early and personal life[link]

Roxon was born in Sydney. She is the second of three daughters and the niece of the late Australian journalist and Sydney Push member Lillian Roxon.^[1] Her paternal grandparents were Jewish and migrated from Poland to Australia in 1937. Anglicising the family name from Ropschitz to Roxon, her grandfather worked as a GP in Gympie and Brisbane.^[2] Her mother Lesley trained as a pharmacist, while her father Jack was a microbiologist. He was a strong influence in her life and she was devastated by his death from cancer when she was 10 years old.

Roxon was educated at the Methodist Ladies' College in the Melbourne suburb of Kew, and the University of Melbourne. She ultimately came to the view that "governments have got a role to make sure they can help people in circumstances they can't control—either through their health failing or an accident".^[1] She has publicly stated that she is an atheist.^[3]

Between 1992 and 1994, Roxon was employed as a judge's associate to High Court Justice Mary Gaudron.^[1] She then became involved with the trade union movement, joining the National Union of Workers as an organiser. Roxon was also an industrial lawyer and senior associate with the law firm Maurice Blackburn and Co. from 1996 to 1998.^[4]

Political career[link]

Roxon was elected to the safe Labor seat of Gellibrand in 1998, succeeding longtime member Ralph Willis. She served on a number of committees, including the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Resources and the Joint Select Committee on the Republic Referendum.

Roxon was promoted to the Shadow Ministry after Labor's loss in the 2001 election. Initially, she was appointed Shadow Minister for Child Care, Family Support and Youth. Roxon then had a brief stint as Shadow Minister for Population and Immigration later that year, when Julia Gillard moved from the Immigration portfolio to Health. In 2003, new leader Mark Latham appointed her shadow Attorney-General and Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader on the Status of Women. She remained as Shadow Attorney-General following Latham's election loss in the 2004 election, holding this position until 2006. Kevin Rudd appointed her to the position of Shadow Health Minister upon his elevation to the Labor leadership in December 2006, and she retained the portfolio when Labor won government, replacing Tony Abbott as Minister for Health and Ageing.

Roxon made headlines during the 2007 federal election campaign when, on 31 October 2007, Health Minister Tony Abbott arrived half an hour late for a televised debate. After apologising on behalf of the absent party to the audience of media and health industry figures, Roxon had the debate to herself and made light of the situation by stating that her staff felt she did a good impersonation of Abbott and could play his part. When Abbott did arrive, he swore at her when she said he could have been on time if he had wanted to.^[5][6]

Minister for Health[link]

In February 2009, Roxon attempted to introduce legislation backing the alcopops tax increase into parliament.^[7]

In 2010, Roxon aimed to introduce major health reform in Australia. She said the Government would hold a referendum on hospital reform even if the Senate rejected the idea.^[8]

Attorney-General[link]

Prime Minister Julia Gillard implemented a major change to her Cabinet on 14 December 2011. Roxon was promoted from Health and Ageing to become Australia's first woman to serve as Attorney-General.^[9][10] In a reshuffle announced by Prime Minister Gillard on 2 March 2012, Roxon was given the additional portfolio of Emergency Management.^[11] She was sworn in to that portfolio on 5 March.

See also[link]

• First Rudd Ministry

References[link]

External links[link]

• Australian Parliament House Website Listing
• Department of Health and Ageing

v t e Gillard Ministry Cabinet • Gillard 1 • 2 Inner Ministry Prime Minister Julia Gillard (since 2010) Deputy PM Treasurer Wayne Swan (since 2010) Immigration Citizenship Chris Bowen (since 2010) Defence Stephen Smith (since 2010) Finance and Deregulation Penny Wong (since 2010) Trade Craig Emerson (since 2010) Regional, Local Arts Simon Crean (since 2010) Foreign Affairs Bob Carr (since 2012) Families Community Services Indigenous Affairs Jenny Macklin (since 2010) Infrastructure and Transport Anthony Albanese (since 2010) Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Chris Evans (since 2011) School Education, Early Childhood and Youth Peter Garrett (since 2010) Climate Change and Energy Efficiency Greg Combet (since 2010)• Attorney General Nicola Roxon (since 2011) Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Cabinet Secretary Joe Ludwig (since 2010) Sustainability, Environment Water, Population and Communities Vice-President of the Executive Council (Since 2012) Tony Burke (since 2010) Resources and Energy Tourism Martin Ferguson (since 2010) Social Inclusion Mark Butler (since 2011) Health and Ageing Tanya Plibersek (since 2011) Outer ministry Sport Kate Lundy Others Warren Snowdon• Gary Gray • Jason Clare • Julie Collins List of Australian ministries

v t e Rudd Cabinet (2007–10) Prime Minister: Kevin Rudd Anthony Albanese • Chris Bowen • Tony Burke • Kim Carr • Stephen Conroy • Simon Crean • Chris Evans • John Faulkner • Martin Ferguson • Joel Fitzgibbon • Peter Garrett • Julia Gillard • Joe Ludwig • Jenny Macklin • Robert McClelland • Nicola Roxon • Stephen Smith • Wayne Swan • Lindsay Tanner • Penny Wong

Geoffrey Robertson
At the 2009 Ideas Festival, Brisbane
Born	Geoffrey Ronald Robertson (1946-09-30) 30 September 1946 (age 65) Sydney, Australia
Residence	England
Occupation	Lawyer
Employer	Doughty Street Chambers
Title	QC; Recorder
Spouse	Kathy Lette
Children	2
Website
Geoffrey Robertson website

Geoffrey Ronald Robertson QC (born 30 September 1946,^[1] Sydney, New South Wales) is an Australian-born human rights lawyer, academic, author and broadcaster. He holds dual Australian and British citizenship.

Robertson is the founder and head of Doughty Street Chambers.^[2] He serves as a Master of the Bench at the Middle Temple, a recorder, and visiting professor at Queen Mary, University of London.^[1][3]

Education and personal life[link]

Robertson was born in Australia and grew up in the Sydney suburb of Eastwood,^[4] attending Epping Boys' High School. He obtained his law degree from the Sydney Law School before winning a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Civil Law.^[1][5] In 2006 he was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws by the University of Sydney.^[6]

In 1990 Robertson married author Kathy Lette, and they live together in London with their children.^[1] They had met in 1988 during the filming of a Hypothetical episode for ABC Television; Robertson was going out with Nigella Lawson at the time and Lette was married to Kim Williams, today CEO of News Limited.^[7] In his 2010 Who's Who entry, he lists his hobbies as tennis, opera and fishing.^[1]

Legal career[link]

Robertson became a barrister in 1973. He became a QC in 1988. He became well known after acting as defence counsel in the celebrated English criminal trials of Oz, Gay News, the ABC Trial, The Romans in Britain (the prosecution brought by Mary Whitehouse),^[8] Randle & Pottle, the Brighton bombing and Matrix Churchill.^[9] He also defended the artist J. S. G. Boggs from a private prosecution brought by the Bank of England regarding his depictions of British currency.^[9] In 1989, he was part of the defence team for Canadian artist Rick Gibson and art gallery director Peter Sylveire who were charged with outraging public decency for exhibiting earrings made from human foetuses.^[10][11][12]

He has also acted in well known libel cases, including defending The Guardian against Neil Hamilton MP. Robertson was threatened by terrorists for representing Salman Rushdie.^[13]

In 1972, he advised Peter Hain when Hain defended himself on several charges including conspiracy to trespass arising from his involvement in anti-apartheid protests, as a protest against the apartheid regime. During the ten-day trial at the Old Bailey Hain dismissed his defence team, which included Robertson, before being convicted and fined £200. He was also briefly employed to defend John Stonehouse after his unsuccessful attempt at faking his own death in 1974 before Stonehouse opted to defend himself and was convicted. His appeal was dismissed by the House of Lords despite his contention that the trial judge directed the jury to convict in a miscarriage of justice.^[9]

Robertson has appeared in cases before the European Court of Human Rights and in other courts across the world.^[14] Amongst these, Robertson was involved in the defence of Michael X in Trinidad and has appeared for the defence in a libel case against former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore. He was also involved in the controversial inquest of Helen Smith and also in the Blom-Cooper Commission inquiry into the smuggling of guns from Israel through Antigua to Colombia.^[9]

Robertson has also been on several human rights missions on behalf of Amnesty International, such as to Mozambique, Venda, Czechoslovakia, Malawi, Vietnam and South Africa.^[9]

Until 2007 he sat as an appeal judge at the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone.^[5][15][16]

He is a patron of the Media Legal Defence Initiative.^[17]

As of December 2010^[update], Robertson is defending fellow Australian, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in extradition proceedings in the United Kingdom.^[5]

Media career[link]

Since 1981, often with long intervals in between, Robertson has hosted an Australian television series of programmes called Geoffrey Robertson's Hypotheticals.^[1] These shows invite notable people, often including former and current political leaders, to discuss contemporary issues by assuming imagined identities in hypothetical situations.

He also speaks at public events. In 2008 Robertson spoke at Marxism 2008, an annual festival hosted by the Socialist Worker's Party.^[18] In 2009 he spoke at the Ideas Festival in Brisbane, Australia.^[19]

Writing career[link]

Robertson has written several books.^[1] One of them, The Justice Game (1998) is on the school curriculum in New South Wales, Australia.^[20]

His 2005 book The Tyrannicide Brief: The Story of the Man Who Sent Charles I to the Scaffold details the story of John Cooke, who prosecuted King Charles I of England in the treason trial that led to his execution.^[21] After the Restoration, Cooke was convicted of high treason and hanged, drawn and quartered.

In his 2006 revision of Crimes Against Humanity, Robertson deals in detail with human rights, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The book starts with the history of human rights and has several case studies such as the case of General Augusto Pinochet of Chile, the Balkans Wars, and the 2003 Iraq War. His views on the United States' atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan can be considered controversial. He considers the Hiroshima bomb was certainly justified, and that the second bomb on Nagasaki was most probably justified but that it might have been better if it was dropped outside a city. His argument is that the bombs, while killing more than 100,000 civilians, were justified because they pushed Emperor Hirohito of Japan to surrender, thus saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of allied forces, as well as Japanese soldiers and civilians.

In his 2010 book, The Case of the Pope, Robertson claims that Pope Benedict XVI is guilty of protecting paedophiles because the church swore the victims to secrecy and moved perpetrators in Catholic sex abuse cases to other positions where they had access to children while knowing the perpetrators were likely to reoffend.^[22] This, Robertson believes, constitutes the crime of assisting underage sex and when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, the present pope approved this policy up to November 2002. In Robertson's opinion, the Vatican is not a sovereign state and the pope is not immune to prosecution.^[23]

Bibliography[link]

• Reluctant Judas, Temple-Smith, 1976
• Obscenity, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979
• People Against the Press, Quartet, 1983
• Geoffrey Robertson's Hypotheticals, Angus & Robertson, 1986
• Does Dracula Have Aids?, Angus & Robertson, 1987
• Geoffrey Robertson's Hypotheticals – A New Collection, ABC, 1991
• Freedom the Individual and the Law, Penguin, 1993 (7th ed)
• The Justice Game, 1998 Chatto; Viking edition 1999
• Crimes Against Humanity – The Struggle for Global Justice, Alan Lane, 1999; revised 2002 (Penguin paperback) and 2006
• The Tyrannicide Brief, Chatto & Windus, 2005
• Media Law (with Andrew Nicol QC), Sweet & Maxwell, fifth edition, 2008
• The Statute of Liberty, Vintage Books Australia, March 2009, ISBN 978-1-74166-682-3
• Was there an Armenian Genocide? (online), Doughty Street Chambers, October 2009, ISBN 978-0-9564086-0-0
• The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuse, Penguin, October 2010, ISBN 978-0-241-95384-6

References[link]

External links[link]

• Geoffrey Robertson Website
• Geoffrey Robertson QC, profile at Doughty Street Chambers website
• Works by or about Geoffrey Robertson in libraries (WorldCat catalog) and List of publications at WorldCat
• Video Geoffrey Robertson talks about Human Rights at Amnesty International on ABC Fora
• Audio on a talk about the trial of King Charles I by Geoffrey Robertson for Bristol Radical History Group