Racism: Understanding your rights & taking action - South Asian communities

The Victorian Multicultural Commission (VMC) and the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission (VEOHRC) unequivocally condemn racism.

To educate and empower multicultural and multifaith communities in Victoria, the VMC and VEOHRC have come together to run a series of information sessions.

This session is for Asian communities and will be opened by the Asian Australian Lawyers Association.

Participating in this session will provide you with information to better understand and exercise your rights if you or someone you know experiences racism, religious discrimination, or racial or religious vilification.

You will also learn how to recognise racism, how to report it and where to seek advice and support.

We’ll cover

• What does discrimination, vilification and victimisation mean?

• Where to get help and advice

• How to report racism

• Why reporting racism is important

• How to take action against racism

Who should attend?

This session is for Victorians from Asian backgrounds and has been designed to create a safe space for participants to contribute.

Registrations

All participants must register to attend this session.

Format

This session will be interactive, with participants encouraged to contribute in a safe and confidential environment.

For further details, go to:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/victorian-equal-opportunity-%2526-human-rights-commission_racism-information-sessions-understanding-activity-6703574082983739392-NNDv

For more information about VEOHRC and VMC:

https://www.humanrights.vic.gov.au/

https://www.multiculturalcommission.vic.gov.au/

Registration – VMC website

https://www.multiculturalcommission.vic.gov.au/racism-information-sessions-understanding-your-rights-and-taking-action

Registration – Eventbrite for Asian Communities

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/117362194483

Registration – Eventbrite for South Asian Communities

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/117472889575

How to Foster Effective Mentoring Relationships During COVID-19 - AALA Online Workshop sponsored by Herbert Smith Freehills

Join AALA's WA President Belinda Wong, National Secretary Matt Floro, and WA Branch Secretary Stephanie Tan, along with your fellow mentors and mentees for an online Q&A session with Shivchand Jhinku, a Partner at Herbert Smith Freehills, about creating and sustaining effective mentorship relationships during the coronavirus pandemic.

Please note that you do not have to be a participant of any currently running AALA mentorship program.

The session will be followed by a separate discussion group for mentors and mentees and will end with a short networking session.

When: 27 Aug 2020, 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm (UTC+10:00)

Location: Online Zoom Meeting

Registration: http://www.aala.org.au/sys/website/system-pages/?pageId=18008

Australia’s first Asian lawyer, William Ah Ket, who battled racism and achieved landmark victories, and how his legacy lives on 

• Chinese-Australian barrister and lawyer William Ah Ket was known for fighting against legislation that discriminated against people of Chinese origin
• Since 2017, the William Ah Ket Scholarship has awarded grants to outstanding research papers on topics dealing with equality, diversity and the law

Read article by Joseph Lam, SCMP, 20 Aug, 2020 at: https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/3097685/australias-first-asian-lawyer-william-ah-ket-who-battled-racism-and

AALA (Queensland) is pleased to collaborate with the Indigenous Lawyers Association Queensland (ILAQ) to present its cultural awareness training seminar series. The seminars provide an introduction to indigenous cultural awareness issues for legal professionals.

Date:       1 September 2020 from 5.30pm AEST
Venue:    Online (via Zoom - link to be sent after registration)
                 King & Wood King & Wood Mallesons (limited in-person attendees)
                 Level 33, 1 Eagle Street, Brisbane QLD 4000  
Cost:       No charge
Register: www.aala.org.au/event-3933106 

There are also limited spaces for in-person attendees available for ILAQ & AALA members.  Register now to avoid missing out!

AALA NATIONAL DIGITAL EVENTS SERIES - CAREER WORKSHOP SERIES - WRITTEN APPLICATIONS  

The AALA invites you to attend the first session in its Career Workshop Series, on the topic of written applications.

The Career Workshop Series is an initiative specifically targeted at law students and graduates from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (CALD). It is intended to equip them with tangible career-oriented skills and knowledge, in order to help them overcome the additional obstacles faced in the job-hunting process associated with being from CALD backgrounds, and indeed, leverage their cultural backgrounds as a source of competitive advantage.

Specifically, this session will cover the following:

- CVs/resumes;

- cover letters;

- questions; and

- psychometric testing.

This session will feature guest speaker Jeffrey Tan, a Legal Recruitment Consultant at Mahlab (and former commercial lawyer) who works with lawyers seeking in-house, government and private practice roles. Originally being from Malaysia, Jeffrey has a strong cultural understanding.

There will be a 1 hour presentation, followed by 30 minutes of Q&A.

Attendees will also have the opportunity to submit a resume and cover letter for review and feedback after the session.

If you have any queries, please contact Kelvin Ng at: students@aala.org.au

http://aala.org.au/event-3925699

A group of WA's most senior female legal practitioners say the coronavirus pandemic has been a "game changer" in terms of helping break down the barriers in a profession where men still dominate its highest ranks. 

To read full article go to:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/v1vroxxqiyermc0/Equality%20of%20the%20Fast%20Track.jpg?dl=0

Dear Members and friends

We are launching the AALA Members’ Blackboard today.

The AALA Members’ Blackboard is an interactive online discussion forum where members can post anything they would like to share with other members, such as:

Job advertisements;

Expressions of interest for career opportunities;

Expressions of interest to assist with any particular areas of legal work;

Expressions of interest to collaborate with other practitioners;

Legal industry news;

Health and wellbeing issues;

Cultural diversity issues.

The AALA Members’ Blackboard will assist in building our member-to-member engagement and provide a forum for knowledge sharing. It will also provide a platform to support members’ wellbeing.

A key objective is to provide members with an open and friendly virtual space in which to discuss and inform each other and share ideas, opportunities and concerns.

The pandemic has necessitated changes to the way we interact with each other, to our work schedules, and to our work arrangements. The AALA Members’ Blackboard will facilitate an exchange of members’ ideas so that we can survive and thrive in these challenging times. It will evolve over time, depending on members’ feedback and usage.

The AALA Members’ Blackboard can be accessed via the following link:

https://padlet.com/secretary20/afdo2b01zulp2y9e

To post, please follow these steps:

You must be an AALA member to post. If you have not renewed your membership, please do so now by logging in to your account and renewing your membership from our AALA home page: http://www.aala.org.au/ 

Of course, if you are not yet a member of the AALA, we warmly invite you to join!

Before you post, please e-mail secretary@aala.org.au  for the password.

Once you receive the password, you can login and add posts by clicking on the pink “add post” button in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. You can also comment on any other posts. You can post anonymously, or sign up for a free Padlet account to post as a registered user.

Please post respectfully and ethically. The AALA Members’ Blackboard is moderated and AALA reserves the right to remove any posts. For example, AALA will remove any posts that do not meet our posting guidelines – these guidelines are published on the AALA Members’ Blackboard. All users of the AALA Members’ Blackboard must abide by the relevant solicitors’ and/or barristers’ conduct rules applicable in your jurisdiction.

Looking forward to seeing you posting on our AALA Members’ Blackboard!

Kingsley Liu

National President

Asian Australian Lawyers Association

president@aala.org.au

Dear Members and Friends

We wish to thank you for your kind support during the 2019-2020 financial year.

It has been an incredibly difficult year for all of us.  The COVID-19 pandemic has led to harrowing impacts on our physical and mental health, jobs and livelihoods, not to mention the impact of racism and discrimination against our Asian-Australian communities. 

In these trying times, AALA will continue to provide support to Asian-Australian lawyers, law students, and supporters of AALA's vision of promoting cultural diversity in the law, whatever their background.  AALA recognises that it plays an important role in supporting our community in the current crisis.

We will now rely, more than ever, on your support and the support of our friends and colleagues in the broader legal profession and beyond to continue our work.  We will continue to provide the professional support, programs and representation that our members need in these trying times. 

We thank you for your responses to our inaugural AALA National Members’ Survey.  Your National Executive Committee is responding to this survey in rolling out AALA’s programs and initiatives for the new financial year.  We are focussing on providing more benefits to AALA members, improving the value and quality of our events (most of which are now being held online), and being more inclusive of all our members.  We have developed an AALA COVID-19 Policy to guide our work.

We are currently planning an inaugural AALA National Summit to be held entirely online later this year for our members. This exciting event will feature some of the most important issues and projects to advance cultural diversity objectives in the legal industry.  We are developing a terrific program of speakers and forums – please stay tuned.

In relation to the range of professional development benefits that we offer to members, in May we launched our inaugural AALA National Digital Events Series, comprising high-quality online CLEs and interactive forums.  We aim to provide sufficient annual CPD points to meet the requirements in most jurisdictions.  We also launched our flagship AALA Mentoring Program online and are planning an interactive Mentoring Workshop, the details of which will be announced soon.

As to furthering your career opportunities, we will shortly launch an online AALA Members’ Blackboard, which is an interactive portal that will build our member-to-member engagement, establish a forum for knowledge sharing and career opportunities and circulate industry news.  It will also provide a platform to support members’ wellbeing.

AALA is steadfastly committed to its overarching objective to promote cultural diversity in the law.  In these critical times, we aim to support you by protecting and safeguarding your interests, sharing opportunities, advancing your wellbeing, and effectively championing you to grow in difficult times and find your own pathway forward.  If you have any comments or feedback, please e-mail us at membership@aala.org.au – we would love to hear from you. 

Please take this moment to renew your AALA membership for the financial year 2020-2021 by logging in to your account and renewing your membership from our AALA home page.  Please note that if your membership fees are not paid, your membership may lapse and we won’t be able to provide our member benefits to you.

If you are a corporate member of AALA, your membership will apply for one year from the date of application for the corporate membership, which may not be the financial year. Please ensure that your membership is up to date. If you have any queries, please contact us at membership@aala.org.au.

Of course, if you are not yet a member of AALA, we warmly invite you to join!

Let’s share our unity on the AALA vision.

Kingsley Liu
National President
Asian Australian Lawyers Association
president@aala.org.au

Deep cultural shifts required: open letter from 500 legal women calls for reform of way judges are appointed and disciplined by Gabrielle Appleby, Professor, UNSW Law School, UNSW; The Conversation, 6 July, 2020 

In an open letter to Attorney-General Christian Porter, about 500 women working in the law from across Australia have sought changes to the way judges are disciplined and appointed.

The letter comes after former High Court judge Dyson Heydon was found by an independent investigation to have sexually harassed young female associates of the court, as reported by The Sydney Morning Herald.

The letter was also sent to Susan Kiefel, Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, along with another letter to thank her

for her strong, decisive and compassionate responses to the complaints in the Heydon matter, and ask her to work with the government to see these reforms implemented in a way sensitive to the protection of judicial integrity and independence.

The full text of the two letters are below, along with the names of signatories: https://theconversation.com/deep-cultural-shifts-required-open-letter-from-500-legal-women-calls-for-reform-of-way-judges-are-appointed-and-disciplined-142042

Recognition of the Advancement of AALA Members: January-July 2020

As a new financial year has dawned, many of our members have had the privilege of being promoted by their current employer, or promoted to a higher position with a different employer.

As AALA is focussed on advancing cultural diversity within the legal profession, AALA would like to release a public statement on our web site and on our social media channels celebrating our members who have advanced in their careers.

Accordingly, if you are an AALA member and have been promoted by your current employer or promoted to a higher position with a different employer between January 2020 and July 2020 (inclusive), please fill out the following form by 5pm Friday 17 July 2020:

https://forms.gle/Dcm4uFMxcFvBbLav9

Congratulations to all AALA members who have been successful in the recent round of promotions.

Kind regards

Asian Australian Lawyers Association