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Julian William Kennedy Burnside (born 9 June 1949) is an Australian barrister, human rights and refugee advocate, and author. He practises principally in commercial litigation, trade practices and administrative law. He 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. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2009, "for service as a human rights advocate, particularly for refugees and asylum seekers, to the arts as a patron and fundraiser, and to the law."The Age (2009). Australia Day honours. Retrieved 26 January 2009. He unsuccessfully stood for the Division of Kooyong at the 2019 federal election as an Australian Greens candidate, but achieved the highest vote for the Greens in the seat at a federal election and allowed the party to enter into the two-party preferred vote.
Burnside and his wife, Kate, have a daughter, Katherine and a foster son, Mosa.
He has appeared in many significant commercial cases, in particular take-over cases and trade practices.
He represented some of Australia's wealthiest people, including Alan Bond and Rose Porteous. Due to these high-profile cases, he became well known in the legal and broader community as a commercial lawyer. As Burnside describes it, until the late 1990s he primarily "acted for the big end of town". Australian Story - Man of Steel - Transcript
In 1998, Burnside surprised some people by acting for the Maritime Union of Australia in its battle with Patrick Corporation during the 1998 Australian waterfront dispute, one of Australia's most severe and longest industrial relations controversies. The matter went to the High Court of Australia, which eventually found in favour of the Union, albeit with certain conditions. 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. His involvement in the dispute is portrayed by Rhys Muldoon in the 2007 ABC miniseries Bastard Boys.
From the late 1990s onwards, Burnside began to undertake more and more pro bono legal work on a range of human rights-related issues. He 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. With his wife, artist Kate Durham, Burnside set up Spare Rooms for Refugees and Spare Lawyers for Refugees, programs which provide free accommodation and legal representation for refugees in Australia.
Throughout this time Burnside has maintained his practice as a commercial litigator, appearing in many major class actions, trade practices cases and general commercial cases.
Burnside has also acted in several major cases on behalf of Indigenous Australians. Most notably, he acted for Bruce Trevorrow, a member of the Indigenous stolen generation, in which Trevorrow sued the South Australian Government for having removed him from his parents. For the first time in Australian legal history, an Australian government was found liable for such conduct, and the court awarded $500,000 in damages to Mr Trevorrow.
In 2004 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. Also in 2004, he was elected an Australian Living Treasure. In 2006 he was inducted as an honorary member of the Monash University Golden Key Society. In 2007 he received the Australian Peace Prize from the Peace Organisation of Australia and in 2014 the Sydney Peace Prize from the Sydney Peace Foundation.
Burnside has also written several successful publications on law, human rights and philology. In addition to his work in the law, he is a patron of numerous arts organisations. He regularly commissions classical music compositions and sculptures, and is Chair of two arts organisations, Fortyfive Downstairs and the Mietta Foundation. Julian Burnside- Prominent Monash Alumnus His commission to Australian composer Lyle Chan for a tongue-in-cheek work entitled Wind Farm Music Dedicated To Tony Abbott attracted substantial publicity for its stance protesting the anti-renewable energy policy of the Prime Minister of the day, Tony Abbott.
In March 2019, 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. Frydenberg received a swing of 8.2% against him as well as the lowest Liberal vote in Kooyong in 76 years. Burnside was also the closest candidate to winning the seat in 90 years, with a two-party preferred vote at 44.3%.
In May 2020, Burnside announced he was running for a Greens Senate seat, in a pre-selection held to replace the retiring senator Richard Di Natale. Burnside lost the contest to Lidia Thorpe, who would become the first female Aboriginal Senator for Victoria.
On 8 March 2019, in a debate on Sky News with Victorian Liberal Senator Jane Hume, Burnside announced that he had been a member of a Melbourne-based men'
During the same interview, he also pointed his finger at Hume when she interjected, telling her "not to interrupt" which was seen as a sexist manoeuvre on part of Burnside. On 9 March, Burnside tweeted that he had resigned as a member of the Savage Club, citing that men's only clubs are a relic of the past, that he had joined as a very different person and that he had attempted to change its culture from within.
In April 2019, it was reported that Burnside has defended female genital mutilation; however, he has since stated that his comments were made as part of a "hypothetical legal argument", and that he believes both then and now that it should be banned. The allegation ostensibly referred to a paper Burnside had given to the Medico-Legal Society in 1994. The paper includes the sentence: "I do not for a minute support or approve of mutilation of any sort or genital mutilation in particular" (The Proceedings of the Medico-Legal Society of Victoria 1994–2002, at page 14)
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