Community lawyer to lead human rights organisation

Community lawyer and lecturer Jessie Taylor has been elected president of one of Australia's leading human rights organisations,
Liberty Victoria.

Ms Taylor BA(Hons) LLB(Hons) MSc(HA) is a lecturer in the Faculty of Law at Monash University and on the Board of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.

“These are difficult times for anyone who strives to see human rights upheld in the face of fear,” she said today.  “Liberty has a proud history of considered, thoughtful engagement in law and policy that has an impact on human rights. Our challenge in the coming year is to remind governments and the community of the centrality and relevance of human rights, even as the world as we know it is changing”.

Before becoming barrister in 2011, Jessie was a Duty Lawyer at Victoria Legal Aid. In 2010 she was Associate to Justice Mordecai Bromberg in the Federal Court of Australia.

The previous year she was contracted by the Federal Attorney-General's Department as a researcher and writer on the National Human Rights Consultation.

Formerly Chair of the Law Institute of Victoria Refugee Law Reform Committee, she sat on the Executive Committee of the institute’s Administrative and Human Rights Law section. She has been a Visiting Fellow at the Australian Human Rights Centre, an Honorary Research Fellow at the Monash Asia Institute and was a researcher in the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, and as a tutor in the Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme.

In 2005 she attended the closing session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights as an intern with the Australian delegation. She worked in community development at Springvale Monash Legal Service, and its general law clinic, as well as the joint clinical legal service with the South Eastern Centre Against Sexual Assault, assisting victims of sexual assault to obtain Victims of Crime compensation.

The author of the report 'Behind Australian Doors: Examining the Conditions of Detention of Asylum Seekers in Indonesia', Ms Taylor is co-writer and producer of the films 'We Will Be Remembered For This' (2007) and 'Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea' (2011).

Listen to Liberty Victoria's new President Jessie Taylor (you tube video)