If you want to read what a pompous, mincing pimp Burnside is...

If you want to read what a pompous, mincing pimp Burnside is look no further than his own words about the injustices done to him in his youth - it'll make you shake your head about what a nancy boy he is.

ULIAN BURNSIDE’S STILL BLUEING ABOUT INJUSTICE (TO HIM)

The colour pics occupied over two pages of the up-market glossy The Australian Financial Review Magazine There was Julian Burnside QC – in bespoke suit, bespoke shirt, bespoke tie and bespoke spectacles – on the cover of the Summer 2010 edition. The heading told the story: “One human’s fight for rights: Julian Burnside’s midlife awakening”.

Turn to Page 3 and there is another photograph of JB QC, this one a head-and-shoulders shot.

Then turn to Page 18, which features yet another photo of the Melbourne QC, along with the commencement of Tony Walker’s profile titled “The Late Education Of Julian Burnside”.

It turns out that there was more space devoted to photos of JB QC [since this chap’s an avowed republican, why doesn’t he junk his “QC” gong for a less pretentious “SC” title? Ed.] than to Tony Walker’s text. The sub-editor’s introductory paragraph gave an inkling of what was to come:

One of Australia’s high-profile and most successful barristers had a personal brush with injustice in his youth, but it took the Tampa incident in midlife to provoke his real awakening to human rights abuses.

This was a warning that we were about to hear, yet again, Julian Burnside’s story about how he had suffered grevious injustice while a student at Melbourne Grammar School (MGS) eons ago. Tony Walker’s piece got off to a bad start:

Julian Burnside is sitting in his office with its floor-to-ceiling windows that afford a view toward Port Philip [sic] Bay to the south and a tangled cityscape to the west. The ornate rotunda that houses the Victorian law courts sits in the foreground, dwarfed by surrounding high-rise buildings. On shelves to Burnside’s left are busts of the Greek orator, Demosthenes, and the Roman lawyer and statesma [sic], Cicero. Both were notable for their many accomplishments, both fought against what they regarded as tyranny – and both came to a bad end.

Demosthenes took his own life to avoid arrest by the successors to Alexander the Great whom he had opposed, and Cicero was murdered in 43BC after being proclaimed an “enemy of the state” for his opposition to Mark Antony. Burnside may not find the comparison compelling but in the post-Tampa period he received the odd threatening message.

Go on. So according to Mr Walker – and, presumably, to Mr Burnside – JB QC is a bit like that Roman statesma [sic] Cicero except that he lives in a different age, not far from Port Phillip Bay. Cicero was murdered. But our Julian has “received the odd threatening message”. Pretty similar, eh?

Then it got worse. JB QC offered Tony Walker a “nerve-steadying whisky”. Nerves steady, JB QC then commenced re-telling the story about how he’s not a do-gooder. He just does good. Much good. And so the discussion went on until “the tumblers of whisky are depleted”. [How many tumblers was that? Ed.]

In the meantime, JB QC told the AFR’s Tony Walker how he had become politicised after he took a brief in 1998 from the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) in its legal battle with the Howard Government over industrial relations reform on the Australian docks.

Julian Burnside said – and Tony Walker reported – that “the Howard government was up to its ears in an illegal conspiracy” with respect to waterside reform. But Mr Burnside QC provided no evidence to support his assertion. Certainly no court made any finding that the Howard Government had ever been involved in an illegal conspiracy. [Does the AFR employ a fact-checker? – Ed].

Then Tony Walker told – or, rather, retold – The Life-and-Times-of-Julian-Burnside. He was once a Liberal Party voter. Yawn. Then he turned against the Liberal Party. Yawn. Up until his change of (political) heart, JB QC’s preoccupations – as Tony Walker put it:

…had revolved around making heaps of money at the bar, collecting art and wine, and indulging his interest in motor vehicles and rugby, which he had played at Melbourne Grammar School.

A “late developer” by his own admission, the seeds of his later activism may have been sown in his school days. The most interesting chapter in his book – Watching Brief: Reflections on Human Rights, Law and Justice (Scribe, 2010) – is the skimpy chapter titled “School Days”, which tells of a particular episode that left an impression. This was the award of prizes on his last day at school, when he received “second colours” for representing the school in lesser sports such as swimming, diving and rugby.

“I still remember the stinging injustice of it, that a good Australian Rules footballer received the ultimate accolade of first colours for playing a season for the school; yet, after representing the school for years as a swimmer, and in diving and rugby, I got second best. If I were to speculate on the origin of my concern about justice, I would settle for that day,” he writes.

So there you have it. Young Julian only got a “half-blue” at MGS for his involvement in the rugger and the swimming. Whereas other chaps who played in the First XVIII and the First XI for the Melbourne Grammar School got full-blues. Mr Burnside has not revealed whether he received a full-blue for pomposity while at MGS. He certainly deserved it.

Little wonder that, having suffered with such injustice in his school days, it took Julian Burnside a mere three decades to become radicalised and to campaign against injustice. Everywhere. [That’s enough. I need to replenish my tumbler – I just can’t bear it any more. – Ed].

http://www.thesydneyinstitute.com.au/issue-81/