Speakers

Ed Santow, former Human Rights Commissioner
Edward Santow has been Human Rights Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission since August 2016.

Ed leads the Commission’s work on technology and human rights; refugees and migration; human rights issues affecting LGBTI people; counter-terrorism and national security; freedom of expression; and implementing the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT).

Ed’s areas of expertise include human rights, public law and discrimination law. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law, a Visiting Professorial Fellow at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Human Rights and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and serves on a number of boards and committees, including the NSW Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee.

In 2009, Ed was presented with an Australian Leadership Award, and in 2017, he was recognised as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

From 2010-2016, Ed was chief executive of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, a leading non-profit organisation that promotes human rights through strategic litigation, policy development and education.

Ed was previously a Senior Lecturer at UNSW Law School, a research director at the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law and a solicitor in private practice.

Simone Casey, Australian Council of Social Services
Simone Casey joined ACOSS in April 2021 as Senior Policy Advisor – Employment, and previously held a variety of roles in policy advocacy, research and communications in the employment services and welfare sectors. Simone holds a PhD in employment services is an expert on marketisation, welfare conditionality, labour market program design, unemployment and related social security topics. She has designed and contributed to many academic and normative research projects involving quantitative and qualitative research methods, where the publication outputs have been both scholarly and/or policy focused. Simone’s recently published article Towards Digital Dole Parole explored developments in automated decision making in employment service

Angie Wong, Victoria Legal Aid
Angie Wong is a barrister specialising in criminal and administrative law. She signed the bar roll in 2013 and is currently a public defender at Victoria Legal Aid. She has experience appearing in complex social security matters at the AAT, and in appeals to the Federal Court.

Brenda Tronson, Barrister
Brenda Tronson is a barrister at Level 22 Chambers in Sydney with a practice in public law (particularly administrative law) and commercial law. She has been a barrister since 2008 and practices in a wide range of tribunals and courts, in both the federal jurisdiction and NSW.

Brenda has been coaching advocacy with the Australian Advocacy Institute and for the NSW Bar Practice Course since 2019, and taught JD students at UNSW from 2011 to 2016 and in the College of Law LLM in 2017. She wrote the materials for two of the College of Law LLM subjects, “Legislation and its interpretation” and the Capstone Project for the Government and Public Sector Law major.

Beth Goldblatt, University of Technology Sydney
Beth Goldblatt is a Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Technology Sydney and a Visiting Professor in the School of Law at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Beth has worked in research, law reform, advocacy and strategic litigation to address inequality and injustice in South Africa and Australia for 25 years. Her expertise includes equality and discrimination law, comparative constitutional law, feminist legal theory and human rights, with a focus on economic and social rights, and the right to social security in particular. She is the author of ‘Developing the Right to Social Security – A Gender Perspective’ (Routledge, 2016) and co-editor of ‘Women’s Rights to Social Security and Social Protection’ (Hart, 2014, with Lucie Lamarche), ‘Women’s Social and Economic Rights’ (Juta, 2011, with Kirsty McLean), and ‘The Right to the Continuous Improvement of Living Conditions’ (Hart, 2021, with Jessie Hohmann).

Terry Carney, University of Sydney
Terry Carney AO is Emeritus Professor of Law at the Law School, University of Sydney and Visiting Research Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney. A Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law, he is a past President (2005-2007) of the International Academy of Law and Mental Health. For nearly 40 years he served as a member of the Child Support and Social Services Division of the AAT and its predecsssor the SSAT, where he handed down five of the first decisions finding robo-debt to be unlawful, Currently he is among other things, an Associate Investigator, on the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society.

Ajsela Siskovic, Victoria Legal Aid
Ajsela Siskovic is a senior civil lawyer in the Outer Eastern Suburbs office of Victoria Legal Aid. She has experience in complex social security matters, complex NDIS matters, mental health, infringements and working with children check matters.