HOW I’D SAVE A MAD WORLD
Renowned thinker, barrister and media star Geoffrey Robertson is in Australia to explore the big questions
He’s never been one to shy away from a challenge and now Australian human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson is sinking his teeth into the biggest problem of all – how do we fix our turbulent world? The London-based KC is in Australia touring with his latest show, in which he analyses current affairs.
If anyone is going to have the solutions, it’s him, as he’s up there with the world’s deepest thinkers and has represented some of the highestprofile court cases, including Julian Assange, Salman Rushdie, Mike Tyson and John Stonehouse, the British MP who faked his own death for a new life in Australia.
So … does he have the answer? For a start, we need to make changes “in the rules-based order, which is not working at the moment,” he says.
“We have a United Nations, which is utterly incapable of doing its job of saving the world from slaughter and aggression.”
It’s this and more, including what do to about the date of Australia Day, he tackles in his Australian shows.
“People can expect a different view to one they will have heard,” he tells The Saturday Telegraph.
“And they will find it entertaining – the object is to entertain and instruct.”
To entertain and instruct is something Geoffrey, 77, has made his life’s work, as he combined a media career with a legal one.
Having grown up in Sydney, he went to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, graduating in 1972 and staying in the UK ever since, founding Doughty Street Chambers – Europe’s biggest human rights law chambers – which counts among its counsel Amal Clooney.
Of all his headline cases, which is he most proud of?
“Looking back, one of the most important was defending Lula da Silva, the president of Brazil, because he actually went to prison, because of a fraudulent, completely misconceived prosecution, by his enemies in Brazil,” he says.
“What has happened by allowing Lula to be elected as president, is the saving of the Amazon. He has stopped the logging of the Amazon, so that the lungs of the world can breathe freely. I just read an article in The Economist about the impact that has had on stopping climate change. So, I guess in terms of impact, that turned out to be important work.”
Could he have ever imagined how his future would unfold, when he set off for England as a student, 50 years ago?
“It was 1970 and we weren’t quite sure where we were going (as a nation),” he says. “We weren’t clear what the world held for us. The previous generation of Australians, Clive James, Barry Humphries and Germaine Greer, they had left in the 60s because they thought, quite rightly, that Australia was a cultural desert.
“My generation was a little tougher. We had conscription, we faced the Vietnam question. We were a bit harder, a bit more political. That previous generation was looking to shock and entertain. We were looking more to reform.”
He began early, acting as defence in the 1970s obscenity trials against publications including OZ and Gay News, alongside John Mortimer, author of Rumpole of the Bailey.
“They were interesting and important cases,” he says, adding what we need to do now, is learn from them: “What I’ve tried to do more recently, is summarise the lessons that can be learned from these cases, in works of literature.”
He’s a prolific writer – penning everything from Crimes Against Humanity to his memoir Rather His Own Man.
His latest book is The Trial of Vladimir Putin.
“If international law and morality is to be vindicated, this man must be condemned and the question is how to do that in a world where many countries simply don’t see him as an international criminal, but as a common or garden statesman,” he says.
‘So, I have devoted a book to that.” However, he says, probably his most impactful book was 2019’s Who Owns History? Elgin’s Loot and the Case for Returning Plundered Treasure.
“It’s an argument for restoring historical cultural heritage objects to the countries where they were made and mean something,” he says, adding he was “very pleased that Cambridge University acknowledge this moral point” and last month returned four spears taken by Captain Cook in 1770, to the La Perouse and Gweagal Aboriginal communities.
It’s only the start, he hopes, having been engaged with the British Museum to return the Gweagal Shield, which he believes, they eventually will, as well as artefacts such as the Elgin marbles, to Greece.
“Obviously, I want the British Museum to do the same thing with the Gweagal Shield. The shield should be returned to Australia, just as the Koh-i-Noor diamond should be returned to India and the Parthenon marbles should be returned to Greece,” he says.
“That is the probably the test case. I think if artefacts can be safely stored in the country where they were made, then they should go back. That’s where they are going to be most meaningful to viewers. I think it will happen.”
Geoffrey, who has two children with ex-wife, author Kathy Lette, spends a lot of time back in Australia, especially when he was hosting his long-running ABC TV talk show Hypotheticals and says he expects to spend more time Down Under, ideally over summer.
“I think it will become a practice that I spend my summers in Australia. I am a dual citizen, I get my heart checked in Harley Street and my teeth done in Sydney’s Macquarie Street,” he says. “If you look at British dentistry, you can see the reason why.”
If international law and morality is to be vindicated, this man must be condemned
Geoffrey Robertson