History made, now let’s get on with making kids’ lunches
With International Women’s Day tomorrow, lawyer Claire Gibbs tells of a career-defining High Court case win, and of how the balance with family life can only happen with the support of a network of women helping women
FROM making history to making lunches, it’s all in a day’s work for Claire Gibbs. By day, she is a senior associate for Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, hitting international headlines after winning a landmark High Court case last month that ruled Aboriginal people can not be deported.
By night, she is a mother of three – including three-yearold twins – and wrangles meal times, bed times and scarce personal time into her everoverflowing diary. Just don’t call her a superwoman. As well as the help of her husband Ben, Claire says she relies on a team of women to help her kick goals both at home and at work – from child care educators to teachers to admin staff in her all-female office and beyond.
In fact, while she might be a hero to her high-profile clients Brendan Thoms and Daniel Love, she says these “pink collar’’ workers are her own personal saviours.
And she admits that without their help, she never would have agreed to take on the cases of the two Aboriginal men who were under threat of deportation.
Both Mr Thoms and Mr Love, a Gold Coast resident, were born overseas to one Aboriginal Australian parent and moved to the country as young children, never obtaining Australian citizenship.
Both were sentenced to 12 months or more in prison and were told shortly before their scheduled release from jail that they would be going to immigration detention. Immigration laws changed in 2014, allowing visas to be revoked if a person has been convicted of a crime carrying a jail sentence of 12 months or longer.
Mr Love, a Kamilaroi man born in Papua New Guinea, had his visa reinstated after seven weeks in detention, but Mr Thoms, a Gunggari man born in New Zealand, remained in detention.
On February 11, the High Court ruled that indigenous people can not be considered “aliens” under the constitution; that Aboriginal people hold a special status under the law so can not be deported – even if they are not citizens.
The ruling was seen as a historic moment for the recognition of Australia’s first inhabitants, with the Government saying the ruling created a “new category of persons’’ under law.
Claire says the case has been not just a career but a life highlight – although one that she almost passed up.
“Taking on High Court cases is not something that I ever imagined I would be doing. When the opportunity came to be a part of this, I have to admit I had a moment of pause. Knowing how important this case was, I wanted to be sure I was the right person for the job.
“But then my supervisor, who is also a woman and working mum, said to me that I really should take this on. And I bit the bullet and agreed to do it.
“I am so thankful that she gave me the confidence to do it, although it hasn’t been easy. At many stages the workload was huge and the pressure to get it right for the sake of history is enormous, plus add on the media scrutiny as well, along with just the emotions of the men and their families, it does take a toll.
“But that moment when the High Court ruled in our favour was indescribable. I just had a flood of emails and phone calls come in, including from the Human Rights Commissioner congratulating me for the difference I had made.
“I was on the plane and tears just started rolling down my face. I believed so strongly in what we had achieved, I knew we were on the right side.
“Then I get home and it’s like, right, set that aside … time to get meals done and kids to bed and move on to the next day. That’s just the reality of being a working parent.”
Claire says the case is not over yet, either.
While the High Court ruled that Mr Thoms met the
Indigeneity test set out by the court, Claire says fresh submissions are being prepared on behalf of Mr Love to convince the Commonwealth of his Indigeneity.
She says both Love and Thoms will sue the Government for wrongful detention.
Maurice Blackburn has been contacted by a number of people with similar cases, with up to 23 people in immigration detention who say they are Indigenous Australians.
“The Government has used its constitutional powers to deal with aliens inconsistently, unfairly and, now we’ve proven, unlawfully,” she says.
“This case wasn’t about citizenship. It’s about who belongs here, who’s an Australian national and who’s a part of the Australian community.
“Brendan Thoms and Daniel Love committed crimes and they deserved to be punished. They weren’t soft crimes either, and that’s hard to deal with. But this was never about taking the easy option but about being fair. They were punished twice – once in prison and once in detention. Brendan spent more than 500 nights in immigration detention.
“Both of my clients suffered severe embarrassment about being Aboriginal men in immigration detention and they’ve been subject to a lot of ridicule. It’s been a very, very tough time for them both.
“Not just for them but their families. Daniel has five children and Brendan a young son and the pressure on their families has been immense.
“Probably the most rewarding moment of the whole case was speaking to Brendan’s mum and Daniel’s sister. They were so proud of me, of what we had done.
“I know this is a story I’ll be telling my own grandchildren one day.”
After successfully advocating for Aboriginal human rights, Claire is now turning her sights on helping those who helped her during that fight.
She says she is hatching a plan alongside her close friend and Miami High School principal Sue Dalton to lay the blueprint, or rather “pink print’’, to support the working women of the Gold Coast.
“Two of the main industries that drive our local economy are health care and education and the vast majority of those that work in those industries are women. Our pink collar workers.
The teachers, child care educators – or angels in pretty polos as I know them, nurses, social workers and administrative support legends, all of whom I couldn’t do my job without and all of whom get paid considerably less for their efforts than their blue collar counterparts.
“My idea is a not-for-profit concept which I have preliminarily coined ‘Pink Collar’. The idea is that corporate women and potentially local government sponsor a registry or app on which female led/owned/ operated business can advertise for free on the condition that they pass on benefits to pink collar women.
“It’s women supporting
‘I was on the plane and tears just started rolling down my face’
women throughout the whole cycle. It’s something I believe that all sides of politics could get behind by supporting both our workers and small business owners.
“My dream is a situation where my friend Sammy who operates her concreting business in tough competition with blokes gets work through pink collar and my friend Brooke who is employed casually at a daycare centre can get her driveway fixed and doesn’t have to use all her savings for that holiday she desperately deserves because she needed urgent repairs.
“I already have the support of senior leadership at Maurice Blackburn and other leaders in education and health. Now it’s finding more hours in the day to make this happen.
“Sue (Dalton) and I are incredibly passionate about the Gold Coast community and believe that despite the ‘glitter strip’ reputation, our region is full of salt of the earth, smart, generous and innovative people. We believe in supporting other women, developing female leadership and celebrating the success and recognising the unsung heroes and the real heavy lifters in our community.
“I know I could never have helped make history without the help of these women. I tried counting it up one day and there were literally 15 women who made my work day happen, from my mother to kindy teachers, to admin. They don’t get the glory, but they deserve it.”
While Claire says she would love to see the Pink Collar initiative go national, right now she is intent on giving back to the Gold Coast.
She says along with being her proudest moment as a working woman, the High Court case was also an opportunity to represent her hometown.
“It was so funny, I was doing interviews with Radio National and Triple J and everyone in between, and no one could believe that I was a lawyer from the Gold Coast,” she says.
“The country continues to underestimate us, and we continue to surprise them. I love this city and I love the opportunities it can give our children.
“I went to school at Aquinas, I went to uni at Griffith and now I’m working in Southport, but I can still achieve on a high level.
“I think the Gold Coast is a great place for families. It’s where my parents chose to settle and raise us and I think those roots are what helped me flourish.
“It’s funny, I didn’t always want to be a lawyer, I kind of
‘There were literally 15 women who made my work day happen’
fell into it. But now I feel like I’m exactly where I should be. It’s an alignment of my values, morals, beliefs and abilities.”
Claire says growing up in a family of four daughters, she was never taught that women were incapable of anything.
She says that former home environment makes the allwomen Maurice Blackburn office a perfect fit.
“Actually, we do have a male graduate working with us now, which is great. It’s not that we set out to be allfemale, it’s just how it happened.
“In my own family, we never made a big deal about there being four girls, it’s just how it was. My parents believed in all of us.
“In fact, my older sister is profoundly deaf and wasn’t diagnosed until she was three years old – doctors said she would never progress beyond a year four-level education.
“My mum and dad weren’t having any of that. My parents taught her to lip-read, she went to mainstream schools and when she said she wanted to be a teacher one day, my dad converted the entire garage into her own classroom.
“She’s now the CEO of The Deaf Society, she’s the first hearing-impaired person to be in that position.
“My other sisters also work in education, one as a teacher and the other as a trained psychologist working at the University of Queensland. I look at us and realise how lucky we were to grow up in a family where we were always encouraged, and that’s how I feel in our office as well.
“Every day I am so thankful for the flexibility I am given as a working mother – and that I can pass it on to others. But I would love to see the day when this is no longer remarkable, when it’s just a given for any working woman or man.
“Just like with Brendan Thoms and Daniel Love, it’s not an easy thing, but it’s the right thing. And I will always fight for that.”
Surely that has to be some sort of superpower.