Some people will have nothing to do with me
Job takes a toll says veteran criminal lawyer
LEADING Gold Coast criminal lawyer Michael Gatenby says domestic violence laws designed to protect women are “tearing families apart”.
The Southport courthouse veteran spoke to the Bulletin after almost 20 years representing the city’s toughest crooks.
In a rare full-length interview, Mr Gatenby labelled Queensland’s domestic violence laws as “dreadful” for families, described the drug ice as “the worst thing to happen to the Gold Coast” and revealed how the death of his brother, Robert, in a surf lifesaving accident in 1996 shaped his family life.
FAMILY, ROBERT AND THE LAW
Michael Gatenby always knew he’d be a criminal lawyer.
“I was one of those lucky people ... I never had any uncertainty,” he explains.
“I think that most criminal lawyers believe the system works best when there is proper representation even for the most reprehensible people and I believe in that.”
But not everyone has shared Mr Gatenby’s passion for the job.
“My wife had a number of friends who no longer have anything to do with us as a consequence of what I do,” he says. “My family isn’t overly supportive of what I chose to do. They wish I wasn’t a criminal lawyer and they don’t understand why I act for the people I do ... so, black sheep.”
After graduating from TSS, Mr Gatenby studied at Bond University before starting out alongside recently appointed magistrate Andrew Moloney.
He proposed to his wife Petta, who works as practice manager for Gatenby Criminal Law, on the same day he became a solicitor.
Twenty years later and five years after starting his own firm, Mr Gatenby says his job isn’t always easy.
“Most people would see me as being fairly straight down the line. You’re acting for people who’ve done these things that are so contrary to what I would ever do, and you’re trying to justify or explain it. It’s hard.
“It impacts on you. It impacts on your children; you’re reluctant to send them over to people’s houses because you know what other people might do.”
When he was 21, Mr Gatenby’s brother, Robert, drowned after being struck on the head during a boat collision at the Australian Surf Lifesaving titles in March 1996.
The surf was so powerful some experienced lifesavers chose not to enter the water.
Robert’s body was found at Wavebreak Island.
“We were seven years in age difference,” Mr Gatenby says.
“He went missing for, I think, three days before they found him.
“It has to have changed me. Particularly in the way you deal with your own children.
“You obviously appreciate that life is short and you defiary
WHAT WE DO IS REALLY STRESSFUL AND DIFFICULT AND HAVING A JOKE SOMETIMES IS THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN COPE MICHAEL GATENBY
nitely treat things differently.”
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Queensland’s hard-line domestic violence laws are regularly spruiked by politicians as the solution to the scourge of domestic violence on the Gold Coast.
But Mr Gatenby has concerns about the long-term effectiveness of recent reforms.
“I think it’s a dreadful system,” he says.
“Particularly the choking allegation. There is just a glut of those coming through the District Court where the women are saying ‘I don’t want to proceed with it’ or ‘I was cranky at the time and I made up a story’ ... then the prosecutor starts cross-examining these women and saying they’re now lying. I don’t think that’s good policy.
“I think it does nothing to advance a family.”
Mr Gatenby says diversion- programs to take people out of the court system would be a better long-term fix.
“You could get them all to sit down and do mandatory conferencing, mediation, get them to work together.
“Making them pay and engage people like me is a really expensive process. If you were fighting about money, it only makes it worse.
“The number of women that come to me and say I want to withdraw a complaint and unfortunately you have to say to them, ‘The policy is it doesn’t matter what you want they are going to proceed’.
“In a lot of matters the accused person gets excluded from the family home, the woman says ‘I want him back’ and the magistrate won’t let it happen.
“I understand we’re trying to be protective but ... at the moment we are tearing families apart.”
BIKIE LAWS
Like many criminal lawyers who represent bikies, Mr Gatenby isn’t a big fan of legislation targeting one particular section of society.
“I think it’s ridiculous,” he says.
“With the Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment laws and now the consorting laws, they’re alienating people, driving them underground and just creating a whole new system of problems for the police.”
Mr Gatenby says his bikie clients are some of the “most polite” people he’s ever represented.
Despite this, policing has become more heavy handed, he says.
“I think when VLAD came through there was a change in the way policing was done.
“In recent times there has been an escalation of physical violence ... it’s a sad reflection of where we are at.”
THE DRUG ICE
“Ice is the worst thing that ever happened to the Gold Coast,” Mr Gatenby says after almost 40 years living here.
“I don’t think people appreciate who is cooking and manufacturing drugs. If people understood it is the grubbiest people who are cooking ice, under some of the filthiest of circumstances, they would not do it.”
THE COURT JESTER
Ask anyone at Southport courthouse and they’ll tell you Mr Gatenby has a big personality.
There are few who could argue a defendant could not have committed a crime because they didn’t have the same mullet haircut as a man caught on CCTV as convincingly as Mr Gatenby.
“What we do is really stressful and difficult and having a joke sometimes is the only way you can cope.
“But at home, my wife tells me my children aren’t witnesses and I’m not to crossexamine them.”
CRIME
Despite working with the worst of the worst, Mr Gatenby doesn’t seem to have lost faith in humanity.
“I don’t think many people are psychopaths and narcissists,” he says.
“Most are people, that through circumstance, have made a mistake.
“A number of my clients can’t read or write. You see people raising children where education is optional, you have people where mum and dad are getting them involved in their offending from early on so, it’s sort of like what chance do they have?”