The Interview with Ann Wason Moore: Emma Salerno
Don’t be fooled by this managing partner’s corporate elegance, she is every bit as comfortable mustering a thousand head of cattle as she is donning a designer suit to fell giants in the courtroom on the Gold Coast.
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TRUE grit.
It’s the essence of Gold Coast lawyer Emma Salerno. Don’t be fooled by the 42-year-old managing partner’s green eyes and corporate elegance, Emma is every bit as comfortable riding high in the saddle to muster a thousand head of cattle as she is donning a designer suit to fell giants in the courtroom.
Born in an Aboriginal community near Alice Springs, raised on the famous million-acre El Questro property in the Kimberley, a renowned horsewoman and vice chair of the Kimberley Pilbara Cattleman’s Association (KPCA), Emma’s own interpretation of the cowboy code means a loyalty that will not waver come hell or high water.
And Lord knows she’s weathered both.
Emma, who founded Salerno Law at Varsity Lakes, was both legal representative and emotional support for her good friend and fellow KPCA member Catherine Marriott when she filed sexual harassment allegations against former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce, which he denied.
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And she’s holding steady as she and her family await the Adelaide District Court’s verdict after her father, James Gino Salerno, 71, pleaded not guilty to nine counts of unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl, then aged 13, who was part of what has been described in the court proceedings as a “cult”.
The trial has heard evidence about the group as addressing James Salerno as “Taipan”, of wearing white clothing for pure energy, of performing “healings” and massages on their leader.
Emma knows what people say, but she’s not afraid.
“We are extremely confident that my father will be vindicated,” says Emma, eyes blazing.
“The family knows more about this than the public do … we have to await the outcome of the proceedings. That’s really all I can say about that.”
While a verdict is expected within weeks, Emma knows it will not necessarily silence the chatter about her family, who practice a set of behaviours created by her father called the Ideal Human Environment (IHE).
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James, who came to Australia with his Italian family when he was seven, enlisted in the Australian Army when he was 19. He was sent on a one-year tour of duty in Vietnam, unprepared for the horrors he would face, including the deaths of other young men like himself.
“Dad was forced to do this because two countries could not resolve their conflicts. That became his life’s work, how do we better resolve conflicts to create the ideal human environment,” says Emma, who also holds the rank of Captain in the Legal Corp of the Australian Army.
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By the early 1980s, James had gathered a group of friends, family and strangers — who had answered advertisements placed in Adelaide’s newspapers — to partake in an ongoing social experiment to create the “ideal human environment”.
“We’ve dealt with all sorts of rubbish printed in the papers,” says Emma. “I guess I’ve learned this in my job, so it doesn’t bother me as much as it might bother others. A lot of what gets printed is completely fabricated.
“As a family we work together, we live close together, we’re very close. We concentrate on that more than anything else. We’re a corporate family. We make our family our business. The family is the most important thing. But we run businesses too.
“We implement the IHE in our workplaces as the Ideal Working Environment program, it’s the simple principle of how do we get along? It’s ways of managing conflicts.
“You can think of it as a user manual or road rules for human association. The IHE looks for the physics of human interaction and natural human nature … and aims to create social cement — a method of holding people together. In the face of conflict, clashing perceptions, crime or anti-social behaviour we look for tried and tested methods that can be deployed to achieve harmony in any social unit — whether that’s within a friendship, family, company, community, state or country.
“Even at Salerno Law our motto is ‘the human element in law’. At the heart of any business is people, empires have been demolished because people can’t get along. Families are the same.”
So are they a cult?
“Look, we’re a corporate family. We run our family in an organised kind of way, we run businesses together, we aim to keep people together.
“I think more people would work together as a family if they could find a way to make it work. People find it strange but in other cultures, like in Italy, families do work together and they have lots of different people thrown in who have been collected along the way and they’re called ‘aunty’ or ‘cousin’ because they have that close relationship that makes them like that.
“From our perspective it’s not unusual. My brothers and I work together, does that make us a cult because we work together? And we prioritise how we can find a better way to work together, does that make us a cult? Of course we don’t call it that. I think we’d know if we were.
“I don’t pay much heed to what people call us … and I don’t pay much heed to what people call others either.”
Unfortunately, Emma had to listen when the ATO joined in criticism of IHE’s research methods. It’s obviously still a sore point.
In 2005, the ATO granted charitable status to a foundation set up by the IHE, called the Study and Prevention of Psychological Diseases (SPED).
At the time, SPED ran many programs focused on addictions and other disorders — including an experiment here on the Gold Coast in which the group bought a $700,000 Rolls Royce, a $300,000 Ferrari and a $100,000 Hummer as a way of finding out how people react to luxury car use.
But in 2011 the ATO revoked the charitable status and demanded the group pay $3.5 million in taxes it had owed since 2005.
SPED challenged this decision in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal but lost. “The members’ activities, described by SPED as research, are predominantly the ordinary activities of life,” AAT deputy president Ian Molloy found in 2013. “They are carried out for the personal benefit of the members themselves.”
While Emma herself appealed for SPED’s tax-free status to be reinstated and the retrospectivity of the ATO’s ruling overturned, her legal challenge was lost.
“SPED’s position was simply this: In or about 2005 SPED told the ATO what its objectives and activities were and the ATO awarded its endorsements.
“Then in 2006 an ATO audit was conducted, which included a review of the endorsements, and the ATO approved the endorsements. Then in 2007 a further review of the endorsement was conducted and again the ATO did not raise any concerns about the objectives or activities of SPED.
“Then in 2010 a final review was conducted and the reviewing officer took a different view to each other reviewing officer before her and revoked the endorsements retrospectively from 2005.
“That reviewing officer made other extreme determinations on penalties that was later overruled by the ATO on objection. The AAT decision against SPED was appealed to the Federal Court and was upheld.
“The Federal Court found that the issue of the retrospective revocation had not been properly considered by the AAT and sent the matter back to be reconsidered and redetermined. The matter then went before the same Tribunal member — who confirmed his original decision.
“Does SPED agree with the decision? No. Does SPED consider there was implicit unfairness in the decision making process from within the ATO to the AAT? Yes. Did we abide by the decision and get on with life? Yes we have.
“I don’t think we were dealt with fairly, but the most important thing is that we never tried to hide anything. We were completely open and transparent about the research we were conducting and the ATO agreed to grant us our charity status.
“Yes, we were living our lives but our lives were the research. If you’re researching conflict resolution, you need to create areas of conflict — that’s partly what the car experiment was about.
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“When were we given the charitable status, we had two options of how we would raise money: one was to solicit for donations, the other was to fund it ourselves. We chose the latter. We used the revenue from our law firm and other businesses to fund the research, we didn’t ask for the public’s money.
“The foundation is gone now. But our lives are still part of the research, in that sense it’s ongoing.”
Meanwhile, the varied Salerno family businesses are incredible both in their range and their success — testament to the fact that they must be doing something right.
While the family ran their cattle export business at El Questro until 1991, they then sold it to English aristocrat Will Burrell, who followed their lead in turning the vast property into a thriving tourism destination.
The family’s mark still remains with the Kimberley’s magnificent Emma Gorge named after Emma herself.
In 2008, the Salernos returned to take a 275,000ha sublease at El Questro to run the cattle side of the business, and moved into a nearby property at Kununurra, an outback town where Salerno Law maintains an office.
Emma splits much of her time between the two offices, and the Kununurra property remains a hub for various individuals, families and businesses to gather to learn more about IHE
It was while operating the El Questro pastoral lease, which has since been sold — at a market peak, no less, that the family created yet another new venture — a line of western clothing.
Emma says the clothing brand, which has its headquarters in Arundel on the Gold Coast, has filled a gap in the market where RM Williams sat before being bought out by Louis Vuitton.
And it already has some big-name fans.
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“Actually, I think Prince Harry wore some of our clothes when he stayed with us,” says Emma.
Pardon?
“Oh yes, Prince Harry was touring Kununurra in his last Australian visit before getting married and he stayed at our property for some R & R.
“We kept it very low key which I think he enjoyed. He’s a really authentic person and has a connection to the land. We took him shooting and riding, he loved it.
“We even taught him some of practices we use in the IHE.
“One of the things we do with people, we do this in our businesses, we try to add value to them by telling them about themselves. For example, on their birthday, the gift we give in our offices, we all go around and tell the person something we appreciate about them. That’s one of the things we did with Prince Harry.
“He was really embarrassed. I can’t remember exactly what we said, we just went around with everyone who was there and told him something that we had noticed or appreciated about him.
“He did appreciate it though. It’s so different to what he’s used to, which is being exposed to people who are starstruck. He has an amazing ability to make people feel comfortable.”
Emma has high praise too for another high-profile friend of hers, rural advocate Catherine Marriott.
While the investigation into her alleged sexual harassment by Barnaby Joyce was ultimately “inconclusive”, Emma says Catherine raised the alarm not to punish the former Nationals leader, but to change the way the system handles complaints.
In fact, the Marriott complaint was one of the triggers for Mr Joyce’s resignation from Cabinet.
“Catherine and I have been good friends for a long time,” she says. “When that incident came up, my part was really just to help her navigate through a really tricky and traumatic period for her.
“She was a person who had something happen and just thought ‘it’s not right’ and she knew other people were fearful to say something and she thought, ‘I need to speak’. We did everything we could to keep it confidential.
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“Her driver was just to, more than anything, just to say ‘we need to fix this’. We need a better avenue to have these issues sorted out and to have people held accountable. That’s all she wanted.
“It was a no-win scenario but she took that stand. She wasn’t seeking retribution. She said what she needed to and kept walking. She’s an incredible person and I greatly admire her.”
Like Catherine, Emma is not one to shy away from controversy, instead she remains steady according to her own moral compass.
In fact, it’s obvious that the family’s IHE practices are a source of pride for her, and one that informs not just her family and workplace relationships, but those with her clients as well.
Having studied law at Bond University, she later represented clients who had a claim against Alan Bond himself. Emma negotiated head-to-head with him directly for much of the matter, resulting in a significant pay out in favour of her clients.
She also successfully acted for one of the biggest cattle station owners in WA after he was prosecuted for animal cruelty by the RSPCA — largely due to the industry standard procedure of dehorning. The matter proceeded to the WA Court of Appeal where all charges were ultimately dismissed.
Emma says she believes that nobody does anything wrong deliberately. Instead, it’s a matter of poor emotional development and poor conflict resolution.
“At its heart, achieving the ideal human environment means we support each individual to overcome areas of self sabotage and become emotionally fit. That’s what we’re working towards.”
Call it what you want, but Emma calls it as she sees it.
That’s true grit.
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