Lawyer Bernie Balmer awarded OAM for services to boxing

HELPING battlers comes with the territory for “Bernie The Attorney” Balmer, but it’s support of a battling sport has put him in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

Bernie Balmer has been recognised for services to boxing in Victoria. Picture: David Caird

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WHEN the bell rings, the fighting lawyer that clients call “Bernie The Attorney” comes out swinging. Now he’s copped a gong.

Helping battlers comes with the territory for Bernie Balmer, who calls himself an “advocate for the innocent”.

But it is the heavyweight criminal lawyer’s support of a battling sport since he hung up the gloves as an amateur boxer that has won him a Queen’s Birthday Honour.

Bernard William Balmer, OAM, has been recognised for services to boxing in Victoria since 1996, as well as being a member of the World Boxing Council legal committee.

Bernie Balmer at Melbourne Fight Club. Picture: David Caird

The honour might come as some surprise to the Marist Brothers teacher, who unwisely clobbered the then scallywag year 12 student, who immediately “counterpunched” — then quit Assumption College Kilmore before he could be expelled.

It has been a long and sometimes colourful career since that hasty exit. Balmer is one of the last lawyers in Victoria to have entered the profession by working as a clerk of courts. Before that, he also worked in banks and on fishing boats — valuable experience for a man who would go on to represent alleged bank robbers and fish poachers and other misunderstood people.

But all that time he has also been an advocate for boxing as a longstanding member of the professional boxing and combats sports board, which he has chaired since 2000. The role brings him into contact with the colourful fraternity of licensed boxing trainers and promoters, some of whom are also well-known in law courts — but not at the bar table or the bench.

Bernie Balmer has been a longstanding advocate for boxing. Picture: David Caird

The former heavyweight (“At 120 kilos, I’m now officially a super heavyweight”) jokes about running away from the gunshots the day a hitman killed Raymond Patrick Bennett in the old City Court in 1979, when young Balmer still a clerk of courts.

“I could have won the Stawell Gift,” he says of that day. Jokes aside, the evidence suggests Balmer mostly heads towards trouble, not away from it.

When the Russell Street bomb exploded on Easter Thursday, 1986, he was first to reach Constable Angela Taylor, who had been walking past the gelignite-packed car when it detonated outside the city’s then police headquarters.

He carried her battered and burned body to shelter, first step in a doomed attempt to save her life.

The 21-year-old policewoman lived for 24 days. Had she survived, Balmer might have been hailed a hero. As it was, his quick thinking and his strong nerve made the knockabout lawyer the one that knockabout clients like in their corner.