The Indigenous lawyer who says some Australians find his skin colour a problem

‘Coming out’ as an Indigenous person is a ‘scary’ experience for Trent Wallace because he never knows if he will be ostracised.

Trent Wallace offers cultural awareness education and advice on how to work effectively with clients at Ashurst.

Trent Wallace, a lawyer at global firm Ashurst, says he’s been scared at times to reveal to non-Indigenous Australians that he is in fact Aboriginal.

“There’s essentially a coming out as a light-skinned person, as Aboriginal to non-Aboriginal people,” he says. “It is quite a scary experience because you don’t know if you’ll be ostracised, isolated.

“I’ve been to dinner parties where the topic of Aboriginal people comes up and it’s terrifying what I’ve heard, and the things I’ve seen because (he is not seen as Indigenous).

“I’ve noticed non-Indigenous people get very angry when I say that I’m Aboriginal – your skin isn’t dark, you’re a lawyer and blah, blah, blah.”

The criticism comes face to face or online and Wallace, a Wongaibon person raised on Darkinjung country, says people forget he too has been affected by the health issues well-known among Indigenous communities.

“It’s quite terrifying that even though my exterior is quite light-skinned the interior … I’m subject to hearing deficit and hearing loss, things like neurodivergence, living with disability and those elements,” he says.

“I’ve often been discounted as an Aboriginal person because I have an education, I might drive a certain car, I have a certain bag, I do certain things.

“My Aboriginality has been discounted rather than seeing it as me being one of the very few to make it through and get a career and get these opportunities. It’s really quite troubling.”

Wallace is the First Nations lead at Ashurst and is based in Brisbane. He joined the firm in 2020 after working in the community legal sector, government and education.

At Ashurst he offers cultural awareness education and advice on how to work effectively with clients.

Trent Wallace, First nations lead at Ashurst. Picture: Jason McCormack

He says that he has often been met with comments that the “real Aborigines” are those who live in the Northern Territory or who live off country.

“So the identity pressures that come with being Aboriginal are huge, and there are expectations that you must perform ceremony, speak language, as opposed to recognising that Aboriginal identity is a rather personal thing,” he says.

Wallace says racism against First Nations employees has increased, with an upcoming report from the Diversity Council of Australia showing that 59 per cent of Indigenous people report having encountered racism in the workplace, compared with 50 per cent in 2021.

Racism takes various forms: “It can be identity racism, it can be cultural load, it can look like a variety of things. First Nations racism is quite a nuanced issue that we’re seeing come alive in the workplace.

“I have had a lot of friends and colleagues who talk to me about the pain of racism in the workplace, where, for example, it’s people putting the cultural load on them to explain what the Voice is; or it’s ‘you don’t look Aboriginal you don’t behave Aboriginal’, whatever that looks like.”

Wallace blames a lack of education for people failing to understand that “looking a certain way doesn’t actually cancel out your Aboriginal identity”.

The stereotypical reactions to people such as him include statements that because he had an education, “the deficit isn’t real … colonisation really helped you because (without it) you wouldn’t have a degree, you wouldn’t be a lawyer”.

Wallace says that when non-Indigenous people ask an Indigenous person what they think of the Voice, they fail to realise that Indigenous people are often themselves struggling with the issue.

“There’s the fear that if you say, ‘Yes, I agree with the Voice’ and then people say, ‘I think it’s rubbish, it’s disgraceful that you’re trying to disturb our nation’ ... and you’re expected to answer that without fear of repercussion in the workplace,” he says.

Wallace is reluctant to comment on No campaigner Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s views on colonisation and Indigenous “victimhood” but says: “When we look at the statistics and the representations throughout the criminal justice system … these statistics tell a story and they don’t actually make up a narrative one way or the other. They’re purely facts.

“That’s what she (Price) wants to say. I would never attempt to silence another Aboriginal person, that’s not my goal at all, I’m not interested in that. I’m purely speaking from my lived experience and professional experience ... you can’t argue with statistics. You can’t argue with the facts.”

He says clients are grappling with reconciliation action plans, inclusion and diversity, and OHS legislative frameworks, but these were often “siloed operations that don’t operate in sync so clients are having trouble distilling the problems”.

“The Voice has provided an opportunity for us to shed a light on racism and the growing nature of it,” he says.

“This is a new frontier for workplaces, I think, and this provides a really great opportunity for us to harness this and make something of it.”

Wallace says, however, that it’s not helpful to look at behaviour through “a lens of negativity”. “I think we need to respond to it with the lens of change and transformation. Unless we harness the change, it’s going to be a pity fest, and I don’t want that.”

Commenting on the similarities between the upcoming Voice referendum and the plebiscite on same-sex marriage, Wallace says: “As a queer person, I’ve never wanted to get married myself but I would never take away that right from anyone to get married.”

He says the bullying and harassment that surrounded the same-sex marriage plebiscite was disgraceful.

“I liken it a bit to this referendum that we’re experiencing currently, except it’s on a much larger scale,” he says.

Wallace suggests that employers should consider developing a “culturally nuanced risk register” that provides adequate frameworks around cultural safety.

“I’ve been yarning to clients about the need for a culturally nuanced observation given the high rates of racism, given the statistics of vulnerable persons’ employment,” he says.

“I think it’s a really nuanced area that we need to address and I think it’s the new frontier.”

Tony Morris, a partner in Ashurst’s risk practice, says employers have a responsibility under safety laws to ensure employees have a safe space to debate issues on the Voice.

He says employers are obliged to manage potential psychosocial hazards in the workplace and points out that Safe Work Australia outlines 14 psychosocial hazards – including conflicts or poor workplace relationships and interactions. He notes the potential for poor interactions and conflicts at work because of the Voice referendum.

Morris says: “That (risk) requires that employers do a risk assessment for health and safety and they need to make a safe place to be able to have these discussions.

“So I’m not suggesting one way or another that workplaces need to take a Yes or No (position), but they certainly need to understand that it is a risk. Workplaces need to know that this conversation is going to occur whether they like it or not.”

Morris says psychosocial risk is the “new frontier of work, health and safety” and an areas that Ashurst is now focusing on.

“This is the area that’s growing and it’s going to grow even more as we start to see the safety regulators prosecute, proactively, for this risk,” he says.

“So you’ll see over the next year or two some convictions come through in the court system, I guarantee you, around psychosocial risk.”

The Diversity Council’s report, which will be released next month, identifies increased levels of harassment and discrimination of First Nations people in the workplace this year.

Early data, released in July, from the 2023 Inclusion@Work Index shows that since 2021 there has been an increase from 50 per cent to 59 per cent in the numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers experiencing discrimination and harassment at work.

By comparison, non-Indigenous respondents reported a small drop in levels of discrimination and harassment, with 22 per cent reporting this type of exclusion in 2023 compared with 23 per cent in 2021, an early release document says.

“Similar trends appeared in everyday exclusion experiences, with 50 per cent of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander workers reporting sometimes, often or always being ignored by people at work or being treated as if they didn’t exist (compared to 24 per cent of non-Indigenous workers),” it says.

“And 49 per cent reported sometimes, often or always being left out of a work social gathering (compared to 23 per cent of non-Indigenous workers).” The report found that 51 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employees “reported sometimes, often or always having people make incorrect assumptions about their abilities because of their age, culture/ethnicity, disability, gender, Indigenous background, or sexual orientation (compared to 28 per cent of non-Indigenous workers)”.

The figures are based on a nationally representative sample of 3000 respondents, all working in Australia.