Victorian Bar not so woke after all

Common sense, and potential pressure on barristers’ hip-pocket nerves, prevailed. Picture: Glenn Campbell / NCANewsWire

The Victorian Bar is regarded by many as a bastion of political correctness, but some members laugh off that moniker. Earlier this year, a notice pinned to a lift in Melbourne’s Owen Dixon Chambers advertised “Men in Law Awards” with categories for the “most woke counsel” and the “best virtue-signalling counsel”. The spoof did not amuse the Women Barristers Association. That group slammed the mock notice as an attack on female barristers, complaining that “while the Bar has taken great strides towards equality and inclusion, challenges remain”.

The vast majority of Victoria’s 2200 barristers disagree, apparently, or don’t care. On Monday night only about 35 turned up to an annual general meeting at which a proposal to add a diversity clause to their association’s constitution was debated. Mainly through postal votes, the amendment was defeated 291 to 217, well short of the 75 per cent support needed to change the Bar’s founding document.

Common sense, and potential pressure on barristers’ hip-pocket nerves, prevailed. As legal affairs correspondent Ellie Dudley reports, the amendment would have made it a defined purpose of the Bar “to promote and support the physical and mental wellbeing of barristers, including by preventing and redressing discrimination on the basis of legally protected attributes and unlawful harassment”. An email by prominent silk Gavin Silbert KC, circulated before the vote, warned that the proposed amendments could have made all Bar members financially liable if a barrister sued the association for discrimination. Most of his learned friends agreed.