James Farrell OAM

Bending the arc

Community service is a thread that runs through the professional and personal life of UNE alumnus James Farrell, OAM. In 2009 he graduated with a Master of Laws. Today, he is the General Manager, Advocacy, for the community-based charity Cancer Council Queensland. But it was James' support for some of society's most vulnerable people as a community lawyer, head of Community Legal Centres Queensland and Manager/Principal Lawyer with the PILCH Homeless Persons Legal Clinic that saw him awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in 2014, for his contributions to social welfare and legal access programs.

James undertook a Churchill Fellowship that year to investigate how lawyers can empower communities to achieve change, and this quest to improve the lives of others has been a hallmark of his career. Here, the Adjunct Associate Professor with UNE's School of Law, whose research focuses on poverty law and human rights, reflects on the importance of social justice and its advocates.

Where did your interest in community legal work begin?

Community advocacy was very much a family tradition. When I started out in corporate law, I was lucky that the firm invested significantly in my development and provided some outstanding pro bono opportunities. One of those, very early in my career, was to volunteer and then take a secondment with the Homeless Persons Legal Clinic. I really found my place in community legal centres and ended up leaving a large national commercial law firm to run a homeless person's legal clinic in Melbourne.

When I was studying I was on the boards of a couple of community legal centres. I had come to law a little late, after gaining business management and financial experience, which are skills that small community organisations are often screaming out for.

How important is pro bono work to the more vulnerable in society?

There's a big access to justice gap in Australia. Legal aid is available to those who are at the really vulnerable end of the spectrum, and particularly those with issues relating to criminal justice or family law or domestic violence. At the other end are those few people who can afford legal help, but there's a really big bunch in the middle that the Productivity Commission has called "the missing middle". Often they rely on community legal centres or pro bono lawyers, but far too many people miss out on the legal representation they need and the justice they deserve. These are everyday Australians, including many of the people in the UNE community. If they found themselves with significant legal problems they would struggle to afford a private lawyer but wouldn't be so vulnerable to qualify for legal aid.

Is that a product of legal representation being too expensive?

That's part of it, but it's also partly due to the increasing complexity of legal problems. In years gone by, people might have negotiated a property settlement with an ex-partner or navigated their way through criminal justice proceedings or negotiations with an employer relatively easily. Now, a lot of justice is expensive and inaccessible.

How does your current role with Cancer Council Queensland bring together your expertise?

It recognises the complexity and overlapping forms of disadvantage that people can experience, and enables me to have input into the nexus between health and legal services. I think I am most effective when I'm advocating for people interacting with government departments or agencies.

A common frustration for people working in community legal centres is that by the time clients are connected to a legal service they are generally in a final or critical stage. Too often, legal services are providing an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. We need to look at the top of the cliff and the causes and drivers of some of the circumstances people find themselves. Health is a huge driver and I'm interested in contributing in a more focused way to policy and law reform.

The practice of law and working to achieve community change can seem contradictory ambitions.

There's always a tension between these two traditions. Community organising traditions are very much about shifting power to the community, whereas the practice of law is working within established power structures and focused on the exercising of power. Justice is all about who has power and how that power is used to achieve social change.

Are you an optimistic person, to be invested in seeking this kind of change within entrenched power structures?

For me, it's about recognising that there is a need for change and wanting to contribute to it. The law reform policy work that I do is long and slow, and working in the health system is particularly long and slow. But change needs to happen and if I can make a small contribution, then that's where I want to direct my professional efforts.

Whether in your school Parents and Friends association or seeking to drastically change the way that disability services are delivered, or how public housing is provided, there are all sorts of big and small improvements that can be made across our communities. Fairer laws and law-making and legal services are tools for achieving that kind of change. I'm unlikely to be the person at the front of the protest march, but I have other expertise that I can use to make a positive contribution. Martin Luther King Junior famously said that 'the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice'. Maybe the optimism of that is real.

You focus on some challenging issues in the area of cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Yes, every 20 minutes a Queenslander will learn that they have cancer and there are more than 250,000 people living with cancer in Queensland today, for whom diagnosis will have a profound impact on every aspect of their life - their health, their relationships, their employment. To be able to contribute to systems change that improves their circumstances is, again, a contribution to positive change. Whether that's investing in programs that keep people healthy and prevent cancer (and we know that more than one-third of all cancers are preventable), or law reform and policy change that can have trickle-down impacts on healthcare, or the direct delivery and funding of health services.

What has working with disadvantaged and vulnerable people throughout your career taught you?

It's given me an insight into the absolute diversity of people in Australia and the complexity of many peoples' lives. It has taught me that there are systemic drivers that contribute or cause disadvantage and that we need broad systems change. It has also demonstrated the fullness of the human condition; some of the kindest and most generous people with whom I've worked have been some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged. Some of the most challenging people I've worked with have been experienced professionals and advantaged people. We can become pretty blinkered in our privileged lives. Working in the community sector provides lots of rewarding experiences and opportunities for growth.

How can any of us contribute to that positive change in our communities?

Through volunteerism and pro bono work ... everyone has the capacity to make a positive contribution to their community and our society. In my experience, that kind of contribution is an important part of living a flourishing life.

One of the lessons I have drawn from the COVID-19 pandemic is that when the community and governments want to act quickly and invest heavily to support one another, it can be done.

So there is no excuse, when we go back to normal, to be less caring and less focused on one another.