Bureaucrative violence today - Bonus 1

In this bonus episode, employment and human rights lawyer Josh Bornstein talks with Katherine Biber about the family history that shaped his career. Bornstein's grandparents left Poland in 1933 hoping to escape, finally securing passage to Melbourne in 1938, only for his grandmother to be hospitalised under a Nazi doctor and his grandfather interrogated by German police during a stopover before they could continue the journey. Growing up in a politically engaged household — his mother a union official, his father a journalist and, for a time, a politician — Bornstein built a career defending workers and refugees against far more powerful opponents, including the Transport Workers Union's case against Qantas, which he took to a seven nil victory in the High Court and more than $200 million in combined compensation and penalties. The conversation also turns to the language used to describe how governments treat refugees. Bornstein pushes back on the term "bureaucratic violence," arguing that responsibility lies with political decisions rather than the public service, drawing on his experience acting for Shayan Badraie, the young Iranian refugee whom then immigration minister Philip Ruddock refused to refer to as anything other than "it." He also reflects on the legacy of the Tampa election, the use of refugee policy as a political weapon since, and his recent writing on international law and Israel's obligations under the ICJ's provisional measures order in the genocide case.