Secrets, Lies and Digital Privacy: Liberty Victoria

Melissa Fyfe is an investigative journalist with special interests in politics, government policy, social justice and the environment. Melissa joined the Age investigations unit in August 2011 after three years reporting on politics for the Sunday Age, including a stint in the Canberra press gallery.

Julian Burnside is a Melbourne barrister. He joined the Bar in 1976 and took silk in 1989. He specialises in commercial litigation, and has acted in many very contentious cases - the MUA Waterfront dispute; the Cash-for-Comment enquiry; cases for Alan Bond and Rose Porteous - but has become known for his human rights work and has acted pro bono in many refugee cases. 

He is an outspoken opponent of the mistreatment of people who come to Australia seeking protection from persecution. His latest book is Watching Out: Reflections on Justice and Injustice (Scribe).

Peter Norden is an adjunct professor at RMIT, and former Catholic chaplain at Pentridge. In 2009, Peter left the priesthood and the church. After decades of service, he no longer identified with the institutional Catholic Church.

He was a vocal critic of the prison system and a strong advocate for prison reform. He worked to expose the oppression that led to the 1987 Jika Jika fire that killed five prisoners, and was required to identify their bodies. Today, he continues his advocacy of criminal and social-justice reform.

Peter was Catholic chaplain at Pentridge for seven years after taking over from Father John Brosnan in 1985. He would help young or inexperienced prisoners entering the system for the first time, administer last rites to suicide or murder victims, and look after the pastoral needs of the prisoners. The job was a balancing act because he needed the permission of prison officers to access the prison while working to improve conditions for prisoners.

In 2007 he was made an officer in the Order of Australia (AO) ‘for services to community development through social research and programs aimed at assisting marginalised young people and offenders, to the mental health sector, and to the Catholic Church in Australia’.

Spencer Zifcak is professor of law and director of the Institute of Legal Studies at Australian Catholic University. He obtained his PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

His principal areas of research and teaching are in public international law, comparative constitutional law, international human rights law and international organization. His two most recent books, Globalization and the Rule of Law and United Nations Reform, have been published by Routledge (UK).

He is the president of Liberty Victoria. He is a director of the public policy think-tank the Australia Institute and of the Centre for Dialogue at La Trobe University. He serves on the steering committee of the Australian Human Rights Group and is a member of the Accountability Round Table.