Richard Pourau’s internship experience
Community Legal Centres NSW/Australian Human Rights Commission
As a university student, it can be quite easy to become absorbed in the academic requirements of earning a degree. However, while substantial study focus is obviously necessary for a successful university experience, there are a number of other factors that are also relevant to one’s personal and professional development. These include, among other things, self-confidence, practical experience and the development of professional contacts. There is perhaps no better way for a student to build, gain and develop these than through the experience of an internship. With this in mind, I decided to apply for a placement through the Aurora Project’s Native Title Internship Program.
The Aurora Project was established in 2006 and aims to strengthen Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations, and organisations that work in areas of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs, by supporting their staff and facilitating opportunities for all Australians to work in these organisations. Aurora achieves these aims through the provision of support services to Native Title Representative Bodies and Native Title Service Providers, the establishment of educational initiatives and scholarship opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and the Aurora Internship Program. Having a keen interest in the rights of Indigenous peoples and social justice generally, I decided that the Aurora Internship Program represented a great opportunity for me to gain some valuable practical experience in these areas and at the same time to contribute something to organisations and causes that I genuinely believe in. The opportunity struck me, and still strikes me, as the proverbial win-win situation. As it turned out, I was successful in my application and was fortunate enough to undertake and complete two internships in the legal stream over the summer 2012-2013 internship round.
My first internship was with Community Legal Centres New South Wales (CLCNSW), which is the peak body for community legal centres (CLCs) in NSW. CLCNSW supports and represents CLCs across a range of government and community forums, and plays a crucial role in the New South Wales law and justice sector. As an Aurora intern, I had the opportunity to work with CLCNSW’s Aboriginal Legal Access Program/Community Development Worker. The Aboriginal Legal Access Program funds a number of important projects which assist CLCs in meeting the needs of their Aboriginal clients. My work at CLCNSW included answering phones, attending staff meetings, research, offering comment on government initiatives and the submissions of other bodies, as well as participating in conferences and meetings with CLC workers and members of affiliated organisations. This work allowed me to develop important skills and confidence in my ability to work in such a professional environment.
I was also fortunate enough to be involved with The Justice Reinvestment Campaign for Aboriginal Young People. The Justice Reinvestment Campaign seeks to address the overrepresentation of Aboriginal youth in custody in NSW by influencing the State Government to introduce a policy of justice reinvestment. According to the 2011 report Doing Time –Time for Doing: Indigenous youth in the criminal justice system, ‘Aboriginal juveniles are 28 times more likely than non-Indigenous juveniles to be incarcerated, despite Indigenous peoples representing only 2.5 per cent of the Australian population.’ As of 2010, Indigenous young people in NSW made up over half the juvenile detention population despite comprising only 2.2% of the population. Justice Reinvestment is a data-driven approach to criminal justice that addresses drivers of crime at a local level. It is a whole-of-government approach that focuses on the building of capacity within communities, rather than the comparatively short-sighted approach of building ever more prisons. While assisting my supervisor, I had the opportunity to research and comment on relevant publications and data, as well as take part in meetings with stakeholders. As with my CLCNSW experience as a whole, I found my involvement with the Justice Reinvestment Campaign immensely beneficial and richly rewarding. The sheer workload that the staff of CLCNSW gets done is a testament to their professionalism, as is their unshakable resilience in the face of often difficult circumstances.
My second internship was with The Australian Human Rights Commission (the Commission). The Commission is Australia’s National Human Rights Institution and is an independent statutory organisation created to promote and protect human rights in Australia. The Commission’s role also entails ‘keeping the government accountable to national human rights standards’. I was placed with the Commission’s Community Engagement Team (CET), which works to encourage human rights education, debate and action in the wider Australian community. Within the CET, my role focused on assisting the Projects Officer with work on the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Advocacy (NATSILA) course reaccreditation process.
The NATSILA syllabus is owned by the AHRC and is delivered by RTOs in the vocational education sector. NATSILA is comprised of nationally accredited certificate 3, 4 and diploma courses and was developed for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who work in legal environments. NATSILA was created in response to Recommendation 212 of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody that recommended that the Australian Human Rights Commission consult with Aboriginal organisations and Aboriginal legal services ‘with a view to developing strategies to encourage and enable Aboriginal people to utilise anti-discrimination mechanisms more effectively’.
My work on the reaccreditation of NATSILA involved reviewing existing competency resources, researching more current resources and updating the competencies generally. My work also involved consultations with a range of stakeholders from within the Commission, the Aboriginal Legal Service sector and the Registered Training Organisations. To contribute to such an important program was both a great honour and a very productive learning experience. To have had the opportunity to meet people like Australian Human Rights Commission President, Gillian Triggs, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Mick Gooda, was inspiring. Having experienced what it is like to work within a large, well-structured and ultimately professional organisation like the Commission on a project as extensive and important as NATSILA has left me with a far greater understanding of the skill requirements and standards of professionalism required to work at the highest level in human rights law and policy. My supervisor and the rest of the CET are models of dedication and excellence who I feel privileged to have worked with.
When I reflect back over the past four months, I can scarcely believe just how extensive and rewarding my internship experiences have been. What I have mentioned above is merely a brief and partial summary of those experiences. While I applied for my internships with the expectation that they would prove both personally satisfying and professionally productive, I could not then have imagined how fortunate I would be in experiencing so much in such a short period of time. I would like to again offer my thanks to the Aurora Placements team as well as my supervisors and the other wonderful staff at CLCNSW and the Commission. Needless to say, I highly recommend the Aurora Internship Program to all UWS students.
In addition to the legal stream, The Internship Program also provides anthropology and other social -science internships. Applications for the summer 2013-2014 rounds of Aurora Internships will be open from 29 July through 23 August on the Aurora Project website (opens in a new window) .
