Secretary’s Speil

There have been a myriad of celebrations since my last report: Pro-trackstination, O-week, Illegally Bond, and Bondstock to name a few. Hopefully you have all fully recovered from the social marathon and are settling back into the routine of classes. The LSA’s semester officially started in O-week with the committee joining new student’s at the infamous Boot Camp. However, we all know the real start to the semester is Tuesday of Week 1- Illegally Bond. Thanks to the hard work of our Social Director, Naomi Atkin-son, the night at Melbas was a great success. Illegally Bond was a good warm up for the massive week that is Bondstock.The LSA launched itself into the festivities of Bondstock. Most nota-bly in the FSA (Faculty Student Association) Masterchef Challenge hosted at Wednesday by the Water. Each faculty association was allo-cated: a table, a knife and half a BBQ. As for ingredients, there was a free for all on one table of food. Pretty much a ‘grab as much as you can as quickly as you can” type scenario. With 4 desperate FSA’s, the food table was cleared in a matter of seconds from the word ‘Go’.

Each FSA had a different meat and 30 minutes to prepare a main and side dish.

We had turned up donning our blue and yellow LSA Polos prepared to dominate the other FSA’s. What we didn’t pre-pare for, however, was cooking mince meat on a bbq. Yes- we were stuck with mince meat. It came as no surprise then, that Sam Hourigan declared the HMSA winners of the competition (they had steak!). However, we all thought the true Kate Bracks (Masterchef Champion) of the day were the HSA. They whipped up a lemon and chilli chicken stir-fry and Waldorf salad. Although our culinary skills didn’t get us over the line, we didn’t walk away empty handed. The LSA took out the award for ‘best organisation and time management’...in other words we finished 10 minutes early. Whilst we’re all stuck in holiday mode, the semester progresses and it’s never too early to start thinking about assess-ments. Keep your eyes peeled in the next week for details on an LSA skills seminar. Also, we have a new addition to the LSA office (and no, it’s not new functioning computers). We now have a suggestion box. Feel free to pop into the office (Monday- Friday, 10am-2pm) and throw in your two cents worth. Until next time.Gabby

CONTRIBUTORS:

Susie Forder

Fraser MacDonald

Katherine Mansted & Jordan Issaakidis

Gerard Karney

Rowan Kendall

Naomi Atkinson

Jay Merchant

Anna-Louise Peterson

Bondies Celebrate the Start of 113

Welcome (back) to Bond!

I was already ¾ of my way through my law degree when I came across electives on interna-tional law and international crimi-nal law, and first learned what the ICTY was. For those who don’t know, the ICTY is officially known as the “International tribu-nal for the rosecution of persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former yugoslavia since 1991” and was established by the U.N. in 1993 to prosecute people who were responsible for… well, that should be obvious.

It was the first war crimes tribunal since Nuremberg and Tokyo, and seems to have sparked a trend in international criminal law that now extends to the most recent “international-esque” court, the special tribunal for Lebanon (es-tablished 2007). The ICTY is situ-ated in the hague (den haag), just down the road from the far more glamorous peace palace building housing the international court of justice and the permanent court of arbitration in the hague.

It is thus a part of the hub of expats (including over 70 interns at the ICTYalone) who live, work, and play here. As interns, we are, in fact, unpaid, and do approximately 6 month stints of slave labour interspersed with long chats in the office about the respective merits of using “lol” in speech versus writing, attend-ing wine and cheese Wednesdays, champagne fridays, and frequent drinking excursions in the name of “team bonding”, taking fly-ing weekend visits anywhere and

everywhere in Europe (my latest: Oktoberfest, two thumbs up),

And generally begging for more

money from our parents. In my work in one of the trial cham-bers, I’ve helped draft procedural decisions and judgements, written legal memos, and summarised thousands of pages of transcript: they expect an extremely high level of quality from your work, but the quantity varies depend-ing on the timing of the case, so if you keep breathing during the worst of it and learn from your mistakes, you’ll be fine.

If you do ever want an inter-national law career (including working for the U.N.), then I thor-oughly recommend applying for one of these internships. They’re a fantastic way to get some ex-perience, make amazing friends and contacts at the same time, and basically enjoy every weekend in some new exotic location in europe whilst spending all your hard-earned savings and making your friends jealous. (And yes, it can count towards your PLT.) Al-low me to guide you through your many choices:

1.The ICTY: the original and in my opinion the best.

2.The ICTY’s sister tribunal in Rwanda, the ICTR: mainly based in Tanzania, with an appeals sec-tion here in the hague, this tribu-nal has more indictees and more continuing matters so will be busy for some time to come (but you’ll be living in the heat of Saharan Africa, so prepare for that).

3.The special court for Sierra Leone: Naomi Campbell testified. But good luck filling out their ap-plication by fax or email as they request, since the thing will take up far more memory than even the most advanced computer will send.

4.The extraordinary chambers in the courts of Cambodia: do you speak Khmer? I didn’t think so.

5.The special tribunal for Leba-non: watch as antonio cassese, a respected international law academic, ignores years of po-litical wrangling by states and invents an international definition of terrorism so it can be applied to people who haven’t been arrested yet.

6.The international criminal court: hello, Ghaddafi, should you ever be arrested (unlikely, see Sudan’s Al-Bashir); and hello also to Angelina Jolie, who visited the ICC one day but failed to come to any of the other international courts or tribunals (even though she’s a U.N. goodwill ambassador and the ICC isn’t a part of the U.N. but the ICTY is). We’re not bitter at all.

If you want to know more (about anything except Angelina Jolie), feel free to email me on my bond email address, which I still check because technically I haven’t fin-ished my PLT paperwork yet. I’m totally going to get to that—just as soon as i get back from Stock-holm, Berlin, Paris…

-Susie Forder

Insider Interning at the ICTY in The Netherlands

CLSA The new Canadian Law Students Association Executive would like to introduce ourselves to the whole law faculty.

Our job is to represent the over 300 Canadians here at Bond, and help with things like settling in here in Australia and getting your law degree accredited back home. However, we’re best known for the events we put on every semester. In 113 our flagship event is the CLSA Halloween Party taking place on Saturday October 29th. Prizes for the top costumes and many other surprises always inspire amazing costumes and what is often voted the Party of the Year here at Bond.

We’ll also be hosting Information Sessions for Canadian students looking to get jobs back home, and for Canadian students looking to stay and work here in Australia. These Canada Homebound and Canada Inbound sessions will be held in weeks 7 and 8, so stay tuned for more details.We encourage all Canadian Bondies (and any other students with a taste for the Great White North) to join the CLSA on BondSync so we can keep you up to date about other events we’re looking at host-ing, like some NHL hockey games on a lecture theatre screen and watching our men’s rugby team compete in the World Cup in New Zealand.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for the CLSA, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with any of us at the emails listed above.All the best for a great 113 semester!

The CLSA ExecutiveNames / Emails (back to front, left to right)Administrative Director: Sara Mosadeq: Sara.Mosadeq@student.bond.edu.auPublications Director: Fraser Macdonald: Fraser.Macdonald @student.bond.edu.auAlumni/PR Director: Jason Motevalli: Hossein.Motevalli@student.bond.edu.auCompetitions Director: Kyle Hetherington: Kyle.Hetherington@student.bond.edu.au

Financial Director/Secretary: Jamie Bregman: Jamie.Breg-man@student.bond.edu.auVice President: Alyson Toms: Alyson.Toms@stu-dent.bond.edu.auPresident: Phil Zuker: Philip.Zuker@student.bond.edu.au

NEGOTIATIONG AT WAIKATO: KATHERINE MANSTED & JORDAN ISSAAKIDIS

The New Zealand Law Students’ Association (NZLSA) is the peak representative body of New Zealand law students. Each year, NZLSA (the equivalent of ALSA in Australia) hosts a Conference. The Conference brings together the champions of internal legal skills competi-tions from each of the six New Zealand law schools. And, for the first time in 2011, four Australian universi-ties were lucky enough to also receive an invitation to participate.

Thanks to the hard work of the LSA, Bond University se-cured one of those invites. Over the September holidays, we were lucky enough to spend a week in New Zealand to compete in the NZLSA Buddle Findlay Negotiation Competition. The Conference was held on the North Island at Waikato University in Hamilton, a city now overrun by Rugby World Cup fans, and just south of Auckland.

The Competition itself was amazing. If we were ever predisposed to underestimate our trans-Tasman friends, we quickly learnt the error of our ways! New Zealand-ers are fierce competitors, and in all the skills – Witness Examination, Mooting, Client Interviewing and Negotia-tion, they performed flawlessly.

At the negotiation table we had both “front end” and “back end” disputes to deal with. From negotiating major television-network contracts, to smoothing over neigh-bourhood disputes (the type where cats are run over and bonsais are poisoned), we had plenty to keep us oc-cupied. Our Aussie charm saw us into the semi-finals, where we were bested by Otago University.

Many thanks to the LSA who made the trip possible, to Louise Parsons, Ian Stevens and Hugh Zillmann who dedicated their valuable time to our preparation, and to Kylie Fletcher, Bond’s resident negotiation guru, who spent many hours helping us to hone our skills.

Take Part...

Skills Competition: Negotiation When: Heats running Mon-Friday Wk 5 Sign Up: Week 4 outside of the LSA OfficeMore details to be released to your Bond Student Ac-count

With the LSA’s own Negotiation Competition coming up, it’s time to start thinking about negotiation skills. Here are a few things we learnt throughout the competition.

Preparation is key! In mooting, research is essential. In witness-exam, the rules of evidence are key. In negotiation, it is imperative for your team to have devised a clear strategy well before sitting down at the negotiating table.

The whiteboard is your friend. Without dominating the negotiation, try to ensure you have your fair share of whiteboard use. When the other team monopolises the ink, you may find that a few sneaky things make their way up onto the board without your consent.

Information is power. Even if your client is in a weak bargaining position, you can gain control of a negotiation by asking lots of ‘probing’ questions. Find out as much as you can about your opposition before you reveal all your cards.

Recognise ‘positional’ behaviour. At Bond we learn how to conduct ‘interest-based’ negotiations. However, not all teams in competitions (and in real life) negotiate in this way. Fisher and Ury would probably have had a few things to say about one team we encountered, which saw shouting and fist-banging as a negotiator’s essential tools. But perhaps even more dangerous is the ‘passive positional’ team. This type of team won’t stand up and shout at you, and may even use interest-based language. However, their saccharin tones conceal supreme inflexibility. As time ticks away and the deadlock deepens, resist giving away too many concessions.

Give it a go! We can’t recommend enough that you get involved in as many competitions as you can whilst at University. Negotiation is a ‘real world’ skill , regardless of your chosen career path. And competitions present a rare opportunity to hone professional skills, observe high level arguing techniques and, most importantly, receive constructive feedback.

Hot Topic

Insight behind the JD & LLB split Have you noticed anything different about your tutorial groups this semester? May be that you are not getting as much air time as you have in previous classes? Or on the alternative you are wondering where all the Canadians have gone? The changes are a result of the law faculty implementing a teaching structure which seperates the JD students and LLB students in tutorials and lectures. There are clear advantages and disadvantages to having the new structure incorporated into our degrees.

In seeking more information and without judgment we contacted the source, Deputy Dean Gerard Carney, for further insight into the split. Below is his response:

Fwd: JD & LLB Split Tutes

A reply from Gerard Carney for you!

Begin forwarded message:

From: Gerard Carney <gcarney@bond.edu.au>Date: 29 September 2011 3:16:24 PM AESTTo: LSA <lsa@student.bond.edu.au>Cc: Hayley Morgan <hmorgan@bond.edu.au>, Brenda Marshall <bmarshal@bond.edu.au>Subject: RE: JD & LLB Split Tutes

Dear Jamie,

As Deputy Dean, I am responsible for the teaching plan. The splitting of classes in the compulsory law subjects between the JD and LLB students is in an experimental phase at present. It began in January semester this year in Criminal Law A which was taught in two lecture groups with Professor Eric Colvin taking the JD students and Liz Greene taking the LLB students. Both lecturers found that tutorial groups made up entirely of JD or LLB students worked very well. So in May semester, we extended the split in tutorial groups to other early subjects. And then for 113, we gave each subject coordinator the option to split their groups in this way. At the end of 113, we will be able to assess the advantages and disadvantages of this arrangement. Integral to that assessment will be feedback from the students. The main reason for separating the students in our classes is to facilitate the best level of discussion. Teaching content, assessment and standards remain equivalent under these arrangements.

Best

Gerard

From: lsa@bond.edu.au Date: October 3 2011 4:17:30 PM AEST To: Law Students

We are seeking your imput on the recent change, which has now affected all us. Please send an email to the LSA with your opinion. Your feedback will be confidential and heard by our faculty. Help decide if this change shou;d be permanent.

- LSA

So it all kicked off with the late night flight out of Brisbane to Dubai and then Dubai to Amsterdam (this is the not very exciting part of the story, I promise!) In a nutshell, if you are ever inclined to fly Emirates – JUST DO IT (I feel like I am crossing some cultural boundaries with that one, but indulge me).Upon arriving at Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, I was informed that no trains were running to Leiden that afternoon due to track damage and that I had a rather complex set of directions to follow to catch a train/bus combo to my new town – fortunately the Dutch speak better English than South Australians so it was not a tough trek. On top of that it was a Sunday afternoon and anyone who has been to Leiden can agree: nothing is open on a Sunday afternoon except bars. Fortunately (and here is a very good reason to keep your fellow Bondies onside!), Meagan (another Bondie in Leiden) met me at the station and, let’s face it, the only thing that you are looking for after 26 hours of travel is a bar anyway! So we strolled our way to Einstein’s (Leiden Uni local, and can I blasphemously suggest that this name is a tad more pretentious, and a little bit cooler than Don’s??? Not to mention the barge tied at the canal outside where you order your drinks from…) and I discovered my first major revelation re: living in the Netherlands. Heineken is cheap. And cold. And a damn sight better than it is in Australia! I haven’t been counting how many that I have consumed since then, but unfortunately my wallet has been. It feels considerably lighter now for some reason…So my next major revelation was the fact that the weekend lasts until 1pm on Monday. Attempting to get ANYTHING done before then is absolutely useless. I wouldn’t for the life of me suggest that this is something that Australia should implement, however, look at it this way – it means that Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights are all legitimate nights of celebration (and potentially the odd pint or three) and Monday morning = recovery sleep-in. Spec-tacular.Upon starting classes (which for me began with European Union Law) I realised the next big thing about studying over here: I don’t have the slightest bit of background knowledge on any of the legal systems and it was going to take a fair bit of read-ing to get myself up to speed. In order to recover from this troublesome revelation, I booked flights to Spain. And Switzerland. And Ireland. This is obviously a very good method for developing a wide understanding of European legal systems and is not simply a convenient method for me to miss 70% of classes in October. Promise.Finally, upon realising that there were no Irish pubs in this town we honed in on the next best thing – an Australian one, namely the Duke of Oz. Don’t worry, I am not sacrificing my amazing European experi-ence to spend all my time in the only Australian pub in town – the only thing that makes it Australian is the surfboard hanging from the ceiling and the ridiculously large number of kangaroos painted around the place. Our friendly publican is a Dutch-national named Marco who supported the Irish when we played them the other morning – go figure… And yes, that also helps the attraction – they play every game of the World Cup (starting from 4:30am in the morning), and didn’t kick us out when we showed up rather cheery at 2:00am the other morning, even though they were opening the doors again in another 2 hours time…So all things considered, the start of this European adventure has been a journey of enlightenment – cold beer, meeting great people from all over the world (and a huge number of Irishwomen [that’s right, women] who could drink Hartsuyker, initial M under the table). Looks like the next 3 months are going to be brilliant – but I’ll cross that dyke when I come to it!- Rowan Kendall

Travel Section A look into Leiden from our former President...

ILLEGALLY BOND – back to Melbas!

A few of you may remember it as ‘Drink the Pub Dry’; then the ‘Bond Bar Exam’ and more re-cently ‘Illegally Bond’. Whatever the heck you want to call it, it’s the first party of the official semester and it always goes off. This semester was no exception with Bondies pushing Melbas’ Ultra Lounge to capacity.

Illegally Bond was taken back to Melbas this sem to revive some of the tradition that Drink the Pub Dry brought Bond students for so many years. It’s the guys “hey man, how were your hols?” or the girls “eeeeeep, OMG, OMG, how are you!?” event. With cheap drinks and awesome company Illegally Bond is a great way to kick off every semester.

Everyone stepped up to the plate and attempted to literally drink Melbas dry; a few creating memories I’m sure they would rather forget. You know who you are. I would throw in a winky face emoticon but I feel you get the drift. Don’t stress! Bondstock just happened, everyone will be talking about how you embarrassed yourself throughout that week, not back at Illegally Bond ;).

It was an amazing night and fantastic to see you all there. Looking forward to next sem, it’s only going to get better! Trust me.

In the meantime, get pumped for the Bus v Law GRUDGE MATCH. Week 10 – be there.

Any qualms, queries, or concerns regarding any social event run by the LSA please email me naomi.atkinson@student.bond.edu.au

MYEXPERIENCE IN

COURT: Merchant v. Minis-ter of Immigration and Citizenship

On July 25th at 10:00am this year I found myself standing in the Commonwealth Law Courts building in hearing room 2 and poised to square off against the legal team of the Minister of Immigration and Citizenship at the Admin-istrative Appeals Tribunal. Weeks before the 25th we were engaged in several ADR negotiation sessions but they ALL failed. Unlike 85-90% of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal cases, mine was one of the 10-15% that was going to a final hearing. It might be worth noting that [A] I do not have a law degree and [B] I was representing myself. To set the stage I will give you the ‘Coles Notes’ version of the facts regarding this case. In November 2010 I migrated to Australia on a Distinguished Talent Visa and I received Per-manent Residency in 8 days. After obtaining my residency in Australia I approached the immigration staff in Southport and asked when I could apply for my citizenship. Obviously the sooner the better given I play an Olympic Winter Sport and the Olympics are staged for 2014. The immigration staff handed me an application form and said that I could ap-ply according to the terms in the application form and that the Minister had discretion in these unique circumstances.

Bond’s Jay Merchant

The application form indicated that with an Aus-tralian Olympic endorsement that I was required to wait 6 months holding permanent residency. I waited the 6 months and handed in my application form thinking it was a done deal...and I was re-fused citizenship. The Minister [his staff actually] mentioned that I did not fit the prescribed timeline that was indicated in the Citizenship Act. Immedi-ately after I received his letter, I opened the legis-lation and read that with an Olympic Endorsement you need 2 years with your permanent residency. So the red flags and bells were going off in my head. First the staff indicated that the Minister had discretion...he does not!Second, the application form that I would venture a guess of 99.987% of those who apply for citi-zenship read [rather than the legislation] did not reflect terms in the legislation itself. It took me all but 5 minutes to make the decision to appeal the matter. At that point I didn’t know the avenue for appeal but luckily for me the fine print at the bot-tom of the Minister’s letter indicated that the AAT was the avenue for appeal. I filled out the forms of the AAT website and submitted them and it was game on.

I received a great deal of correspondence but I will never forget the first letter from the AAT whereby my name was beside the applicant’s po-sition and the Minister of Immigration and Citizen-ship was the respondent...fairly daunting actually. Nonetheless, we moved forward though the ADR process and even though it all failed it was a great process and an even greater experience. So on July 25th I found myself giving my appearances in hearing room 2 against the Minister of Immigra-tion and Citizenship. I should mention that he actually contracts out his lawyers regarding citi-zenship applications so he wasn’t actually in the room with us. My grounds of appeal were soft principled grounds namely the im-migration staff’s instruc-tions and the application form not being reflective of the legislation. During the process however there were a few procedural issues that I picked up along the way. First the Minister was responsible for collecting and provid-ing ALL of the pertinent documentation regarding my matter and providing the AAT a copy for the Senior Member hearing my matter.About a week before the hearing I noticed that there were documents ‘missing’ from the pack-age

Essentially the lawyers for the Minister did not include my citizenship exam results [which I nailed with a 100% - and I might mention that it was the only HD I have re-ceived on a final exam in the past 1.5 years so I was pretty proud of it] as well as the FULL application form that I filled out with the pre-amble. The preamble was CRITICAL in my appeal. Recall that the application form I filled out mentioned that someone with Permanent Residency could apply after 6 months if and only if they have an Olympic Endorsement. These were two discovery issues that bothered the hell out of me. Why wouldn’t the lawyers include them? What were they trying to hide? Those sorts of questions and more were run-ning through my mind up until the hearing and the more and more I thought about it the more and more negative I thought about the Minis-ter and his staff. So just after giving my sub-mission on July 25th I indicated to the senior member that I had issues with the documents provided to him and that there were docu-ments missing. He agreed with me that these documents were vital and should have been included in his package.

These were two discovery issues that bothered the hell out of me. Why wouldn’t the lawyers include them?

What were they trying to hide?

The Minister’s lawyers indicated that there was no malicous intent involved and that some of the documents actually get thrown out because they are not relevant in applications. I had a hard time accepting this line of defence for their action but the Senior Member took no issue with it beyond his reference to it being important to my case. After delving through all of my submissions [staff, application forms, and lack of complete documents] the senior member took a few minutes to make some encouraging comments and then closed the hearing with his decision to follow a week later. I remember sitting on the train thinking that although my arguments were sound [a bit soft but sound] all that matters in these types of cases is the legislation.

The legislation indicated that the Minister had no discretion and that the timeframe was 2 years with permanent residency so I thought my chances were slim. The decision was released and I was right... I was denied citizenship a second time because of the legislation. It might be a good time to make some general comments on the entire process. I could tell Minister’s Legal team throughout the process were not Bond graduates because it ap-peared that they was more nervous than I was. During the ADR process and then the hearing their speech was short and choppy and it appeared to me that they were not in his comfort zone. As for me, I was in my zone. I felt as if the Min-ister’s lawyers were not doing their due diligence and I was prepared to unleash the fury on them in the hearing in a collegiate way of course. With the fire in the belly from that, and the moot court experiences at Bond, I was prepared for this hear-ing. Obviously I was nervous but not as much as if I was being marked for it by someone like the great Jim Corkery. And although I was denied citizenship there were a few positive results from this process: first the citizenship application forms were changed to better reflect the legislation. Why this Labor Government [who I might add is one sandwich short of a picnic] didn’t have ap-plication forms reflecting the legislation in the first place is beyond me. Second, July 25th was the day that I knew that I wanted to become a barrister! It was an adrenaline rush and borderline addictive standing in the hearing room for hours engaged in discussion and debate regarding the case at hand. I remember telling the staff here at Bond that I could not wait until I get in the courtroom for a second time. Some of the staff and students I talked to prior to the hearing thought I was crazy for representing myself but it was the best decision I could have made. For starters it was cheaper and secondly I gained actual real life ‘non-moot type’ experi-ence that is a hellava resume booster. Ohhh and I would be remised not to mention that I am now on Austlii...haha. If I could give any advice it would be to confident in your abilities in scenarios like this. From the analytical document reviewing skills learned at Bond to the moot court room and speaking exercises, we have the tools to do well. And if you’re confident and structured in your ap-proach you might end up losing as I did but in the end you actually win!

ETIQUETTE Tutorial & Lecture Manners

We all know how to behave by now at the dinner table, out in public and job interviews. So, why do students become so slack when it comes to attending a 2 hour lecture? It can be even more obvi-ous in a 1 hour tutorial.

social networks, texting & surfing

If you have ever sat at the back of a full lecture in the Cerum Theatre you will notice at least 50 per cent of the class is on a social network or in rare but semi-entertaining form streaming a sporting event.

It leaves the old school paper and pen students wondering why they even bother coming to class? There are obvi-ous reasons like to make themselves feel better or to hopefully absorb at least a few important facts from a case. The intentions are there but the excessive FB creeping, texting and status up

dates become a distraction to others. Even the most disciplined students cannot help but take a look at the daily Scopon deals from a classmate infront. This is not a proposal to ban all lap tops rather a plea to consider stream-ing on your lazy days.

timing People who show up late bursting into class must be extremley happy with their outfit that day. Classes start at 5 past and there is not one quiet door on this entire campus. The chances of a latecomer sneaking in are very slim. Yes, everyone can be late. Quick fix, use our manners and try and be as quiet as possible or wait for a break.

eating Students must be the number one consumers of apples. No matter

where you are in the room everyone will know how many more bites you have left in that apple.

Popcorn, in tutorials and class? Sounds great! The only class this should be acceptable in is Crim A for the really interesting cases.

Whats wrong with cof-fee? Its an appetite surpressent and can get you through 60 minutes no problem. Promise.

Think dinner table man-ners on your first meet-ing with your partners parents.