A FOMER Bomaderry High School student at the centre of an international media spotlight shows how the sky is the limit for locals who have just completed their HSC.
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As one of the London-based lawyers for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Jennifer Robinson has spent a lot of time in front of the world’s media amid the continuing storm over the whistleblower website.
It is all a far cry from the upbringing on dad Terry’s horse training property at Berry, and her attendance at Bomaderry High, where she completed the HSC in 1998.
Bomaderry High School principal Jill Appleton remembered Ms Robinson as “a lovely girl” who was focused on her studies, but was also involved in a wide range of activities.
That included being named the Berry Showgirl in 2000, while she was studying a double degree in law and Asian studies at the Australian National University.
“She was brilliant,” Ms Appleton recalled.
“She was just delightful, a real role model for her peers.”
She said Ms Robinson’s success and profile showed “the sky’s the limit” for local students.
“It shows you can come from Nowra, attend a public high school, and go on to become a Rhodes Scholar and achieve great things in your life.”
When she graduated from ANU with her double degree in law and Asian studies, Ms Robinson was also University Medallist in Law and Distinguished Scholar in Asian Studies.
After working for a judge and qualifying as a solicitor, she took up a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University, graduating with a Bachelor of Civil Law with distinction and a Master of Philosophy in Public International Law for her postgraduate research on international investment law and human rights.
Her Australian studies unleashed a passion for human rights, particularly when she spent a year in Indonesia in 2002 as part of her course, and also got involved in humanitarian work in West Papua where she worked to free a man from jail and helped his family escape the region.
The humanitarian work continued in England, where Ms Robinson worked for a few years with high profile legal and media identity Geoffrey Robertson QC, one of the world’s leading counsels in media, criminal and human rights law.
Together they worked with Irish families taking legal action against the Pope, and later wrote a book on the subject.
In 2008 she was named by the UK Attorney-General as a National Pro Bono Hero for her international advisory work on international law and human rights.
Last year Ms Robinson joined the human rights, media and international litigation group at Finers Stephens Innocent.
Apart from joining work with lawyer Mark Stephens in the Julian Assange case, Ms Robinson has been primarily working on complex, contentious and advisory matters.
She specialises in media, defamation, human rights, Privy Council and international/cross-jurisdictional disputes.
However, none of that has compared to the WikiLeaks case, which has brought threats of violence and even assassination against Mr Assange, and a close scrutiny for his representatives.
“Just in the last week both myself and Mark Stephens, his two lawyers here in London, have been under surveillance and I have instructions from his Swedish counsel that he has suffered the same experience,” Ms Robinson recently told ABC Radio.
That surveillance included “being followed, having people sitting outside our homes, certain interferences with telephone calls – a number of issues”.
Terry Robinson said the profile of the case, and the amount of anger it had stirred up in places including the United States and Canada, was worrying.
“I just hope she’s all right, to tell you the truth,” he said.
However Mr Robinson conceded, “She’s getting a huge amount of experience, it’s all happening for her.”
That includes the 29-year-old being asked to be the media representative for WikiLeaks into the future.
“She’s worked extremely hard to achieve what she’s achieved,” Mr Robinson added.
