Ray Finkelstein, QC, has presided over one of the highest courts in the land and helped reshape Australia’s media landscape. Now he's investigating the fallout from a schoolboy’s haircut.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
He and high-profile barrister Renee Enbom - who represented actor Rebel Wilson in her $4-million-plus defamation case, and for the AFL during the Essendon supplements scandal - have been hired to investigate one of the biggest high-school brouhahas in years.
The pair has been appointed by Trinity Grammar’s school council to investigate the sacking this month of deputy principal Rohan Brown after he cut a schoolboy’s hair on school photo day.
As a Federal Court judge, Mr Finkelstein presided over major cases including one brought by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission in 2005 against Steve Vizard for breaches of his duties as a director of Telstra. Vizard was fined $390,000 and banned from serving as a company director or manager for 10 years.
After retiring in 2011 from the bench and as president of the Australian Competition Tribunal, Mr Finkelstein was tapped by then prime minister Julia Gillard to lead an independent inquiry into Australia’s print and online media.
In a letter to the school community on Friday afternoon, newly reappointed school council chair Robert Utter said the lawyers had agreed to undertake the review on the basis that they had full cooperation of staff and the school council, and access to any documentation they required.
They had also requested that they speak to the parents of the student involved if appropriate. The lawyers would also seek "the views of any group they think may be able to assist, including the Parents' Association and the Old Trinity Grammarians' Association".
All sides in the stoush enveloping the Kew private school appear to have lawyered up, some with the best that money can buy (who can cost up to $10,000 a day).
Old Trinity Grammarians’ Association, after seeing their 5pm Friday deadline for the removal of the current school council pass without response, has appointed a legal team and says it will proceed with its threat to take legal action over the matter.
The association has amassed a legal war chest after fundraising over several weeks. It had made overtures to the school council this week through an intermediary, but received no response.
Old boys, parents and students have come out swinging in support of Mr Brown, who has engaged highly regarded employment lawyer Josh Bornstein in a bid to get his job back. An application alleging wrongful dismissal and seeking reinstatement is being prepared.
Students rallied in protest soon after Mr Brown’s sacking, with boys spontaneously chanting ‘Brownie’ in the schoolyard. In less than a week, more than 6600 people have signed a petition to ‘bring Brownie back’.
At a meeting on Tuesday more than 1000 disgruntled students, parents and alumni voted for the removal of Trinity principal Dr Michael Davies and the school council.
By Wednesday three prominent members of the school council had stood down. Several other council members are thought to be considering their positions.
It’s been a bruising episode for Dr Davies, who has faced a huge backlash – including several weeks of intense media focus – over the decision to sack Mr Brown, who was in charge of discipline at the school.
Mr Brown’s sacking has become a flashpoint for tensions that some say have been brewing over an increasing educational emphasis on results since the appointment of Dr Davies, the 114-year-old school’s 10th headmaster, in 2014.
The school did not respond to questions from The Age on Friday about whether Dr Davies had moved out of the headmaster’s residence at the school in recent days.
A statement released by the Old Grammarians on Friday laid bare the enmity between the alumni and the school council. The actions of "the remnants of the embattled Trinity Grammar School Council" had plunged the school into "chaos and crisis", the association said, leaving "disrupted and distracted by this fiasco".
It has been damaging, too, for Mr Brown. Several students and a teacher at his previous school, Erinbank Secondary College, have accused him of bullying, intimidation and physical assault in the 1980s, The Age revealed on Friday.
Mr Brown denied allegations of assault but conceded he may have scared some students at the state school, which closed in 2008.
On Friday several of his former teaching colleagues from Erinbank approached The Age, one to back the allegations of intimidation and bullying, another to vouch for Mr Brown’s character and devotion to his former students and school community.
Regardless of the outcome – whether Dr Davies and the school council members stay or go, Mr Brown is reinstated or not – of one thing there is no doubt: the school and its reputation has been irrevocably damaged.
