Mark Dreyfus - Biography

Mark Alfred Dreyfus QC (born 3 October 1956), Australian lawyer and politician, is the Australian Labor Party member for the House of Representatives seat of Isaacs, Victoria. He was elected in the 2007 federal election.

Early life

Dreyfus was born in Perth, the son of George Dreyfus, a noted composer who came to Australia as a refugee from Nazi Germany. Dreyfus was educated at the University of Melbourne and holds degrees in Arts and Law, becoming a lawyer in 1982 and a barrister in 1987.

Career

He was a ministerial staffer, advising Jim Kennan the Victorian Attorney-General and Planning Minister, for two years in the 1980s.

Legal work

An expert in planning law, Dreyfus was the Legal Editor of the Victorian Planning Reports and was a member of the Victorian Planning and Environmental Law Association. He was also the co-author of the Contract chapter in Butterworths' Court Forms, Precedents and Pleadings, Victoria, He was one of the top defamation lawyers in Victoria, representing some of the state's large media businesses. He was appointed Queen's Counsel in 1999 by Attorney-General Rob Hulls on recommendation from the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria. He was a director of the Law Council of Australia and the Vice-Chair of the Victorian Bar.

Dreyfus frequently represented the Labor Opposition in court cases on Freedom of Information and other cases throughout the 1990s. In one case, he represented the ALP in attempting to unseat Liberal MP Bruce Atkinson who faced allegations of moon-lighting. An active ALP member, he was asked by the Party to investigate branch stacking and to write recommendations about how they might combat it. The resulting Dreyfus Report proposed sweeping measures to combat improper practices which were substantially implemented, imposing caps on the number of members who could be recruited at individual meetings and other restrictions on multiple recruiting. Some faction leaders including the Left's Kim Carr and the Right's Stephen Conroy initially strongly opposed the Dreyfus Report and its recommendations. Ultimately the Dreyfus reforms with slight modification were adopted unanimously by the Victorian ALP State Conference in 1998.

More recently Dreyfus has represented Aboriginal plaintiffs in cases relating to Stolen Generation claims. He also represented environmentalists sued by Tasmanian timber company Gunns for campaigning against and damaging them. He was a National Editorial Board member of the Australia Israel Jewish Affairs Council.

Politics

In March 2006 Dreyfus successfully challenged the sitting Labor member for Isaacs, Ann Corcoran, for the right to contest the 2007 election. Although Corcoran won a majority of votes in the local ballot, Dreyfus, a member of the Labor Unity faction, had a large majority of supporters on the party's Public Office Selection Committee, and thus won the overall vote. Ironically, in his 1998 Dreyfus report, Mr Dreyfus stated: ‘Membership makes a party, not the other way around. Labor is, or should be, people—not vehicle, not structure, not hierarchy.’ At the 2007 election, he defeated the Liberal candidate, Ross Fox, gaining a 5.9% swing to Labor.

Following Labor's victory at the 2007 Federal Election, Mark Dreyfus was appointed chairman of the House of Representatives legal and constitutional affairs committee.

At the 2010 election. Mark Dreyfus was re-elected gaining a further 3.33% swing to Labor.

In September 2010 Mark Dreyfus was appointed as Cabinet Secretary as well as Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency in the Gillard Government.

In March 2011 he described the campaign by Tony Abbott against the Carbon Tax as Nazi propaganda.

In August 2011 he was accused of calling Sophie Mirabella a "bitch" in parliament. He denied the accusation although he did withdraw for an unparliamentary remark at the time.

Personal life

Dreyfus lives with his wife Deborah in Malvern.

• [1]
• Mark Dreyfus website

External links