Summary Profile

Mark is a Sydney barrister practising in administrative law and general law at Maurice Byers Chambers. He is author of New South Wales Administrative Law, a two volume looseleaf service, published by Thomson Reuters which covers the Administrative Decisions Tribunal, Supreme Court judicial review, freedom of information and privacy.

He is the Title Editor of the two Administrative Law volumes of Laws of Australia, also published by Thomson Reuters.

For seven years he was a part-time Judicial Member of the Administrative Decisions Tribunal of New South Wales in the General Division – hearing matters concerning privacy and freedom of information.

For sixteen years, Mark was an occasional part-time lecturer in undergraduate “Administrative Law” in the Law Faculties of the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales.

He also served on the Law Council of Australia‘s Administrative Law Committee for about twenty years, ending in 2010.

Mark is the author/editor of a number of published legal texts, including:

Judicial Review: The Laws of Australia, published in 2014 by Thomson Reuters with an encyclopaedic coverage of judicial review Australia wide;
NCAT – Practice and Procedure, 2nd edition published in 2020 by Thomson Reuters; and
Administrative Law – The Laws of Australia, published in 2017 also published by Thomson Reuters. It relates to State and Federal tribunals and it also covers the Ombudsmen and freedom of information around Australia.

For 17 years, Mark was a director of Counsels Chambers Limited (providing accommodation, internet data and telephony services to about 600 barristers in Sydney).

For 2 years, Mark served as a member of the Council of Law Reporting for New South Wales (in 2012 and 2013).

Mark was junior counsel in the High Court of Australia in 1986 for the British Attorney-General in the famous Spycatcher Case, against the late spy and author, Mr Peter Wright (a).

In 2002, Mark acted for 6,700 refugee plaintiffs and won one of the largest administrative law class-actions in history in the High Court of Australia. The case concerned systemic denial of natural justice in the Refugee Review Tribunal (b).

Mark has also appeared in many unlawful imprisonment, domestic slavery cases and cases on prisoner’s rights (c).

He recently argued in the High Court of Australia on behalf of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, in a civil rights case leading the High Court to set aside as invalid State legislation (d).

FOOTNOTES

a Attorney-General (United Kingdom) v Heinemann Publishers Australia Pty Ltd [1988] HCA 25; (1988) 165 CLR 30 (2 June 1988)

b Muin v Refugee Review Tribunal [2002] HCA 30; (2002) 190 ALR 601; (2002) 76 ALJR 966 (8 August 2002)

c Kang v Kwan & 2 Ors [2002] NSWSC 1187; Midya v Sagrani [1999] NSWCA 187; Sleiman v Commissioner of Corrective Services & Anor; Hamzy v Commissioner of Corrective Services & Anor [2009] NSWSC 304

d Wainohu v New South Wales [2011] HCA 24 (23 June 2011)

Prior to full-time practice at the Bar, Mark worked :

for 5 years as a Commercial Litigation Solicitor with Mallesons Stephen Jaques in their Canberra and Sydney offices;

for a year as the Legal Assistant to the Solicitor-General for New South Wales, Mr Keith Mason QC, later, Justice Mason, President of the NSW Court of Appeal

for 2 years as the Senior Legal Research Officer with the Justices of the High Court of Australia in Canberra; and,

as a Consultant and Legal Officer at the NSW Law Reform Commission (Also at Austlii, here)