Mark Dreyfus
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Mark Alfred Dreyfus QC (born 3 October 1956) is an Australian barrister who is the endorsed Australian Labor Party candidate for the Australian House of Representatives seat of Isaacs at the 2007 federal election.
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 Melbourne High School and the University of Melbourne and holds degrees in Arts and Law, becoming a lawyer in 1982 and a barrister in 1987. He was a ministerial staffer, advising Jim Kennan the Victorian Attorney-General and Planning Minister, for two years in the 1980s.
Considered an expert in planning law, Dreyfus is the Legal Editor of the Victorian Planning Reports and is a member of the Victorian Planning and Environmental Law Association. He is also the co-author of the Contract chapter in Butterworths' Court Forms, Precedents and Pleadings, Victoria, He is 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 is 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 1990's. 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 has also represented environmentalists sued by Tasmanian timber company Gunns for campaigning against and damaging them. He is a National Editorial Board member of the Australia Israel Jewish Affairs Council.
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. Dreyfus lives with his wife Deborah in Malvern, which is not in Isaacs. He has pledged to move into the seat following the completion of his daughter's Victorian Certificate of Education.
