If anyone can make sense of this crazy world we live in, surely it's the esteemed Geoffrey Robertson AO QC?
The world-renowned human rights barrister, academic, author and broadcaster will be giving it his best shot next May on an extensive speaking tour of Australia.
Robertson, who was born in Sydney but lives in England, will take to the stage to discuss the big issues of our time and some of his most famous cases, including his defence of Salman Rushdie and Julian Assange. His list of career achievements could fill a book and are, regretfully, too extensive to chronicle here.
Australians might remember him, though, as the host of ABC TV's Geoffrey Robertson's Hypotheticals where social issues were discussed by a panel of experts using a "hypothetical" scenario.
"I am calling my show It's No Longer Hypothetical because some of the things that were, when I first started doing Hypothetical, just too far-fetched to really focus people's attention on, we now live with. Things like climate change and fake news and pandemics."
Robertson is "cold and hiding from the virus in locked down London" when Weekender calls and immediately starts talking about the plight of Australians stranded overseas due to the pandemic.
"I get lots of emails from Australians telling me they can't get home for Christmas this year and I tell them they have a right to get home because article 12.4 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights - which Australia has ratified - says that everyone has the right to go home to their native land," he explains.
"I'm afraid the Australian Government are not very interested in international law in this regard and it's an outrage, really."
I am calling my show It's No Longer Hypothetical because some of the things that were ... just too far-fetched to really focus people's attention on, we now live with.
Geoffrey Robertson AO QC
A quick glance at article 12.4 of the covenant confirms the accuracy of Robertson's statement ("No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.") Not that I ever doubted the QC. Still musing on the COVID-19 pandemic, Robertson describes Australia as "the lucky country".
"You know, there are all these studies about what it is that keeps Australians so COVID-free and one study put it down to the injections we all had in the 1950s against typhoid. They weren't compulsory in Europe," he says.
"If you've got to find something that Australians happily ingest that the rest of the world happily doesn't, my vote is for Vegemite. Maybe that's given us an immunity."
After a chuckle at the memory of a certain president thinking out aloud about the prospect of ingesting bleach recently, Robertson mentions "the crazy American system that weights certain states with a political importance that they would not normally have except in the case of an election" and also quips: "I'm touching wood that Biden will win, so hard in fact that it's giving me splinters."
He believes that the "current state of the world is not a happy one".
"That's partly due, of course, to coronavirus, and we can't blame ourselves for its appearance but we can blame ourselves for not taking appropriate action," he says. "It's something that we should have guarded against."
He identifies one positive about the global pandemic, though. It postponed his 2020 Australian tour.
"And that means I get to visit Newcastle for the first time in my life," he replies, with evident delight.
"I grew up in Sydney and we used to go on family holidays to Harrington on the north coast. We'd drive up the old Pacific Highway and turn right at the Oak Milk Bar at Hexham, missing Newcastle and driving for another three hours up to the Manning River and the beaches there.
"I have been to Port Stephens and landed at Williamtown air base but have never cracked Newcastle. I am so looking forward to it."
Robertson describes himself as a workaholic, and his many achievements are a testament to that. I ask what he does to relax.
"Oh, I just work," he replies.
"In the good old days I would go and watch theatre and opera and movies, and would travel extensively. Often for work I would write a constitution for a small country with a lot of beaches, and that was nice.
"I do relax sometimes but so long as I can do work that interests me, I am happy to work.
"I thought I'd write a lockdown diary, a book about it all, but everyone was doing that. I then read Daniel Defoe's wonderful book A Journal of the Plague Year which really said it all, so I moved on to write another book which is soon to be published called Bad People and How To Get Rid of Them."
The book furthers a new idea within human rights circles which looks at the use of sanctions against human rights abusers.
"I gave some evidence about it to the Australian Parliament a few months ago and they're about to put out a report. So I've done a little book about that while I've been in lockdown. It hasn't been a complete waste of time."
The treatment of asylum seekers by the Australian government and the issue of Indigenous deaths in custody "embarrasses expatriates", Robertson says, and reading first-hand accounts from asylum seekers "makes you realise the cruelty, sometimes, of Australia's policies".
"It's a bit of a blind spot, this desire to punish people who are innocent, who haven't committed a crime," he says. "It's not a political point; we've got to avoid being cruel. That's the thing I hate most in the world. Nor is it good for our image abroad."
I mention the Tamil family of four who had been living in Biloela in central Queensland but are now in detention on Christmas Island, and suggest clemency is not an act of weakness.
"Politicians forget Portia's great speech in The Merchant of Venice, that 'mercy is the soul of justice that droppeth like gentle rain from heaven on the ground beneath'," he replies without pause. "I think mercy is crucial to any justice system."
Robertson is not happy with the volatile situation in Armenia, nor the AFP raids on Australian journalists' homes ("It makes Australia look backwards, like a second-rate country"), and strongly supports the introduction of a National Integrity Commission or Federal ICAC ("That would be a most necessary thing. There's too much corruption").
"But onwards and upwards, via Newcastle," he says, laughing. "See you all soon."
- Geoffrey Robertson's 2021 tour begins on May 20 in Newcastle and includes Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane.
