Working Flexibly
The topic of dads’ taking more responsibility for parenting has been the subject of quite a bit of media lately: from Annabel Crabb’s recent Quarterly Essay (some of which is extracted here), to a recent Lawyers Weekly podcast, and elsewhere.
The Lawyers Weekly podcast featured Jane Needham SC, who, amongst many other very good points, advocated that both men taking up childcare and flexible working be normalised. This is something that Annabel Crabb’s essay is also concerned with. It is something that I have tried to do as much as possible.
As some of you may know (at least those of you who I have met in real life or those who follow my posts on LinkedIn), I gave up chambers a couple of years ago. Amongst the reasons for giving up chambers was to allow me to be able to more easily help out with parenting.
Ever since our son started school, my partner and I have divided responsibilities so that I do school drop-off and she does pick-up, with some exceptions when either one of us is jammed. I also enjoy being able to plan and cook dinners. The result of these arrangements was that when I had chambers, I was often in them late and left them early. It seemed like I was getting little value out of them. Giving them up has meant that I can do drop-off and then be back at my desk working almost straight away.
Because life at the bar is much more flexible than life at a firm, I am also the parent on-call when our son is sick. I am also often on kid-entertainment duty during school holidays.
This is all a long-winded way of saying that, because it is school holidays, some of my time will be spent looking after my son. Some of that time will be spent on a road-trip to Adelaide to see grand parents. As a consequence, I won’t have time between this and my other work, to post any substantive updates here.
I will return to them in two weeks time. When I do, there are a few topics into which I want to look at in a bit of detail. Those topics include recent Federal Court cases in Australian Prudential Regulation Authority v Kelaher [2019] FCA 1521 and National Australia Bank Limited v Nautilus Insurance Pte Ltd (No 2) [2019] FCA 1543.
In the meantime, I will also be contactable in the usual ways, if anyone needs to get in touch. I am still working, after all. I’m just working flexibly.