Our Council of Ambassadors

Julian McMahon AC SC is a barrister in Melbourne working in criminal law. He was President of Capital Punishment Justice Project from 2015 to 2020. He now chairs the Council of Ambassadors to CPJP.

In 2002, Julian was briefed on the matter of Van Tuong Nguyen, a young Australian arrested in Singapore carrying heroin from Vietnam to Australia. Van was executed in 2005. Since that case, in addition to being a local barrister, Julian has worked on death penalty cases and related issues. He has had death row clients in numerous countries, some executed, some not. He was part of the team who defended Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, executed in Indonesia on the 29th of April 2015.

In 2017, Julian was made a Companion of the Order of Australia. In 2016, he was awarded the Law Council of Australia’s President’s medal.

Sarah Bradley AO is a former judge of the District and Childrens Courts of Queensland. She is the treasurer of the Julian Wagner Memorial Fund Inc, a charity based in Queensland which is committed to the worldwide abolition of the death penalty.

Sarah has been a volunteer with Australian Red Cross since 2011 and in 2022 was awarded the National Emergency Medal. In 2020 Sarah was made an Officer of the Order of Australia “for distinguished service to the law and to the judiciary, to women in the legal profession and to the community”.

Chris Hayes is a former Australian Labor Party politician who served as a member of the federal parliament in the House of Representatives for 17 years. He commenced as the representative for Werriwa, New South Wales from 2005 to 2010 and then served as the member for Fowler, News South Wales from 2010 to 2022.

Mr Hayes has long advocated against capital punishment. During his time in Parliament, Mr Hayes was the co-chair of the Australian Parliamentarians Against the Death Penalty and was heavily involved in the Regional Parliamentary Seminar Standing Against the Death Penalty in Asia, held in Malaysia in 2018. He met with Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan when they were in Kerobokan Prison and bore witness to their successful rehabilitation, as attested to by prison officials.

Mr Hayes is a strong proponent of the importance of Australia’s ongoing advocacy for the abolition of the death penalty. He holds the view that those who have the privilege of serving in public office should use their various platforms to support, inspire and encourage other nations to start or accomplish their journey towards abolition.

Marshall Irwin was formerly a Judge of the District Court and Chief Magistrate of Queensland. He is a former commissioner of the Crime and Corruption Commission and is involved in a number of social justice initiatives.

He is also the President of the Julian Wagner Memorial Fund, based in Brisbane, which is committed to the worldwide abolition of the death penalty through public education, providing opportunities for Australians to gain experience in defending individuals facing the death penalty and supporting ongoing and strategic anti-death penalty campaigns. 

Barry Jones AC was a Labor member of the Victorian Parliament from 1972-77 and of the Commonwealth Parliament from 1977-98. He was the Minister for Science from 1983-90, represented Australia at UNESCO in Paris from 1991-96 and carried out research in Cambridge from 2000-01.

A Fellow of four of Australia’s five learned Academies, he was awarded an AC in 2014.

Barry Jones edited the first edition of The Penalty is Death in 1968 while Secretary of the Victorian Anti-Hanging Committee (later Council) from 1962 to 1975. He released an updated edition in 2022, in association with CPJP, to mark the centenary of the abolition of the death penalty in Queensland.

Justice Lasry was admitted to practice in Victoria in 1973 and joined the Victorian Bar. In 1990 he was appointed Queens Counsel.

Until his appointment to the Supreme Court of Victoria in 2007, and in addition to his criminal practice, he conducted a Royal Commission into the Victorian Ambulance Service, represented Van Nguyen charged with drug trafficking in Singapore, represented (until 2007) Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, two of the ‘Bali 9’, represented the Law Council of Australia as the independent observer at the trial of David Hicks at Guantanamo Bay Cuba, represented ‘Jihad’ Jack Thomas in his terrorism trial, represented former police officer Peter Halloran in Sierra Leone, assisted the ACT Coroner in her enquiry into the 2003 Canberra bushfires and, for four years, was the Chair of the Victorian Criminal Bar Association.

As a judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria, he sat in the Criminal Division and upon his retirement in 2018 he had been the Principal Judge of that Division for four years. He sat in numerous murder trials, some of which were notorious. He also sat occasionally as an Acting Justice of Appeal. After formal retirement in 2018 he continued as an Acting Justice of the Court until February 2024. He has now been appointed as an Acting Judge of the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory.

Fiona McLeod AO SC is a Senior Counsel at the Victorian Bar practising in the areas of commercial, public and common law including class actions and Royal Commissions of Inquiry. She is a leader of the national profession, recognised for her clear legal advice, advocacy and strategic thinking in commercial and public law matters.

Fiona signed the bar roll in 1991 and was appointed silk in 2003. She appears regularly in the Supreme Court of Victoria and the Federal Court of Australia in trials, including jury trials, appeals and major class actions.

In her roles as President of the Law Council of Australia and the Australian Bar Association in Australia, and as a senior officer of the International Bar Association Commonwealth Lawyers, Fiona has participated in presentations on death penalty matters at numerous conferences and other fora and advocacy on individual cases.

Dr Christopher Ward SC is a highly experienced and successful commercial advocate before trial courts, appellate courts and arbitral tribunals.

He has a diverse multidisciplinary and international practice as Senior Counsel and works in large commercial disputes and inquiries, international law, large corporate insolvency, employment disputes, all constitutional issues and administrative governmental disputes.

Sally Warhaft is a Melbourne broadcaster, anthropologist and writer. She is the host of The Fifth Estate, the Wheeler Centre’s live series focusing on journalism, politics, media, and international relations, and The Leap Year, a Wheeler Centre podcast about Australians’ lives in the fog of the Covid-19 pandemic. She is a former editor of the Monthly magazine and the author of the bestselling book Well May We Say: The Speeches that Made Australia.

Sally is a regular host and commentator on ABC radio and has a PhD in anthropology. She did her fieldwork in Mumbai, India, living by the seashore with the local fishing community.