Biography
Brennan is the son of Sir Gerard Brennan, a former Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia.
Brennan studied at the University of Queensland where he graduated with honours in arts and law. He then studied at the Melbourne College of Divinity, where he graduated, again with honours, in divinity. He was awarded a Master of Laws as a result of further study at the University of Melbourne. Brennan was later awarded, honoris causa, a Doctor of the University from the Queensland University of Technology and a Doctor of Laws from the University of New South Wales.
Brennan's contact and involvement with Aboriginal Australians began early in his priestly ministry. In 1975 he worked in the inner Sydney parish of Redfern with priest activist Fr Ted Kennedy, where he also met and worked with Mum (Shirl) Smith among others who were founding indigenous Australian legal, health and political initiatives.
In 1997, he was Rapporteur at the Australian Reconciliation Convention and the following year he was appointed an Ambassador for Reconciliation by the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. On 10 December 2008 he was appointed as the chairperson to the Australian Government's National Human Rights Consultation Committee. In 2009 this independent committee consulted with the Australian community about the protection and promotion of human rights. On 30 September 2009, it reported its recommendations to the Attorney General, the Honourable Robert McClelland MP.
Brennan is presently a professor of law in the Public Policy Institute at the Australian Catholic University, visiting Professorial Fellow at the University of New South Wales and served as the Founding Director of the Uniya Jesuit Social Justice Centre in Sydney from 2001 to 2007.
During 2011 Brennan was critical of Julia Gillard and the refugee policies of her government, claiming that she has led the Labor Party into moral decline, saying that the Malaysia Solution is morally derelict and tantamount to "offshore dumping".
Read more about this topic: Frank Brennan (Jesuit)
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