Deputy president Susanne Cole, along with senior member Harry Dixon SC and general member Mary Bolt, found Waterstreet would not be “permanently unlikely” to be fit to practise as a barrister again, particularly given the dominant causal factor in his offending was a then-undiagnosed and untreated bipolar II disorder.

“A year should be long enough for him to demonstrate he is capable of engaging in psychiatric treatment on a sustained basis and making progress with improving his insight and changing his behaviour,” the bench said in written reasons published last week.

Last April, Waterstreet was found to have sexually harassed a law student, known only as C1, by watching a pornographic video near her, telling her he wanted to “rub” a client’s partner “all over”, and showing her a pencil drawing of a flaccid penis.

A juris doctor student, or C2, said she was shown a “black vibrating sex toy” during an interview and said Waterstreet introduced a client to her as a “porn star” with the “biggest cock in Australia”.

The third woman, a legal secretary, said Waterstreet asked her which of the three men in an elevator she preferred. He repeated this question when a fourth man got onto the elevator.

When a woman joined, Waterstreet told her: “I didn’t mean to be discriminatory, which of the five of us would you prefer?”

Taken together, the conduct was professional misconduct.

In submissions before NCAT, Waterstreet said he regretted the conduct and was “embarrassed and ashamed by the grossness”.

“My tendency to overshare personal information and to broach sexualised topics and over-sexualised topics at the time is now startingly frank to me,” Waterstreet said.

However, likely after the stage one hearings, but before the draft decision was given to the parties, Waterstreet shared an extract from an article about the obligations of prosecutors in sexual assault trials.

The article included a comment about the “very real cost of social campaigns like the #MeToo movement”.

Waterstreet commented he wished “it applied to NCAT”.

Appearing on an episode of The Stick Up podcast weeks after he received the draft decision, Waterstreet described the events around his cancellation and said he “got into trouble for … slips of the tongue”.

Waterstreet also said his “neck gets hurt” when he writes in cafes around Bondi. Further, in response to the hosts’ comment that Waterstreet was “having a good old perv”, he said he “wouldn’t say it’s just that you have to bend down … for your lost coins”.

Asked to explain this answer to the tribunal, Waterstreet said he was self-mocking because he could not write in his home and “couldn’t write in cafes because of the temptations of the population”.

The Bar Council said these comments were evidence that Waterstreet had not gained “adequate insight” into sexual harassment behaviours.

Waterstreet was also grilled over a reference on his website to him being on “sabbatical” from legal practice.

He agreed this was “potentially misleading” but claimed it was “the soft way I chose to put myself”, without saying he was cancelled.

On the website, a map depicts a building on William Street in Sydney’s CBD and states the address as “Waterstreet Chambers”.

Asked what basis he has to use the phrase “Waterstreet Chambers”, particularly as it could imply he was working as a barrister, Waterstreet said it was “tongue-in-cheek at the time”.

The council said by including both references on his website, Waterstreet displayed a lack of regard or insight into his behaviour.

Waterstreet was then taken to a passage on the Screen Australia website about a documentary into his “rise and fall”.

The passage claimed Waterstreet’s success in the legal profession was short-lived because allegations of misconduct “resulted in him being tried and convicted in the court of public opinion, swept up in the scrutiny of the newly mobilised #MeToo movement which would prove to be the beginning of his professional downfall”.

Under cross-examination, Waterstreet said he was in “full support” of the MeToo movement and claimed he would not have used the words “swept up in the scrutiny of a newly mobilised #MeToo movement”.

However, he also said it was a “minor aspect of my journey”.

Asked whether he meant the MeToo movement was still a factor in his current position, Waterstreet said yes.

“In the way that I was targeted by a small online publication that chose to target me. Other than that, that’s about it,” he said.

The council said this was “inconsistent with someone who has gained true insight with respect to adverse findings of sexual harassment”.

In further submissions, the council said that while Waterstreet appears committed to treating his bipolar II disorder, his lack of insight and understanding of his behaviour “continued to be of concern”.

However, they said Waterstreet has a “considerable way to go” with his psychiatric treatment and reflections on his misconduct “before we can be confident that the risk of him engaging in sexualised conduct … has been reduced to an acceptable degree”.

Waterstreet’s comments on The Stick Up podcast indicated he has a tendency to “minimise” such behaviour and revert to sexualised topics and to “sexually objectify people in the process”, they said.

The bench also found Waterstreet is “still quick to deflect blame”, having instead pointed to #MeToo or “political correctness”.

“Waterstreet avoids facing up to the fact that three young women who he sexually harassed experienced enduring adverse impacts from his behaviour, in all cases psychologically and in one case financially,” Cole, Dixon and Bolt said.

At this time, the bench said it was not satisfied that Waterstreet was capable of changing his habits “in a sustained way” and was not satisfied that the public would be protected if Waterstreet were allowed to apply for a practising certificate in the immediate future.

They believed a year’s suspension should be sufficient.

The tribunal was invited to set certain conditions on Waterstreet’s practising certificate but said this would be best done by the council when the need arises.

The case is Council of the New South Wales Bar Association v Waterstreet (No 2) [2025] NSWCATOD 4 (15 January 2025).