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The market has ‘gone backwards’ in addressing cultural diversity, says lawyer
Although Australia takes pride in its multicultural identity, the national president of the Asian Australian Lawyers Association has highlighted the legal profession’s ongoing challenges in effectively addressing cultural diversity within its ranks.
Grace Robbie
Speaking on a recent episode of The Lawyers Weekly Podcast, Matthew Floro, principal at Johnson Legal and national president of the Asian Australian Lawyers Association (AALA), shared his insights on the current state of cultural diversity within the legal profession.
Floro attributes his parents’ decision to move to Australia as the foundation of a life enriched with opportunities. However, he also reflects on the challenges and instances of discrimination he encountered growing up as an individual of Asian heritage.
“I’ve always been really lucky to have grown up in Australia, and it’s been a real privilege. My parents came here for a better life, and for the most part, they found it.
“Growing up, I did experience [racism and discrimination] myself. In primary school I was called a monkey by none other than my teacher. In high school, a fellow student told me to get back on the boat and go back to where I came from,” he said.
“During uni in Brisbane, my family and I were dining at an Italian restaurant, and a fellow diner who didn’t know us from a bar of soap just made a weird comment that maybe we needed chopsticks to eat our pizza.”
Despite encountering these instances of racism, Floro shared how he used them as a source of motivation, noting that he did not experience similar racism during his time at university.
“These weird and frankly racist things have always been a driver for me, and during uni itself, apart from that incident at that Italian restaurant eating pizza, I didn’t experience bias or racism from my fellow students,” he said.
Upon entering the workforce, however, Floro observed a striking lack of cultural diversity, particularly at the senior levels within the legal profession.
“But then when I entered the workforce, and I don’t want to talk about specific workplaces, obviously, but I think, in general, I wasn’t able to see much of the cultural diversity that there was in society or the student or junior cohort at the mid or senior levels of the profession,” he said.
Floro drew attention to recent census data that highlights the underrepresentation of culturally diverse professionals in leadership roles within the legal sector despite their significant presence in the general population.
“Australia, in our latest census, 2021, 27.6 per cent of our population was born overseas, and almost half of Australians have at least one parent born overseas, and interestingly, about 18 per cent of Australians have an Asian background.
“But when you look at the proportion of people in senior levels of our profession, so there was a report that was in the Financial Review in 2019, where racial diversity among law firm partners, for example, was very low, with only 5 per cent from non-European backgrounds contrasting that to the statistics I’ve already mentioned,” he said.
Floro explained that this disparity indicates that the “bamboo ceiling is still, unfortunately”, within the legal profession.
The issue is not confined to the legal profession, as Floro pointed out that the representation of culturally diverse individuals on the boards of ASX 300 companies has steadily declined over the past seven years.
“There was another report earlier this year about cultural diversity among the ASX top 300 companies, and the ASX Corporate Governance Council commissioned a review of what had happened.
“That report found that in the past seven years, the level of non-European representation on boards had actually decreased, and although the level of Anglo-Saxon representation had decreased, it was actually the level of European but non-Anglo-Saxon representation on boards that had increased,” he said.
“In some ways, we’ve gone backwards, unfortunately, in the last seven years. So these statistics drive me at AALA, and they drive our members as well in our community.”
