Laura Michaelson (Class of 2009) A Passion for Justice
Posted on May 13, 2025
All through her schooling, Laura Michaelson knew what she wanted to study – a choice that aligned with her desire to help the socially and structurally disadvantaged.
When Laura Michaelson (Class of 2009) was 10, a family friend asked what she believed in most. She gave a one-word answer: justice. For any child growing up in Hobart’s northern suburbs in the aughts, “justice” could have meant “it’s-not-fair-it-wasn’t me,” but the word held something larger and more profound for Laura. She came from a family where there was disadvantage, but where other branches of the family knew wealth and relative privilege. “There was a dichotomy in how people I knew and loved lived their lives,” says Laura now. “What I really struggled to understand as a 10-year-old was: why do some people have to live like that while other people get to live over there?”
Laura works for the Department of Justice in Tasmania as Assistant Director of Corrective Services, a role that sits beneath the secretary and deputy secretary responsible for the Tasmania Prison Service and Community Corrections. The mother-of-two has helped introduce body-worn cameras for correctional officers, and Child and Youth Safe Organisation Standards into Corrective Services. At the time she spoke with The Friends’ School for this article, she was working on a response to an inquiry into ADHD in Tasmania’s prisons.
Laura came to Friends’ in Year 6 on a bursary; an aunt and her grandmother, whom she lived with as a teenager, encouraged her to apply. “I didn’t know it then, but I experienced a little bit of culture shock,” she recalls of those early days at Friends’. One day, when she didn’t understand a task the teacher set, she had what she now believes was a panic attack. She wanted so badly to belong. “But I was supported and valued and given opportunities I don’t know would have been presented to me somewhere else,” she says.
She knew early she would become a lawyer, going straight from Friends’ into a five-year Arts Laws degree at UTAS. Then, when she discovered close to graduating that she was pregnant, she started a PhD. (She researched therapeutic programs in the criminal justice system – alternatives to traditional punitive methods, such as diversions into addiction or mental health treatment programs.) She taught police officers evidence law and lectured in evidence and criminal law before she and her partner Marc Gates had their second child. They moved to Queensland’s Sunshine Coast where carpenter Marc stayed home with their daughters as she worked at law firms.
In 2021, she joined Tasmania’s Department of Justice as it established the Witness Intermediary Scheme, which followed a recommendation from the child sexual abuse commission, and is available to any child, young person or vulnerable adult who attends a police interview or appear in court as a victim, sexual abuse survivor or homicide witness. In the scheme, a professional can help them communicate and understand the process. “There was resistance to the scheme because it interferes with a long-standing, very traditional, very patriarchal system,” says Laura. “It’s introducing a new player – a non-lawyer – with the ability to put their hand up in court and say, ‘This witness needs a break,’ or raise something else that’s impacting the witness’s ability to communicate.”
In 2022 she became a lawyer in Tasmania’s Commission of Inquiry into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It was the biggest exchange of documents the state has seen; more than 100,000 documents were provided to the commission. Laura’s job was to understand what was in those documents, so the commissioners would be fully informed. “It was an incredible experience, in all senses of the word,” she remembers. A year into the job, after immersion in child abuse for 30 months, she needed to step away.
Laura took a job in the then attorney general’s office as a senior adviser on justice law and policy. “You’re close to the locus of control, providing advice on law and justice,” she says. “That is not something that should be taken lightly. Any legal job carries an enormous responsibility because the advice you give has a tangible impact on people’s lives.” In 2021 she returned to the Department of Justice.
Her belief in justice is resolute and not limited to one side of the justice system. “The people who become engaged with our criminal justice system mostly don’t wake up and decide to make bad decisions,” she says. “In their lives they may have experienced abuse, trauma, and mental health and substance issues.” For Laura, justice includes the perspective of what people require to heal and contribute. “The nexus for me is access to justice and opportunity to participate in life and all the wonderful things that come with our life.”
