How did a person of Chinese descent rise to become one of the nation’s top barristers at the height of the White Australia Policy?

On this week’s Afternoon Light, Andrew Godwin tells an astounding multicultural success story that long predates the very concept of multiculturalism. Offering lessons on integration and the process of ‘becoming Australian’, by shedding light on the life and times of Menzies’s friend and contemporary, William Ah Ket.

Professor Andrew Godwin is Professor of Commercial Law at Melbourne Law School, Director of the Melbourne Law Masters, Joint Associate Director of the Corporate Law and Financial Regulation Research Program at the Melbourne Centre for Commercial Law and Associate Director (Commercial law) of the Asian Law Centre. Prior to joining Melbourne Law School as a member of the academic staff in 2007, Andrew was in legal practice for over 15 years, 10 of which were spent in Shanghai where he was a partner of an international law firm. He is a co-author of Sackville & Neave Australian Property Law and Ford, Austin and Ramsay Principles of Corporations Law, and co-editor of Research Handbook on Asian Financial Law, The Cambridge Handbook of Twin Peaks Financial Regulation, and Technology and Corporate Law. He was one of the editors for William Ah Ket – His Life and Times by William’s daughter Toylaan Ah Ket, which was posthumously published earlier this year.