Dr Matt Collins AM KC (he/him) practises in all Australian jurisdictions.
He holds a PhD in law from Melbourne University and is the author of Collins on Defamation (Oxford University Press, 2014), a leading text on the law of defamation in England and Wales, and all three editions of The Law of Defamation and the Internet (Oxford University Press, 2001, 2005, 2010), the standard international text on the application of principles of defamation law to online publications.
Dr Collins was the President of the Australian Bar Association in 2021-22. He was Vice-President of the ABA from 2019-2021 and, before that, President of the Victorian Bar from 2017-2019 and Senior Vice-President from 2016-2017. He was Chair of the Victorian Bar Readers’ Course from 2015-2017, and has served at various times as a director of Melbourne Bar Pty Ltd, the Barristers’ Benevolent Association, the Victorian Bar Foundation Ltd and the Peter O’Callaghan QC Gallery Ltd.
He is a Senior Fellow at the Melbourne Law School, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law, and a member of the Board and Council of the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration. He is a former National Chair of the Law Council of Australia’s Media and Communications Committee and a former member of the Melbourne Law School Foundation Board.
Dr Collins has appeared at both appellate and trial level in many of the most significant defamation and free speech cases in Australia of the past generation, including Hockey v Fairfax Media Publications Pty Ltd, Wilson v Bauer Media Pty Ltd, Charan v Nationwide News Pty Ltd, Gatto v Australian Broadcasting Corp, Lehrmann v Network Ten, Greenwich v Latham, Al Muderis v Nine Network and Deeming v Pesutto.
He has also appeared in important competition law and related cases (including ACCC v ANZ Banking Group Ltd and ACCC v Yazaki Corp), regulatory enforcement matters for and against regulators (including ASIC v Mitchell, Trivago NV v ACCC and ASIC v ANZ Banking Group Ltd), class actions for applicants and defendants, sexual abuse compensation claims (ZAB v ZVM), administrative law matters (Environment Victoria Inc v AGL Loy Lang Pty Ltd) and countless commercial, consumer protection and other disputes.
Dr Collins has appeared in several Royal Commissions both as Counsel Assisting and lead counsel for affected parties, including the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry (lead counsel for ANZ Banking Group Ltd) and the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (lead counsel for the Salvation Army).
In 2019, Dr Collins was made a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to the law, to legal standards, and to education. In 2020, he was named one of Australia’s 50 Outstanding LGBTI+ Leaders by Deloitte Australia.
*Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards legislation