Dr Howard Bell OAM is a government solicitor currently working as a Principal Lawyer with the NSW Department of Customer Service. He also is a Public Notary and previously served as a Justice of the Peace prior to becoming a legal practitioner. Howard is also a serving member of the Australian Army Reserve, holding the rank of Major. He is an experienced governance and compliance auditor and has served in Legal Corps, the Royal Australian Corps of Military Police and has had a range of instructor postings and regimental postings. He has been a company commander in the military police. He served overseas in East Timor as a Peacekeeper during 2002 at the time of the first Presidential elections in that country. More recently Howard has served within the Army’s COVID-19 ASSIST operations.
He is also currently an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at Charles Sturt University with the Centre for Law and Justice where he has supervised international doctoral students pursuing Ph.Ds in public policy, public safety and peace-related topics. He regularly presents research papers to local and overseas conferences. His most recent international appearance was at the European Association of Psychology, Psychiatry and Law in Nuremberg where he presented a paper on jury impression formation in criminal trials, which was also the topic of his own Ph.D thesis.
He has previously been a senior legal officer with WorkCover NSW, NSW Police and NSW Crime Commission. Prior to then, Howard was at the NSW Bar. When employed at NSW Police, Howard wrote the Civil Litigation Systems Manual for NSW Police Legal Services. After subsequently joining WorkCover NSW Howard was awarded the CEO’s Award for Commitment and Achievement in Social Justice.
Howard has, in addition to many years of full-time legal practice also had a very successful concurrent career as a part-time teacher at TAFE NSW. For more than 25 years Howard taught business law, commercial law, legal aspects of small business and customer service as well as management and leadership subjects at TAFE colleges in Sydney and suburban colleges. He has also served on the Executive and the Council of the TAFE Teachers Division of the NSW Teachers Federation. He continues to share his passion for teaching of law through ongoing involvement in numerous community education forums.
He has served in numerous volunteer roles including with Amnesty International where he has been the Convenor of his local action group and for many years also served on the NSW Regional Board of Amnesty. In those roles he has campaigned in particular for a human rights act in Australia and for legislation giving statutory effect to the human right to shelter in order to address Australia’s homelessness levels about which he continues to be very concerned.
Howard is currently a member of the Board of Directors of Coast Shelter on the NSW Central Coast. He is especially inspired by Coast Shelter’s mission of ending homelessness and domestic violence on the Central Coast.
He also currently serves on the Policy Advisory Council of Homelessness NSW.
Howard is the Vice President of his local Sub-Branch of RSL NSW. He is actively involved in campaigning to reduce homelessness and risks of homelessness within the Veteran community.
Howard has previously served on the Board of Shelter NSW. He has also served on other boards and leadership committees, including the Board of Cana Communities and the Board and Council of WEA-Sydney.
Howard has also volunteered for many years with other charities including the St Vincent de Paul Society. He has chaired the Inner Sydney Catholic Justice Group and in that role worked hard to address problems associated with homelessness and the risk of homelessness as well as social isolation and marginalisation.
In 2011, Howard was awarded the Order of Australia Medal in the General Division in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to the community through social justice and legal organisations.
Howard served for many years on the NSW Law Society’s Government Lawyers Committee. He has also previously served on the Anti-Discrimination, Public Law and the Human Rights Committees. When on the Human Rights Committee, Howard contributed to the creation and establishment of a human rights community education program at WEA-Sydney, where he now continues to teach human rights, climate change and environmental law subjects. He is also a former Board Member of WEA-Sydney. He currently also volunteers with the Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL) and is active in contributing to the work of CCL for the achievement of a liveable world into the future through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to a net zero level by 2050.
Howard is strongly committed to mentoring young and more junior lawyers and has served as a mentor on the Young Lawyers Mentoring Program and has actively promoted the benefits of mentoring in relation to nurturing and growing the legal profession in NSW.
As a Councillor of the Law Society, Howard will be readily available to consult with all solicitors across NSW to enable him to understand issues of concern to them and will ensure that their voice is heard loud and clearly by the Council and that they receive full attention and action through the Council and the Law Society as a whole. He will also actively promote solicitor membership of the Society, world-class continuing legal education, the physical and mental health and well-being of solicitors. He will also actively promote the Law Society and its members as a professional group dedicated to improving the quality of life of all in the community including those who cannot afford professional legal services through promoting enhanced legal aid funding, improved access to justice and pro bono support to marginalised and disadvantaged members of the community. He shares a commitment with others to making progress towards the establishment of a dedicated homelessness court system.