[2] He was the Mayor of Waverley in the eastern suburbs of Sydney from 2006 to 2007, and the Labor candidate for the seat of Wentworth at the 2007 Australian federal election.
He is an adjunct professor at Macquarie University [5] where he teaches law, he is also an adjunct professor at the University of Technology Sydney at the Jumbunna Inst for Indigenous Education & Research[6] and is also the chapter editor of Thomson Reuters The Laws of Australia: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders – Civil Justice Issues.
As the principal solicitor of the Project his work involves using the law in ways that support and advance social justice and human rights in Australia.
[7][8] In August 2008 Newhouse was invited to participate in the prime minister, Kevin Rudd's Australia 2020 summit in the area of indigenous affairs.
In February 2011 Newhouse was successful in securing the release of Seena Akhlaqi Sheikhdost, an orphan whose parents had died in a shipwreck on Christmas Island from immigration detention.
[citation needed] In 2013 and 2014 together with Julian Burnside and Dan Mori he mounted a Constitutional Challenge to the detention of asylum seekers on Nauru.
[20] Newhouse fought for the rights of those indefinitely detained in immigration detention to be released or to have their adverse ASIO determinations reviewed.
[21] Newhouse led a team of lawyers to challenge the Minister of Immigration's decision to refuse to bring a woman who had become pregnant as a result of a rape on Nauru to Australia for a safe and lawful termination.
[31] In January 2009 Newhouse advised Barbara Shaw and the Prescribed Areas Peoples Alliance on their complaint about the Commonwealth Government's Northern Territory Intervention Laws to the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
[34] In January 2010 he took on "cyber racists" who published material vilifying Indigenous Australians and succeeded in having Google remove search results and links to two racially offensive web pages based outside of Australia.
[citation needed] In 2014 Newhouse acted for the family of Andrea Pickett, an Aboriginal woman who was brutally murdered by her husband.
[43][44] Newhouse had an assault charge dismissed against a 64-year-old grandmother, Leentije (Eva) McDonald, who was searched by NSW Police outside a pub in Maroubra in unusual circumstances.
[47] Newhouse served as a Labor councillor on Waverley Council from 1995 to 2008 (representing Hunter Ward, which covers North Bondi, Rose Bay, Dover Heights and parts of Vaucluse).
[48] As Mayor, he undertook "back-to-basics" reforms by upgrading Bondi Park, Campbell Parade and Hall Street, moving Waverley Council's Service Centre and Planning Counter to Bondi Junction, creating a "mobile Mayoral unit" to keep in touch with local residents, and emphasising the need to combat climate change at a local level, by committing Waverley Council to be carbon-neutral within five years and supporting other environmentally-friendly initiatives.
[48] Newhouse was endorsed in May 2007 as the Labor candidate for the federal electorate of Wentworth, held by the Liberal member, Malcolm Turnbull; at the time the Minister for Environment in the Howard Government.
[56] Newhouse backed Labor's support of the construction of the Bell Bay Pulp Mill in the Tamar Valley, Tasmania.
Jackson said she had "not understood the proper definition of Zionism" at the time she wrote the email and that she supported the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish homeland.