About Alanna

Alanna is a Partner in the Commercial team at Maddocks. Alanna is an experienced practitioner who specialises in providing commercial, administrative and regulatory, integrity and investigative legal services to public sector and not-for profit clients. Alanna specialises in the energy transition, emergency management, environment sectors and also has a special interest in children and child protection.

She is a legal, commercial and public administration expert with a strong sense of the client imperative and a track record of providing high quality, pragmatic and strategic legal advice in high value, high risk, or sensitive matters that drives strong client solutions.

She has worked with Government departments, Ministers, agencies, private and NFP clients on high-value, high-profile, high-risk commercial and regulatory matters, including advisory, deals, major projects advice at all stages of the lifecycle, investigations, legislation development, litigation, inquiries, enforcement, and administrative law matters. Alanna is also a qualified and deeply experienced project manager having overseen and successfully delivered for Government many legal services packages to service multi-billion dollar major projects and transactions.

Alanna's areas of expertise include:

• Legal strategy for high complexity government projects and initiatives (involving public law, commercial law, public finance law, infrastructure)
• Economics and public finance law
• Energy and emergency management law, projects and deals
• Full project lifecycle advisory, negotiations and transactional services on commercial deals and major projects in relation to sustainability, water, emergency management and renewable energy transition and initiatives.
• Public and administrative law legislation, public inquiries and reviews, governance, decision-making advisory
• Commercial law – government projects and transactions
• Regulatory and integrity investigations, inquiries and enforcement (energy, environment, emergency management, infrastructure, children and education
• Public sector governance, entity establishment and restructuring, public sector board advisory, entity powers and privileges
• Statutory interpretation, legislation development and advice

Prior to joining Maddocks, Alanna was the Assistant Victorian Government Solicitor and legal executive within the Victorian Government.

Experience

• Energy Transition

  Alanna has significant experience advising public sector entities in relation to energy transition, including regulatory and statutory development and interpretation advisory, leading major energy transition projects, and assisting with commercial transactions and advisory.

  Alanna has a strong understanding of the energy regulatory framework in Australia and provides clients with statutory interpretation and development advice in relation to this complex and rapidly evolving area of law. Some notable examples of her experience include the Victorian Renewable Energy Target scheme, the Victorian Desalination Project, and the CarbonNet project.

• Emergency Management

  Alanna has a special interest in emergency management and crisis response. She has an in-depth working knowledge of the Victorian and Australian legislative and operational frameworks that govern health and natural disaster emergencies, and provides statutory interpretation advice on complex areas of regulatory law, along with the governance framework that supports the sector.

  Alanna also has experience acting in relation to intergovernmental agreements, commercial transactions, contracts and emergency incident response to support emergency management frameworks.

  Alanna has acted for public sector entities in relation to COVID-19 advice and litigation and led the State response to the Royal Commission into National Natural Disasters, and often acts for emergency management sector clients in relation to inquiries, legislative and framework issues, and intergovernmental arrangements.

• Major projects

  Alanna is skilled at leading legal advice and other services to facilitate the delivery of major projects.

  Bringing together her project management skills, commercial advisory and legal skills, Alanna has significant experience in advising numerous Victorian major projects and mega legal matters, including the Victorian Desalination Project, Melbourne Metro, the Victorian Renewable Energy Target Project, major road and freeway projects, along with being the legal lead for the Victorian State Government response to numerous Royal Commissions and public inquiries.

• Regulatory and statutory development and interpretation advice

  Alanna is a specialist in statutory development and interpretation, having provided advice to many public agencies on the establishment, operation, and powers under legislation, along with the interaction of legislation with interstate, Commonwealth, and international legislation and law.

  Alanna regularly presents to national audiences on statutory interpretation.

• Commercial advice and transactions

  Alanna provides commercial and administrative law advice to government in relation to major commercial negotiations and transactions including the sale of Heyfield Mill and Snowy Hydro, along with other significant commercial deals.