If you’re in Melbourne and have any interest in transport issues, you’ll have heard of Paul Mees. He’s a one-man headline for public transport. Formerly a lawyer, he took a job lecturing in urban planning at the University of Melbourne, where he has continued his advocacy of public transport. For what it’s worth, I reckon he does get a bit over-enthusiastic sometimes (see for instance this earlier LP post). But that hardly justifies demoting him and docking his pay, because his outspokenness has allegedly hampered the university’s ability to get state government grants:
The University of Melbourne’s reputation for upholding academic freedom has been damaged by the demotion of a senior lecturer after a complaint against him by the State Government, the tertiary union says.
The Age revealed today that Paul Mees, a senior lecturer in transport planning and a prominent public transport advocate, was told his pay would be slashed after he made a strongly worded attack on the Government over transport privatisation.
I didn’t see anything about gagging uppity academics in the Melbourne Model myself…
If this is true, it’s a pathetic action by that University. Academic freedom should be upheld, when a chap is writing on, or speaking on, or discussing, or lecturing on HIS SPECIAL SUBJECT. As you point out, few Melburnians who listen to radio or read newspapers would be unaware of his advocacy and engagement in these issues.
And that, one must assume, would INCLUDE his employer, the grand old University of Melbourne. His reputation for forthright public speech would have preceded him up Swanston Street like a broadcasting loudspeaker on top of a van.
Now it may be that the VC wasn’t so well aware of Paul, being a Quincelander. But Paul’s Dean and colleagues and most of the others would have been. If they wanted a voiceless monk or a quiet chap who’d say little, why in Milky Way’s name did they appoint *of all people* Paul Mees?
There was an even more concerning one last week involving UQ and CSL around a Dr’s commemts about the effectiveness of mass Gardisil injections. I’ll look it up and link in a sec
Whoever pays the piper…. ?
There’s a bit of a difference between “strongly worded” and likely defamatory action. he accused people of corruption, not based on any evidence, in public fora and online. There is a line, he’s too stupid to know where it is, he definitely crossed it.
This smacks of the car companies buying up LA’s tramcar companies and liquidating them. That stinks. Not happy Brumby.
Then going back to the 60’s we see Melbourne Uni running biological experiments to prove Lysenkoism - I saw these with my own eyes.
Then Melbourne Uni began to ‘Grollo’ up large parts of historic Carlton.
Then lately news has emerged that a medical degree is simply out of the reach of any poor or even middle-class Australian and possible cruel experiments are being made on animals at Melbourne Uni.
Don’t get me wrong - I like Unis in general and Melbourne in particular ( worked as a plonguer in Academic House once) but I just don’t want to see them become money laundering fronts and Hard Right( or Hard Left) wing stink tanks.
Maybe we could sell off large slabs of Defense and use the money to Nationalize the Uni’s?
Or privatize them only with small shareholders?
I would like to apply to be thoroughly gagged by Melbourne University, please.
Disgustipated, I am
sublime cowgirl,
the UQ case you were referring to - thankfully they have backed down a bit although that doesn’t excuse their original rebuke.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/16/2246567.htm
Thanks for this Robert. I’ve had a rare day away from the newspaper (quite refreshing I must say!) I’ve been getting the Uni of Melb glossy alumnus magazine for decades now. So many times I’ve thought of writing to tell them to stop them, as I no longer have any respect for them as a university. This might be the final straw that gets me off my lazy ass to actually do it.
There’s a bit of a difference between “strongly worded” and likely defamatory action. - wilful
Indeed, but if he’s defamed people then let him be sued; it’s not his employer’s business. Punishing people for offending those with the power of the purse stinks.
This sounds like a settlement, to be honest. The university has agreed to rein their academic in to avoid litigation, which would involve having to defend allegations of ‘fraud’ and ‘corruption’ in court.
These terms are so commonplace these days (particularly in our increasingly incautious and unaccountable media) that people forget they have particular legal significance, and should only be levelled at people who are (a) poor or (b) not lawyers. Terribly cynical, I know, but anyone with even a small amount of money behind them will defend themselves against allegations of this type.
Wilful, I’ll accept that you’re probably right, but I’d like more details of his crossing the line, if that happened.
There are serious problems with the Ministry of Transport, and this is largely what Mees has tried to draw attention to. The ratio of administrative staff apparently needed to oversee an essentially privatised service is quite extraordinary. Granted this is more likely to be Parkinson’s Law gone mad than evidence of corruption, there are still worries. Why do we need so many staff at Transport House when we can’t even provide staff at suburban stations outside normal hours?
Batchelor squibbed it on these issues, going along with the Kennett ‘Reforms’, but caving in when the companies couldn’t deliver what was promised. The new Minister is no improvement, seeming to accept that removing accountability from political responsibility avoids a lot of heat. The only leverage comes from the ministry. Chances are that most of their listening is to the operators, not the consumers.
Unless there is a real concern about a corruption allegation. Melbourne Uni is in dangerous territory in reacting to bureaucratic pressure.
We get into murky territory depending how corruption is defined. When the RACV makes a statement about how badly the poor old motorist is dudded and we should get more of our taxes spent on more freeways, we assume this is the voice of motorists. But is it? Isn’t just as likely to be what the oil companies and car manufacturers want?
Nobody would suggest the RACV is in their pockets, but you have to wonder if the RACV is necessarily representing the best interests of all, or even most, motorists. Most of us have concerns about global warming, pollution and the decline of public transport investment.
On my limited knowledge of Mees, he seems concerned about the lack of political and bureaucratic interest in public transport. It seems that they are mostly listening to the people with vested interests. As with the RACV analogy it is not corruption as we’d define it, but it is blinkered thinking.
Yeah the guy was obviously very unwise to use such inflammatory language. But it probably came as a direct result of using the public transport system which is the most wonderful welding together of the worst aspects of the private and public sectors I’ve seen.
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Take a greedy corporation give ‘em a monopoly, shovel tax dollars into their mouth. Up the proces on a regular basis. And when the punters complain the minister for transport says: “Transport? What’s that got to do with me. Talk to Connex.”
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And Connex says: Your call is important to us. Thank you for waiting. All our operators are busy providing junkets for the politicans who’ll deliberating the next tender and who’s idea of public tranpsort is a publically funded chauffeur. We’re also processing shareholders’ dividends. We understand you have to pay two grand plus a year to be squeezed into a sardine can that’s always twenty minutes late and stops for 15 minutes for some reason when you get within 100 metres of your destination. But please, go and fuck yourselves.
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And have a nice day.
A sardine can that stinks of piss, Adrien.
Adrien, you are just sooooo right. As a regular user they manage to stuff my day up in so many ways.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/16/2246567.htm?section=australiaThis one concerns me more, in that the comments were made in good faith and in the spirit of evidence based practice, and Doug Porter seemed more eager to appease CSL than support the academic's right to open, and certainly not inflamatory, discussion.
Disclaimer: I may possibly have CSL shares so please dont take this comment as any kind of moral agenda about Gardisal which i think is a great innovation.
Ah, the RACV. That charming organization, that claims that half a million-odd people, most of whom probably just want breakdown service, support its pro-roads political agenda.
There would certainly be grounds for sueing Mees for defamation, but I doubt anyone would do that. He’d have so much fun in discovery getting all sorts of documents that may or may not prove corruption, but certainly demonstrate utter incompetence that I can’t see anyone going through with it.
However, I can’t see on what grounds they could sue the University - because it was on their website and taken down as soon as their was a complaint? The University had no reason to settle this way unless they actually wanted to. Mees can be a pain in the neck for his friends as well as his enemies, but surely we need at least a few academics to fill that role.
Dragging in ISPs and webpage hosts has been a feature of defamation suits since Gutnick. It’s shitty but probably unavoidable. Mees’ error was flinging the ‘f’ word about - no amount of discovery would help him there - fraud is pretty narrowly confined legally.
Well, academic freedom doesn’t confer the freedom to make defamatory statements. It would probably be an issue of professional misconduct and the pay docking presumably a procedural penalty arrived at after following the uni’s internal misconduct procedure (at least, it better be! If unis can just dock pays on an ad hoc basis, then we have a problem, but if the process was procedurally fair…)
But a layman’s question: While I totally get why someone screaming ‘fraud’ or ‘corruption’ would be open to defamation action - what I understand less is that the blogosphere is rife with wingnuts who make all sorts of lurid accusations hurling words like ‘fraud’ ‘corruption’ and much worse around. Are such cases similarly actionable, and just ignored because they’re wingnuts? You see what I’m getting at? Why was Mees the subject of threatened action whereas say, deranged blogger X accusing public figure Y of corruption without evidence tends to just go through to the keeper?
How can deranged bloggers end up with more “academic freedom” than, er, academics, if you get my drift?
Sometimes the line between ‘deranged wingnut crying fraud’ and ’serious accusation of fraud’ is a fine one, and blogs - especially popular ones like LP, Troppo, Tim Blair and Catallaxy have got to tread warily. Most suits are simply not worth pursuing because they give the defamer the oxygen of publicity - that is, media reporting of the incident will make it larger than it was in the first place. However, there are cases much closer to the imaginary ‘litigation line’ than wingnuts on blogs, and I suspect Mees just fell over it.
Much of this angst arose out of the Gutnick case, of which there is a useful summary (and a link to the full text of the judgment) here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutnick_v_Dow_Jones
Thanks, I looked up the Gutnick case.
Soooooo…For the purposes of defamation actions, Dow Jones is likened to a deranged wingnut in the blogosphere - yes, I see the connection!
But wait, what? Geoffrey Robertson was defending Dow Jones?
So, hypothetically if I were a deranged wingnut making wild fraud and corruption allegations, Geoffrey Robertson would defend me too!?
Sweet!
