Blogging politics, culture, sociology and life from Brisvegas
Proof at last — you can’t trust the worm:
THE secret is out: the Nine Network’s worm is a left-leaning university student, or maybe a bored left-wing pensioner, prepared to work for $30 a day.
So says the Government Gazette. Their evidence? Well… um…
Here is the unsurprising conclusion of the investigation into badgeless APEC cops:
Police commissioner Andrew Scipione ordered an internal inquiry by the Professional Standards Command, which found there were real concerns that pin-backed name tags could be used as weapons against officers.
This is a bit strange. The SMH reported last week that “[t]he badges are made out of cotton and are attached to an officer’s blue riot overalls with velcro.” It’s hard to see how velcro could be used as a weapon, except perhaps as identification evidence.
But let’s give them Scipione the benefit of the doubt. He went on to say that “[i]n future, all police officers attending protests would be issued with cloth identification tags”, implying that some people still had pins, and these were the ones who took off their badges. Okay. Have a look at these photos:
The dark rectangle on the right of their chests is the velcro to which the identification patch is attached. These officers therefore can not be afraid of pin-pricks.
Frankly, this shows that the Professional Standards Command inquiry is a whitewash. Continue reading ‘Secret police inquiry a whitewash’
Apparently Alexander Downer reckons he’s “never known such a bunch of cry-babies as the Labor Party”. I laughed when I read that, because last night I watched Downer’s amazing performance on the SBS World News. Here’s a summary:
Mean old Peter Beattie is bagging people, Kevin Rudd is smearing people, the media is writing mean headlines, Kevin Rudd is sneaky, “This is pathetic. It’s pathetic… it’s pathetic”, Labor is smearing people again, and Kevin Rudd is smearing people.
As Tim Dunlop wondered, “Can accusations that Mr Rudd is a poopy pants be far away?”
But the most interesting line in the SBS interview was this one:
STAN GRANT: But there are valid questions in the handling of this [the Haneef case] — the fact the SIM card was not found in the car, as was told to the court, the fact we now hear police had written personally names in Dr Haneef’s diary, the fact this has been so public that there have been allegations of leaking. It’s a wonder we’re not a laughing stock, isn’t it?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: No, but we don’t want to become a laughing stock by becoming like America, where the media are the judge and the jury.
Get that? Our foreign minister just declared that the United States of America is a laughing stock. Why do you hate our greatest ally, Alexander? This knee-jerk anti-Americanism is not a good look from a cabinet minister. We know that their legal system is no laughing stock — just ask David Hicks.
The decision to revoke Dr Haneef’s visa was in the Federal Court yesterday. Here’s an exchange reported by The Age:
Justice Spender said he, himself, had associated with persons involved in criminal activity. “I have defended them, charged with murder,” he said.
“Unfortunately, I wouldn’t pass the character test on your statement,” the judge told Roger Derrington, SC, representing the Immigration Minister.
“You’re not a non-citizen,” was the Government barrister’s reply.
Wow. Is it just me, or does it seem really dumb to tell a judge that he might well fail a character test if he wasn’t a citizen?
The High Court is currently hearing a challenge to the validity of certain undemocratic provisions of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 — those that prohibit sentenced prisoners from voting.
Part of the transcript of the hearing has been doing the rounds in legal circles since it appeared on the AustLII site. You will see why:
MR MERKEL: … I was going to say under section 93(8AA) the amending legislation defines “sentence of imprisonmentâ€?. That is at page 7. This was also a significant amendment because prior to this amendment there was a question about whether home detention or parole would be caught by the disqualification. So this amendment made it clear that you had to be in detention on a full-time basis. So that is in the extrinsic materials. So there was no question if someone on parole or on home detention would not be caught by the disqualification and that comes out as a result of that definition.
Can I take your Honours next to Part VIII of the Act starting at page 122 dealing with - - -
KIRBY J: So Paris Hilton would now be disqualified, but last week for a short time she would have been entitled to vote?
MR MERKEL: Yes, your Honour, and she would have been entitled if she were in Australia and an Australian citizen to be standing here unburdened by the five-year point at least.
KIRBY J: I just wanted you to know that I follow these things.
Gerard Henderson complains that most Australians believe David Hicks has been badly treated by the US and Australian governments. Those who are unhappy include “[Hicks’s] father, Terry Hicks, his Australian legal team, his American lawyer, Major Michael Mori, along with … many prominent lawyers, church leaders, former public servants, intellectuals and othersâ€?, “prominent conservative[s]â€? and at least 56 per cent of the general public.
Henderson stands alongside “Imre Salusinszky and a couple of columnists�, his comrades-in-arms in what he calls a battle in the “culture wars�. They are obviously running out of ammunition, if today’s column is anything to go by. The main strategy Henderson employs is to pretend that Hicks’s treatment is nothing out of the ordinary. Let’s take a look at a few examples.
Continue reading ‘Rule of law a casualty in Henderson’s culture war’
According to the ABC:
A Federal Government backbencher [Alby Schultz] has echoed the cries of mens’ rights groups in the wake of this week’s High Court ruling, which did not allow a man to recover child payment costs even though the children were proven to not be his.
That’s not what the High Court said at all. In fact, he was already entitled to his child payments under the statutory regime that governs overpayments to the Child Support Agency. According to Gummow, Kirby and Crennan JJ:
a husband is entitled under the family law regime in Australia to seek an order for the repayment of any moneys wrongly paid for child support, or child maintenance, in reliance on such representations [as to paternity].
So you can get back any child support you paid after the marriage broke up. What can’t you get? Damages for the emotional trauma caused by deceit within the marriage (even if it’s not discovered until after separation), or compensation for the time you took off work to be at the hospital while your wife was in labour.
Essentially, the Court said it would not interfere in the internal dynamics of a marriage — but once the marriage is dissolved, it’s a different matter. A reasonable distinction to draw, given the floodgates that would open if every transgression by a spouse was potentially actionable.
Alby Schultz’s claim that Mr Magill was “deemed to be the father and is forced to pay for [the children] because it might upset the mother” is totally at odds with the reality of the situation. Schultz should read the High Court’s judgment instead of parroting the views of so-called “men’s rights” groups. This issue is important but emotional, and it’s essential that the public policy discussion is based on the facts.
The High Court decision has been handed down.
By a 5-2 majority, the Court ruled that WorkChoices is validly based on the corporations power of the Constitution (Gleeson CJ, Gummow, Hayne, Heyden and Crennan JJ; Kirby J and Callinan J dissenting).
The Court’s media release is here, and the decision itself is here.
In her column on the career of prosecutor Margaret Cunneen, Miranda Devine agreed with her subject that when a guilty person goes unpunished, the system has failed, a sentiment that I defended against my occasional sparring partner, Peter Kemp. On Devine’s latest effort, though, I suspect Peter and I will be in agreement: it is a load of rubbish.
In Livermore v R [2006] NSWCCA 334, the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal quashed a rape conviction and sent it for retrial due to an atrocious closing address by counsel for the State. After Richard Ackland highlighted the decision last week, Devine obviously felt bound to defend the DPP, no matter how far she had to twist the judgment out of shape to make her point.
At issue is the way a prosecutor is expected to present the State’s case under our system of criminal law. Devine characterises it in these terms:
There is a longstanding legal tradition that prosecutors effectively operate with one hand tied behind their backs, dispassionately presenting the facts, while defence lawyers are free to use emotion and opinion and the power of their personalities to sway a jury.
It is more than just a “tradition”, which implies a quaint but irrelevant practice like the wearing of wigs and jabots. The requirement that the prosecution’s case be founded on facts rather than emotion and opinion is rather more essential — it ensures our justice system does not become a sanctioned lynching. Devine wants the DPP’s other hand untied, so that it is free to wave a pitchfork and egg on the townsfolk with emotion, opinion and the power of personality.
Skepticlawyer picks up on a column by Miranda Devine that advocates on behalf of Margaret Cunneen, who it seems has been repeatedly rejected by the NSW bar despite widely accepted talent and dedication to the profession. I am not familiar with Cunneen or her career, so I don’t propose to discuss the merits of that rejection, except to say that the application process in NSW and around the country should be far more transparent than it is. I am more interested in the extract from Cunneen’s 2005 Sir Ninian Stephen Lecture highlighted by Devine and skepticlawyer:
What must not be lost in the rhetoric of the criminal law and our zeal to afford every possible protection to accused persons is the fact that every time a guilty person is acquitted the law, in a sense, has failed the community it exists to serve, just to utter this unassailable proposition is almost a heresy…
This ought to be a commonsense proposition, but something about it makes lefties and defence counsel flip out. The brain-snap is epitomised by Dubya, apparently a lawyer, who commented in response to skepticlawyer’s post:
I fail to see how Margaret Cunneen could possibly argue that “a guilty person is acquitted”. It is a legal impossibility and one which any budding criminal lawyer should well understand.
Quite apart from the patronising tone (putting a senior prosecutor on par with a “budding” lawyer is incredibly rude) this position is simply wrong. A person must be presumed innocent of charges laid against them. Even a guilty person must be presumed innocent — this does not change their actual culpability, it just affects the power of the legal system to punish them for their crime. There is no “legal impossibility” involved.
[Hi, I’m Atticus. I’m a law student and intend to contribute an occasional post on law-related topics.]
In Paul Sheehan’s Monday column, his topic was the recent decision of Judge Nicholson to exclude a speed camera photo because its accuracy came into question. Although we do not yet have the benefit of the judge’s written reasons, Sheehan is certain that the decision is a travesty of justice and another example of unelected judges trampling the will of the people as expressed through parliament. But he’s got it exactly backwards. The problem seems to be that the judiciary is upholding the law, and the parliament’s sloppy legislation is at fault.
According to Sheehan, the case boiled down to this:
Continue reading ‘A loophole big enough for hoons to speed through’
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