NSW bar election bumf flies thick and fast … Bruce McClintock claims Neutral ticket is breathtakingly hypocritical … Michelle Painter slaps down knitting club critic … Paul Menzies wants the return of civil juries … Jeffrey Phillips insists his ticket is not right wing … What to believe?
THE flow of NSW bar election fodder has not slowed.
There are some delicious new highlights, including:
Hugh Marshall, from Jack Shand chambers, who is a candidate for election, told colleagues in an email that the bar council needed to do more for common lawyers.
He wrote:
“In recent time, many of you have questioned what, if anything, Bar Council has done to try to arrest the continuation of this trend. If the commissioning of child care centres and the support of knitting clubs is advancing the cause of the Common Law Bar, I have clearly overlooked the impact of these improvements.”
Here’s Marshall’s beef …
Michelle Painter, chair of the women barristers forum and the bar knitting group, fired back to Marshall, asking if he gave any thought to whether the availability of places at a nearby child care centre “was something which was a genuine benefit to barristers”. That was not all …
“Let me turn to your sneering comment about the ‘support of knitting clubs’.” Why wasn’t his “obvious distaste” extended to other collegiate interest groups under the aegis of the bar association?
“Do you also sneer at the chess club. The book club? The annual tennis, golf and sailing tournaments …
The bar knitting group doesn’t divert resources, is organised by volunteers and meets after hours. We even welcome members from the common law bar. Rhetorically, what, precisely, is the problem?”
Nothing further was heard from Marshall.
Then there was Menzies’ laying out the Neutral faction’s achievements during 2015, while it had a majority on the bar council, including freezing practising certificate fees, submitting to the government that queen’s counsel should be reintroduced as well as reviving civil juries.
You can read more of Baby Ming here …
Bruce McClintock belled the cat with his sparky intervention, saying that the Neutrals were a bunch of hypocritical right-wingers who were up to no good, that the whole QC thing was an embarrassing farce and out of step with mainstream Australia, and to vote for anyone not on the Bennett – Hyde Page ticket.
Go Bruce …
It was left to Jeff Phillips, of all the Abbott-loving eccentrics, to say that Bennett and Hyde Page don’t have a right wing agenda. “Our goal is to put ideology to one side,” said one of the bar’s most ideological characters.
Here’s Phillips in full …
John Hyde Page also sent an email to members, in response to McClintock. He rather proved McClintock’s point by saying the same things as Jeffrey Phillips. Both messages are eerily similar, which makes you wonder who is pulling whose strings.
Also, for good measure, some interrogatories from Tony Slater …
It was great to see Miranda Devine come out in favour of Neutral ticket candidate Margaret Cunneen, cheering her campaign to “rescue the bar association from the forces of political correctness”.
In a normal world, support from Devine would be the kiss of death.
Cunneen was also the subject of supportive piece in The Australian on Thursday (Oct 22), alleging that ICAC botched a search warrant for her mobile phone.
Who on earth would have leaked that story?
Earlier bar election postures …
See also, Promises, promises