David Rofe QC … A complex life … Mother in sharkskin … Cases and right wing causes … Bar room insults … Lofty correspondence … Decay and despair
His final years were beset with a combination of dementia and alcoholism – having Kathy Jackson and Michael Lawyer looking after you would be enough to drive anyone to drink.
Sources report that among various misadventures Rofe was barred from the Bar ‘n Grill’s bar. The barman declared the barrister was drunk and obnoxious and that if he did come back he would not be served.
This was some achievement because not even thirsty and boorish Kevin Murray managed to get himself barred.
In his day Rofe was regarded as a top draw barrister, although in landmark cases success seemed to elude him. He led the charge for the Commonwealth in the Greek conspiracy case where originally 181 people, mainly of Greek origin, were charged with social security fraud.
Medical practitioners allegedly assisted members of the Greek community to obtain invalid pensions fraudulently, in return for payment.
According to a report by the Australian Institute of Criminology the prosecution case was a disaster – marred by lack of planning and questionable propriety. Chief Inspector Don Thomas, the chief copper in charge of the investigation, was in cahoots with a co-conspirator, Mr Nakis, who went over to the prosecution in exchange for immunity and money, but this was not initially revealed to the prosecution lawyers.
Apart from that, the prosecution at an early stage was not able to supply particulars of the charges to the defence.
The AIC report said:
“Of 181 persons initially charged with conspiracy to defraud the Commonwealth, four were convicted on that charge. Three defendants (all patients) pleaded guilty to the charge against them. All were placed on good behaviour bonds. One defendant, a doctor, was tried and convicted on a conspiracy charge and sentenced to a term of imprisonment. He appealed successfully, but was tried and convicted a second time.
A further thirty-three alleged conspirators were convicted on substantive charges of imposition. These charges involved minor irregularities, some bordering on the trivial. Eight were fined, and the remainder placed on good behaviour bonds.”
All up, these abortive legal proceedings cost the Commonwealth $10 million.
In more recent memory Rofe unsuccessfully sought to get barrister Robert Cameron off the hook over his ballooning tax debts. Ultimately, Cameron, a former legislative draftsman in the Office of Parliamentary Counsel, was struck off the jam roll.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported in April 2009:
“In November last year, on advice from his senior counsel, David Rofe QC, Mr Cameron admitted to the Administrative Decisions Tribunal he had been guilty of professional misconduct. To his ‘eternal regret’, especially as a former drafter of legislation, Mr Cameron told the tribunal he had totally misread the July 2001 amendment to the Legal Profession Act.”
Cameron added:
“I was not thinking clearly at the time [2001] and have to concede that I was emotionally troubled about the whole situation, particularly the way in which the media was treating me, my family and the NSW bar.”
One of the less pleasant moments picked-up on the police intercepts of Morgan Ryan’s conversations with High Court judge Lionel Murphy was their discussion of Rofe attending a “gay bar” and the prospect of him being compromised there.
Justinian rang Rofe after that morsel emerged in The Age tapes and he told us to go ahead and publish it.
Of course, he was by then acting for solicitor Danny Sankey in his private prosecution of Gough Whitlam, Rex (The Strangler) Connor, Jim Cairns and Lionel Murphy over their involvement in the “loans affair”.
It was a mad action, shifting between the Queanbeyan magistrates court and the High Court.
Sankey subpoenaed executive council documents which the Fraser government was unwilling to produce, arguing they were subject to crown privilege. The government’s argument was upheld by magistrate Darcy Leo, but overturned by the High Court which, in the process, narrowed the claim of crown privilege by the Commonwealth.
The High Court also ruled that the charge of contravening the Commonwealth-State financial agreement was bad in law.
The case duly fizzled, but not before it indirectly claimed the scalp of Bob Ellicott, the attorney general under Fraser, who disagreed with the government’s decision not to pay the costs of all the parties in Sankey v Whitlam.
He later came back as Minister for Home Affairs and the Australian Capital Territory and later Minister for the Environment.
Rofe was on his way to a busy practise specialising in acting for and advising various right wing identities and causes, including Pauline Hanson.
In 2011, Justinian reported that Rofe sold his room on 12 Selborne/Wentworth for close to $900,000 and then moved into 15 Wardell, which he acquired for $0 – made possible because of a mass exodus from those chambers where rooms were then being offered for “free” with a 10 year lease.
We discover in our archive from 2009 a report that David Rofe, alderman of Woollahra Council and later mayor, had prepared a report critical of law shop Abbott Tout – accusing the firm of “disappointing legal advice”.
Rofe produced a War & Peace sized report on the council fouling a proposed development of a car park and library at Double Bay.
The mismanagement allowed the builders to rescinding their contract, leaving the council out of pocket to the tune of $1.6 million by way of a deposit returned to the developers; $683,000 of interest on the deposit; $5.5 million for the purchase price of the land; and $74,000 to lawyers and consultants.
Some say that the snafu will cost ratepayers about $18 million.
Alderman Rofe’s report was eight months late, but he still managed to give Abbott Tout a serve, saying that his task force “feels that the legal advices which council received were, to say the least, disappointing, having regard to the importance of the issues involved”.
To rub it in a bit further the Rofe report urged Woollahra Council to secure expert legal and commercial advice when it is next involved in a property deal.
In 2005, Rofe was complaining to the bar president Ian (Hormones) Harrison about the security scanning at the NSW Supreme Court.
He fired off a missive to Hormones, saying:
“There must surely be a limit imposed where the risk of terrorist or other attacks made by accredited practitioners is ‘far fetched and fanciful’ and the burden of non-exemption so heavy for those of us who are lucky enough to get a brief, so as to justify an exemption.”
Hormones shot back:
“Considerable representations were made to the court and a satisfactory compromise was ultimately reached. This did not include exemption for barristers.
As the result of much hard work on behalf of this association I am satisfied that a workable solution has now been achieved.”
Rofe wrote again, seeking expanded answers:
“In what way is it suggested that the ‘satisfactory compromise’ requires barristers to go through the ‘screening process’?
You state that ‘as the result of much hard work on behalf of this association’ you are satisfied that a ‘workable solution has now been achieved’.
Do kindly tell me what this ‘workable solution’ is which apparently still requires barristers to be subjected to screening?
I would have thought that a small demonstration of the indignity cast upon us would have been to refuse for 15 minutes or so to accept the screening on 31 January 2005.
I wish you a very Happy New Year.”
Rofe died a confirmed bachelor. He came from a well-to-do Sydney eastern suburbs family, which partly explains his estate of $30 million – $3 million of which goes to Kathy Jackson which stands a good change of ending up with her former employer, the Health Services Union.
This from the SMH social pages of 1938, dealing with an overseas trip by David’s sister and mother:
MANY HOSTS AND HOSTESSES
A family party, including Miss Jean Rofe, her mother, Mrs. Wyndham Rofe, and her grandfather, Mr A.B. Shand, also Mrs Jack Shand, of Killara, will leave in the Orontes on March 9 for England. Their friends are arranging some farewell parties before they go, one of the first will be at the home of Mr, and Mrs. Dudley Westgarth on March 5, when there will be eight hosts and eight hostesses, including Misses Binkle Bowker, Ruth Julius, Jean Mackay, Joy Minnett. Joan and Pamela Roberts, Betty Winn and Mollie Westgarth. The hosts will be Messrs Dick and Jack Buzacott, Basil Diethelm, Bill Fesq, Reg Lamb, Tony Rabett, Dick Staflord, and Peter Minnett.
A.B. Shand seems to have been Rofe’s grandfather, at least according to the Wagga Advertiser of 1938:
PERSONAL
Mr A.B. Shand KC is due back in Sydney on Thursday by the Oronsay, after a visit to the United Kingdom. Mr Shand was accompanied by his daughter, Mrs Wyndham Rofe, his granddaughter, Miss J. Rofe, and his daughter-in-law, Mrs. John Shand. Another of Mr. Shand’s daughters, Mrs. Laneford Gibson, is returning from Colombo, where she recently travelled to meet her relatives.
The Herald also managed to snap David’s Mum as she departed on the P&O steamer and provided the following caption:
“Mrs Wyndham Rofe and her daughter Miss Jean Rofe, with Mr A.B. Shand KC, and sister-in-law, Mrs John Shand, left for England yesterday by the Orontes. Yesterday morning Mrs Rofe was wearing a white sharkskin frock with a jacket printed in blue and white, and a blue tam. Miss Rofe’s white sharkskin frock was worn with an unusual white ‘nurse’s cap’.”
You’d have to feel for poor little David.