Inflated terrace decorations … Here comes “Mandy Jane” … Council of the Order of Australia gets Stoned … Law ‘n’ order at the Top End … Post-Covid life at Vic’s Bar ‘n’ Grill … Theodora does the rounds
Taco’s neighbours in Sydney’s chi-chi Paddington thought all their Christmases had come at once as they peered into the presidential palace to find not only a huge inflated plastic Santa fluttering on his terrace, but an equally enormous plastic snowman.
The entire street is celebrating the deflation of these blow-up creatures and their limpid frames consigned to Taco’s attic, where they’ll stay with a whole lot of unemployed elves – until next December.
The wait will be unendurable.
Attorney General Pantsman Porter gushed with glee as he welcomed the appointment of unelected senator Amanda Stoker as the assistant AG.
Stoker is shrill, annoying and from the religious far-right. Anti-abortion, anti-euthanasia, anti-section 18C, anti-anything reasonable, a scare-monger about renewable energy, and iffy about LGBTI people.
She’s been sent to us straight from god.
She is also prone to misjudgment, such as alluding to the George Floyd tragedy when describing Annastacia Palaszczuk’s border restrictions as a “knee on the throat” of business.
Needless to say, she’s apoplectic about the majority High Court decision in Love and Thoms, telling the Samuel Griffith Society (aka the Klu Klux Klan’s industrial relations branch) that reliable conservatives should filter prospective High Court appointments, rather in the fashion of the Federalist Society in the US.
After all, the Constitution should be interpreted “as it is written”.
She also used a fake identity, called “Mandy Jane”, to comment on and support her Facebook posts, as though Mandy Jane was an anonymous third person.
In the Margaret Court mould she wears her rabid Christian conservatism on her throat.
The Pantsman said that “specific responsibilities for the assistant minister will be settled over coming weeks …”
She likely to be handed management of the festering and dud Religious Freedom Bill, a mish-mash concoction that seeks to give religious organisations priority not to employ LGBTI people, and in the process to be free to say hurtful things about them.
Porter couldn’t get this legislation to work, and it’s unlikely that someone with Stoker’s insensitivity can do any better.
Shane Stone “QC”, the man in charge of Australia’s gongs committee, has a colourful past.
In view of this week’s honours list, it’s timely to be reminded of his prior form.
There is the famous Bob Liddle affair at the time Shane was president of the Northern Territory Country Liberal Party and practising law in Darwin and Alice Springs. That was 1989.
Liddle is an Aboriginal Australian, a mining consultant, and seeking CLP preselection for the Territory’s only seat in the House Representatives.
At the time, Stone was acting for Liddle in matrimonial proceedings and wanted the party’s preselectors to be aware of the details of his marriage problems. Liddle refused to give Stone permission to reveal these confidential and privileged details.
Liddle was dumped as the CLP’s candidate for the federal seat and complained about Stone’s conduct to the NT Law Society.
The Ethics Committee slapped him with findings of unprofessional conduct and professional misconduct, saying that he had put Liddle “under undue and unfair pressure” and had failed “to give undivided fidelity to his client’s interests”.
The committee recommended Stone be lashed with a $1,000 fine.
On appeal Justice Brian Martin of the NT Supremes quashed the finding of professional misconduct.
As Buffalo Bruce reported at the time:
“Right-thinking readers must be relieved to know that it is possible to take a confidential file on a client’s matrimonial affairs into a political meeting and leave it lying around, for a political purpose – and not be found guilty of professional misconduct.”
Shortly after, Shane became the NT’s attorney general. He had to stand aside on two occasions in the wake of further conduct complaints.
Like spume, he kept floating to the top – collecting awards, decorations and Liberal Party appointed jobs. In October 1997 he anointed himself “Queen’s Counsel”. In 1999 he became federal president of the Liberal Party and more recently he’s held the job of Coordinator General of the National Drought and North Queensland Flood Response Recovery Agency, with a total renumeration for 2019-2020 of $617,631.
Darwin barrister Jon Tippett likened Stone’s self-appointment as one of Her Maj’s Counsel to an award of the Distinguished Flying Cross to someone who’d never been up in an aeroplane.
The President of the Northern Territory Bar Association, Colin McDonald QC, so infuriated fellow barristers by writing a letter congratulating Stone, that he was obliged to resign his post.
Hugh Burton Bradley was awarded an AM in this year’s Australian Day honours.
He was Stone’s appointment in 1998 as chief magistrate of the territory following the resignation of Ian Gray, who fled the Top End after Stone & Co introduced mandatory sentencing, which had an adverse effect on the indigenous population.
To make sure everyone was on team with mandatory sentencing Stoney was playing around with the idea of fixed term contracts for magistrates. Curiously, Bradley was appointed to hold office as Chief Madge till age 65, but his pay and perks were to reviewed after two years.
The North Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service took exception to this and launched a challenge in the NT Supremes to the validity of Bradley’s appointment, arguing that the independence of the position had been compromised.
The case was dismissed by Justice Howard Olney. It went on appeal to foreign judges (Priestley from NSW, Doyle from SA and Brooking from Victoria) who unanimously found for NAALAS.
It was sent back to Olney who cross-vested it to Mark Weinberg in the Federal Court. Weinberg found the appointment did not breach the Magistrates Act, but in the process said the Act, “may be thought to offend fundamental principles and to be seriously deficient in failing to secure judicial independence”.
In relation to attorney general Stone, the judge added:
“The insensitivity of the attorney general of the Northern Territory, and some of his advisers, towards the need to secure judicial independence reflects little credit upon those individuals.”
Ultimately, NAALAS’s case wound up in the High Court, where it was downed seven:nil.
Blind Freddy, but not the saloon, could see the arrangement for a pay review was open to the perception that should the new Chief Madge perform to the satisfaction of the government, he would be eligible for increased benefits.
We assume Stone stood aside when the Council of the Order of Australia considered the application for a gong on behalf of Bradley.
Barristers at Vic’s Bar ‘n’ Grill should do away with Barristers Chambers Ltd and the bar council itself, according to a letter in last months issue of Quad-Rant, the organ for uber-right crusties.
It was written by Vic barrister, academic and tribunal-member, Damien Cremean.
Damo said that because of Covid the old model of rented chambers was on the way out. At last count there had been about 1,400 rent relief applications to BCL and with trials being conducted from bedrooms it may mean there is no need for chambers.
BCL only has one asset – barristers’ rentals. “Running a largish concern with a single asset is inherently risky,” he advised.
Barristers should start buying rooms – “thereby having something to sell at the end of their working lives”.
Damo diagnosed the trouble with the bar is that “it has started speaking out on divisive social issues”.
“The bar has also taken on modern managerialist terminology – frequent references to ‘diversity’, ‘harassment’ and the like abound.
Much of this is quite foreign to the notion of being a barrister but those in the administration – growing in size and cost and influence over the years – push on regardless. The bar has become a vehicle for advancing ‘activist’ views.”
Cremean likes the idea of a new body, “to speak for barristers and their interests, thus sweeping away the old completely”.
Actually, he’s got it the wrong way around. The new has already been swept away by the old, and we’ll find it unlikely that the current council at Vic’s Bar ‘n’ Grill will let foreign ideas like “diversity … harassment” pass their lips.
Under Cremean’s vision of the future, there would be greater separation between the bar and the judiciary, putting an end to the cosy pre-Covid daily lunch time feasting on BCL premises at the Pig & Whistle, or whatever it is called.