Racial discrimination complaint against venerable barrister thrown out … Harvesting votes at the Queensland bar … QC offended by Soapy’s snub … Paying for a day in the life of Mr Wolf … Snoozing ex-judge found in Iran 

FOR a man who has dedicated countless fee-free hours to assisting the cause of Aboriginal Australians, it must have come as a bitter blow to Clive Evatt to be hauled before the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal to face a complaint of racial discrimination. 

The defamation case was brought by two solicitors Michael Edwards and Timothy Wardell, who claimed Trapman put a sign outside their office saying they were corrupt. 

Trapman said he felt “gutted” after Evatt offended him. 

However, Evatt insisted that he didn’t say the offending words, but if he did they would not amount to discrimination. 

Barrister Allison Hawkins was also in Evatt’s chambers at the time he is alleged to have made the beastly remark. 

Hawkins denied that Evatt said anything about not knowing what to do about “abos”. She also denied that she had said to Trapman, “Old Clive should not have said what he said”. 

There was also a delay of around eight months in Trapman making his complaint to the Anti-Discrimination Board. 

One of Evatt’s footsoldiers, Roger Rasmussen, also gave evidence that Trapman had thanked Clive and said, “I will try and find some money to pay you”.  

Rasmussen also said that later the complainant told him in the street, “Evatt is a racist. I’m going to put a sign up outside his office about it”. 

It appears that Trapman may have changed his mind about the settlement negotiated for him by Evatt and Rasmussen. 

In any event, the tribunal found that Evatt has “an excellent reputation” and it was unlikely he said what Trapman alleged.  

Case dismissed.  

Unlike the tiresome emails touting for votes that besieged NSW briefs, Mark Plunkett, from the Queensland bar, knows how to get members to vote early, and often. He turns on a generous spread with drinks that never stop flowing.  

The chamber’s common room at level five, Inns of Court in Brisbane on Thursday night (Nov. 5), was bursting at the seams as ruddy briefs wrapped themselves around plates of Noosa spanner crab crostini, Peking duck morsels with cucumber and shallots, Vietnamese rice paper rolls, twice cooked Asian pork belly and Mooloolaba prawn dumplings. 

All washed down with copious amounts of sparkling brut, Semillon sauvignon blanc, Shiraz cabinet and James Boag premium.  

Plunkett put on a similar gig last year and, once more, was voted onto the council. 

This year he’ll romp home, yet again – and the only email he sent was an invitation to a sumptuous happy hour or, in this case, a happy three hours.  

Why didn’t those nincompoops on the Neutrality ticked in Sydney think of that. 

To Van Diemen’s Land where I find a depressing article in The Mercurial from former Supremo, Pierre Slicer. 

The Slice was complaining about attorney general Soapy Brandis shifting control of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Legal Service across Bass Strait and into the hands of the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service. 

Maybe Soapy thinks there are no Aboriginals left in the Apple Isle, so what’s the point of having an ALS? 

However, according to the census, there are 20,000 people in Taswegia who identify as indigenous and the TALS has been functioning for 43 years. 

In June a delegation from the Tasmanian service was dispatched to see Soapy in Canberra, and it included the Vanilla Slice. 

He reports to readers of The Mercurial that the the whole experience was a dreadful disappointment.  

“We attended the office of the attorney general at the agreed time, but he did not appear. As one silk to another that was discourteous.” 

Is this some ancient protocol – about which we have been blissfully ignorant – a silk can’t turn down a meeting with another silk?

Anyway, is Soapy really a “QC”? We’ve wondered about this. He was made senior counsel on the say so of Daphnis de Jersey, because he was passed over by the Qld bar council. 

Once he was an SC he was easily able to upgrade to QC when crazed monarchist attorney general Jarrod Bleijie restored the gilded bauble. 

Maybe there was a mistake and the delegation from Tassie was in the wrong room. Slicer refers to meeting Brandis’ senior adviser, Marcus Priest, who “said little and did not acknowledge the existence of a problem”. 

The trouble is that Priest, who set the hares running on the Dyson Heydon apprehended bias furore, was at that time an adviser to opposition justice spokesmodel Mark Dreyfus (real-QC). 

It’s all quite odd. 

In 2006, judges on the Tas Supreme Court, in freezing Hobart, were peeved that the Slice kept them waiting while he attended to judicial duties in sun-kissed Samoa. 

I’m sure many citizens could only dream of spending “a day in the life of Charles Waterstreet”. 

In fact, the dream has become a reality to someone called Jason Soderblom, who bid $500 for this prize at the recent ACT Environmental Defenders Office fundraising auction.  

Lunch with Bob Brown, a book of cartoons and a holiday at the Paperbark Camp were also on offer, but what are they compared to spending a great slab time with barrister Charles (Mr Wolf) Waterstreet? 

According to a recent report in Sneakymag, Charles took a young female journalist, on one fateful evening, to a “suckatorium”, a sex shop and a brothel – filled with sad women and crying men.  

Some of the time the famous brief sat flicking through Tinder looking for young women who might like to join him in a threesome. 

According to the story, the lass ended up back at Charles’ gaff, where he took pills, farted and begged her to rub oil into his body. 

Jason could be in for a real treat.  

Reports from field agents in far flung Iran report a sighting of Sleeping Judge Dodd travelling with a group of Australian tourists. 

Many will remember Ian Dodd as the NSW Dizzo judge who snoozed intermitted through criminal trials. 

In 2008 the High Court ordered a retrial in the Cesan and Rivadavia drug conviction cases because of the judge’s snoozing, even while one of the accused was giving evidence. 

The sheer thrill of watching Judge Dodd sleep, kept everyone else in court fully awake. 

And there he was last month in the Islamic Republic of Iran, eating an enormous amount of food and snoozing on bus trips to Isfahan and Persepolis. 

Dodd remarked, when a group of alluring young Iranian women walked past in black garb, that Mrs Dodd would disapprove if he looked at them. 

He then retired to his room and knitted up the ravelled sleeve of care.