Another sexually harassing judge under secret scrutiny … Death of Robin Speed – what now for the Law of Rulers Institute? … Averting the Republic of Gilead – the Law Reform Commission steps up … Theodora reports
Michael Boylan, the state’s judicial conduct bloodhound, has launched a preliminary investigation and ordered that everyone keep schtumm – in the interests of open justice. `
The name of the alleged harasser has been swirling around the local bar ‘n grill. Thankfully, it is not a Supremo who has blotted the escutcheon of the Palais de Justice.
People are pointing fingers further down the chain of command – at the District Court.
In January, Boylan told the local media that his investigation into the complaint was at a preliminary stage and it would be “inappropriate to say anything further about it now”.
District Court judge Michael Evans piped up and announced that the court takes these sorts of complaints “very seriously”. Apparently the magic elixir of intoxicants combined with a Christmas party is at the heart of the problem.
Last year Magistrate Simon Milazzo was defenestrated after a finding by a judicial conduct panel.
There were accounts of touching and comments about a cleaner’s breasts.
After he had been suspended Milazzo was diagnosed with autism – but the panel thought this did not excuse his conduct.
Last February, The Age revealed that when he was a Victorian Supreme Court judge, Peter Vickery had subjected two young women, 40 years his junior, to unwelcome sexual advances – including groping a thigh, planting a kiss on lips and purple poems.
One associate was invited by the judge to have a quiet little drink – the invitation accompanied by a poem:
“If I am not made for you in this world / I will find you in another
Look up to the vast night sky / Starlight from Alpha Centauri journeys to Earth.
A thing of great beauty, glittering of you / Nunc scio quit sit amor.”
An investigation was done by Sydney barrister Kate Eastman who found there was a serious transgression of professional boundaries and a significant power imbalance.
Vickery was involved in the redesign of judges’ robes for the Supreme Court and had been rewriting verses of the national anthem in an attempt to incorporate Indigenous heritage into the dirge.
And we shouldn’t forget Dicey …
RIP Rob Roy Speed, aka Robin Roy Speed, the big bwana at Speed and Stracey – taxation gurus to the mega rich, lawyers to the strife ridden Dicey Heydon and, above all founding father of the mighty Law of Rulers Institute.
The institute is dedicated to propagating neanderthal notions. It’s vice president, former newspaper hack Chris (The Tamil) Merritt, has been an obsessive campaigner against anti-corruption commissions and has advocated the use of involuntary confessions in terrorism-related cases and prison for those who have been acquitted by the courts.
More recently, for the the Rulers Institute he published a paper, a.k.a. a diatribe, advocating a NO vote for The Voice and the constitutional amendment.
The Voice, according to the Tamil, introduces racial preference into the affairs of the nation, is anti-egalitarianism and destructive of the ideals of liberal democracy “that emerged in revolutionary America and France”.
During the marriage equality campaign Robin Speed unsuccessfully tried to derail the Law Society’s support for the YES vote at the plebiscite.
What happens now that Rob Roy has gone? Will The Tamil ascend to the throne of this enlightened institute?
Godly outfits will be squawking following release by the Australian Law Reform Commission of a consultation paper on discrimination in religious educational institutions.
The ALRC has pulled the rug from under the pre-copernican religious lobby groups who have been badgering the government for the right to discriminate against people they don’t like.
The first stage thoughts from the ALRC on the reference from Mark Dreyfus late last year would permit religious schools to give preference to staff “where the teaching, observance, or practice of religion is a part of their role” and not otherwise discriminatory.
Otherwise, the commission puts forward a couple of general propositions:
What would the Rob Roy institute think of that?
Remember those heady days when Clapper Morrison pulled the latest version of his Religious Discrimination Bill from the senate, in the expectation that more anti-discriminatory wokeness would infect his god-bothering agenda.
In February 2022, the House of Reps, with Labor and the cross-bench, had voted to remove the exceptions found in section 38(3) of the Sex Discrimination Act. The religious outfits were incandescent and Morrison was worried that the same provision would bite the dust in the Senate.
The Coalition wanted the Religious Discrimination Bill passed and then later have the ALRC work out.
The Very Revd. Christian Porter extended the ALRC’s reporting deadline on a reference to study the “framework of religious exemptions under anti-discrimination legislation”, and for it to be delivered after the Religious Discrimination Bill was passed.
Weird, is the least of it.
Dreyfus put the lid on that inquiry in November 2022 and set out terms of reference for a new inquiry and report in line with Labor’s anti-discrimination policy.
It’s been a long and winding road to scrap Morrison’s vision of a civil society dominated by religious zealots.