Remembrance Day 1975 … Why didn’t Gough go to the High Court instead of eating a steak? … Big field for Law Council of Australia council elections … Trouble locating a permanent CEO for the LCA … Soapy freezes out the Australian Law Reform Commission 

Aficionados of the Whitlam government’s sacking in 1975 should get hold of Jenny Hocking’s crisp little book, The Dismissal Dossier – Everything you were never meant to know about November 1975. 

It brings us up-to-date with the latest material that has been made available through the archives and new material on the record from Sir John Kerr, Malcolm Fraser and a bitter Reg (Toe-Cutter) Withers. 

Hocking’s purpose is to explode the popular, but fictional, view of the dismissal and to reveal more of the conspiracy between the pantomime figure of Kerr, Chief Justice Barwick, Sir Anthony Mason, Fraser and Buckingham Palace. 

Yes, Queeny was in on it, right up to her tiara, along with Prince Chazza who gave solicitous responses to Kerr, who was fretting about being sacked before he could do the sacking. 

Sydney solicitor Bruce Donald has for many years applied intense thought to the dismissal scenario. Here’s his current thinking:

If Gough had gone straight to the High Court at midday on November 11, 1975 instead of telling no one what had happened and returning to the Lodge to lunch alone, history might have been different. 

Had he quickly instructed his senate colleagues that he had been sacked and not to vote through supply, which they did in complete ignorance of the dismissal, and had urgently applied to the High Court for a declaration that the dismissal was unconstitutional, then at the very least there would have been an opportunity for a legal review of the Governor General’s decision.

Of course, Barwick always contended that the GG’s decision, being an exercise of prerogative or royal power was “non-justiciable”, but even deciding that proposition would have required the court to consider the matter.

Neither Barwick nor Mason, having given private advice to the GG, could have  sat on the case, leaving Stephen and Gibbs, with McTiernan, Jacobs and Murphy to decide, the last three being Labor appointees, two of them Labor attorneys general. 

I believe whatever that legal review may have decided, the public having a level of respect for the High Court, would have been more accepting knowing a review had occurred. 

If you think local, state and federal politics is a nest of swines, nothing can prepare you for the brutality of the politics of the Law Council of Australia. 

The executive of the peak lawyer body is up for election on Saturday week (Nov. 28). 

• Jennifer Batrouney QC (Vic Bar)
• Penny Cheong (Law Soc NT)
• Caroline Counsel (Law Institute of Vic)
• John Dobson (Law Society NSW)
• Michael Fitzgerald (Qld Law Society)
• Konrad de Kerloy (Law Soc WA)
• Arthur Moses SC (NSW Bar). 

It looks like some old cast-offs from various law councils are wanting to continue to save the world and strut their stuff. 

The tensions between the bars and the conveyancers are ongoing and the NSW law society, representing 42 percent of the nation’s solicitors, feels gypped that it only has the same vote as small fry like the NT law society. 

“Unrepresentative swill,” is the complaint coming from Phillip Street. 

The real problem is finding a suitable full-time CEO for the national body. Mike Brett Young from Victoria is acting in the position. Martin Hagan formerly executive director of the Taswegian law society had the task for a while, as did Peter Webb, a NSW public servant and backroom boy, Prof. Sally Walker served for a year and resigned suddenly saying there should be a review of the structure of the LCA. 

Bill Grant also was in the saddle for a few years and then went to run NSW Legal Aid and Michael Lavarch, former commonwealth attorney general, was secretary general between 2001 and 2004. 

Few seem to have been terribly thrilled or happy going the gig. There was an attempt to lure Michael Tidball, the current CEO of the NSW Law Society, to Canberra – but he wouldn’t be tempted. 

Stuart Clark jumped the queue to get to the top of the greasy pole, zipping around the country lobbing constituent members saying he will get the place buzzing, but damned if he’s going to wait five years in a queue as part of the traditional ladder climbing arrangements. 

Attorney General Soapy (Bookshelves) Brandis last month attended the 40th anniversary party for the Australian Law Reform Commission and made cooing noises about what an important role it played in “independently researching, consulting on and evaluating Australia’s laws and legal framework”.  

Days earlier, he had reappointed Prof. Rosalind Croucher as president of the commission, for a three year term. 

However, everyone was hoping and expecting Soapy to give the ALRC a new reference, since he hasn’t given the commission a new project to work on since May 2014. 

The most recent reference was the very peculiar Freedoms inquiry, which requires the commission to trawl through the entire body of Commonwealth legislation and “identify provisions that unreasonably encroach upon traditional rights, freedoms and privileges”. 

An interim freedoms and encroachments report was delivered in August and the final instalment will be completed next month.  

Thereafter, commissioners and staff will be polishing their fingernails and admiring the view from level 40 of the MLC tower in Martin Place. 

It’s to be hoped that Soapy doesn’t have his nose out of joint because the law reform commission was an initiative of Lionel Murphy, who appointed Michael Kirby as it’s first president. 

One of the most recent final reports published was in June 2013, dealing with remedies for serious invasions of privacy in the digital era, a reference that was given by Labor AG Mark Dreyfus. 

This was just one of a number of privacy reports, including Australian Privacy Law and Practice, which included recommendations for a cause of action for serious invasions of privacy. 

Blow me down, if a NSW upper house committee is not now doing exactly the same thing, with an inquiry into remedies for serious invasions of privacy in NSW. 

Looks like a make-work scheme for under-employed members of the Legislative Council.