NT Supreme Court hands down judgment in which the president of the NT bar association is accused of sanctioning false statements to a commission of inquiry … Politics Darwin style … Tactics backfire badly in an attempt to ignore political inquiry into former government
THERE are huge legal and political dramas unfolding in Darwin. The president of the top end bar ‘n’ grill association, Alistair Wyvill SC, and the leader of the ALP in parliament, Delia Lawrie, have been skewered by Justice Stephen Southwood in an April 1 NT Supremes’ judgment.
Lawrie was deputy chief minister in the previous NT Labor government. Prior to the election in 2012 she sought to arrange a crown lease for the benefit of Unions NT over property in Darwin known as the Stella Maris site.
Even though the lease was not ultimately granted to Unions NT the process was a red rag to the incoming Country Liberal government who, on taking office, appointed former Australian Crime Commissioner and deputy head of the AFR, John Lawler, to head-up an inquiry into “the purported decision” to grant the lease to the union movement.
In an email discovered as part of the proceedings Wyvill, who acted pro bono for Lawrie at the inquiry, referred to Lawler as, “an under-qualified southerner who should have never been appointed to run any Territory inquiry”.
In 2014 Lawler reported that Lawrie directed her office to brief Unions NT in preference to community groups who had also expressed an interest in the site; she had acted with bias; she hid the unions’ proposal from her department; and her involvement in the process was not proper.
Lawler also recommended that the Legislative Assembly consider whether there had been a breach of the members’ code of conduct and ethical standards.
Lawrie rashly then brought judicial review proceedings, claiming that Commissioner Lawler’s report should be quashed because he failed to observe procedural fairness in that he had not given Lawrie an opportunity to be further heard before making his final findings.
Southwood found that Lawrie, along with her legal team led by Wyvill, had created a strategy to undermine the inquiry and had thereby waived her right to procedural fairness. In any event, the judge said the commissioner had not denied Lawrie procedural fairness.
Southwood accepted that once it was realised that Lawler was unlikely to accept the former minister’s explanations for the proposed crown lease to the unions, then there was a change of tactics and a decision, in Wyvill’s words, to “ignore, disengage and discredit” the commission of inquiry. The judge said:
“They intentionally and knowingly abandoned any further participation in the inquiry by engaging in conduct inconsistent with a right to be further heard by Mr Lawler. Instead of further participating in the inquiry, Ms Lawrie chose a political course of action.”
This was done so as to enhance a claim that the inquiry lacked procedural fairness.
One of the strategies was the claim, in a letter to the commissioner, that Lawrie and another minister subject to the investigation, Gerry McCarthy, had exhausted the pro bono legal services of Wyvill and instructing solicitor Cathy Spurr, a former president of the NT Labor Party – and so would no longer be able to participate in the inquiry.
Southwood said this was “deliberately and knowingly false”.
“The making of the false statements was counselled by Mr Wyvill; and Ms Spurr sent the letter after obtaining instructions from Ms Lawrie. Ms Lawrie knew the statements were false. Ms Lawrie had not exhausted her ability to access pro bono advice from Mr Wyvill and Ms Spurr …
After this letter was sent to Mr Lawler, Mr Wyvill, and to a lesser degree Ms Spurr, continued to provide ongoing pro bono legal assistance, advice and representation to Ms Lawrie.”
The letter from Spurr added that her client remained “vitally interested in the outcome of the enquiry”. Southward said that this is also “disingenuous and misleading”.
“It is a device which has been used to deflect any suggestion that Ms Lawrie has abandoned the inquiry. It is a device which was capable of being used to suggest that Mr Lawler failed to accord Ms Lawrie procedural fairness.”
The judge added that Spurr’s letter does not ask Lawler to notify Lawrie and her lawyers in advance if he is going to make any adverse findings.
The case is a disaster for the opposition leader, with NT chief minister Adam Giles quick to jump on it with a self-serving statement.
It is not as though the chief minister’s government is free of dodgy deals. After all, it promoted and defended a magistrate who was member of the CLP, who handed out how-to-vote cards for the party and sat as a director of the party’s slush fund – while a servicing NT judicial officer.
Magistrate Peter Maley resigned from the bench after the NT Crocodile Courier sent him a series of questions about trying to arrange a donation for the CLP in exchange for a client having access to confidential government files.
After Southwood’s judgment the NT Law Society president, Tass Liveris, issued a statement that took blandness to new heights:
“Upholding the standards of the legal profession is a responsibility that the Law Society Northern Territory takes very seriously.”
As the regulator of the legal profession in the Northern Territory, the society is charged with investigating issues of professional conduct under the Legal Profession Act and is not permitted to comment on specific cases.”
Wyvill has a distinguished legal pedigree. His father, L.F. Wyvill QC, a notable figure at the Queensland bar, was a commissioner on the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.
We asked Alistair Wyvill for a comment, but he was about to board a plane to Adelaide and said would get back to us later.
Grumblings from the NT bar ‘n’ grill are getting louder by the minute.