Groomed for success … Ticket remains in suspension after failed Full Court appeal … More collateral injuries from the Neill-Fraser case … Notebooks shredded in Slicer contempt scare … Supreme Court judges sit on top of each other  

He joins another former Tasmanian Liberal MP Andrew Nicolić (aka Андрија Николић) as a full-time senior member on the bench of the administrative appeals tribunal. 

Nicolić got his soft landing after voters expressed their distaste for him at the 2016 federal election, whereas Groom didn’t recontest the March 2018 state election having had enough excitements in politics. 

Field Marshal Nicolić brought the quiet dignity, for which he is famous, to his quasi-judicial job by promptly trumpeting Liberal Party messages on Facebook. 

Matthew Groom keeps Tasmania’s “family first” flame brightly burning, being the son of Ray Groom, a former federal MP and state premier. Will Hodgman’s father, Michael, took Ray Groom’s state seat of Denison when the former premier retired from politics in 2001. 

Matthew’s mum, Gillian, also moved from occupational therapy to law in 2013 and five of his six siblings are law graduates. 

Raymond blazed an AAT trail for his son, taking up a 10-year AAT appointment in 2004 as a part-time deputy president. He was the sole assessor of claims under the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal Children Act 2006 (Tas), plus he assessed claims by others who had suffered abuse in State care. 

What goes round, keeps going round. 

He resigned from the government in September 2017 because he wanted to spend more time with his family. Ten months later he has saddled up at the AAT. 

Etter was the inaugural CEO of the Tasmanian Integrity Commissioner, but resigned after 18 months in the post, alleging she was bullied. The state settled her claim for around $200,000 in 2014. 

The same year she ran unsuccessfully as a Palmer United candidate in Denison. She had also been the solicitor for Susan Neill-Fraser in her bid to open a retrial for her conviction for the murder of Bob Chappell who disappeared off the side of their yacht, Four Winds.  

The current stand-off concerns her refusal to supply documents to Emily Warner, a Legal Profession Board investigator, who had been appointed to inquire into complaints about Etter’s handling of a coronial inquest into the death of Rita Greer. 

It appears that Rita had died of stab wounds 2007 which the coroner said were self-inflicted. Greer’s daughter, Pauline, engaged Etter to argue for the reopening of the coronial inquiry on the basis that her mother had not committed suicide. 

The compliant against the lawyer had been made by Greer’s son, Robert. The coroner Olivia McTaggart also made complaints about Etter in her report. 

Etter said, among other things, that it was a breach of privilege to give her Greer file to the investigator. 

Late last year Justice Greg Geason declined to stay the suspension and directed that the documents be handed over.

The Full Court has now upheld Geason’s reasons and findings that the Legal Profession Act abrogates client confidentiality and claims of privilege where a lawyer is subject to an investigation. In any event, the reasons advanced by Ms Etter lacked merit. 

Justice Stephen Estcourt said that the duration of the suspension is “entirely within the control of the practitioner”. 

By now, this has turned into a costly affair for Barbara Etter. We are told that she had put away her shingle, so presumably the suspension of her ticket is neither here nor there. 

The three women are members of the Sue Neill-Fraser campaign committee. Ms Keefe, who had been in jail with Neill-Fraser, has pleaded not guilty to charges of perverting the course of justice and corrupting a witness. 

The police allege Keefe provided them with false information in the expectation that another person would give false evidence for Neill-Fraser. 

At the bail hearing members of the campaign committee were taking notes when Slicer told a court officer that this “should have been a closed court”. 

He then said the three women could be up for contempt of court. He indicated to the terrified trio that he could have them straight down in the lift, into a van and off to prison. 

He instructed the court officer to go and collect the notebooks. Slicer promptly ripped out the offending pages and tore them into shreds before handing them back to the stunned members of the gallery. 

He warned them not to go to Karen Keefe’s address, not to have any contact with her and not to mention anything that happened in the court in connection with the case. 

Jeffrey Thompson, a former solicitor for Neill-Fraser, has also been charged with conspiring to pervert the court of justice in relation to reopening the case. 

Last month, Stephen Gleeson got 12 months porridge for giving false evidence to support the retrial of Neill-Fraser. 

Section 37A of the Justices Act 1959 (Tas) says that an account of bail proceedings should not be published – but how did the judge know the three note-takers proposed to publish anything? 

He submitted that the structure of the six-judge Supreme Court could lead to a sort of in-house protection racket. 

“All I am doing by this is asking the court to examine itself,” Ellis submitted, according to a report in The Daily Rupert. 

“The structure of the Court of Criminal Appeal in Tasmania is not one where there is a separation between the sentencing judge and the appeal judge,” Ellis said. 

This could lead to the possible of judges being “prone to group think” and “protecting each other’s judgments”.  

He came up with figures from Austlii which showed a greater proportion of appeals were allowed in NSW and Victoria than in Tasmania. 

The crown prosecutor said these statistics needed “proper analysis”.