Attorney General Porter supports two contradictory notions … Free speech to attack judges personally, but the Law Council shouldn’t criticise the Family Court CJ over the Three Wigs Willy affair … News Corpse hacks do their stuff … Department of Cant and Hypocrisy 

Chris (The Tamil) Merritt in The Australian got quotes from Porter to prop-up Dyson Heydon’s latest long-winded outburst, this time in support of the Yarra Three – the politicians who attacked the Victorian Court of Appeal over terrorism sentencing. 

“Attorney General Christian Porter has endorsed a devastating critique by a former High Court judge of last year’s threat by the Victorian Court of Appeal to have three government ministers charged with contempt for criticising soft sentences in that state … 

Mr Porter said Mr Heydon’s remarks had highlighted the fact no part of the democratic system was immune from criticism.” 

In a paper to the right wing British “think tank” the Policy Exchange, Dyse posed the “Yarra Three” instance in a most benign manner. It was, apparently, just a disagreement between judges and politicians on sentencing terrorists. 

The attorney general went along with this version of events. 

In truth, it was more than that, with ministers Hunt, Tudge & Sukkar complaining that the court is a “forum for ideological experiments”, that the judges were “hard left activists … divorced from reality”. 

The comments were made before the Court of Appeal had delivered its sentencing judgment. 

It was left to Justice Robert Beech-Jones from the Judicial Conference of Australia to point out that there is a difference between criticising judicial decisions and reasoning and sledging judges personally. 

Beech-Jones said none of the people quoted in The Tamil’s article, including Heydon, “squarely confront the fact that the ministers’ statements were not a commentary on court decisions, but instead were co-ordinated personal abuse by ministers of the Commonwealth directed at three judges who had heard but not yet decided an appeal which directly involved the Commonwealth”.  

Blow me down – two days later the Rt Rev Porter was ticking off the Law Council of Australia for criticising “Chief Justice” John Pascoe after he elevated Three Wigs Willy Alstergren CJ of the Circus Court to run the appeal division of the Family Court. 

The Law Council wrote to Pascoe to complain that it didn’t look good and gave rise to the appearance of bias for the Chief Justice from the circus court to be allocating appeals in another court. 

“I am very surprised that the Law Council thinks it is appropriate to lecture the Chief Justice on how to administer his own court.” 

Porter thinks “no part of the democratic system was immune from criticism”, but at the same time a lawyers’ organisation should not criticise an administrative decision of the Family Court’s CJ. 

This is a salutory instance of rent-a-quoting, whereby newspaper hacks ginger-up tailored remarks to fit the party line of the moment. It happened with Hunt, Tudge and Sukkar, now Porter.

Alexander (Fishnets) Downer takes over as chairman of the Policy Exchange when he finally wraps-up his lavish suckling on the public teat as High Commissioner to the UK. The think tank scores the lowest possible “E rating”, for transparency about its funding.