Turnbull and the poisoned fountain of justice … Doug Meagher and Costigan days remembered … Retired silk pushing for more speed to reduce the road toll … Lawyers and law v the public’s right to know … Fresh gongs … Theodora reports 

Doug Meagher QC, an elder statesmen at the Melbourne bar, departed the mortal coil on January 5, at age 81. 

The bar put out a brief obituary, noting that Meagher had been counsel assisting Frank Costigan in the Commonwealth-State Royal Commission into the Federated Painters and Dockers Union. 

What was not mentioned was that as counsel assisting Meagher played a luminous role in the early litigation missteps of young blade, lawyer and future disappointing prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull. 

We’ve drawn on information in Justinian’s library so we can report that when Turnbull worked for Packer as company secretary and in-house counsel between 1983 and 1985 he dealt with much of the fallout from the “Goanna” corruption allegations that emerged from Costigan’s investigations. 

Turnbull, acting for Packer, had commenced defamation proceedings in the NSW Supreme Court against Meagher, alleging that the counsel assisting had leaked compromising material to The National Times newspaper, damaging Packer’s hitherto lily-white reputation. 

The case clearly didn’t have legs because later Packer filed a notice of discontinuance. Meagher sought to have the notice struck out and the case dismissed as an abuse of process. 

Just before the case commenced, Turnbull issued a statement saying: 

“Meagher and Costigan have conducted themselves most reprehensibly in failing to stop an unauthorised and illegal leak of information, which was inevitably going to do immense or irreparable damage to the reputation of Kerry Packer.” 

Not bad coming from someone who six years later did damage to Packer by an unauthorised leak of information during the Tourang consortium bid for the Fairfax media group in 1991. 

On the day the statement of claim was issued Turnbull told the ABC’s AM program that he had “significant evidence” that Meagher leaked these documents.  

There were never any particulars provided to the court of this “significant evidence” and the failure to provide them was not explained.  

It was a brazen attempt by Turnbull to crash through and Justice David Hunt found that there had been an abuse of process. Packer’s in-house lawyer, the judge said, had “managed effectively thereby to poison the fountain of justice immediately before the commencement of the present proceedings”. 

Vale Doug Meagher.

Tax guru and retired Hobart silk Andrew Abbott has a passionate interest in traffic management and speed limits. 

The attempt “to impose by force” a system of slower road travel is “indistinguishable from that which applied under the Nazi regime”. 

Nowadays the German autobahn system is unrestricted, with a 130 km/h advisory limit. This has been the case “since the fall of Nazi Germany”. 

Parts of Hobart’s road network have become an obstacle course, according to Abbott’s submission. For instance, it is impossible to overtake other cars on Sandy Bay Road. 

Emboldened pushbike riders who “inflict their selfish lifestyle choice on motorists” need to be curbed – and the same goes for pedestrians. 

Driving below the speed limit is also dangerous because it induces “road rage in other drivers”, quite apart from “boredom and inattention and may even put the driver to sleep …” 

The retired brief has studied comparative road rules and speed limits in Norway and the Northern Territory. 

For the Royal Automobile Club of Tasmania to lobby for a Norwegian default speed limit encourages “civil unrest and promotes violence against the state …” 

In the NT, there used to be an unrestricted limit on outback sealed roads. The dread Labor government “inflicted by force the 130 km/h limit which had previously applied”. 

“In my submission that was an outrageous thing to do, and amounted to infliction of a Nazi-style limit for no good reason. It was an outrageous breach of the most fundamental of all human rights, namely freedom of action.” 

Further: 

“The casualty rate in the Northern Territory is also highly likely to be in part a function of the racial composition of the territory, which is, of course, very different to Tasmania. 

“The statute law of this country prevents me from taking this aspect of the matter any further.” 

Powerful thoughts. For a moment it might seem that this submission from the sixth generation Tasmanian is an attempt at a bit of fun. 

Most likely it’s not – when you consider other correspondence, including a campaign by Abbott for an exemption under the Firearms Act so that he could shoot wood duck, native hen, sulphur crested cockatoos and bush possums as he drives his Porsche Cayenne around the Kingston Beach Golf Course. Details here and here. 

And there was his famous wine-glass letter to the president of the Tasmanian Club. 

Justice Stephen Rothman of the NSW Supremes had a quirky opening paragraph in his judgment squelching another attempt by notorious cosmetic “surgeon” Joseph Ajaka to stop publication of TV and newspaper reports that exposed malpractice at his chain of clinics. 

“Charles Dickens, through the character Mr Bumble in Oliver Twist, remarked that ‘the law is an ass – an idiot’. While I am not an admirer of the style of most of Dickens’ works (as a result of the original publication of them in serial form, which infects the novels) I regret that Charles Dickens has long been deceased. Otherwise, the controversy now before the Court could well make the basis of a sequel to Bleak House.” 

Ajaka engaged high profile “reputation management” lawyers in an attempt to injunct the program and obtain draft contents of the media investigation into the barbaric practices of the cosmetic surgery business. 

Rothman’s original order was stayed pending an appeal. 

Over a fortnight later the Court of Appeal found that preliminary discovery could only be permitted against “prospective defendants”, and since the Nine group was an existing party to the litigation there was no jurisdiction to order discovery. 

Ajaka and his Cosmos Cosmetics business promptly changed tack, seeking leave to discontinue the proceedings against Nine, foreshadowing they would apply for preliminary discovery as they would not now be applicants in proceedings already commenced. 

It came back before Rothman who, now bound by the Court of Appeal’s findings about the limit of jurisdiction, had no option but to send Ajaka and Cosmos packing.

The whole time-consuming, expensive process was yet another effort to stifle thorough and professional public interest reporting. 

By these accounts the grisly cosmetic surgery business has more than its fair share of sharks, feeding the whims of a trash culture. 

When Ajaka was approached for comment prior to the proposed publication by Nine journalists he promptly reached for the reputation managers. By this stage, the overriding contention is that reputation is more important than a search for the truth.  

Nine won the fight on a civil procedure technicality. It’s not as though the judges are possessed with a high-fluting belief in the importance of a free media and investigative journalism.  

The Roberts-Smith case is also an ample demonstration of the hoops through which media respondents have to jump to establish the truth of serious allegations about the conduct of the war in Afghanistan – at eye-watering expense.

In the same way the courts in Britain have been shopping centres for Russian oligarchs, and high profile libel attack teams, to crush publishers and authors of major works exposing the claimants’ corruption and ill-gotten gains. 

Roman Abramovich, a sanctioned oligarch, also tried it on in Australia with his action against HarperCollins over the publication of Putin’s People, the groundbreaking book by Catherine Belton, an experienced business journalist who covered Russia for the Financial Times. 

Talking of which, Bruce McClintock insists submissions in Brian Burston v Pauline Hanson will be completed this week, as he has removalists coming the following week into clean out his digs in Phillip Street. 

He maintains he’s retiring come June 30, as he’s sold his chambers.

An AM for ex-Qld CJ Tim Carmody – “for significant services to the law and to the judiciary”. Amazing