Dutton and News hacks take on the AAT, assisted by AG Brandis in the wings … Political attack on the integrity of the tribunal … Conflating terrorism with migration and refugee visa decisions … Misinformation abounds … Woeful times
THE judges have sooled the hitherto modest Judicial Conference of Australia onto newspaper hacks who foul their stories with more than the usual quota of dross and inaccuracies.
Twice in as many days the trusty JCA, under the baton of Justice Robert Beech-Jones, has given Melbourne’s Hun a polite but firm pasting over its campaign of Dutton boosting and judge smearing.
On Sunday (June 18) The Sunday Herald Sun reported that the Justice John Logan, acting president of the AAT, “has thwarted immigration minister Peter Dutton by again saving sex creep Jagdeep Singh from deportation – but the battle is not over”.
The minister’s delegate had cancelled Singh’s visa last September, after the Indian born taxi driver pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting a passenger.
“The report was inaccurate and unfairly described Justice Logan’s reasons and decision.”
In fact, the judge had not overturned a ministerial decision “to kick the taxi driver out of Australia”. Instead, he had determined the applicant receive a bridging visa subject to conditions so that he can be released from custody to organise his voluntary departure from Australia by the end of next month.
The original decision of the delegate to deport Singh on character grounds had been overturned by senior AAT member Miriam Holmes after receiving psychological evidence. Dutton used his ministerial power to set aside that decision and subsequently Singh applied for the limited bridging visa, granted by Justice Logan who, in the process, make a pointed effort to shore-up the independence of the AAT:
“Any member [of the tribunal] who allowed himself or herself to be persuaded as to an outcome by partisan or political rhetoric by a minister, any other administrator or the popular press would be unworthy of the trust and confidence placed in him or her.”
The minister since has cancelled the visa granted by the judge and was cheered on by The Sunday Hun:
“Mr Dutton is ideally placed to have a role in shaping what the AAT of the future looks like.”
On Tuesday (June 20) the paper reported the JCA rebuke under the headline, “Judges’ professional body backs visa decision on taxi driver convicted of sex attack”.
The JCA the same day day had to point out that it had not “backed” the visa decision at all, it had corrected the errors in the Herald Sun beat-up.
It was a correction of the report reporting the correction – and it showed that the judiciary was not going to take it anymore.
In February Dutton had a go at Queensland magistrates, saying they were “hopeless left-wing softies” – mostly Labor appointees. The Queensland Law Society said the remarks were “mindless abuse” and “breathtaking in their ignorance”. Beech-Jones also defended the patch.
The minister and former Queensland copper is on a deliberate campaign, assisted by the Murdoch press, to conflate terrorism with migration and refugee visa decisions. The separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary and the tribunal are the casualties in the process.
It’s not as though Dutton’s star among Liberals is waning. One of his federal colleagues described the minister as “dumb as dog shit”, however the party in Queensland has made a submission to the Australian Electoral Commission for a redistribution to bolster the vote for their man in his marginal seat of Dickson.
According to political columnist Paul Bongiorno, the party wants a swag of Liberal voters taken out of Wayne Swan’s neighbouring seat of Lilley and also from Petrie, held by Coalition MP Luke Howath, and moved into Dickson. One strategist was quoted as saying:
“They’re prepared to risk one of their own and shore up Swannie to save Dutton.”
The minister most recently alleged that decisions of the AAT were partisan, telling hyperventilating radio announcer Ray Hadley:
“When you look at some of the judgments that are made, the sentences that are handed down it’s always interesting to go back to have a look at the appointment of the particular Labor government of the day. Anyway, it’s a frustration we live with.”
Both the JCA and the LCA slapped down the attack, while attorney general George Brandis came to the former copper’s defence at a recent session of senate estimates.
He loosely wandered over the contempt landscape in a search for authorities, quoting Lord Denning in R v Commissioner of Police, ex parte Blackburn No 2, Michael Kirby, and Borrie and Lowe’s text book on The Law of Contempt.
In Brandis’ view for a minister to say that the decisions of the tribunal are politically motived does not amount to an attack in the tribunal’s integrity, rather it was “legitimate public criticism”.
“What it seems Mr Dutton has said is well within the bounds. Now, if there were an attack upon the integrity of the courts, that may be a different thing. But, as I read the remarks attributed to Mr Dutton, it is merely a criticism of the way in which certain matters have been handled, which is perfectly open to anyone to make.”
Brandis didn’t always think this way. Shadow AG Mark Dreyfus dug-up a revelatory piece from Gorgeous George in 2006, where he foreshadowed his own unsuitability for the job of attorney general:
George Brandis himself wrote the below in 2006. Does he now consider himself “not suitable” to be A-G, given refusal to defend judiciary? pic.twitter.com/ps4GmlkmPG
— Mark Dreyfus (@markdreyfusQCMP) June 13, 2017