NSW goes back to the future … Cabinet shuffle looming … Anti-corruption firebrand chafing in the nether region … Judicial recognition of the Taliban … New eftpos machine arrives in Hobart … Angelo Vasta RIP … Rule of law hysterics about ICAC … Theodora reports 

Premier Dominic Francis Perrottet is an offshoot of the old Opus Dei faction run for years out of the Legislative Council by David Clarke. 

It’s widely anticipated that attorney general Mark Speakman SC will be replaced by ultra conservative Dutchman and law ‘n’ order zealot Alister Henskens SC MP. 

The AG warned his fellow party moderates that Perrottet would be the “most conservative Premier the state has had since World War II”. 

This is far too generous an assessment – the new premier restores the thirteenth century to its long-awaited place at the centre of society.

Anyway, it looks as though Speakers will be sent to the Prickly Pear Commission when cabinet is reshuffled before the end of the year. He is likely to be replaced by Henskens who engaged in “demonic lobbying” for the job when Speakman was appointed AG by Aunty Glad in 2017. 

We’ve been troubled to report before that the clog-wearing conservative chided the NSW bar ‘n’ grill in 2016 for voicing concerns about the government’s serious crime prevention orders – allowing the wallopers to apply to restrict the movement of people who have not been convicted of any crime, let along any serious crime. 

Henskens was upset that the bar made a submission critical of the Bill without consulting all its members. He made the mistake of saying the law was modelled on similar UK measures, so what’s the problem?

Bar prez Noel Hutley had to point out that there are significant differences and the NSW law goes much further than its UK counterpart – e.g. hearsay evidence is admissible. 

In 2014 NSW District Court Judge Judy Gibson brought to light a case where the Dutch silk appeared without a fee agreement. 

Send him a bunch of tulips while he’s waiting for the call. 

It was intriguing to read in Private Eye about young Australian “firebrand” Harry Stratton. 

He’s a law grad from Uni of Sydney and Oxford currently doing time at Linklaters in London as a “legal adviser”. He’s also the chair of the Cities of London and Westminster Labour Party branch. 

London and Westminster is as Tory a borough as you’d find anywhere, but the Labour operatives in the seat have included members of Militant Tendency, Corbynites, Red-Ted types, serious rads and assorted mutineers. 

Young Stratton is in the thick of it. A brief flick through the internet finds Harry writing for various leftist organs, such as Jocobin and Tribune – where recently he denounced the “right wing clique currently running Labour” and “Blairite moral bankruptcy”. He was bylined as a “lawyer and anti-corruption activist”. 

Eye No 1555 wondered how this fits in with his work for Linklaters where he did the research grunt work for a paper on a bilateral investment treaty between Jersey and the United Arab Emirates. 

The treaty was held up as an “interesting opportunity for international investors who may wish to structure their investments through Jersey to benefit from its low taxes and more relaxed regulatory environment”. 

Just the sort of stuff you’d expect from the morally flexible environment of a big law shop, but how it meshes with Harry’s politics must involve a painful straddle. 

There was also a post on the NSW Labor Lawyers website where the “firebrand” said that the rule in Bonnard v Perryman should be torn up so that judges can fling injunctions to stop defamatory or allegedly defamatory publications. 

To make it easy for crooks and shysters to bury stories that expose political and administrative wrongdoing is curious coming from an “anti-corruption activist”. 

The Australian government hasn’t got round to taking this step, but Judge Street is leading the way. 

The applicant, known as EGZ17 is an ethnic Hazara and Shia Muslim from Mazar-e Sharif in Afghanistan. 

He is trying to reverse a decision of the Immigration Assessment Authority on the ground of jurisdictional error. 

The IAA refused his application for protection because it thought everything was peachy safe in Afghanistan and Hazaras were having a splendid time in the country. 

When it came before the FCA-FCA it was foreshadowed that the court would take “judicial notice” that the Taliban had taken over the country, which is now the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. 

True to form, the servants of the Minister for Immigration argued that new evidence about the changed status of “the receiving country” was not relevant and did not amount to a jurisdictional fact.

Happily that was rejected.

Newspapers and international reports that the Taliban had taken over were available for HH’s inspection. Judge Sandy was happy to regard this news to be “a matter of common knowledge” that is not reasonably open to question. 

Step by careful step, HH concluded that Afghanistan no longer exists, that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is a different country, a different relevant state and a different receiving country. 

“What Australia as a sovereign nation may or may not recognise as a foreign state is not relevant to or determinative of the application in these proceedings.” 

Consequentially, the IAA exceeded its powers under the Migration Act with a decision that was legally unreasonable. The review application has to start again and be determined properly. 

Late last month, Vicki Lovell, team leader at the “disclosure unit” of the southern regional prosecution service of the Department of Police sent out a missive to criminal lawyers saying that her unit now has a very modern eftpos machine for taking payments over the counter at the Hobart cop shop. 

“All full disclosure will require payment of $53.90 by cheque or eftpos unless a legal aid certificate is attached to the disclosure request,” Vicki wrote. 

Barns believes that Tasmania is the only place in Australia, and probably the entire common law world, where payment is required for the prosecution case. 

Even though the Magistrates Court (Criminal and General Division) Act 2019 requires police disclosure of evidence without a fee, Plod has told the government they are not yet ready to implant such a radical departure from traditional procedures and operation of the legislation should remain on hold. 

Meanwhile, the eftpos machine has arrived. 

Barns has written to the Department of Premier and Cabinet and the Attorney General’s Department asking the government to put an end to the coppers’ “not ready yet” money-making rort. 

The Bar Association of Queensland put out a brief statement: 

“Mr Vasta QC has been a long standing member of the bar association, having been admitted to the Supreme Court of Queensland as a barrister-at-law on February 13, 1968 and taking silk, January 31, 1980. He was a judge of the Supreme Court of Queensland from 1984 until 1989.” 

A judge for only five years – something must have happened. 

Indeed, following findings by a commission of inquiry, he was defrocked by parliament and expelled from the bench in 1989 over allegations concerning dealings with his brother-in-law’s toilet paper business, “misconduct” in relation to taxation arrangements, payments for overseas travel, giving false evidence at a defamation hearing and a “sham” lease for a Gold Coast apartment. 

Angelo, from a Sicilian cane-cutting family, came from the depths of the Bjelke-Petersen era and was thick with Sir Joh’s crooked chief constable, “Sir” Terence Lewis. He was appointed to the bench over objections from the then bar president Bill Pincus QC and government legal adviser Ian (The Tub) Callinan. 

The objection was that prosecutors tended to lack experience in civil matters, which is not helpful for the court. 

A Bill to reverse the removal of Justice Vasta was introduced into the Queensland parliament in 2017 by Robert Katter MP, son of the Mad Katter. 

The attempt to restore Angelo relied on a report by the International Commission of Jurists that challenged some of the parliamentary commission’s recommendations. 

The argument was that the judge’s dismissal was for conduct unrelated to his judicial functions and that some of the findings by the parliamentary commission were incorrect and exceeded its powers. 

The legislation to exonerate the judge failed to pass. He was the first Supreme Court judge in Australia to have been impeached.

Angelo’s spawn includes Judge Salvatore Vasta of the FCA-FCA and LNP MP Ross Vasta.  

The BAQ extends “its sincere condolences”. 

It’s bewildering to know that the spin from people in high office is so threadbare. As for The Tamil, his nostrums are completely moth-eaten. 

To accept anything The Tamil says about the “rule of law” requires a good dose of the mind-altering powders. 

He is the person, after all, who wants accused people to be convicted on the basis of forced confessions. He wants people who have been found not guilty by juries to be incarcerated nonetheless. 

You can read here all about The Tamil’s approach to the “rule of law”.

More recently, he brought his special insights to bear on Blue Balls Porter’s defamation case against the ABC. On March 19, 2021, he told his reader at The Australian: 

“Right now, the penny must be dropping for Louise Milligan and the ABC about what is at stake in the defamation proceedings that have been launched by Attorney-General Christian Porter. 

“The big issue is not whether the national broadcaster will lose; that’s almost a given. It’s how badly it loses, how much material comes to light in court and whether the Federal Court will declare that the national broadcaster and one of its most famous journalists were motivated by malice.”  

People had to pay $3.50 for that.