Vic’s Bar struggles with the Voice … Should there be a position at all? … Financial Review’s legal affairs man ticked off … Old grizzlies out of the cage … NSW bar run by “woke” mullahs … More kero on the flames … Peach Melba with Yarraside Yarns
It reported a letter to the bar’s nabobs, signed by a large number of members, urging the council to support the YES campaign for a constitutional Voice.
Former presidents of the ABA, the NSW bar council and the solicitor general, among others, have already endorsed a First Nations’ constitutional Voice.
Unfortunately, the Cardinal’s article mentioned the “vote for change” ticket which romped home at the 2020 bar council elections and “took aim at ‘woke’ leadership”.
This faction even now retains nine of the 21 seat around the mahogany table.
He added:
“The petition, which has been sent to bar president Sam Hay KC sets up a showdown with conservatives on the bar council …”
Marita Foley SC organised the petition and was upset that the Cardinal had pitched his story in the “context of a frankly tiresome narrative regarding the internal politics of the bar two years ago”.
“I have zero interest in fuelling a ‘woke’ vs ‘conservative on bar council narrative,” adding the article “contains a number of errors which should be corrected”.
Further, she doesn’t want her photo from the VicBar website to be used – “… it would certainly be my strong preference that it not appear in the article”.
Foley also wrote to signatories of the letter saying, “I will spare you the exchanges with the author of the article.”
It seems Pelly responded to the objections and changes were made to the online version of the story.
Throughout bar president Hay has played a cool hand:
“I don’t have a sense of which way this current bar council will go.
“There is a genuine mix of people in both camps, including those who say ‘I support the Voice, but I don’t think the bar council should say something about it’.”
It wasn’t long before Planet Janet Albrechtsen made her traditional ham fisted entry in an attempt to stir up a cauldron of contention.
She dialled up some on-message quotes from a predictable source bearnaise, in this instances the porcine “Stuart Wood AM KC”.
Wood is a frequent hobnobber with the Sammy Griffith Club and the Gina Rinohart Institute of Paid Advocacy.
He made the incendiary claim that barristers who support the YES case are doing so for the money.
These barristers, apparently, wanted to stay in favour with the government because “their whole livelihood is taking government briefs”.
“It doesn’t hurt them to be woke with their corporate clients too …
“It’s a no brainer for them. This is just a commercial play. It’s smart.”
Another brave silken brief who wanted to be anonymous explained to the Planet:
“The New South Wales bar is much more desperate to be part of the zeitgeist that Melbourne … The mullahs (in NSW) have really taken over, it’s much more fundamentalist stuff there even than Victoria, which is kind of weird.
“I just don’t understand how the New South Wales Bar Association got away with what they got away with.”
Poor president Hay had to slap down Wood, telling members that to his knowledge not one of the people who want the bar to adopt the YES case is motived by financial gain.
He rang Gabrielle Bashir, president of the NSW, pouring oil on troubled waters:
“… the overwhelming majority of Victorian Bar members hold the NSW Bar, its Council and its members in the very highest esteem.”
There have been rumblings about a special general meeting of the rank ‘n’ file to vote on whether to support the Voice or stay sitting on hands.
In the meantime, on May 9 the council will try and get to grips with the great moral issue of the moment and see if can stretch its imagination to support the YES case for the Voice.