Big changes in Waterstreet World … Helping women barristers hits an ideological wall … Soapy expected to stay on his soapbox
CHARLES (Mr Wolf) Waterstreet has notified the world through his newspaper column that he’s been raked out of Sydney’s Forbes Chambers and set up shop in a serviced office.
Then suddenly there was silence – no newspaper columns for two weeks. We asked what was up going on and Wolf replied:
“When you write about the appalling level of NSW policing and the armoury says to swat team, don’t shorten your barrels, don’t use that explosive bullets, and Lindt is more than sweet, and the elderly can’t shop in the west, then you might think the legal system are out cropping the truth from its stems, as to chambers, Rake can only float for so long before the floor notices the closed door.”
Make of that what you will.
Soon the presses where again whirring with Wolf’s words – even if temporarily. There was a piece about his old mentor Marcus (The Mensch) Einfeld with the former judge photographed in an Armani jacket outside the Matthew Talbot Hostel for homeless people in Woolloomooloo.
“Could you please take me out of your contact list. Thank you.”
“There’s nothing more painful than a narcissist in decline. Youth is free but older age requires a fee.”
“This is Charles Waterstreet’s final regular weekly column for Fairfax Media, after six years.”
Working out of serviced space with no entry on the bar website, friends wanting to be scrubbed from the contact list and now no acreage in the paper.
A concatenation of unkindness.
The Law Council of Australia’s equitable briefing policy was released shortly before the election. The non-mandatory aim is 30-30-20 – i.e. briefing women barristers in 30 percent of all matters and paying them 30 percent of all brief fees by 2020.
President-in-Waiting Fi-Fi McLeod said the policy, “was the result of significant consultation and reflected a common commitment by the profession and clients to brief barristers for their skill and expertise”.
That’s a common commitment from everyone, except the Queensland bar n’ grill.
Qld bar president Christopher Hughes gave the impression he was thinking along the lines of Sydney silk and opponent of “social engineering”, Jeffrey Phillips. Hughes told the LCA in May that the BAQ council …
“… takes the view that such targets are not in the interests of all its members, both women and men, and has the potential to be unnecessarily divisive.”
Maybe it’s because Phillips and Hughes go back a long way – to the carefree days as lads at the Catholic Boyo Brotherhood, St John’s College at the Uni of Sydney.
In an article earlier in the year for The Australian, Phillips complained about equitable briefing, and asked if its good enough for women what about equitable policies for Anglo-Saxon male juniors with no great legal connections, or LGBTI barristers, or Asian barristers?
It could have been written by Miranda Devine.
“My personal view is that the Bar Association has no business commenting on climate change, children in detention, and other idiosyncratic issues …”
In fact, the NSW bar had said nothing about climate change, and it was the ABA that had made “idiosyncratic” comments about children in detention.
Bar senior vice president Arthur Moses last year got into strife with his former client, Margaret Cunneen, who accused him of making “highly partisan and imprudent” remarks. Cunneen misquotes Moses, claiming he besmirched the bar by saying, “many barristers have an attitude to the advancement of women that is ignorant and offensive”.
“Mere platitudes including ignorant and, with respect, offensive statements that women have to do more to get ‘noticed’ are a diversion from the real problems.”
Equitable briefing has now entered the “culture wars” as an ideological issue, with the hardliners saying women should get ahead on the basis of brilliance and hard work. Policies that assist them are akin to ungodly socialism.
Tony Abbott as PM was so impressed by Phillips that he made him the Defence Force Advocate, enabling Jeff to dress up in military costumes.
More on Phillips:
Uglier by the day
Idiosyncratic issues
Protection racket
There were strong pre-election suggestions that Malcolm Turnbull has fallen out of love with AG Gorgeous George Brandis “QC” and was planning to shift him as soon as he could to a full-time position with the Prickly Pear Eradication Board.
However, the best laid plans are now in ruins, along with everything else in Canberra.
“Stability is always better than instability, discipline is always better than indiscipline, playing a team game is always better than self-indulgence.”
Turnbull has little, if any, room to move and the oracles from the banks of the Molonglo say that Brandis is now likely to keep his gig as AG for as long as the Coalition can last in the next session of parliament.
In any event, the Australian and Victorian bars have taken a presumptuous punt on Soapy still being in place nearly four months hence. “George Brandis QC Commonwealth Attorney General” is billed to open a massive law corroboree at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on October 27.
The ABA and the Yarraside Bar have “joined forces to deliver a conference which brings together the best of the legal profession in this country”.
Every chief justice in the nation has been shanghaied for this massive chin-wag on “the big issues, market trends, political influences on the law and global trends in dispute resolution”.
The bigwigs are expecting Soapy to cling on, while everyone else was hoping for a see the back of him.