Gender quotas … Solicitors elect NSW Law Society Council with an 82% female majority … Retired judge wants more litigation to bring the ABC to heel … Questionable evidence to parliamentary committee on litigation funding … Premier has confidence in conflicted AG after no confidence motion … Time stretched allows for extra careful detailed review of evidence in a copyright case … Theodora reports
The 22 member council for 2022 will have 18 female members, two more than the current outgoing council. The executive will also comprise four women and one bloke.
Joanne van der Platt from Cooma will be next year’s president, Cassandra Banks from Coffs Harbour senior vice, Jennifer Bell treasurer, the solitary bloke Brett McGrath as junior vice, and immediate past president Juliana Warner.
Brett is actually a senior judicial registrar at the FC-FC and some members are puzzled that a judicial officer can sit on the governing council of the solicitors guild.
Here are the newly elected councillors …
And two who have been reelected …
With retiring or unsuccessful councillors:
The executive will officially be announced in the new year, but we thought you should know now.
The annual Law Society dinner was held on Monday (Dec. 6) at the Fullerton Hotel. The zeitgeist was captured by entertainers on stilts, acrobatic contortionists and performers with hoola-hoops.
How marvellous to see The Hon Ken Handley AO QC, ex-NSW Supremes, responding promptly to the call from Senator Bragg (Lib. NSW) for submissions to the senate communications committee’s now defunct inquiry into the ABC’s and SBS’s complaints handling procedures.
Bragg, an accountant, former toe-cutter at the Menzies “Research” Centre, and repeat complainer about ABC content, has been incandescent with rage after the senate suspended his inquiry until Aunty completes her own review of complaints handling.
Bragg is now busily engaged in trying to foist Our Glad on the people of Warringah in an ugly up-you to ICAC’s investigation into the former premier.
ICAC is due to report on whether Berejiklian turned a blind eye to the corrupt conduct of her boyfriend, the former MP Daryl Maguire, while shovelling barrow loads of taxpayer money at his electorate.
Bragg’s proposed ABC show-trial would have seen all sorts of conservative moaners and groaners wheeled out to vent about bias and programming “agendas”.
An investigation of complaints by a bunch of the national broadcasters’ political foes would mean poking into why particular programs were made, the process of deciding who to interview, the costs involved, and the backgrounds of the program makers.
With an election in the wings it would turn into a festival of bile for the Coalition, the IPA, News Corp and Colonel Blimps in the suburbs.
ABC chair Dame Ita Buttrose said Bragg’s proposed inquiry was an attempt to usurp the role of the ABC board and undermine the operational independence of the media organisation.
Handley’s flimsy, fact-free, submission, seems to be the only one that is publicly available on the senate committee’s website.
The former judge mistakenly thinks there is no external review of the complaints process and wants the ABC Act amended to provide for appeals to the AAT (which is widely regarded as a branch of the Liberal Party), then on points of law to the Federal Court and by special leave to the High Court.
In fact, the Australian Communications and Media Authority can and does review complaints about ABC and SBS programs.
Further, the findings by the internal independent complaints unit are binding and can’t be overruled by the editorial director.
No doubt the AAT, Federal Court and Last Chance Saloon will be ticked pink at Uncle Ken’s suggestion they get down and dirty with people bellyaching about the public broadcasters.
Err … I think she meant “self-regulation”.
Myriam Robin, from the Financial Review’s Rear Window, had an excellent little item the other day dealing with the Rule of Law Institute’s appearance at the joint parliamentary committee inquiring into litigation funding, in particular for class actions.
The aim of the litigation funding participants legislation is to dilute the capacity for financing cases against corporate interests. The government members of the committee fell into line behind the Bill, predictably enough.
Naturally, the Labor MPs and senators didn’t think much of this and released a dissenting report in which they got stuck into one of our favourites here at Justinian – Chris (The Tamil) Merritt, who appeared for the Law of Rulers Institute.
They wrote:
“One of the great mysteries of this rushed inquiry was the appearance of the Rule of Law Institute.
This mysterious outfit made no submission, yet was called by Liberal MPs for reasons unknown.
At the public hearing, the Institute declined to provide any substantive comment on the bill while praising the ‘overall direction’ of the bill.
It was clear that the presenter had no relevant expertise and, perhaps for that reason, was unable or unwilling to engage in specific discussion regarding concerns raised by other submitters in relation to the bill.
Moreover, after providing his evidence to the Committee the presenter, Mr Chris Merritt, was accused of ‘misstatements’.”
To the parliamentary committee The Tamil made allegations about a distribution in the Huon Corporation case, which turned out not even to be a class action.
Then it was was the turn of Stuart Clark, a former big wig at Clayton Utz and ex-president of the Law Council.
The dissenting report was no less kind to Stu than it was to The Tamil.
It pointed to the “extraordinary coincidence” in Clark’s personal submission to the committee with great slabs of the same content from the US Chamber Institute for Legal Reform that had been submitted in respect of an exposure draft of the Bill, purportedly authored by Scévole de Cazotte.
The Labor members wondered if Clark was paid to write the US Chamber of Commerce submission then why did he present himself as an independent voice, “despite his apparent links to a foreign lobby group”.
“It is deeply ironic that, in a submission where Mr Clark attacks the credibility and integrity of others, he failed to acknowledge apparent copying and pasting of large swathes of a submission made in someone else’s name to a completely different inquiry.
“In our view, little reliance can be placed on Mr Clark’s submission, at least until these questions and concerns are addressed.”
Step forward Vickie Chapman, a fresh exhibit in the nation’s decaying political probity.
Vickie is the former South Australian Deputy Premier, Attorney General and Minister for Planning.
For those not familiar with Torrens-side doings, a parliamentary committee found she had a conflict of interest when as planning minister she vetoed a port development proposal on Kangaroo Island that could adversely impact a nearby property she owned.
The committee accepted the submission of Rachael Gray QC, counsel assisting, that there were perceived and actual conflicts and Chapman should have recused herself from making a decision about the fate of the port project.
The parliamentary inquiry also found that the deputy premier mislead the parliament and it recommended she be found guilty of contempt.
In true Schmo Morrison style, this was decried by Liberals as “a kangaroo court, a witch hunt”.
The government lost control of the lower house, which passed a vote of no confidence in Ms Chapman, but she still had plenty of confidence in herself and clung on, insisting that everything was peachy – until the party boys got restless and said this was doing their March re-election prospects no good.
Ultimately, her portfolios and party positions were peeled away and handed to others, not because the House lost confidence in her but because the conflict of interest was being examined by the Ombudsman, for whom the attorney general is ministerially responsible.
In stepping aside, Vickie is keen to emphasise that she is the very embodiment of noblesse oblige.
She’ll will be back in Cabinet, hollered premier Marshall, once she is cleared by the Ombudsman.
On November 30, the House of Assembly voted to suspend her from parliament for six days, the equivalent of two sitting weeks.
In the olden days, a vote of no confidence would have seen a minister out the door, tail between the legs.
Now the premier says he will decide who is in the government, not the parliament.
All this just after the SA parliament eviscerated the ICAC legislation, rendering it ineffective in instances involving allegations of political misfeasance.
There was a curious addition inserted into Judge Julia Baird’s December 3 judgment in a copyright case – Brennan v Foster Blake.
It was a tussle over similarities in the content produced by two authors and whether the respondent had access to the applicant author’s manuscript.
Timing was the critical issue at this point, and the respondent showed she sent her manuscript for The Wrong Girl to her editor at Penguin Random House and her agent at Curtis Brown before there was a possibility of seeing a version of a chapter in Ms Brennan’s book Playlist.
She sent the emails on April 2, 2013 with the manuscript attached, whereas Brennan had alleged that her manuscript for Playlist had been sent to her literary mentor at Writers Victoria, based at the Wheeler Centre, and this is how Foster had access to her work, from about April 14 or 15, 2013.
Whether there was a “sufficient degree of objective similarity” between the Brennan manuscript and Foster’s published work was a separate question.
For her part, the applicant contends that the date of the emails to which Foster’s manuscript was attached was tampered with to hide the fact that Foster saw Brennan’s work.
The judge rejected the submission the emails were manipulated.
According to the judgment, the date of hearing was “3 and (sic) December 2019”.
The reasons and orders were published two years later, on December 3, 2021.
We find this curious addition at paragraph 20A of HH’s reasons:
Another matter
20A. Regrettably, this judgment has been delayed well beyond any indicative time that may have been assumed by the parties at hearing or shortly after final submissions. The passage of time, however, has enabled me to undertake a detailed review of the evidence, in particular the forensic evidence, with the benefit of transcript as well as my contemporaneous notes, to consider the lay and expert written evidence, and the material on which the experts’ opine, the oral evidence of the witnesses in cross‑examination at hearing, and enabled considered conclusions to be drawn.
No matter how long or how short the length of time to prepare a judgment, a judge would be expected to undertake a “detailed review of the evidence”.
Possibly paragraph 20A is designed to head off an appeal on the basis that the delay is an appeallable error.