2021 down the gurgler … Recapping some easily forgettable moments before we’re entirely drowning in 2022 … Glimpses of Justinian’s restless news reports … A year of lawyers and the law
The year commenced with news of attorney general Christian Porter’s latest batch of carefully burnished appointments to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
There was a promotion for Fiona Meagher (Ian Callinan’s daughter) and for former Liberal senator Karen Synon, a pal of Michael Kroger and Peter Costello, plus jobs for other party drones.
Theodora also had a news break about NSW CA Present Andrew (Taco) Bell’s Paddington terrace Christmas decorations, Senator Amanda Stoker’s fake Facebook identity so that she could comment favourably about her own posts, and recommendations for the abolition of the Victorian bar council.
It wasn’t long before developments from the Apple Isle filtered onto the mainland with news that Justice Greg Geason’s associate wound-up on his honour’s lap for a good old snog during the celebrations to mark the beginning of the law year.
Later we learned of conniptions on the island over former DPP Tim Ellis’s submission opposing legislation to increase the judicial retirement age from 72 to 75. He thought that extending the work span of judges would increase the risk of dementia, cognitive incapacity and lack of acuity.
We reported ructions at Sydney’s Frederick Jordan Chambers, with the departure of the board, the clerk, rooms for sale without buyers and accounting explanations that cast a sombre light on the numbers.
Attorney General Porter in March gave a long and teary denial of an allegation of rape 33 years earlier. He had outed himself as the subject of the allegation with the Morrison government insisting there would be no independent inquiry. Kate, the young women at the centre of the allegation, committed suicide in February 2020.
“It just didn’t happen,” the AG told the assembled hacks. He subsequently commenced defamation proceedings against the ABC and journalist Louise Milligan, which he withdrew after the Federal Court decided that his barrister Sue Chrysanthou should be not act for him. This was followed by a nice costs bill.
This was the beginning of the great unravelling. The ABC’s defence was so bruising that he successfully fought to have chunks of it suppressed. He was sacked as attorney general and when the controversy of his “blind” fee paying trust gathered pace he announced he would not re-contest his seat at the next election.
The South Australian coroner continues an inquiry into the death of Kate.
It emerged that the legal profession was not short of pandemic and vaccine deniers. The Concerned Lawyers Network advised that “there is no pandemic in Australia, according to medical evidence – at most a seasonal flu type epidemic”.
Further, “brain damage from masks cannot be reversed”. Anti-vaxxer, enemy of QR codes and masks and generously crowd-funded solicitor, Naughty Nathan Buckley, ran into strife with the Law Society following complains about his conduct from other lawyers and the public.
One of his social media supporters decried the suspension of his practising ticket as a “crime against humanity” while another suggested it was time to “set up a new law society of NSW – built on Truth and Liberty”.
In overseas developments, the Johnson government in the UK wants to bring the Supreme Court to heel on the ground that it is too judicially “active”. Another target is the system of judicial review, with the Lord Chancellor deploring the fact that courts were meddling too much in government decision making.
In Hong Kong, the National Security Law and the Court of Final Appeal are set-for a headlong clash as it is evident that an independent judiciary is incompatible with Beijing’s way of thinking. Appeal judges are the boiling frogs of Hong Kong.
The NSW Law Enforcement Conduct Commission found that three police officers had deliberately, deceitfully and maliciously harassed a country solicitor who was acting for a bikie on animal cruelty charges.
The police sought to prevent the solicitor getting to court by pulling him over on a series of trifling road and vehicle offences. Apparently, all in the line of duty. The coppers were smacked with wet lettuce.
There was a spate of orders to suppress the identity of lawyers who defrauded their customers and didn’t pay tax, and even some helpful anonymity, courtesy of the CA, for a judge who failed to recuse himself from a criminal trial. His long-term partner is a crown prosecutor who advised the police on the charges.
The government’s detention policy for refugee boat arrivals continued to entrance the nation. Former CJ Gerard Brennan spoke about the cruelty inflicted on the Murugappan children in order that their parents be punished for arriving on a boat.
People have been sent to permanent limbo and the High Court was asked to wrestle with how long an asylum seeker or refugee can be detained before the detention becomes illegal.
Following tax guru Simon Steward’s appointment to the High Court his brother judges promptly starting overturning various of his tax decisions handed down when he was a judge lower down the food chain.
Steward’s appointment followed intense lobbing by IPA and Sammy Griffith people and others at Vic’s Bar ‘n’ Grill.
People in conservative circles were thrown into dismay when Steward joined a High Court majority in chopping down an implied constitutional freedom challenge by a right wing “think tank” to the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act.
Stew thinks that implied freedom of political communication probably doesn’t exist, which was news to Speed & Stracey and the Law of Rulers Institute, which together ran the case.
Eddie Obeid found himself back in pokey, alongside his son Moses and their crook facilitator Ian Macdonald, a former member of the ALP’s Socialist Left. They were sentenced for their part in rorts associated with mining exploration licences at Mt Penny, following corruption findings made by ICAC.
There were some great moments in sentencing submissions. In a last ditch effort to keep his client out of jail, crime barrister Tim Game, acting for businessman and child porn enthusiast Ron Brierley, told the judge that his client didn’t know it was illegal to possess images of children, as young as four, being abused.
A few of the law shops also came in for a miserable time. Bartier Perry was clobbered by the NSWCA with damages of almost $1 million for negligently advising a stroke victim he was not sufficiently disabled to sell out of a family law practice where he was a partner.
This was somewhat overshadowed by Justice Kelly Rees award of damages against Maddocks for $13 million over a balls up over the sale of a shopping lease in Sydney’s Double Pay.
Dingbat Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson demanded that the Victorian bar confiscate Julian Burnside’s gongs, his AO and QC. She was incandescent about a Tweet the silk made in support of Palestinians.
In responding to a Human Rights Watch report about violations of international law by the Israelis, Burnside tweeted that the “treatment of Palestinians looks horribly like the German treatment of the Jews during the Holocaust”.
He regretted the Holocaust reference but stuck with his criticism of Israel. WA bar president Martin Cuerden wrote to Senator Henderson telling her she is a goose.
On September 1, Two Wigs Willy’s Palace of Justice opened for business, meaning that he was down to one wig. According to family law practitioners “gaping chasms remain in the system”.
Following the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan many legal practitioners and judges scrambled to leave the country. Justinian reported on the confused legal situation in the wake of the regime change.
In the same month that the Taliban were on the move, Balkan solicitor John Atanaskovic lost his fee battle with former client Bruce Gordon.
As the year’s final quarter loomed, South Australian politicians dismembered the state’s Independent Commission Against Corruption. The commission will no longer be able to investigate maladministration and misconduct by parliamentarians.
This happened just as moves were being made in relation to the deputy premier’s conflicts and failure to declare a pecuniary interest.
An investigation into Covid’s impact on the NSW and Victorian bars revealed that the chambers model faces an uncertain future, although some practices were thriving while others wilted.
Sydney barrister David Smallbone delivered a searing assessment of the bar’s silk selection process, describing it as a club with no rule of law – a system of distortions and secrecy. Someone added that because he hasn’t toed the line, Smallbone has Buckley’s of ever being granted silk.
In Melbourne, prominent silk Norman O’Bryan was removed from the jam roll, over the Banksia fee gouging scandal. Bar president Christopher Blanden swiftly observed that the Supreme Court didn’t have any problems with the “capacity of the legal system to self-regulate”.
He added that the public duty to protect the administration of justice remains “deeply rooted” in the legal profession.
Meanwhile, the Old Guard romped home at Vic’s bar elections, with the Vote for Change faction successfully rebranding with a new catch cry, Putting Members First, i.e. forward to the 1950s.
The year also brought forth new books on lawyers and the law – not exactly bodice rippers but page turners nonetheless. Ian Temby delivered With Conviction, a self-published journey from Perth solicitor, to the bar, Commonwealth DPP and first head of NSW’s ICAC – with controversies at every turn.
And there was Gideon Haigh’s The Brilliant Boy – Doc Evatt and the Great Australian Dissent – with marvellous stuff about the bickering, distrustful and ego maniacal judges on the High Court in the 1930s.
What better way to wrap up the year than with the NSW Court of Appeal’s decision in the case of the “suck my dick” barrister who has suffered so much already that publication of his name has been suppressed for another 20 years.
Apart from that smattering of news reports, Justinian’s columnists, bloggers, and feature writers also had a brim-full year – and, as ever, there was no shortage of flatulence.
The year ahead looks abundant and promising.