Gambling barrister from Victoria breaches conditions of his ticket and is put off the track for two years and four months … Queensland solicitor who bribed a minister deemed to be indelibly unfit … Kishor Napier-Raman reporting trackside
Matthew Stirling, who has a gambling addiction, asked a client to pay approximately $45,000 either to him in cash or to a specified Tabcorp account.
The tribunal held that this breached both the Victorian bar rules, as well as the conditions of an earlier disciplinary order against Stirling.
In 2012, the barrister was subject to disciplinary proceedings for failing to fulfil various tax obligations. Initially suspended for three years, the Victorian Court of Appeal allowed him to continue to trade, subject to various conditions.
These included that his clerk pay at least 50 percent of his gross receipts into a separate bank account solely to be given to the ATO, and that Stirling not commit any further act of professional misconduct during the next five years.
He admitted that he had materially breached the court’s order, by seeking this unorthodox form of payment from the client without notifying his clerk.
Any breach of the Court of Appeal’s order attracted a mandatory cancellation of his ticket for at least two years.
Stirling also asked his client for a loan of $23,000 to help meet his obligations to the ATO, and the loan was not repaid for 19 months after he promised to do so.
The tribunal held this was a breach of the rule which prohibits a conflict between the interests of barrister and client.
The tribunal cancelled Stirling’s ticket for a further four months over this second breach.
It heard evidence about his struggles with gambling addiction, depression, and the breakdown of his marriage.
A number of medical professionals gave evidence that he had “obsessive-compulsive traits” and was taking anti-depressants.
During the hearing, Stirling told the tribunal that he felt “ashamed” and had “gained an insight into the consequences of his actions”.
In November, we reported that Stirling had gone bankrupt with debts of $600,000 to the tax office.
Victorian Legal Services Commissioner v Stirling
A solicitor who was imprisoned for making corrupt payments to a Queensland minister has been struck off jam roll as “permanently unfit to practice”.
In 2002, Harold Warner Shand, who was at the time CEO of Jellinbah Resources, made a payment of $60,000 to Queensland Minister for Mines Gordon Nuttall.
Eleven years later, Shand was convicted and sentenced to 15 months imprisonment, later suspended to four months.
Nuttall, the disgraced former minister was found to have accepted 35 other secret payments, and spent five years in prison before being released on parole in 2015.
Following an appeal by the Attorney General and Legal Services Commissioner, the court overruled a 2017 order made by the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal which cancelled Shand’s ticket for five years.
The appeal court held instead that Shand was permanently unfit to practise as a solicitor.
Phillip McMurdo held that the tribunal had erred by assessing Shand’s fitness to practise at the time of the hearing, rather than at the time of the misconduct.
Such a test was inconsistent with the NSW Supreme Court’s ruling in The Council of the NSW Bar Association v Sahade.
QCAT was also criticised for failing to pay sufficient attention to protection of the public and community confidence when exercising its power to make orders under s.456 of the Legal Profession Act.
According to McMurdo, this was an important consideration when determining whether someone should be permanently struck off the jam role.
Despite mitigating factors that arose at Shand’s trial, such as evidence of his good character, the court ultimately held that his character was “so indelibly marked by the misconduct that he cannot be regarded as a fit and proper person to be on the roll”.
Attorney General for Queensland and the Legal Services Commissioner v Harold Shand