Doctor and activist
04/07/2021
25 June 2021
The much publicised rape allegations against Christian Porter have been released.
People can judge their veracity for themselves. Click on the link in The Saturday Paper:
www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/post/max-opray/2021/06/25/porter-dossier-released
17/03/2021
17 March 2021
Many were surprised when Attorney-General Christian Porter sued the ABC, using the very defamation law that he has criticised as favouring the plaintiff.
What will happen? Will it go ahead? Will he win? And what will be the effect?
I do not pretend to be an expert on defamation law, but I did run a live radio programme that called tobacco executives mass murderers most weeks for 14 years and I gave some thought to avoiding being sued. The advice was basically that if you spoke about a class of people, it was OK, but if an individual was identifiable you were in much more danger.
Defamation was defined merely as likely to lower the opinion of someone in the opinion of their peers, so was relatively easy to prove.
The defences were that it was true, or that it was in the public interest, or it was ‘fair comment’ on a known situation. (There was also ‘qualified privilege’ if the allegation was made to a closed body entrusted with maintaining standards, such as a complaint to a Medical regulatory body).
But after the lawyers had given this rather bleak advice, they said that main question was whether it would actually be in the interests of tobacco companies to sue a little-known doctor speaking on a little-heard community radio station. They could send him broke, but the issue would get a lot of publicity and how many people they killed would compete with how callous they were to stuff up the life of a little truth-teller. So I was to be careful, but not fearful.
Porter has raised the stakes in that if the ABC wants to run the truth defence, it has to prove it, which is hard with Katherine Thornton dead and the Police saying that without even a sworn testimony there was no hope of proving the case. If the story is not true, then arguably it is not in the public interest to discuss it, and since the ABC raised the issue, it is hardly fair comment on an existing discussion. Most people did not know which individual it referred to, but some did.
I am unsure to what extent comment will be shut down by the fact that it in sub judice, but I think if it is not a jury trial, judges are supposedly uninfluenced by the media, and you can comment on civil but not criminal matters. There is no doubt that everyone in the pub or tea room will have an opinion. If the ABC settles without running the case, Porter will claim a big victory. If the ABC fights and loses, he will also claim a big victory, but the damage done to him in the process is likely to be terminal. Most people are likely to continue to believe the story and he is likely to look like a privileged pratt using a bad law. This is not good when both he and his party have to face the voters.
Also, if the ABC loses, it will have a large budget blow, a loss of prestige and probably a budget cut from a vengeful government. But the process may have damaged the government enough to turn the next election and Labor may then restore the funding.
If you look at the tide of history, this issue is one that’s time has come. The coverage and discussion of the issue will make this a watershed moment where high legal costs are merely an investment in hastening a major social reform, though we cannot reasonably expect the ABC’s lawyers to see it that way.
Crikey looks at the strength of Porter’s team and case.
www.crikey.com.au/2021/03/16/christia-porter-defamation-trial-of-the-century/?fbclid=IwAR1_dcbIg1jexXl3TUkooK73YSy9yEIlKjTJ6CvMuE68BSqqZtKENo-TbvU
14/03/2021
14 March 2021
The former Solicitor-General, Justin Gleeson has made the case as to why there needs to be an investigation into Katherine Thornton’s rape allegation against Attorney-General, Christian Porter.
The mechanism for this would be that Morrison should ask the Solicitor-General for advice as to the situation. This Morrison has so far declined to do.
Interestingly, Justin Gleeson was highly respected Solicitor-General who resigned in 2016 after a very public argument with the then Attorney-General George Brandis, when Brandis wanted all referrals to the Solicitor-General to go through his office. Gleeson felt that this was restricting his freedom to give advice and effectively politicising his office. Prior to Brandis’ restriction he had made a statement about the legality of refugee legislation. (Guardian 24/10/16) The Prime Minister not asking the Solicitor-General now and the Solicitor-General not making a statement does sound like the same issue. Brandis, like Porter, was also accused of making poor appointments (of political party hacks) to judicial bodies.
In terms of the reasons for having an inquiry into the rape allegation, this opinion is as good as it gets. At least as an ex-Solicitor-General, Gleeson can speak publicly.
www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-09/christian-porter-historical-rape-allegation-gleeson/13229880
12/03/2021
12 March 2021
As a schoolkid, I was a good debater and the vocational guidance advice was that I should be a barrister. My father was dead against this idea. His dictum was, ‘Don’t go to court, you will get law but you will not get justice’.
He was a surgeon and to prove his point he took me to a court case where he was an expert witness. A company that manufactured concrete pipes was having an industrial dispute. The workers had stopped work and the union delegate was standing on a pipe giving an impassioned speech about how terrible the company was and that they should all go out on strike immediately. As he spoke a runaway truck crashed through the fence, knocked him off his pipe and broke his leg. It seemed obvious that was injured but he was not at work. The Union claimed that he was at work. The employer argued that he was not at work, and threw in that he was not injured either, which was why an expert witness was needed.
My father’s point was the process had nothing to do with the truth of the matter- it was just a talkfest that would give me the sh-its after a while. He won in the sense that I did not do law.
40 years later I went to a Family Law barrister as a support person for a friend getting divorced. The barrister, unprompted, said that he had thought about being a doctor, and regretted having done law as, ‘there is right and wrong on both sides, it all becomes adversarial, it is random which side you are on, and it is all about money.’
When I lived in New Zealand there was a high profile trial where a man had allegedly shot his brother in law. The brother in law was to inherit the family farm and he was jealous. The evidence looked very strong. His barrister managed to create a shadow of doubt in one of the juror’s minds and he walked free. It then came out that the man had been released charged with damaging farms, killing stock and burning buildings where he felt that he had been slighted, But the jury had not been allowed to know this. The defence barrister, Greg King, a family man with two children suicided a few months later. (Radio NZ 17/10/13). In his obituary people said he was a good kind man who did jobs that had to be done but no one else wanted.
I had a barrister acquaintance who said he had had a bad week in that he had been vehemently abused by a stranger as he tried to buy a pizza. He had been recognised by his critic as the defence barrister for a paedophile. He felt that this was completely unreasonable as he was ‘just doing his job’.
Our legal system is adversarial. Effectively there is a debate, with one side saying that the person is guilty and the other that they are not. It is about winning the argument; the truth is often an early casualty. The people running the system are as affected as those in the dock, albeit differently. The adversarial model in our legal system spills over into our parliamentary party system. It is more about winning than the truth.
Napoleon reformed the French legal system by making it inquisitorial rather than adversarial. The object of all parties to the court proceedings is to get to the truth, then the judge deals with that. Lawyers trained in our system think this is a terrible idea, but it seems very reasonable to me.
Now, because the complainant in the alleged rape by Christian Porter is dead there supposedly cannot be an inquest. No adversary, no action. No truth either.
Minter Ellison is a big end of town law firm which advised Christian Porter. Now its chief executive, Annette Kimmitt is being forced to resign because she questioned the firm’s support for him. Is giving him advice supporting him? Obviously she is not alone in thinking so.
Is there any chance of Australia getting a cost-effective, affordable legal system that gets to the truth, or is it too long after Waterloo?
SMH article today
MinterEllison boss exits after Attorney-General all-staff email
MinterEllison’s board and its chief Annette Kimmitt have ‘‘mutually agreed’’ she will leave the law firm after she sent an all-staff email critical of a senior partner for providing advice to Attorney-General Christian Porter about a 1988 rape allegation.
In an email to staff this week, MinterEllison chairman David O’Brien said the board had come to an agreement with Ms Kimmitt that she would depart the firm.
Managing partner Virginia Briggs, who heads the firm’s infrastructure, construction and property division, will serve as acting chief executive while the board considers a permanent replacement.
Ms Kimmitt has faced pressure since she sent an all-staff email last week that was critical of veteran partner Peter Bartlett for not following ‘‘consultation or approval processes’’ before he provided advice to Mr Porter. The Attorney-General has denied the allegation.
She apologised in the email to staff who may be experiencing pain over ‘‘the nature of this matter’’ and said that she too had been ‘‘triggered’’.
The email divided the firm and implicitly questioned whether the firm was right to represent Mr Porter.
Mr Bartlett, who also provides advice to the Herald, wasn’t aware of the email until it landed in the inboxes of the more than 2000 staff and partners it was sent to, some of the firm’s lawyers have said.
Tammy Mills, Chris Vedelago
05/03/2021
5 March 2021
As a child our family moved to Port Kembla, and we lived on Hill 60, just above the rocks where a lot of people have drowned recently.
I went to Port Kembla Infant’s School, which was overcrowded but interesting. Half the kids there came from the migrant hostel in the old WW2 army camp where ‘displaced Persons’ (as WW2 refugee families were called) lived. These kids arrived in kindergarten without a word of English. This was taken as normal by the teachers, who just plugged on. The kids from the hostel were called ‘Hostels’, but it was a descriptor rather than a pejorative. By the time we got to 2nd class in our 4th year (Kindergarten, Transition, 1st Class, 2nd Class) there was no difference between Aussie borns and Hostels. There were 46 in my 2nd class and girls filled the top 6 places. There was minimal racism in kids leaving this school.
There was no anti-discrimination legislation or bureaucracy in the 1950s but all the parents had jobs in the steelworks or associated industries and the Housing Commission was building suburbs full of affordable housing as fast as it could. If you had a go, you got a go. The ABC Radio had an awkward segment before the news called ‘Learn English with us’ where some somewhat stilted practical speech exercises lasted about 2 minutes. I used to wonder how the new migrants all tuned in for this little segment if they could not understand the rest. But the intention was there.
In 1966 there was a movement demanding ‘State Aid for Church Schools’ on the basis that they had paid their tax, and now they had left the state system they were paying twice. The government wanted to win the election, and this was seen as critical for the Catholic vote. The Democratic Labor Party, which had split from the ALP were the champions of this and still represented a significant threat to the ALP as they preferenced the Libs. State Aid came in.
Some time later there was a lot of emphasis on ESL (English as a Second Language) classes at TAFE, which were held during school hours. Their target was migrant women and their objective was to encourage English speaking to allow the women both to meet each other and to participate in society more easily. John Howard defunded the programme; ‘user pays’ was the new paradigm.
I now live in Sydney in a relatively central affluent suburb. Each morning 8 private school buses start near my door ferrying students to 8 private schools. No public transport needed- the school takes care of it all. Others students in private school uniforms catch subsidised public transport to the schools of their parents’ choice. But the cost of ‘choice’ is ‘residualisation’. Schools where there are a lot of ethnic students suffer from ‘white flight’, and so have concentrated social disadvantage and a lack of native role models. One school I visited in Western Sydney had had a stabbing in the playground about 25 years ago. The school photos in the foyer had no white face for the last 20 years. That was as far back as the photos went.
When we wonder if the Cabinet have any idea how the poorer folk live, my opinion is that they do not. These social dynamics have now been going for long enough that it is possible to be old enough to be in Cabinet and have no idea how the other half live. Some think that people without jobs have ‘wasted their opportunities’ or have alcohol or gambling problems. Add a little self-ri ghteous religion, ‘the poor are always with us’, a touch of arrogance and a peer group that thinks the same, and you have policies that are increasingly dismantling the fair go and equity that should be at the heart of our culture. It may be that you cannot make all people equal, but you can give all children equality of opportunity, and all adults enough to live on. We have to change direction and do just that.
Here, at the risk of being repetitive, is an article on Christian Porter.
www.themandarin.com.au/150633-christian-porter-the-unshakeable-belief-of-a-white-man-born-to-rule/?fbclid=IwAR2PbktE5jzTIgIjcL4orzdW1TO8ax03VpOBCFDTzDbRUepQnigaB1WG24Q