By Garry Stannus*

19 Aug 2017: Round about 50 were there in the little park outside the Tasmanian Parliament. Mainly locals, some from elsewhere in the state and one from the mainland.

It was the vigil for Sue:  Susan Neill-Fraser, who has now been eight years in jail, convicted of the murder of her partner, Bob Chappell, who disappeared from the Four Winds yacht on the Australia Day of 2009 or in the early morning following it.

This vigil had been on my ‘appointment’s list for two months or so, and I was pleased to catch up again with supporters of Sue down in the ‘teeth of winter’, with the snow on the mountains around Hobart quite widespread (I’m from the north).

Photo: Protester’s sign with the latest news…and a call for an independent inquiry. (Pic: Garry Stannus)

Below the mountain, it was ‘Salamanca Saturday’, and the business of the market went on nearby as it always does, rain, hail or shine. We were not there for any reason other than to acknowledge the weight of the eight years so far, the weight shared variously, of Sue Neill-Fraser’s imprisonment and we were there to affirm either or both of two issues:

1. For some of Sue’s supporters, they know she is innocent. They know it in ways that are for some … quite informed, for others … as a result of knowing her personally, and for others … on the basis of their lifetime experiences in justice and police agencies and lastly, … a combination of all three.
2. For others who attended – myself included – there are also the wider issues: There is a significant number of people … people who are concerned that Sue Neill-Fraser’s court trial may have miscarried, that a miscarriage of justice occurred during that trial.

That trial was conducted in the court of the (then) Justice, Alan Blow. Alan Blow is now our state’s Supreme Court Chief Justice. Also, he served as our Lieutenant-Governor and in 2014 briefly assumed the role of Governor of Tasmania following the sad death of widely respected Governor Peter Underwood. Peter Underwood too, had been a Chief Justice of our Supreme Court.

I belong to a group of Tasmanians who do not claim to know all the facts surrounding Bob Chappell’s disappearance from the Four Winds in January 2009. We regard ourselves as ‘Supporters of Sue’ because of the perceived defects in her trial. With the deadweight of legal momentum, those defects persisted to her appeal, then to her application for leave-to-appeal to the High Court.

This ‘deadweight of the law’ continued further: when the Coroner was asked to further examine the circumstances of Bob Chappell’s disappearance. Without commenting on the quality of Coroner Hay’s report, I note that the Coroner drew attention to the legal requirement to make findings that were in accord with those of the original trial. Checkmate!

Euchre is a card game in which one suite always wins. In the case of Bob Chappell’s disappearance, the legal/prosecutorial apparatus has always held the trump cards, able to ‘trump’ anything that is presented to it, reaching into the chasms of precedent when required, and seemingly overlooking it when not.

So all ‘Supporters of Sue’ believe that her trial miscarried.

Here is not the place to ask whether Alan Blow wisely – or properly—exercised his legal discretion in refusing to allow that a certain witness to be recalled. However, here is the place where we state that Susan Neill-Fraser had a right to a fair trial and that there are persistent grounds for believing that she did not receive it.

Eight years in … Justice Blow gave her 26 years … which got reduced to 23. Sue maintains her innocence which means she’s got another 15 years behind bars to go.

Confident that justice has taken place?

We in the community have a right to be confident that justice has taken place. We have a right to know when someone is imprisoned, that they have been justly convicted. I make no comment on the recent developments.

Sue’s right to a (second) appeal was begun on ‘fresh and compelling’ material gathered prior to the alleged attempts of others to pervert the course of justice. We cannot – and should not – comment on these recent matters until evidence has been presented and until the courts have decided as to the truth of the Tasmanian Police allegations.

I note that TasPol have on separate occasions stated that there is no claim that Sue Neill-Fraser was part of (or knew of) the alleged recent conspiracy, and secondly, that there is likewise no claim that Barbara Etter had any involvement in, or was party to, the alleged attempts.

My views are shared by others in this state, and wider afield. We are not confident that Susan Neill-Fraser ‘got a fair trial’. We have asked for a second appeal to be allowed, with a view to either a quashing of conviction or a retrial.

Now, given the present imbroglio, and the May request by eminent barrister Robert Richter and two others (in a private meeting) with the Premier, the acting Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General, I personally think that Richter’s suggestion of an independent inquiry into the Bob Chappell/Susan Neill-Fraser case is warranted. Not only warranted, but also required as a means of standing outside the original police investigation, of standing outside the trial and the failed appeal; required so that we have someone – some body – to stand outside this mess and to find answers that will work for all of us.

It may be the case that Richter’s approach to the three government members was based on allegedly perverse evidence. However, regardless of the outcome of the present police arrests/charges, I think that the matter has reached a stage where Richter’s request – rightly or wrongly founded – should be granted.

We are entitled to have confidence in our police, to have confidence in our prosecutions and in our trial systems. At the moment, in my view, we are experiencing a ‘deadweight of the law’, the deadweight of what ‘our mates’ have decided in the past … it’s time, in my view, for a fresh, independent look at this case.

ENDS

Garry Stannus is a Tasmanian ’northerner’ who made a special trip down to Hobart for the rally. He is into the environment, politics, tennis, current events and social justice. He loves researching pet topics, especially legal aspects, and slow meanders on a push bike, camera across shoulder. The photo above is also his. This article appeared first in the Tasmanian Times: http://tasmaniantimes.com/

By Ben Aulich

For more than 100 years, the word ‘defamation’ has carried the clear understanding that the legal battleground under consideration was dominated by the mass media – newspapers, television and radio and their concurrent website publications.

For all of that period, the agitation for law reform has come from the proprietors of those same mass media – Fairfax, Packer and Murdoch. The issue, as they saw it, was freedom of the press – a catchcry debunked by the great American humorist AJ Liebling who noted that:

”Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”

Certainly, defamation law has never been entirely about the press barons’ rights. There have always been mini-media defendants: the authors of libellous letters, slanderous gossips… even graffiti taggers.

Now the Australian courts are under attack for their “lack of agility” in coming to terms with the avalanche of defamation spewed out in our social media. The claims for damages are shouldering aside conventional defamation suits and threatening to clog up the court lists.

Landing in a litigation cost-for-all

It is painfully obvious to the solicitors to whom clients bring screen-shot examples, and ask to be advised about their rights, that it simply doesn’t occur to the authors of so many Facebook and Twitter character assassinations that their hasty and often malicious comments are liable to land them in a great deal of very expensive litigation.

It’s not just at that level – there is a massive amount of actionable defamation to be found on websites that invite customers and clients to comment on their experiences with doctors, architects, lawyers, hairdressers and other businesspeople.

So, before you let fly at your neighbour about leaving his bins out all week and accuse him of bad citizenship or worse, here’s a little guidance: defamation for beginners.

The most common question posed by solicitors’ clients is whether the matter appearing on Facebook or a word-of-mouth blog is defamatory.

Usually, that is hardly the issue. Most people, including clients, can tell whether something is defamatory. The classical legal test is whether the words in issue tend to lower the aggrieved person in the opinion of reasonable members of the community – or, put simply, the question is does the post denigrate him or her?

Not the words, but the meaning

The next task for the lawyer is to formulate the meaning conveyed by the words. A plaintiff in a defamation action sues not on the words themselves, but on their meaning, and such meanings are almost invariably written between the lines. If a tweet advises readers not to leave their wallets lying around if John Smith’s in the room, the meaning on which Mr Smith’s lawyers will fight the case is that the words impute that he’s a thief.

Which brings me to the matter of imputations, or meanings. To stay with poor old John Smith, if the tweet is in the words: “Smith is a thief”, the court case will be about whether or not that simple statement is true.

More often, the words will be: “I hear that John Smith was dismissed from his employment after allegations that property had been misappropriated”; in which case the imputation is: Smith is a thief.

There is a good deal of sarcasm in social media attacks. If the words are “Of course it is not for me to say that Smith is a thief”; or even “There is no truth in the rumours that Smith is dishonest”; or perhaps “When asked whether he was a thief, Smith had no answer”, the same meaning – that Smith is a thief – will express the “act or condition” that is conveyed by the words, and for which John wants damages.

Since 2005, Australia has had the benefit of a more or less uniform law of defamation in every state and territory.

Tweets girdle the earth

Which is just as well, because a Canberra tweet is certainly going to be read in NSW, and Victoria, and even outside this country. At least the legal defences available are consequently uniform, and lawyers can advise those responsible for the publications on their chances of succeeding: substantial truth of the meaning of the words is the best defence, and applies everywhere; and the other strong defence (if it fits) of “it was my honest opinion,” or a fair comment, can be invoked in every jurisdiction.

Just a quick aside: even what is intended as a joke can be defamatory. The legal principle was established long ago that “a person shall not be allowed to murder another’s reputation in jest.”

Now some inside knowledge that may help, if you have it in mind to get square with the people next door for their offensive bin-handling. Your intended tweet: “Our neighbours are letting down the whole street with their I’m-all-right-Jack attitude” is going to be the subject of legal advice, along these lines:

• How serious is it? A good question, because sensible advice is that some defamations are best allowed to pass through to the keeper.
• How many people read it/saw it/heard it? Even if it’s fewer than a dozen recipients, damages for a very nasty comment could be within the $50,000-$100,000 range.
• How long before we go to court? Time is always on the defendant’s side. The question is whether waiting one or two years is worth the worry.
• Can I afford to sue? All litigation is expensive, and victims of defamation not infrequently have to come to an arrangement to pay their lawyers once they’ve won the case. The reality is that lawyers have to back their own judgment.
• Will I win? This involves whether the meaning of the words can be proved substantially true, or – being false – whether the author acted reasonably in putting them out there (which won’t work for an indiscriminate publication), or whether the court can be persuaded to see them as a fair comment. That’s a great deal harder to do than most tweeters think. How is the reader to know it’s fair enough if the facts aren’t also featured in the words that appear?

Many defamation victims rush in to see their solicitors, breathing fire… but that fire dies down quickly. The best advice is often to advise to put the defamation aside for a fortnight, and then to reconsider suing. In the meantime, a solicitor’s strong letter to the offender may succeed in removing the defamation from the site. It is quite surprising how many clients decide they would rather forget it.

On the other hand, some libels are so bad, so obvious, and so indefensible that immediate action assists with the damages – because it shows the degree of hurt to feelings, and that the plaintiff did everything he or she could to obtain a retraction and apology.

Bloggers and tweeters almost never seek legal advice before they send their defamatory messages. They, obviously, are the ones who would benefit even more from a cooling-off period before they rush into print.

ENDS

Ben Aulich is a partner of Aulich Civil Law Pty Ltd, and a member of CLA. This article appeared first in the Canberra Times on 12 August 2017: http://tinyurl.com/y8n96q9u

By Paddy Gourley

The re-organisation of the machinery of government in July 1987 was the most significant, wide-ranging and possibly beneficial in the history of the Commonwealth.

Better concentrated around coherent and related functions, the number of departments was reduced from 28 to 18 and arranged in 16 cabinet portfolios supported in many cases by non-cabinet ministers.

The re-organisation was conceived in secrecy by the then Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and a couple of his staff. It was signed off by the Prime Minister three days after the 1987 election without apparent consultation at ministerial or official levels, something if indulged could well have killed off the whole scheme.

A new Administrative Arrangements Order was immediately issued with ministers being appointed and functions allocated to them and their departments. While the distribution of staff and resources took time, the detail of the whole deal was known on the day it was announced, Bastille Day.

The new cabinet and departmental structures were unaffected by political intrigue or the ugly empire-building aspirations of ministers and officials and were consistent with generally-accepted machinery of government principles.

On the 30th anniversary almost to the day of these momentous changes, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced an intention to create a “Home Affairs portfolio of Australia’s immigration, border protection and domestic security agencies” including “ASIO, the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre and the Office of Transport Security.” He also outlined the government’s response to the L’Estrange-Merchant review of the Australian Intelligence Community.

CARTOON: Ministerial merry-go-round Illustration: Zhou Tao for the Shanghai Daily

While decisions on the AIC review are sound, the Prime Minister’s statements (and those of some of his ministers) on the Home Affairs proposal are rich in cliché, wishful thinking and ignorance. Such shortcomings could be excused if the proposal was meritorious; it is not.

Sensible machinery of government principles are offended, the stench of politics and empire building is abroad, there is no revised Administrative Arrangements Order and, notwithstanding the avowed urgency of security and terror risks, the new show will not come into effect for about a year.

The contrast with the much more significant 1987 changes could not be more stark. Home Affairs begins as a shambles and will likely end as one; a public administration amateur hour. It’s little wonder the reception has varied from lukewarm to puzzled to stringently adverse.

Have any of those involved in advancing the cause of the Home Affairs portfolio ever bothered to familiarise themselves with important texts on the machinery of government – the 1918 Haldane Report and the Coombs Royal Commission, for example, and the vast academic literature? If they have, they’ve ignored the lessons. It’s more likely they’ve not. The proponents of the new portfolio seem to have made it up as they’ve gone along beginning with an answer and then scrambling for justifications none of which are worth a toad’s breath.

Machinery of government literature does not provide guidance as precise as Newton’s laws of motion. Indeed, the Haldane Report cautions against the application of its dictums with “absolute rigidity.” There is also the need for purist administrative prescriptions to take into account, for example, the abilities and wishes of ministers.

Testing the proposal

Nevertheless, there’s sufficient agreement in the literature to distil principles against which the Home Affairs proposal can be tested. Let’s take a few.

First, Haldane says that functions should be allocated by “defining the field of activity in the case of each department according to the particular service it renders” rather than on the basis of “persons or classes to be dealt with.” That’s re-iterated by the Coombs Royal Commission which says that “departments should be organised around a coherent function.” The 1987 changes sought to do that with departments dealing with foreign affairs and trade, health and community services, industry services and the like rather than children, the unemployed or the ill.

Turnbull says that the proposed Home Affairs portfolio is about “entrenching cooperation between agencies which has helped us thwart 12 terrorist attacks and stop 31 people smuggling ventures.” That is to say, he’s wanting an organisation based primarily on what he sees as overlapping classes of people to be dealt with – “terrorists” and refugees. It’s unlikely to work well and to apply the approach as a general principle in government administration would be disastrous.

Second, major related functions should have a stand-alone department. Since the end of the Second World War, immigration has been one of the most important Commonwealth functions and its effects have been highly consequential.

Now it’s likely to be thoroughly subordinated in the Home Affairs portfolio whose primary objective now seems more to be about keeping people out rather than getting them in. Through gritted teeth the big loser in the re-organisation, Attorney-General George Brandis, says that the Home Affairs portfolio will provide a minister “whose exclusive focus is on national security.” Really? So immigration, a nation building function, will have to fit under a minister whose exclusive focus is on “national security”.

It’s tragic that a great department, the Department of Immigration, is to have its role further distorted and its place in the scheme of things reduced by the perceived imperative of pandering to exaggerated anxieties about those who try to get into the country on rickety boats.

Third, departments should be composed of like or related functions. On this basis the merging of immigration and customs was a mistake that no amount of muttering about “border protection” can make good.

Arranging for people to migrate to Australia is an entirely different activity from seeing that appropriate duties are levied on imports and that illegal imports of goods are prevented. That may be why the Australian Export Council is reported as calling for customs and visa policy to be transferred to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Plagued with controversy, failure

Apart from difficulties caused by the distractions of its re-organisation and the obnoxious policies it has had to implement, it’s no wonder the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, composed of functions as different as immigration and customs, has been so plagued with controversy and administrative failure. Adding a range of security functions is going to further impede the effective administration of them all.

Fourth, police and prosecutorial functions should be kept at a step removed from major activities they are likely to be required to investigate. That is why the Australian Federal Police Act has usually been administered by the Attorney-General where the AFP can more properly, independently and impartially carry out its role across the broad range of Commonwealth functions and that is why it is wrong for them now to be placed with customs and immigration.

Fifth, intelligence gathering should be kept apart from related policy functions so that policy predispositions don’t bias intelligence collection and analysis.

The CIA’s intimate involvement with decisions by President George W. Bush to invade Iraq in 2003 appears to have affected the nature of intelligence advice. The head of the CIA, a statutorily independent organisation, told the President that Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction was a “slam dunk” while a British official reported back to the Blair government that in Washington intelligence “facts” were being fitted around the policy. With the best will in the world, once a government policy is set, there is a natural tendency for officials to look for “facts” to support it.

Putting distance between intelligence gathering and policy helps to minimise this risk. That is to say, it is unwise to include ASIO in the new Home Affairs organisation notwithstanding its statutory independence, especially given the capacities and inclinations of its minister-to-be Peter Dutton.

Sixth, overall government responsibilities should be spread as evenly as possible between ministers. The Home Affairs proposal goes significantly in the opposite direction.

Seventh, some observers have remarked on the apparent intention for the Attorney-General to retain his role in issuing warrants and authorisations for ASIO which will not be in his portfolio, although that’s uncertain as the Prime Minister has said that the Attorney’s role “in ASIO operations” is to be reviewed. Having the Attorney approve warrants etc may not be significant although it is a return to the bad old days, abetted by Kevin Rudd, of ministerial matrix management making for confused operations and accountability.

More could be said but it should be clear enough that the Home Affairs proposal is inconsistent with just about all usually-accepted principles of machinery of government.

Inappropriate, ill-advised

In his announcement, the Prime Minister made much of the precedent of the UK’s Home Office. That’s an inappropriate, ill-advised and unconvincing comparison.

The UK has a unitary system of government including all those functions performed in Australia by state governments and which can conveniently be gathered into its Home Office which has evolved over perhaps hundreds of years. Moreover, in its contemporary form it hardly seems that this institution is worthy of copying or emulating, it having recently experienced a plague of scandals, adverse publicity and failure.

It’s also worth noting that a Home Affairs portfolio was not recommended in the L’Estrange-Merchant report on the AIC.

There’s been a suggestion that such a proposal would have been outside their terms of reference. Clearly it would not have been, the terms of the review requiring it to report on “how effectively the AIC [the Australian Intelligence Community] serves (and is positioned to serve)….the needs of policy makers” and “whether the AIC is structured appropriately, including in ensuring effective coordination and contestability.”

In commenting on the Home Affairs proposal, the head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Peter Jennings, is reported as saying that “I don’t think the case has been as compelling as it could have been” and that the government’s decision was a “line ball call”. As the poet Pope wrote, “Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer. And without sneering teach the rest to sneer”.

The fact is that there is no obvious compelling case for the government’s proposals. In the improbable event Jennings has one in his back pocket, let him bring it forth.

If he were to do so, he would need to deal with former Queensland National Party senator and Treasury Secretary, JO Stone who slagged off on the proposal using a quip he falsely attributed to the Roman courtier, Petronius, to the effect that “we tend to meet any new situation by re-organising, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation”. While there’s no evidence Petronius said any such thing, the sentiments are apposite.

More convincingly and a couple of thousand years after Petronius, former Public Service Board Chairman and departmental secretary, the late Peter Wilenski, referred to academic analysis of mergers and demergers in the UK Civil Service, the two major conclusions of which were:

• that re-organisation always produces cost escalation (expressed as the iron law of prodigality), and
• that it has little observable effect on operations (expressed as the iron law of inertia).

While these observations are hyperbolic, in the hapless circumstances of the development of the Home Affairs proposal, they stand an excellent chance of being made more credible.

If there’s a good thing, if unredeeming, in this whole business, it is that when something goes wrong on the security-terror front, everyone will know who to ask why: Peter Dutton.

If he’s true to form, however, don’t expect a straight answer or even any answer.

ENDS

Paddy Gourley is a former Canberra senior public servant, originally from Tasmania. Email: pdg@home.netspeed.com.au This article appeared first in ‘The Public Sector Informant’, a ‘supplement’ of the Canberra Times: http://tinyurl.com/y9uaukq2   It is reproduced here with the permission of the author. Also by Paddy Gourley: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/independent-review-of-public-administration-is-overdue–and-a-bizarre-viceregal-oath-no-one-needs-20170330-gv9r02.html