What a magnificent speech from Justice Robert Beech-Jones. It is rare for lawyers gathered at a professional jamboree to witness from a High Court judge anything so sparkling, pointed, and footnoted.
HH had two themes.
The radical legal and economic policy legacy of Sir Samuel Griffith (1845-1920), which is completely at odds with the endeavours of the ultra-cons at the current-day Samuel Griffith Society.
Also, Beech-Jones dispelled the idea that the society is just some sort of dusty talk shop. Rather, it lobbies for constitutional originalism, monsters implied powers, and advocates for the selection of the right sort of Lord Fauntleroy’s for judicial appointments.
He encouraged everyone to “keep an eye on this combination of originalism and court stacking”.
What’s not to like?
Except that Allan Myers KC, president of the SGS didn’t like it and poured himself out in a rather disconnected way to his typist, Janet Albrechtsen – an opinion writer for Murdoch’s media conglomerate (which, for good measure, is controlled from America and avoids tax in Australia).
It’s understandable that Myers would want to defend his patch – unfortunately he failed to confront Beech-Jones’ arguments head-on.
Instead, the judge was instructed to stick to judging, stay out of politics, and not make speeches or deliver papers.
“Stick to the job of deciding cases according to law.” Presumably, judges, even High Court judges, who windbag away at SGS festivals are exempt from that injunction.
Frankly, the response to Beech-Jones didn’t cut it.
The judge examined Griffith’s Elementary Property Bill (1890) for Queensland, which declared that land, by reason of natural law, was the common property of the community, with courts overseeing large-scale redistribution of wealth
Essentially, he was advocating a form of worker collectives – as Beech-Jones put it, Griffith was “Marx adjacent”.
How does that sit with the Man of Property who is the current president of the Samuel Griffith Society, one of the biggest private landowners in Australia – a Top End cattle baron and the Squire of Dunkeld?
Griffith’s Bill was met with a “splenetic” response in the conservative press, but fortunately for the pastoralists, the legislation was never passed.
There’s more here on Griffith and his complexities from Peter Applegarth, former justice of the Supreme Court of Queensland.
There has also been a splenetic response to Marbo [No 2] from some of the shrivelled souls delivering papers and orations for the Samuel Griffith Society. Justice Beech-Jones gave us a sample:
• The decision will “benefit at most 1.53% of the population … upon whom we already spend upwards of a billion dollars in public money annually”.
• Terra nullius was correct … The High Court decision was “pitiful … mischievous … stupid”.
• Mabo [No 2] is akin to a “disease”.
• “Aborigines are a pretty incompetent lot, who are difficult to help.”
Over a period of 10 years, the SGS published at least 33 papers attacking Marbo [No 2]. The outcry against the implied right to political communication (Lange) has been no less deafening, while more recently there have been calls for the Society to take itself in a similar direction to the US Federalist Society.
As a further example of the abuse of Griffith’s legacy, Beech-Jones pointed to one commentator, who said:
“Success will come down to resources. Change requires money. Perhaps there is a quiet billionaire willing to back the role of law, just as a couple of wealthy Americans did for the Federalist Society 40 years ago.”
That was a quote from Planet herself, who was helpfully trying to rectify the “legal professions lurch to the left”.
You wouldn’t want to be stuck in an elevator with any number of these Sammys.
Justice Beech-Jones concluded:
“Ordinarily, all this would be none of my business but these methods are being advocated for in Australia. This has made it my business and it has made it your business as custodians of the law; we are all interested in this, whether we like it or not. To adapt a phrase, they have driven into my lane and they have driven into yours. If anyone thinks this particular US style of court stacking and judicial decision-making is a good idea, then go and live there. The rule of law appears to be having an interesting time in that country.”
Apart from taking dictation from Allan Myers, the Planet vented in two further wordy and repetitive blasts against Beech-Jones, Gageler CJ, the High Court and God knows who else – here and here.
The liberal use of “quotes” from unidentified sources is a feature of her attack.
This from a bloviator who was recently found by the Australian Press Council to be “inaccurate … misleading … and unfair” in her hit job against former ACT DPP, Shane Drumgold SC.
Part of her campaign against Drumgold involved the cultivation of Walter Sofronoff during his Board of Inquiry into the prosecution of Bruce Lehrmann, resulting in a finding that, as a result of “impugned communications” with Planet, the Cossack engaged in “serious corrupt conduct”.
See: Operation Juno, ACT Integrity Commission
Also, see Sofronoff stripped bare
The prolific scribbler is also blithely devoid of irony. She’s incandescent about the High Court’s finding of an implied constitutional right of political communication – most recently here, where she says:
“What started out, in the first case of Nationwide News Pty Ltd v Wills, as a relatively limited implied freedom to criticise a member of the then Industrial Relations Commission has now reached into many other areas.”
In other words, it was her bosses at News Corp who were to blame for the blossoming of this implied freedom.
At one stage, Albrechtsen was writing for The Sydney Morning Herald, resulting in Magistrate Pat O’Shane suing the newspaper over one of the columnist’s articles.
Planet was critical that the magistrate was not sufficiently tough on law and order in the cases she dealt with, particularly for her lenient treatment of Aborigines when sitting at Brewarrina and Lismore.
In defence of the article, published in December 1999, Fairfax pleaded the implied constitutional right of communication for political and governmental matters.
The Planet did not seem to object that this judicial “invention” was being argued in defence of her work.
As it happened, Acting Justice Rex Smart awarded O’Shane damages of $220,000 (later shaved on appeal), finding that there were inaccuracies in the statement of facts and in the reports about O’Shane’s proceedings.
Further, he found that the author had not acted reasonably.