NSW government goes softly-softly on anti-corruption … AG from a crooked era nominated for chief commissioner … South Australian magistrate loses conduct appeal … Red wine snifters to raise funds for Queensland legal aid … President of Vic Appeals hangs up his wig with a shot at mandatory sentencing … Theodora reports
Former ACT CJ Helen Murrell and Judge Paul Lakatos (Hungarian for locksmith), president of the Mental Health Review Tribunal, are the two additional commissioners.
The selection sifters were the former chief justice Tom Bathurst; Annabelle Bennett (who has numerous government appointments); Juliana Warner, ex president of the Law Society; Michael Coutts-Trotter from premier and cabinet; and Michael Tidball from communities and justice.
The recommended appointments have to go through a process – input from the retiring chief commissioner Peter Hall and the parliamentary oversight committee.
A Supreme Court judge expressed interest in the job, but was overlooked.
With Hatzistergos at the helm, and the equally conservative Lakatos at his side, the government could have found a way to neuter the anti-corruption commission.
The evidence is readily available.
There’s this article from June 2014 in the virulently anti-ICAC Australian newspaper where Hatzistergos complains about the commission holding inquiries in public:
“All too often, inquiries have descended into spectacles where reputations have been damaged and the processes have been used for a preliminary trawl through evidence to uncover weakness and exploit the vulnerabilities in later proceedings.”
He thought that this explained why “so many ICAC referrals to the DPP … result in no prosecutions or in unsuccessful ones”.
It also explains, he suggested, why interstate ICACs “have not replicated the model but rather have placed greater rigour around public hearings …”
As a parting shot, he said “it is time to question” whether ICAC policy and direction should change “to achieve a better balance and … a more effective overall outcome”.
I.E. – lets go easy on ventilating corruption cases in public. The requirement is that two of the three commissioners have to agree to hold a public hearing as part of a corruption investigation.
In 2010, as attorney general, Hatzistergos introduced the Court Suppression and Non-Publication Orders Bill, which opened up the wave of closed justice, with orders granted lavishly to stop the reporting of court proceedings, without reasons and often with little regard for the public interest.
Here’s News Corp lawyer Gina McWilliams’ most recent tally of court suppressions for this year, up to June 24, 2022.
The NSW parliament recently passed government amendments so that judges who are appointed to ICAC can have their judicial appointments revive once they have finished their term with the anti-corruption body. Pensions are protected as well.
Then there were was the warfare attorney general Hatzistergos conducted against the DPP at the time, Nicholas Cowdery – even to the extent of measuring the DPP’s office to check whether it was too large.
During his reign as NSW AG Hatzistergos went on a law and order binge – introducing legislation to outlaw gangs; toughening sentencing for sex and violent offenders; restricting the grant of bail; and redefining the boundaries between art and pornography with increased powers for the police.
He prepared a report on bail for the Liberal government, and following legislation to implement it the state’s prison population rose by about 20 percent.
Soon after, the Liberals’ appointed Hatzistergos to the District Court.
He also introduced mandatory rehabilitation as a sentencing option for offenders – known as “intensive correction orders”.
Apart from that he has been a vociferous opponent of a proposed Charter of Rights, arguing that “tantalising as they sound, charters and bills, with their soaring values and protections enforced through adversarial litigation, do not present the best way forward”.
In July 2010, he was on Justinian’s Couch where he said that a Charter of Rights was one of his “greatest fears”.
One Notion MLC, Mark Latham, is unimpressed by Hatzistergos’s ICAC nomination:
Much comment on the Barilaro appointment.
Yet none on John Hatzistergos being made the Chief Commissioner of ICAC.
Between 2007-11 he was Labor’s and NSW’s first law officer surrounded by Obeid, Macdonald, Kelly, Tripodi etc, seemingly unable to bring integrity to that Govt.— Real Mark Latham (@RealMarkLatham) June 24, 2022
The case of the South Australian magistrate fighting off multiple complaints somehow or other quietly slipped into view sometime between March and mid-July.
The Judicial Conduct Commissioner in May last year notified the unnamed beak of eight complaints made against him.
There was a preliminary investigation and the commissioner recommended to the attorney general that a panel be appointed to investigate and report.
In June 2021, the AG duly appointed a judicial conduct panel, whereupon the beak wanted a judicial review of the recommendation made by the commissioner to the AG.
Ninety-three pages later the SA court of appeal dismissed the application for review on all grounds:
A Judicial Officer v The Judicial Conduct Commissioner and the Judicial Conduct Panel
The court found:
Sadly, the details of complaints 1-7 were not considered sufficiently important by their Hons to detail in their reasons.
Tip-toeing through the redactions, complaint 8 concerned an alleged incident “in a court building on 18 July 2014 … The applicant was told that the incident was witnessed by Ms B”.
The witness allegedly was told by the person concerned that the magistrate “often treated her in that way and it made her uncomfortable”.
She “claimed to have raised it with [the magistrate] but it made no difference”.
That was 2014 and since then a wave of mandatory training about conduct and making people feel “uncomfortable” has gripped the legal profession.
No doubt the work of the panel to restore public confidence in the judiciary will be conducted in private.
LawRight, the legal access people in Queensland, has a seductive way of opening the wallets of lawyers in the Pineapple Belt.
Red Wine for Justice, a ticketed event scheduled for Friday (July 29) will be hosted by Herbert Smith Freehills at The Grove in Queen Street, Brisvegas.
“Well-cellared wines” are available for sale and there’s an auction where the prize is a picnic for up to eight hosted by former Supreme Court justices Roslyn Atkinson and Ann Lyons.
Sounds fun.
Justice Chris Maxwell retired as president of Victoria’s court of appeal on July 15.
The day before he stepped down he and Justice Terry Forrest issued a full-throated rebuke of the state’s mandatory sentencing laws.
At trial Beau Buckley was convicted of aggravated carjacking and handed a mandatory minimum sentence of three years.
The offence happened four weeks after his 18th birthday. Buckley was described as “exceptionally immature and would be vulnerable in prison”.
Instead of prison, he might more appropriately have been detained in a Youth Justice Centre or given a community correction order with therapeutic conditions.
But the legislation instructs the court to lock the offender away for a minimum of three years, regardless.
Maxwell and T. Forrest were decidedly upset at having to dismisses the appeal.
There’s more …
“In our view, mandatory sentencing reveals a profound misunderstanding of where the community’s best interests lie, especially in the sentencing of young offenders. As has been pointed out repeatedly, sending young people to adult gaol is almost inevitably counterproductive. It also reveals a wholly unjustified mistrust of those on whom the sentencing discretion is conferred. Sentencing courts are much better equipped, and much better placed, than legislators to determine what type and length of sentence will satisfy the sentencing objectives in a particular case.”
Over and out from President Maxwell.