Concentrating the mind

Nauru, where "undesirable" people are concentrated without trial, indefinitely ... VCAT rules on the fleeting nature of a kiss ... Police cover-up identity of person receiving $250,000 witness payment for the shaky Phuong Ngo conviction ... Procrustes at large  

Nauru: slippery slope

YOUR correspondent, reduced to watching morning television, was appalled to see the deer-like Michael and Karena on ABC News Breakfast in the first week of February tut-tutting over the use by an Australian eye-witness of the description of our holiday facilities for refugee applicants on Nauru as a "concentration camp". 

Shock horror. Not acceptable, the doe-eyed duo decided on air.

Well, the OED being too far on gouty feet, Procrustes tapped into Wikipedia to discover the following about the concentration in concentration camps:

"The term itself originated in the 'reconcentration camp' set up in Cuba by General Valeriano Weyler in 1897. Concentration camps had in the past been used by the US against Native Americans, by the British in the Boer wars, and wherever the 'undesirables' had to be kept in check by those who incarcerated them." 

Goodness me. That sounds like an exact definition of what the Australian government has set up on Nauru, and elsewhere, to place the boatpeople descending on our sparkling shores.

Yes, yes, what's at issue isn't the precise denotation, but the connotations of the phrase. But isn't that the point?  The connotations, rejected with anger by Howard and Ruddock a decade ago, are inevitably present.

If you lock-up a recognisable group of people i.e. concentrate them, away from the community, without charge or conviction, you infringe on fundamental common law rights.

The slippery slope in the direction of all the Nazi-era connotations has already been well descended.

Your correspondent suspects that what troubled the lovely Michael and Karena was the ABC's endless appetite for "balance".

Leaving the eye-witness account and reference un-airbrushed might lead to an accusation of allowing a politically charged statement to remain at large.

Better to play safe and defuse the idea that might trouble middle Australia over its muesli that we were incarcerating people we didn't like, without trial, in a manner reminiscent of a system now discredited for 70 years.

So much for a national broadcaster that's meant to report fearlessly, while looking over its corporate shoulder at an approaching Abbott government that has, via recent Tony-speak, indicated that the ABC needs to sharpen itself up on the "balance" front.

A Kiss is just a Kiss

Jarred & Sheree Mitchell: stolen kiss

MEANWHILE, the Victorian VCAT has brought down a weighty decision on the ephemeral nature of a kiss.

Newlyweds Jarrad and Sheree Mitchell claimed they were entitled to the money shot, their kiss while exchanging vows, but photographer George Ferris said they should have lingered longer if he was to record it for posterity. 

Confronted with this epic litigation emerging from Nathania Springs, VCAT, in the form of the redoubtable Dr Rebecca French, ruled in January 2013 that "the kiss" cannot be a guaranteed entry in every wedding album.

The Mitchells argued that Ferris had failed to capture (among other critical matters) "the kiss".

Ferris argued the kiss had been "just a peck" and that it was impossible to capture every moment in the evolving spectacle that was a wedding.

Procrustes reflected on his sole involvement as a principal participant in a nuptial knot-tying: the drunken uncle, the bridesmaid in tears, the best man slapped - much too fast moving, although indelibly imprinted over five decades.

Dr French found the Mitchells did not prove Ferris' work was sub-standard, but said weddings were "moving feasts", which lacked the controlled conditions of a photographic studio.

"It was put to me that it was 'just a peck' and while it was not discussed at length in evidence, I accept that it is quite difficult to capture the moment of a kiss ... Nor is it always possible to capture other precise moments and doing so can be problematic." 

Doc French ordered that the photographer pay $710 and the Mitchells to pay $60 for the snapper's dinner.

Bring back Blondie, I say, singing her old hit French Kissing in the VCAT.

It is to be hoped this case has legs, as it would be splendid to see Dr French's kiss theory tested in big brother Bob's High Court.

No kiss and tell from the NSW Police

CANBERRA based Hugh Selby has waged a long struggle to reopen the conviction in 2001 (after two mistrials) of Phuong Ngo for the murder of John Newman, reckoned to be Australia's only political assassination. 

What currently piques Selby's interest is that just a few weeks after he had supplied the police, the NSW DPP and the NSW Supreme Court with material he claims shows that an indemnified witness lied often at Ngo's first two trials, the NSW Police paid out $250,000 in June 2010, with no fanfare, to an undisclosed witness.

This payment was made nine years after trial, and some months prior to the handing down of a "decision" by Peter McClelland CJ at CL in October 2010 deriding Selby's claims.

Selby set out to find out the mystery recipient of so much public largesse.

He asked the NSW Police for the name and for what information the reward had been paid. 

The coppers refused to answer.

Selby went to the NSWADT with his FOI claim for this information and had a hearing in November.

In accordance with the usual practice regarding documents in respect of which a government body may claim public interest immunity, Selby reminded the police lawyers in writing before the hearing to bring the contested documents to the hearing. 

That was with a view to the decision maker, as is customary, seeing the documents as part of the process leading to a decision to allow or refuse access.

At the ADT hearing the member asked the police lawyers for the contested documents.

They refused. When pressed for an explanation the answer was, "The tribunal might leak them".

At the ADT hearing the police sent an officer who had no knowledge of the payment, the reasons it was paid, or the recipient.

She also denied any dealings with superior officers about her role in the ADT hearing.

However, within two weeks after the  hearing the Sunday Telegraph ran a two page spread on police reward     payments, with quotes from Assistant Police Commissioner Peter Barrie. 

 The newman case and the accompanying reward was mentioned in the article. 

Just short of three months later there is still no decision. Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice said.

Payment of a large reward so many years after a conviction, but in the months leading to a judicial enquiry into the safeness of the conviction (the payment not being disclosed to the judge or the public) raises inferences as to sealing the lips of the person whose lips were presumably opened so many years earlier at trial.

Isn't that an important consideration in weighing up the cogency of evidence, particularly when location and timing of the parties was much in contest at the trial? 

In any case, don't the taxpayers of NSW have a right to know where their money is going, a right which transcends the police "operational requirements" fob-off, the more so when it is now 18.5 years since the murder, some 16 years since the reward was offered, and about 14 since they locked Ngo away?