Counsel Assisting wipe the floor

Counsel assisting Dyse ... Allsop in the gossip pages ... The Australian passes-off barrister's learned article on the RDA ... Tim Ellis and all Tasmania wait for verdict in driving case ... The "smart arse" tactic ... Queen Anne is dead, long-live coloured robes ... Flying Malaysian Airlines 

I'm delighted to see that Dyson Heydon has selected not one, but two, of his learned friends from his own floor at Selborne Chambers as counsel assisting the royal commission into trade union rorting. 

Heydon: floor work

Jeremy Stoljar SC and Michael Elliott join Dyse as part of the 8 Selborne union busting squad. 

On the chambers website Jeremy lists his expertise as: commercial, corporations law, equity and property. 

On the royal commission website this has slightly expanded to include: "corporations law (including corporate governance), property and building and construction." 

Michael Elliott has always included building and construction on his chambers' bio, but the commission helpfully has included his expertise in "corporate officers duties and liabilities". 

People have spitefully remarked that these appointments from the same chambers are appropriate for a royal commission examining the back-scratching activities of the bruvvers and cloth caps. 

I put such comments down to the sort of jealousy and meanness that characterise a lot of Sydney briefs.  

In any event, all is not lost. A third counsel assisting has been appointed, the truly brilliant Fiona Roughley from the Chifley Tower branch of Banco Chambers - a world away from Selborne. 

Roughley: all is not lost

She won the University of Sydney medals in both English and Law, was associate to Ken Hayne, worked in the Senate in Canberra and was awarded a Gates scholarship to Cambridge, coming home with a Master of Law (hons). 

Her core practice areas are: admin, constitutional, communications, media, corporations, insolvency, equity and commercial. 

Go Fi. 

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For a shy person like Federal Court CJ James Allsop it must be wretched to be plastered over the pages of the popular tissues, twice in the space of a week. 

Allsop: shySydney Morning Herald gossip muffin Andrew Hornery on March 22 reported the following item in his Private Sydney column: 

"Sydney socialite, lawyer and former charity cheerleader Judy Swan has risen from the ashes of her former husband, millionaire cleaner Bon Swan's calamitous corporate collapse last year, in which about 900 cleaners lost their jobs and led to the pair breaking up. PS hears South African-born Swan, who has a penchant for wind machines when she sits for portraits, has been stepping out with Australian Federal Court chief justice James Allsop." 

If this was not galling enough, there was an item in the same paper's property pages last Saturday (March 29): 

"Anne McWilliam, of the McWilliam wine family, has sold her Paddington terrace, after a protracted campaign, to the Chief Justice of the Federal Court James Allsop, AO. 

Settlement on the three bedroom terrace reveals a sale price of $1.48 million through Di Grundy, of BresicWhitney." 

This looks like a case of too much information. 

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Talking of Banco Chambers, I notice on its website a well-deserved ticking-off for the Legal Affairs section of The Australian. 

"Attached is a paper that Tom Blackburn SC gave to a Law Society seminar on 19 March 2014. 

Mr Blackburn's address to the seminar was extracted in an article in The Australian on 21 March 2014. 

This article appeared under Mr Blackburn's byline and photograph, giving the impression that he was the author of the article. Mr Blackburn did not write or approve the article. Attached is a link to the paper he presented." 

Faking the authorship of an article - little wonder The Oz is so opposed to independent press standards oversight. 

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To Tassie where the trial of suspended DPP Tim Ellis has just concluded.  

Madge Chris Webster has reserved his verdict to June 25 on whether Ellis is guilty, or not, of negligent driving causing death. 

Ellis: on the way to court

In March last year Ellis's Merc ran into oncoming traffic on the Midland Highway, killing Natalia Pearn, 27. 

Ellis's case was that he fell asleep at the wheel and so was not consciously in control of the vehicle. 

The prosecutor John Pickering SC (imported from the NSW ODPP) submitted it was impossible for Ellis's car to have negotiated a sweeping right hand curve in the road while asleep. 

He asserted that Ellis must have been distracted, not concentrating, day dreaming or mistaken about his position on the road. 

Other evidence suggested that the Tasmanian DPP could have driven along the bend in the road using skills similar to those of a sleepwalker. 

Ellis was reprimanded a number of times during his evidence for arguing with Pickering.

The trial has excited the Van Diemen's Land legal and political world like no other. 

At one point all the state's magistrates had disqualified themselves from hearing the case. 

Ellis sought orders that a local beak should do the trial and ultimately the no-nonsense local madge Chris Webster was appointed.  

At some of the preliminary hearings enemies of Ellis turned-up in court to gloat at the DPP's discomfort, including former magistrate and attorney general Sir Eardley Max Bingham QC and former Police Commissioner Jack Johnston. 

Some of our readers referred to them as: "silly, selfish, shits."  

*   *   *

There was a great intake of air at ICAC, when Arfur Sinodinos' barrister, Tony Bannon, referred sotto voce, but quite audibly, to a witness as a "smart arse". 

The former chief financial officer of Rothschild Australia, Rod de Aboitiz, had previously given damaging evidence that he had warned Arfur about the perilous financial position of Australian Water Holdings. 

Then on Wednesday (March 26) de Aboitiz was back in the box and, after referring to Sinodinos as the "former assistant Treasurer", he got Bannon's "smart arse" treatment. 

Nicholson in The AustralianThat struck a bell with Richard Talbot, a former director of the NRMA. 

The chairman of the roads and motorists outfit in Talbot's era was Nick Whitlam, who was prosecuted by ASIC in 2002 for failing to cast 4,000 NRMA members' proxies against a resolution to increase directors' fees. 

Bannon was Whitlam's barrister in that case. 

Talbot and a Deloittes auditor were the star witnesses for ASIC and were grilled by Bannon about the proxy forms. 

Talbot gave evidence that there were two proxy voting forms for directors - an individual one, plus one for all the proxies they held.  

There was a slight pause, and Bannon turned to his solicitors for further information about this, but they didn't seem to be much help on the proxy form issue. 

Returning to his cross-examination he said: 

"Are you a smart arse Mr Talbot?" 

Surely a sign of desperation, in instances where a witnesses seems ahead of the game, 

Incidentally, some of same old stagers keep bobbing up. 

John Wells of spin-doctoring shop Jackson Morris Wells was on the drip advising Nick and his NRMA mates. 

And there he is mentioned at ICAC as spinning for the spivs at Australian Water Holdings.  

Whitlam went down before Ian Gzell J on the count of failing to act honestly as a director, but got up before the Court of Appeal. 

*   *   *

If appointments as QC are to be resuscitated in NSW, then presumably it will done, as before, on the recommendation of the AG to the executive council. 

A learned subscriber suggests that it's conceivable ICAC then will be overwhelmed by complaints from the unsuccessful applicants with allegations of corruption, some of which are likely to have merit. 

ICAC's budget will blow out enormously. The debate should be opened up, not just about the material and design of the robe, but the issue of robing at all. If robes continue to exist, the question of colour should be considered. 

Barristers used to wear robes of various colours (like men's ties and women's scarves of today). 

But when poor Queen Anne died, the English bar went into mourning and wore only black robes. 

This bereavement has lasted 400 years and at the risk of sounding insensitive, it is time to move on. 

Queen Anne: sent the bar into permanent mourningLet colour be reintroduced so both barristers and solicitors  can wear the hue of their choice, or mood, or football team. 

Incidentally, August 1 this year is the 400th anniversary of Queen Anne's death and the adoption of black robes. 

August 1 is also the birthday of all racehorses. 

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Malaysian Airlines has decided not to resurrect its once popular and alluring advertising campaign ...