Hocking the budget

Essential programs slashed and burnt in Hockey budget - including Bret Walker's job ... Here comes Mega-Trib ... Fancy bookshelves ruled out-of-order for Chinese judges ... How to get a remedy against an indigent blogger  

ONE of the more shocking cuts in Joe Hockey's battlers' budget is scrapping the funding for Bret Walker's $300,000 a year task as the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor. 

The government was going to have a hard time getting legislation through the Senate to abolish Walker's job, so the next best thing was to cut off the magnificent silk's funding. 

In any event, Bret's as busy as a bee and will hardly miss this miserable shilling from the government. 

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THE merger of all the merit review tribunals has been announced as a budget saving, but details are vague. 

Administrative Appeals, Social Security, Refugee Review, Migration Review and the Classification Board are to be swallowed live by Mega-Trib. 

Needless to say, "stakeholders are to be consulted".  

The grand plan to merge all Federal courts, as recommended by the Business Council of Australia, aka the National Commission of Audit, is on hold - for now. 

Bill Rowlings, the tireless worker for civil liberties in Australia, has ferreted around in the darker recesses of Hockey's budget papers and come up with other fetching morsels. 

Apart from the saving of $1.7 million over four years by abolishing the stand-alone disability commissioner at the HRC, the Human Rights Education Program also is to be chopped, saving a further $1.8 million. 

That program was a component of the suite of measures introduced as the alternative to having a full-blooded Human Rights Act, following the less that satisfactory Father Brennan report. 

The humbling of the Human Rights Commission, with the exception of finding an additional $60,000 in top-ups for Freedom Boy Timbo Wilson, is very much part of the agenda of J.S. Mill's favourite Australian, Senator Soapy Brandis. 

Legal aid is down $15 million for this year. In other words, the money that Mark Dreyfus put into last year's budget for this year has been confiscated from the Legal Aid Commissions. 

On top of that the LACs lost a further $6.5 million as part of the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook, which brings the total cut for the commissions to $21.5 million - a 10 percent chop on last year's figure. 

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner will close shop, with a saving of $34 million over four years.  

The FOI work will be carved-up between the Ombudsman and the AG's department with Mega-Trib doing the merits reviews. 

The AG's department has been charged with issuing FOI guidelines and we know how much those furtive bureaucrats under Roger (Bow-Tie) Wilkins love freeing their secrets. 

The Privacy Commissioner clings on, to be rehoused at the Human Rights Commission. 

Happily, $50 million will continue to roll into the Safer Streets program, which funds CCTV and street lights in marginal Liberal electorates. It's a dollied-up version of the Rudd-Gillard era's Safer Suburbs program. 

Also, $10.2 million has been found this year for the AFP to fund an anti-gangs squad for Western Australia. Why WA? - Can-Do Campbell will be livid. 

Rowlings says the money for Safer Streets and WA gangs is squirrelled out of the Confiscated Assets Account, i.e. proceeds of crime. 

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IF Soapy Brandis was a judge in China, he'd be in real strife. 

The Supreme People's Court has released a list of instances that typically constitute judicial misbehaviour. 

Among the serious infringements is "wasteful procurement of office equipment" and cited for this offence was the Shanxi District Court, which spent over RMB200,000 on adornments. 

That is equivalent to the $A35,000 taxpayers lavished on Brandis' library and two sets of office bookshelves. 

The Chinese are trying to clamp down on this sort of stuff and if Soap was demanding office embellishments on this scale in Shanxi, he'd be packed off to reeducation camp. 

The Communist Party's Central Inspection Commission researches and gathers instances of poor judicial conduct, and this is the first time the Supreme People's Court has released the details publicly. 

Among the most common offences are: touring at public expense; using public funds for gifts; obtaining reimbursements for foot massages; accepting gifts; and office misbehaviour (a Zhanjiang District Court judge wore slippers during a meeting with a litigant and was caught playing computer games in chambers). 

Over 40 percent of CIDC cases involved improper use of public funds or government vehicles. 

Australian judges are partial to tax deductible global conferences, banquets, sight-seeing, junketeering and, most dangerous of all, foot massages. 

In China this louche behaviour would be drawn to the attention of the Central Disciplinary Inspection Commission and classified as "official corruption or other abuse". 

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THE blogosphere can be a pretty wild and smeary place, as Seven West Media chairman Kerry Stokes and his lawyer Justine Munsie are only too aware. 

They have been the focus of some pretty alarming allegations by Shane Dowling, who blogs at Kangaroo Court of Australia. 

Rarely, and only for special people, are injunctions granted in defamation cases. Stokes and Munsie (a partner at Addisons Lawyers) qualify for this honour, with Justice Peter Hall in the NSW Supremes granting interim orders for Dowling to take down the objectionable sprays. 

Hall trod where last month Justice Hormones Harrison didn't tread. 

Apparently, Hormones mistakenly thought the defamation ground had been abandoned so made no orders for injunctive relief. 

Stokes and Munsie are smart enough to find a judge who knows what the submissions are. 

The plaintiffs' defamation action is fairly unique in that, unlike Joseph Benedict Hockey, they are not after money. 

Just as well, because Blogger Dowling doesn't have any. Sandy Dawson, for Stokes and Munsie, submitted the defendant was without defences - nothing in truth, opinion or qualified privilege.

The only place to go was an interim injunction with the removal from the internet of the attacks on Stokes, Munsie and others. 

Directions for the defamation case take place on June 16.  

Somehow or other Dowling, who is something of a hero among conspiracy theorists and assorted fringe-dwellers, has persuaded himself that he's off the leash.

This bloke certainly has a way with words. Following Hall's orders, he wrote: 

"I have had to take down this post short-term because the nutter Kerry Stokes has had his mate Justice Peter Hall make me ...

Justice Hall said to me, for talking out of turn, words to the effect that if I disobey him there will be consequences. I said 'Don't threaten me, your [sic] a public servant and you work for me and you would do well to remember that'. I don't cop garbage from dodgy bullying judges and Hall backed off with his threats. But Stokes had been judge shopping and Hall was his man."

Maybe, contempt is the only remaining "remedy". Martyrdom awaits.