Out and about

Nanny state distress at The Australian ... Defence Association on the warpath ... Bar man leads insurgency against street art ... You can run, but not hide from today's juror ... The cabbie and Keli Lane's missing baby ... Inside sex, uncovered by The Kirby Institute

The Australian's Friday legal affair section struggles on. Its editor, Chris Merritt, has bravely fought to keep the show afloat, but the advertisers have all but vanished.

A week or so ago Merritt was showcasing his talents in another part of The National Rupert with a piece called, The rise and rise of the nanny state.

Roskam: not so free marketeerHis thesis was that the race discrimination case against Andrew Bolt and the draft legislation by Health Minister Nicola Roxon to make cigarette packaging even more unattractive, are among incidents that "point to what some consider to be the rise of the nanny state".

Who better to turn to in support of such an angle than the champion of the free market, John Roskam of the Institute of Public Affairs.

"In the view of Roskam, who is executive director of the IPA, governments are increasingly treating citizens like children unable to make their own choices...

He says governments are increasingly bringing in new rules governing gambling, alcohol and fast food that 'infantalise' the community."

IPA research fellow Chris Berg also chirruped: "It's a lawyer's wet dream."

What was carelessly left out of this fascinating story was any mention of the commercial relationship between the "think tank" and big tobacco. Not for nothing is this outfit known as the Institute for Paid Advocacy.

Sorry to be a carping nanny.

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Neil James: frisky is the wrong wordThat Neil James brings untold amusement to issues concerning the military.

He's the executive director of a strange outfit called the Australia Defence Association, which operates out of a post box in the ACT and is dedicated to making sure that the wide brown land is "adequately defended".

Neil is an old army buffer himself and has been having a field day over the allegations surrounding sexism in the armed services and at the Defence Force Academy in particular.

After Defence Minister Stephen Smith said on Sunday (April 17) that the Commonwealth could be liable for significant compensation to victims of sexual abuse in the military, the ADA boss was quick to toss a bit of cold water on the idea:

"The trouble is a lot of the allegations are old, some are clearly exaggerated, some are the result of peoples' personal views and not necessarily the facts, some could even be false memory syndrome."

When the Defence Minister first got into the fray and was critical of the way the academy handled the Skype-sex incident, James sent around an email saying Smith had overstepped the mark.

"The Constitution and the Defence Act are actually civil law and Defence Minister Stephen Smith should respect them.

His grandstanding public attack on ADFA's commandant, and his thoughtless interference in ADF disciplinary proceedings, were unfair, probably unlawful, certainly unwarranted by the facts and contrary to the principle of the separation of powers."

This conceptual jumble ignored the fact that the minister didn't interfere in the disciplinary command structure. The man from the ADA also must have forgotten section 8 and section 9 of the Defence Act.

Following the minister's remarks on Sunday James couldn't resist opening his trap, only to get his size 12 boot wedged in his gullet:

"The reason they have the no fraternisation rule is to try to stop any form of sexual harassment. They're [military cadets] also as fit as Mallee bulls."

A reporter from a News Ltd tissue asked him to please explain:

"Well, they are all physically fit. It's not like your average university. So, the more physically fit you are, as a rough rule of thumb, well frisky is the wrong word, but because it's a high pressure environment there's a bit more pressure for an outlet."

As for the young woman involved in the online abuse, it was James' understanding that "she's a little bit of a troubled lass".

God defend us from the Defence Association.

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Chris Winslow is a quiet, effective achiever in the bowels of the NSW Bar 'n' Grill.

As publications manager he runs the daily In Brief missives, plus other organs pumped out by the grill.

VandalTrack has its work cut outNow I see he's got an altogether separate life as a graffiti-buster.

Chris is a director of an outfit called VandalTrack, a website that allows concerned citizens, by way of their mobile phones, to upload snaps of the graffiti-ridden urban landscape.

VandalTrackers then alert local Rotary Clubs in the area, which dispatch teams with cleaning equipment and paint rollers to obliterate the "street art".

Importantly VandalTrack stores the pix on its website so similar tags and daubs can be matched.

At this stage the service seems to be confined to north-west Sydney, Winslow's home turf.

Writing in The Sydney Morning Herald last week Winslow quoted Mao Zedong and said that the "war against graffiti is a suburban insurgency".

He suggested that the government should impose a levy on the average $12 aerosol spay paint can, so that the money raised could go into a graffiti control fund to reimburse community groups dedicated to graffiti eradication.

Good idea. It's been dubbed "spray and pay", and is the key to "reclaiming the neighbourhoods".

Of course, there are some pieces of graffiti that should never be eradicated, such as on the Opera Australia building in Redfern: "Sir Reg Ansett is gay."

I hope VandalTrack has not tampered with it.

*   *   *

Suppression orders keep raining down upon us.

In Sydney the Dizzo has suppressed all the key names in a criminal trial involving a teacher at a "school".

The school in question can only be referred to as "the school". The accused has to be referred to as AZ and the key witness as BA.

A day or so before the trial got underway the DPP's office in Sydney asked the media to co-operate in the removal of stories about earlier cases against this accused person and any of his alleged victims, including "any reports of any previous proceedings that name the school".

It seemed like a kindly request, so it's surprising that a Google search for the name of the accused and the school will still fill your screen with pages of fascinating material from news websites.

One story from 2009, covering an earlier trial of the same accused, said that the alleged victim, whose name is now suppressed for the current trial, had requested the court to allow his name to be used so that it may move others to come forward.

Also, attempts by the school to have its name suppressed in that trial were rejected by the District Court.

Hence, there's plenty of fodder available online.

You simply can't hide from today's juror.

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There were garbled reports yesterday morning (April 18) that a taxi driver had come forward to say that he had dropped the now convicted murderer Keli Lane and her baby Tegan near some bushland in Sydney.

According to this account, Lane left the baby near a tree and then took the cab onto Manly.

A taxi driverThe cabbie's "suspicions were aroused" and he returned to the bushland where he found the baby and another woman. He handed Tegan to this woman because she said she would look after the tot.

It sounds screwy, but Keli Lane's solicitor, Chris Murphy, said he was inclined to believe the driver was telling the truth because he wasn't interested in making money from the story.

That must be a new test for truthfulness.

Another possibility is that the cab driver is completely nuts - not unheard of in Sydney's taxi world.  

There are grounds to suspect that this is the same driver, who is known to the cops, who threatened to blow up Gladsville police station and was suffering a delusion that former Labor minister John Watkins was out to get him. At the time of Tegan's birth this cabbie was disqualified from driving.

The police have interviewed this man and say they have made a "preliminary assessment".

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At the University of New South Wales the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research (NCHECR) has been rebadged as The Kirby Institute, in honour of the AIDS campaigner and former High Court judge.

It should not be confused with the Michael Kirby Centre for Public Health and Human Rights at Monash Uni.

Women are more likely to have sex in prison than male inmatesThe institute, in its new manifestation, has just released a fascinating report on sex in NSW and Queensland prisons.

The findings include the fact that of the prisoners surveyed only seven percent of male inmates had sex with another prisoner, while the figure for females was around 30 percent.

The report said that "overwhelmingly" the sex was consensual, which led Prof Basil Donovan, who is head of sexual health at the Kirby Institute, to conclude that "sexual coercion seems to be a disappearing phenomenon in prisons".

Since 60 percent of women and 13 percent of the men reported sexual coercion, including rape, prior to their imprisonment, Basil said that these people are safer inside the jails than outside.

Most of the male respondents said they engaged in sex for pleasure (79 percent) and for the majority of those it was only occasional and did not involve anal intercourse.

Another 15 percent indulged in order to garner protection and only six percent did it for drugs and other goods.

What is surprising is that 30,000 condoms a month are distributed through NSW prisons. With such a low incidence of anal sex going on inside, the question arises - what happens to all these condoms?

Prof Donovan explains:

"The uses are varied. Some are liberated of their lubricant to be used as hair gel, others are used as household ties or masturbatory aids."