Rayney daze in Perth

Pillsbury Flom in Australia for his hols, where he picks up the latest on the Lloyd Rayney case, gives his thoughts about Julia Gillard and her forbearance of radio ranters and her hypocrisy on gay marriage ... Plus, the Viagra patent case 

Rayney: barn-burner of a murder trialI managed to escape from the US of A and head back to Perth for Chrissie, just in time for the Lloyd Rayney case to resurface with the revelation that the barrister is to be tried for murder without a jury before former Northern Territory Chief Justice Brian Martin. 

Martin has been specially appointed by the AG solely for this purpose, beginning February 1. 

The trial is fixed for May 14 and set down for an estimate of five months, which seems a tad long for a judge alone affair. Nonetheless, the trial promises to be a barn-burner.

This development had been suppressed from the time the order was made in October, like so much else of these proceedings.

Also suppressed were the details of Gina Rinehart's desperate bid to retrieve files seized by the cops from Rayney's chambers prior to his arrest.

Rayney's strategy is intriguing.

Those of us vaguely interested in transparent justice are hoping the absence of a jury might moderate the hitherto litany of suppression orders - although we are in the West, after all.

Meanwhile, Lloyd's massive defo case is on the backburner.

He sued on the cops' statement that he was the only suspect in the murder of his estranged wife.

He alleges he has been branded as her murderer causing him loss of earnings in the millions.

So one side or the other in this case is going to end up with a surfeit of schadenfreude.  

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I also managed to catch the aftermath of the unpleasant skirmish in the ALP, involving the Prime Minister, over same-sex marriage.  

Julia Gillard has always been prepared to do whatever it takes to advance her political position.

Right from her days in student politics, the girl has had her ears pinned back in her race for high office. 

She has been happy to seamlessly cut tacky factional deals, move house to get a plum preselection, and flip-flop on fundamental policy to secure the Greens in her minority government. 

Her forbearance in the face of misogynistic ranters like Alan Jones and Neil Mitchell reflects Howardesque discipline.

What other woman could have withstood Jones' hissy-fit over her tardiness of a few minutes for his interview, without descending to calling him the nasty, petty popinjay he is?

Frost: too plummy for HawkeOr at least reminding him that as the Prime Minister of Australia she had one or two other matters to handle aside from his simpering right-wing radio show?

She might also have questioned Mitchell as to how he justified his unspeakable condescension in calling her Julia, a familiarity he would never have affected on-air with John Howard or even Kevin Rudd.

She simply would not be moved off-message. It's moments like these when I pine for her political hero Bob Hawke, a man who, as ACTU president, could plant himself in the studio of A Current Affair after a few beers and tell guest host, the plummy David Frost, he was a foreign interloper.

I would surrender some serious pleasures to see Bob's response to Jones' admonition that he was seven minutes late. 

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The one corner of her life that Julia treats as hers alone is her domestic circumstances. 

PM and her bad boySadly, a jolly marriage with a couple of kids remains a political asset, but Julia just won't go there.  

She will not compromise her taste for bad boys, and an aversion to marriage and children. No one was or is going to tell her what sort of chap she should date, or what status her relationship should be.

Here is the rock jutting out of her sea of compromise and opportunism. Might not this have served as some sort of ever-so-vague reference point for her position on legalising gay marriage?

Not for Julia. The sanctity of personal choice is personal to her, and not to be afforded to gay people. It is a matter of conscience and, in some twisted peregrination, Julia's conscience can't support gay marriage. 

There's something deserving of real admonishment. Over to you, Alan. Or not.

*   *   *

2011 ended in frustration for those of us deeply concerned in the outcome of the Viagra patent case tried in Norfolk, Virginia.

I know of widespread interest in the case among the Victorian judiciary and bar in particular.

$25 each, for another seven yearsWe had all been anticipating the demise of Pfizer's US patent in March of this year, but Judge Rebecca Beach Smith's ruling last August preserves Pfizer's market exclusivity of the drug until 2019.

The generic version of Viagra's active ingredient, sildenafil, will cost a tiny fraction of Viagra once the coast is clear.  

For those few readers not familiar with the price of Viagra not covered by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, it runs at around $25 a pill, which can mount-up for some fortunate patients. 

When the generic is up and running in the US, prices are likely to also droop around the rest of the world.  Until then, it's back to the dodgy online pharmacy sites.

All hopes are pinned on the appeal.