Theodora in the trenches
Thursday, April 8, 2021 Robe row ... Election barrister endorses "self tan mousse" ... It's April 1 at the WA bar ... Federal Court's Yarraside women's problem ... Rule of Law cult overturns Kunc opinion ... From Theodora
Eldon has the blues
A Banana Bending field agent from Brisbane reports that Lord Eldon was before the Court of Appeal late in March.
Sofronoff P asked his lordship what sort of gown he was wearing.
Eldon: It's a blue gown.
The president said he didn't want to hear him while he was wearing a blue gown. Adjourn.
This must have been a shock to his lordship who had conducted extensive research on gowns and found it was appropriate for a QC to wear a cloak of many colours.
Earlier we reported that at a judicial retirement ceremony he was adorned with an acid-green robe which, from a distance, looked like shimmering gold.
See: Acid green is the new black.
The Map's election fever
Hobart barrister Fabiano Cangelosi is standing as a Labor candidate for the state seat of Franklin and he has roared into the election campaign with some signature policies diametrically opposed to those of the party under whose banner he is running.
According to the local Daily Rupert, Cangelosi says the ALP policy on poker machines, "overstuffs the coffers of the Federal Group".
He didn't hold back with the amplifications:
"It maintains the monopolised flow of blood money. It unbalances unequal scales, committing the poor to financial devastation, the vulnerable to depression and suicide, and woking families to fracture and ruin."
He also doesn't like his party's position on anti-protest laws because, "It is a policy that impairs the process whereby we seek to balance unequal scales and to shine the light of progress".
State Labor leader Rebecca White could not be more clear:
"Fabiano made some comments today that are not Labor policy and I made that clear to him. The Labor Party has clear policies on both the issues he has spoken out about and I have made it incredibly clear that Labor policy is very different to his views and he is now aware of that."
Fabs and Jessica: with the tanning mousseFabs also has some firm views about buff-on organic tan, specifically the Three Warriors brand.
Here he is endorsing his wife Jessica's views on Tasmania's own self-tan mousse, which he believes smells of "cup-cake dough ... sweet, yummy. It's always smooth, it's never streaky".
Jessica says it's the only tan she can sleep in after Fabs has "buffed" it onto her back. The Labor candidate squirted a blob out of a tube so we can all see the colour in real time.
Jess says if she sleeps in any other sort of tan she'll wake up with "orange knuckles". She's hoping to make these Instagram sessions with Fabs a "regular thing".
This instalment of the Cangelosi beauty show is certainly worth viewing.
Fabs plies his barrister's trade from Edward Coke Chambers, Rooms 22-25, 114 Bathurst Street, Hobart.
UPDATE: The Examiner newspaper is also reporting that Fabs is in a tangle over his suggestion that the police should be defunded.
On Facebook he supported an article in The Atlantic to this effect, yet when questioned he now says he doesn't think the Tasmanian police should be abolished.
Phew!
Robes and trollies
From: "President, The WA Bar" <president@wabar.asn.au>
Date: 1 April 2021 at 9:14:15 am AWST
Subject: The Western Australian Bar - Uniform Law
Dear All
As most if not all would be aware, Western Australia is expected to adopt the Uniform Law some time later this year.
Bar Council has been actively considering the implications on this for The Western Australian Bar. In particular, Bar Council is considering options to bring practices within The WA Bar into line with practices in some of the Eastern States.
Two particular changes which have been proposed, and which Bar Council presently proposes to adopt, are as follows.
First, it is proposed to adopt the Eastern States practice by which barristers are required to robe when walking between chambers and court. It is considered that this is an important practice which adds considerably to the esteem in which the Bar is held, and which serves to distinguish members of the Bar from other members of the legal profession. It has the additional benefit of ensuring that when eastern states counsel appear in the Western Australian courts no distinction is drawn between local counsel and interstate counsel when travelling between chambers and court.
The proposal is that members should be fully robed when walking between chambers and court. The practice by which a bar jacket and/or jabot is worn without robes is not appropriate.
As wigs were dispensed with in Western Australia some time ago, any discomfort experienced during the summer months will be considerably less than that experienced by our learned friends in the east where this practice remains the norm.
Secondly, it is proposed to specifically deal with the practice of senior barristers (whether silk or a senior junior) appearing with a junior, pushing their own trolley. It is to be expected that a barrister appearing with a junior (including a member of the amalgam as junior) may carry his or her own robe bag, but ought not be seen in public pushing a court trolley. Trolleys are required to be pushed either by one's junior or instructing solicitor.
If any member of The WA Bar wishes to make any submission in support of, or against, either or both of these reforms, they are invited to do so before Bar Council next meets on Tuesday, 20 April 2021.
Kind regards
Martin Cuerden SC
President
In response about 35 barristers had made "strongly worded submissions" against the proposals, some requiring multiple pages to do so. By 1.44 PM that day, president Cuerden SC felt he had to issue a clarification.
The penny drops at the WA bar
From: President, The WA Bar <president@wabar.asn.au>
Sent: Thursday, 1 April 2021 1:44 PM
Subject: Robes and trolleys
Dear All
For any who may be under any lingering doubts (and for those who may remain agitated about the issue), I wish to make it clear that Bar Council is not contemplating either of the proposals suggested in my earlier email of today.
As many have now realised, my email was sent before noon on 1st April.
To the 35 or so members who made strongly worded submissions against the proposals, and particularly to those whose submissions covered more than one page and/or who made supplementary submissions, I apologise if I have distracted you from more productive work.
To the criminal bar which went into complete meltdown for about two hours this morning, I also apologise.
On a positive note, I am pleased to say that not a single member supported either proposal.
Kind regards
Martin Cuerden SC
President
Great moments in misogyny
Madam Cash: gender inbalance
The Stoker last month confirmed at senate estimates that the Coalition has not appointed a women to the Melbourne registry of the Federal Court during its seven years or so mismanaging the nation.
Over the same period nine men have been sent by the government to the Melbourne registry of the court, six of them appointed by The Christian.
Opposition justice spokesmodel, Mark Dreyfus, said this is further evidence of the need for a transparent and accountable judicial appointments policy.
At the moment there are 15 judges at the Melbourne registry of the court, only three are women: Susan Kenny (appointed Oct. 1998), Jennifer Davies (appointed July 2013) and Debra Mortimer (appointed July 2013).
In other words, 20 percent of the Melbourne Feds are female.
In Sydney, things are marginally better. Of 20 judges, six are women - 30 percent of the bench: Jayne Jagot (2006), Anna Katzmann (2010) Kathleen Farrell (2012), Melissa Perry (2013), Brigitte Markovic (2015) and Wendy Abraham (2019).
Since 2020 four Federal Court judges have retired: Lindsay Foster (Sydney), Alan Robertson (Sydney), Simon Steward (Melbourne) and Jacqueline Gleeson (Sydney).
Several silkies are trying to contain themselves in expectation of appointments.
Some of the recent Melbourne appointments (Pavlos and Stavros) got the job after their joint 60th birthday party on the Greek island of Lefkada, attended by Chuckles Allsop CJ. John Snaden was a Liberal student politician appointed by Porter to the court in April 2019.
Membership of the Melbourne Club is not a handicap for appointment to the court.
The gender "imbalance" of the Melbourne registry will require Madam Cash to drop a single, lonely women into Steward's old spot.
Speed limits
Speed: laying down the lawThere is no rule of law other than that approved by the Rule of Law Institute.
President Robin Speed and his merry men were out of the blocks with a ukase dismissing Justice Francois Kunc's treatise in the Australian Law Journal that an independent probe into The Christian's fitness for office would "enhance" the rule of law.
Robin wants none of that. He has got a stranglehold of rule of law rulings and insists that an inquiry would put Porter "below the law".
Robin, a vehement campaigner against marriage equality, and his law shop are also famous for their astroturf lobbing operations.
Police Commissioner Mick Fuller has said he can't press on because there is insufficient evidence for a criminal case against the former AG. That's the end of it, insists Robin.
It's a handy outcome for those of the conservative faith, especially for Schmo Morrison, who was Mick's former garbage bin wallah when they were neighbours in the Shire.
"But an inquiry can have no object, it is not a person, it would be an inquiry whether the inquirer considered the allegation was proved to the criminal standard or some lesser standard. An investigation outside of the criminal system would be contrary to the Rule of Law regardless of its stated objectives."
And this is the word of an expert. Heaven help the little kiddies the ROL Institute wants to ferry around the courts as part of a re-education program.
The institute last month issued a treatise on the role of the attorney general, in which this claim was squeezed into the rhetoric:
"Parallel systems of justice and trial by media are contrary to the rule of law and erode public confidence in the integrity of the legal system to provide justice."
Dyson Heydon, Speed & Stracey's famous alleged harassment client, would agree, surely.
It gets better. Margaret Cunneen SC has been appointed President of the Rule of Law Education Centre.
What with Chris (The Tamil) Merritt also on the ticket, the whole operation has the appearance of a cult running a protection racket for uber-conservative causes.
Money business
All that fuss over a lousy $300,000.
Peach Melba reported in November last year about the email campaign by old timers, incandescent about Vic Bar 'n' Grill's frolics and expenditure.
As a result, the "change" ticked swept the pool at the council elections, so it was just a matter of time before the thin silk was torn from the heaving, alabaster shoulder of the accounts.
It can be seen that overwhelmingly the money was directed to worthy causes. Now there's a quibble about a miserable $100 a head, or thereabouts, for the Law Council.
Barristers wingeing about money - can you believe it?
Reader Comments (1)
Let's say "elevated", not "retired" for the last two...