Corrupt administration of justice in the Australian State of New South Wales

Last Thursday, the NSW Minister for Police, David Campbell, acted without any sense of irony or respect for due process. His tool of character assassination was a Dorothy Dix question from a crony during question time in Parliament. He was asked: "Can the minister update the house on the prosecution of the former deputy senior Crown prosecutor of the Director of Public Prosecutions [Patrick Power]?"

Campbell, a former lord mayor of Wollongong, responded to this set-up by accusing the former deputy director of public prosecutions, Greg Smith, SC, of impropriety, misconduct and hindering police. It is noted at this point that Smith recently had the temerity to run for Parliament as a Liberal candidate at the last state election, and won the seat of Epping. He is now shadow attorney-general. "On 4 July [2006]," Campbell told the Parliament, "Smith told Dr Power that child pornography had been found on his [Power's] computer and it was likely that he had committed a serious offence. Remarkably, despite having advised him of the discovery of evidence against him, Mr Smith then allowed Dr Power to go home. "What we now know is that police were not able to seize a [computer hard drive] which contained catalogued homosexual pornography. This drive, and any of the disturbing files that may have been contained on it, could not be considered by the court in sentencing Dr Power yesterday. That is because the member for Epping tipped off Dr Power before alerting New South Wales police."

Uproar. Question time was dominated by the minister's ensuing public inquisition of Smith. In fact, Smith had contacted the police within 30 minutes of his meeting with Power but it had taken the police two days to get to Power's house. A detailed report about the conduct of Smith and the DPP is with the NSW Attorney-General. The head of the DPP, and Smith's former boss, Nicholas Cowdery, is unimpressed by the way the integrity of his office has been attacked. "It has caused considerable distress for a lot of people," Cowdery told me by email on Friday. "I have given a very full report to the Attorney-General. The ball's in his court now."

Cowdery is right to be concerned. We seem to have reached a new low in the NSW justice system. The behaviour of the Minister for Police in Parliament is the latest example, and it follows by just one week the highly dubious contempt trial revolving around protecting the identity and reputation of a young man who can only be known as MWK.

It stemmed from a brief news story in The Daily Telegraph on July 12, 2005 which named MWK as a 16-year-old witness in a murder trial. As a juvenile, his identity is protected by law. I know a lot about MWK. I've seen him in action many times. He is the person who provided me with the title of my last book, Girls Like You, which comes from his comment "Shut up you bitch, you slut. Girls like you, I know how to fix them up", uttered before he assaulted his 16-year-old sister.

The justice system has been assiduous in protecting the interests of MWK, even though he has engaged in unrelenting perjury in no less than three matters before the courts. Yet MWK has never been charged with perjury. Instead, in the perverse logic of our justice system, the broadcaster Alan Jones has been charged and convicted with contempt because he read, on air, the report in which MWK's name appeared in print. It was there by mistake. A court reporter for The Daily Telegraph, Nicolette Casella, believed the suppression order concerning MWK's name had been lifted. As a result of her inadvertent error, which caused no damage to MWK, Alan Jones was put on trial, found guilty of contempt, and his company fined $3000. Another $4000 fine was separately imposed on News Ltd, publisher of The Daily Telegraph.

Jones had not been present in court when the judge issued the suppression orders, unlike Ms Casella. He wasn't the one who put this name into the public domain, unlike The Daily Telegraph. He did not commit perjury, unlike MWK. Yet he is the one who is convicted, because he read from the Telegraph's news story, which contained an error he was unaware of and did not make. It is extremely rare for the media to breach suppression orders, and thus it is a reasonable assumption that if a name appears in a court report, the name has not been suppressed. To compound this bizarre discrepancy, it was even suggested in court that Jones apologise to MWK.

I asked Nicholas Cowdery why there was such a gulf between the treatment of Alan Jones and the treatment of Nicolette Casella. He didn't know. He pointed out that although the DPP conducted the prosecution case, it did not make the decision over who to investigate and charge. "It is not my office's role to investigate offences or to charge anyone and we do not do so," he told me by email. "It is my office's role to prosecute matters referred to it by investigators. My office can only do its job in response to investigations and charges undertaken and put on by others."

Then who are the "others" who made the decision? Cowdery suggested I ask the police prosecutors. Such high-profile decisions are also made within the Attorney-General's Department. If this contempt trial was meant to buttress public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the justice system in NSW, it has had the opposite effect. So has last week's behaviour by the Minister for Police. It is part of a trend. Selective justice is becoming normalised.

Report here



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