Australian lawyers lashed over costs, delays

THE nation's top judge has launched an attack on cost and delay in the legal system, saying "intolerable" delays are now accepted in criminal cases and that expense is "the greatest blot" on the civil litigation landscape. High Court Chief Justice Murray Gleeson also urged judges to assert their authority over "well-resourced" parties who used the courts as "instruments of oppression".

Speaking to the Judicial Conference of Australia's annual meeting in Sydney, Chief Justice Gleeson said he wanted to put his thoughts on the record "with the directness that is the prerogative of age". The Chief Justice, who must step down on turning 70 next August, said everyone agreed criminal justice should be administered with reasonable speed. "Yet modern criminal justice moves at a pace very different from that of earlier, or even fairly recent times," he said. "Time standards now accepted as reasonable would have been regarded as intolerable ... 30 years ago. Forty years ago, a long trial was one that lasted more than two days; now, at the end of a second day, counsel are just getting warmed up." He said it was "easy to become desensitised" to the issue. "Delay, like inflation, is sometimes convenient for those who are part of the system," he added.

Chief Justice Gleeson noted state governments had intervened to cut back vehicle or work-related actions, which were invariably run by lawyers who were on a percentage of any settlement. However, he said the ability of people to make a living out of funding litigation might be a necessity. "There is a need for some pragmatism about this, because the cost of access to justice is essentially a practical matter," he said. "A basic problem of access to civil justice is the remorseless mercantilisation of legal practice." He added that time-based costing was part of the problem. "Because of the basis upon which most lawyers charge for their services, repeated interlocutory hearings add substantially to the cost of litigation," Chief Justice Gleeson said. "Interlocutory procedures ... sometimes involve astonishing expense. Such is their cost, they may even be used as instruments of oppression."

He said the length of the ordinary case was alarming but that for "well-resourced litigants, the time of judges is cheap".

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Australia: Plague of corrupt officers found in State police force

So the State government is abolishing the whistleblower!

SYNDICATES of corrupt officers, some with extensive links to organised crime, are operating within the Victorian police force under the protection of a "code of silence". The syndicates include long-serving officers with extensive influence within the force, and insome cases are run from outside the organisation by former members who had resigned while under investigation for corruption. Syndicates are also using their extensive network of contacts within the force to undermine attempts by senior officers to clean up corruption and are actively recruiting members.

In the most comprehensive assessment to date of the depth of corruption within Victoria Police, the Office of Police Integrity says poor supervision and a code of silence within the force have allowed the syndicates to flourish. "These groups appear to be organised hierarchically, with those at the top of the group often connected by long-standing relationships, some of which are inter-generational," the OPI says in a report tabled in state parliament yesterday. "Most of the syndicates have also joined forces with people who have significant criminal histories, including some individuals with extensive links to organised crime. Many of these relationships between police members and criminals are also long-standing."

The assessment comes just a day after the Brumby Government announced it was splitting the roles of the OPI and the Ombudsman to provide greater independence to the police corruption agency. It also appears to contradict repeated assurances from Victoria Police command that corruption was not a major problem within the force.

Based on intelligence gathered by OPI investigators during the past 12 months, the assessment says the corrupt syndicates shared a number of common features, including "promoting self-interest or personal profit" by working outside the law. "Sometimes the most influential member of a group is a former police officer who continues to connect with, and exert influence over, current serving members who are willing to engage in corrupt conduct," it says. The syndicates "sporadically" recruited new members from within the force, although often the recruits operated on the periphery and were not included in the "main game".

The OPI says it is not yet possible to determine the number of police involved in the corrupt syndicates, although it was probably only a small proportion of the force's 11,000 officers. The syndicates employ extensive contacts embedded throughout the force to create divisions within Victoria Police, and they use gossip and innuendo to undermine attempts to tackle corruption. Corrupt officers had learned how to work the system to their advantage and use the code of silence, which deterred honest police from informing on them. "These individuals have a vested interest in perpetuating myths about old-style policing and the 'good old days'; they are adept at rallying support to ensure the failure of management initiatives to improve professionalism and accountability within Victoria Police," the report says.

Having gathered intelligence on the syndicates, OPI director George Brouwer said he would now use "the full range of sophisticated investigative techniques at our disposal to expose and prosecute those involved". But officers had attempted to undermine previous investigations by lying under oath.

Deputy Commissioner Kieran Walshe said he was not surprised at the OPI's findings. "We've never shied away from the fact that we believe there potentially is small elements within Victoria Police who engage in unethical and potentially corrupt behaviour," he said.

Police Association secretary Paul Mullett said the OPI report lacked substance and was simply aimed at justifying the agency's $16.5 million budget. But state Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu described the findings as alarming and said they proved the need for a broad-based anti-corruption commission in Victoria.

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