Burning Words

It’s been a good week for getting rid of politicians with a penchant for sexual harassment.

Earlier in the week, Troy Buswell, the Western Australian state Liberal leader, finally stepped down. Buswell had been lambasted for months after various incidents of sexually harassing women, including sniffing the chair and making sexual remarks towards a Liberal staffer, and snapping open the bra of a Labor staffer, and had unbelievably managed to hold on through several leadership challenges. Finally, after the polls showed that his behaviour had gotten so unpopular that the Liberals were going to get absolutely thrashed, he stepped down, and he’s been replaced by former leader Colin Barnett.

It gets better. Len Kiely, the Northern Territory’s boorish Labor Minister for the Environment, has been defeated in the territory election tonight, with a massive swing of more than 18%, double the general election swing - and that against a three-time loser opposition candidate. Kiely had a history of drunken indiscretions until an incident last year where he made disgusting sexual remarks towards a female security guard while trashed at the cricket. He had to step down as Deputy Speaker - only to be brought back into the ministry by Paul Henderson late last year. Karma came back to him this week, however, when the woman he’d harassed letterboxed Kiely’s electorate with a letter about what he’d done.

Good riddance, you bastards.

And on a completely different note, go read the Down Under Feminists Carnivale over at Audrey and the Bad Apples. It’s easy to forget that we’ve got a lot of great bloggers out here, and I’ve got quite a bit of good reading to catch up on.

Tags: assholes, politics, sexual harassment

Steve Kons, the Tasmanian Deputy Premier - who had been reported as a potential replacement for Premier Paul Lennon if he were to resign this year - has resigned after a pretty strange series of events led to him being caught misleading parliament today.

It seems that late last year, Kons - the then Attorney-General - recommended the appointment of public servant Simon Cooper as a magistrate, only to retract it under pressure from the then head of the Department of Premier and Cabinet, Linda Hornsey, reportedly for having inconvenienced the government while Resource Planning and Development Commissioner during the battle over the phenomenally controversial Gunns pulp mill.

The letter nominating Cooper was shredded and thrown out, but was somehow salvaged from the office’s garbage bin, and nearly six months later, has turned up in the office of Greens MP Kim Booth. His office has then reconstructed it and tabled it in parliament hours after Kons had denied that he’d ever written it.

It’s an epic fuckup on behalf of the government, and a pretty spectacular victory for the Tasmanian Greens. The Greens nationally seem to be on fire this year - with this coming on the back of their efforts to procure a Royal Commission into planning approvals in New South Wales, which have been gaining more press by the day. I’m really pleased to see state Green parties starting to work with the Liberal Party, or at least tag-team, against their respective state governments on key scandals like this: it’s making them a lot more effective an opposition party than just being seen to yell from the distant sidelines.

It’s a disaster for the government, too - Kons having been brought in as a clean candidate after his predecessor, Bryan Green, was put up on corruption charges - and not exactly the press they needed after Green’s second trial ended in a deadlocked jury again recently. The whole fiasco - having the Premier intervene to block the appointment of a magistrate because of his less-than-wholehearted support for their pulp mill, and then having the Deputy Premier lie through his teeth on the floor of parliament about it - shows more than anything so far the lengths the Tasmanian government has been willing to go to get that mill built, and just how deeply that they’re in bed with Gunns.

It’ll be interesting to see who replaces him: I assume it’ll be either Education Minister David Bartlett or Health Minister Lara Giddings. I imagine that this might be a good sign as to which one of them has the support to take over if Lennon were to resign, too. I really do hope that it winds up being Giddings; Bartlett strikes me as the soullessly ambitious type, and I’d love to see a woman rising closer to the top down that way. Still, if I had to put money on it, I’d say it’s going to be Bartlett. I have no idea who might take the ministerial vacancy caused by Kons’ resignation: everyone else, as far as I can see, I’ve heard to be useless, retiring, or too much of a maverick to gain support.

Tags: politics, tasmania

I’m becoming increasingly convinced that our means of appointing judges -whereby the say-so of a state Attorney-General is enough to put someone on a Supreme Court - is just not good enough. In the last day, I’ve come across two cases of men being appointed to high judicial office who shouldn’t be getting anywhere near it - and in one case, should be staring down the barrel of disbarment.

I was reading through the book about the history of the Ernie Awards, 1000 Terrible Things Australian Men Have Said About Women, and I came across a notorious cross-examination in a rape case which I remember from back in 2004. In trying to make out that a woman hadn’t been affected by being sexually assaulted, a male barrister said “to sit on a bar stool … with a skirt as short as that takes a lot of confidence”. He asked, “You weren’t embarrassed by the attention it might attract?” It caused a rightful press storm at the time, and was one of a number of incidents that sparked the serious round of reform of laws concerning sexual assault trials in NSW that we’ve seen in the last year. And then I looked at the name - one Ian Harrison SC - and realised that he was appointed to the New South Wales Supreme Court by then-NSW Attorney General Bob Debus in February of the last year. It wasn’t the first time he’d had issues with misogyny, either - he’d previously been nominated for an Ernie Award for some not-so-enthusiastic comments he’d made about women in the legal profession when he was president of the NSW Bar.

This really raises the question - how in the fuck did Bob Debus - a generally progressive figure in NSW politics, and now a federal MP - wind up appointing this guy to the Supreme Court? Under the new rules introduced this year, he’d have been risking disbarment for his cross-examination efforts back in 2004 - and yet he’s now sitting on the state’s highest court. We need our Attorney-Generals to start taking responsibility for who they put in positions of judicial power. This should be a serious stain on Debus’ record - but the fact that judges are admitted to office without so much as public hearings first means that this dirt tends to stay settled, and the public has no chance to cry foul before it’s too late.

And then I found a far more recent example. The Aurukun case should be well known to most people by now. A ten year girl in a remote Aboriginal community was gangraped by several adult men, and the white judge held that she really wanted it and acquitted the men, in utter defiance of statutory rape laws. The judge concerned, Sarah Bradley, faced a international firestorm of criticism, which may still result in a nearly unprecedented explusion by the Queensland parliament. It also sparked a rare intervention by state Attorney-General Kerry Shine, who personally saw the decision appealed. Bradley then did it again a couple of months later, when she granted special leave to a pedophile who was trying to find an anthropologist who could say that he’d repeatedly raped a young boy because of cultural reasons. Her biggest defender in the legal community throughout this scandal was the head of the Queensland Bar Association, Hugh Fraser, who repeatedly savaged the press and feminist activists for daring to call out a judge for one of the most disgusting legal decisions in this country in recent memory.

So you might imagine my surprise when I discovered to my surprise last night that Kerry Shine - that same Attorney-General who is currently appealing the Aurukun case - appointed Hugh Fraser to the Queensland Court of Appeal in late January. Would you want a man who vehemently argued in favour of a judge who flagrantly violated statutory rape laws to acquit a group of gangrapists in spite of there being no legal basis on which to do so hearing your case if you were a victim? I have zero confidence in this man’s ability to adjudicate criminal trials - and after his efforts in the Aurukun case, neither should Shine have. The same question arises as in the Harrison case - what the fuck was Shine thinking?

Our state Labor Attorney-Generals need to have a long, hard look at the means by which they’re selecting the judges for our highest courts. The fact that it was those governments who appointed the likes of Harrison and Fraser, and not the wingnut usual suspects - absolutely boggles the mind. And when it’s the likes of Bob Debus and Kerry Shine appointing these people, it really starts to feel like we urgently need that appointment reform that’s starting to be called for in the ACT and elsewhere. There’s a lot that’s screwed about the American judicial system, but the public scrutiny of their judges by elected representatives and the possibility of a free vote to approve or deny said appointment would be a massive improvement on what we have now.

Tags: law, politics, sexual assault

Over the last couple of weeks, there’s been a pretty messy corruption scandal developing in New South Wales surrounding the activities of a couple of corrupt local bureaucrats, a few developers, and about half the Wollongong council - all of whom have serious political connections within the Labor Party. There’s an important angle on this that’s been missed entirely by the mainstream press, though - were it not for an accident of fate, Joe Scimone, the man most implicated in this whole mess - would currently be a Labor member of the House of Representatives, and Kevin Rudd’s nascent government would be reeling under the strain of this scandal.

Let me take you back to 2002, and the by-election for the federal seat of Cunningham, based on Wollongong. To cut a long story short, the local branches were so badly stacked out by all sides that the right faction-dominated Labor state executive decided to impose their own candidate in the traditionally left-dominated electorate. The man the state executive were so keen to get into parliament was one Joe Scimone, then an obscure bureaucrat working for the Wollongong council. The whole preselection mess was in the national papers for weeks, and then federal Labor leader Simon Crean took a serious hit in the polls as Labor ate itself.

It sparked a massive local backlash, as the local branches of the union movement decided to support the Greens in the by-election, with the president of the local Trades Hall running as an independent and endorsing the Greens. In a decision for which I’m sure Kevin Rudd is thanking his lucky stars, the state executive got scared at the eleventh hour and dropped Scimone, installing instead Sharon Bird as the candidate - apparently figuring that a woman and a recent defector from the left would be easier to sell than a walking archetype of a Labor “mate”. Bird went on to lose the by-election to the Greens, before winning it in 2004, and she’s still in parliament today.

Every Labor MP in New South Wales has been trying to put great distance between them and Scimone over the last few weeks. It seems as if, so far, they’ve succeeded - the Independent Commission Against Corruption has decided not to pursue state Ports Minister and Labor powerbroker Joe Tripodi (who appointed the thoroughly unqualified Scimone to a $200,000 to a prominent government job) and Wollongong state MP Noreen Hay (who had her campaign office at the last election paid for by one of the developers who is up to his neck in this, and had repeatedly lobbied on his behalf). It’s quite possible that, as now seems likely, the state government will sack the Wollongong council tomorrow and try and declare that it ends there.

It shouldn’t. Tripodi and the rest of the right faction mates who control the New South Wales Labor executive should be explaining exactly why they went out on such a limb four and a half years ago, and nearly put a thoroughly corrupt hack into the House of Representatives. More than that, it raises serious questions about exactly how far the influence of Scimone and his mates down in Wollongong extends, both in state and federal parliament. I think there’s a lot more to this than Iemma, Tripodi, Hay, and more than a few powerbrokers in the New South Wales Right are letting on. This has the potential to well and truly trump the Metherell affair (which brought down the Greiner government in the early 90s) if actually investigated. ICAC was responsible for forcing Nick Greiner’s resignation; there is no excuse for pulling their punches this time. Too many people have too many questions still to answer to let this drop.

Tags: corruption, new south wales, politics

This afternoon, the only non-retiring member of the Liberal caucus in the Western Australian Legislative Assembly, former Shadow-Attorney General Sue Walker, announced that she would quit the Liberals and run as an independent in the forthcoming election.

The Liberals in Western Australia have perhaps been the only state opposition within striking distance of an incumbent Australian government in recent months. It’s bad enough that they had all of two women MPs in their lower house caucus - the lowest, to my knowledge, of any major party caucus in any house of parliament in the country - but considering that they’ve now had both of those MPs angrily resign, how on earth can they reasonably expect women to vote for them as an alternative government?

The WA Liberals elected Troy Buswell as their leader a weeks ago despite knowing of numerous sexual harassment allegations against him. Veteran MP Katie Hodson-Thomas, one of those who had made the allegations against Buswell, almost immediately announced that she would retire at the next election. Speculation then turned to the only remaining Liberal lower house MP who was recontesting her seat, Sue Walker, after she didn’t show up to the leadership vote when the outcome became clear, left the state, and refused to return Buswell’s phone calls. She returned to Perth this week, promptly announced that she was declining Buswell’s offer of a return to Shadow Attorney-General, and today made the much-expected decision that she was going to go it alone, quit the party, and run at the next election as an independent.

The WA Liberals are the singularly most backward of the state Liberal parties, taking far wing stances on a host of issues, perhaps the most disgusting being their talk about recriminalising homosexuality if elected to power. It says a lot about how out of touch and extreme they’ve begun when one of their leading moderate figures gets so frustrated as to go it alone as an independent. Walker has been openly frustrated about the party’s treatment of women candidates in the past, and was especially critical of the decision to preselect another man for the forthcoming by-election in the safe Liberal seat of Murdoch after it became clear that Hodson-Thomas would retire. She has also repeatedly accused notoriously corrupt powerbroker (and friend of Brian Burke) Noel Crichton-Browne of targeting her, and it had been expected that he would arrange a challenge to her preselection due to her outspoken status.

In quitting the Liberals, she joins existing moderate independent Liberals Elizabeth Constable and Janet Woollard, both of whom have survived concerted attempts to unseat them and replace them with endorsed (surprise surprise, male) candidates in the past. My friends in the know in WA suggest that she’s got the local support to win re-election and join those two on the crossbenches permanently, so good luck to her. I’ll certainly be hoping that she gets returned in the election due (probably) later this year.

Tags: politics, Western Australia

The Age is reporting that Kim Beazley is being tipped as the next Governor-General, with Michael Jeffery due to retire in a few months. What the? We’ve had two atrocious conservative Governor-Generals in a row with former archbishop Peter Hollingworth and then former soldier Jeffery, so you’d think Labor would try and put up a more unimpeachable candidate for the office. But if that story is correct, they’re going to repeat what they did with Bill Hayden in the 1980s and appoint an undistinguished - and again, male - former Labor leader to the office.

This is the perfect chance for Labor to show some remotely progressive credentials and finally appoint our first woman Governor-General. There’s plenty of people who’d be great for the role - off the top of my head, say, Elizabeth Evatt or Mary Gaudron from the judiciary, or scientist Fiona Wood, or going all-out and appointing someone like Aboriginal academic Jackie Huggins. Beazley would be such a damned waste.

Something I find especially odd about this is that both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard are suggested to be not all that supportive of appointing Beazley, but Senator John Faulkner, of all people, seems to be going all-out to get him appointed. Why in hades is the father of Labor’s left faction trying so hard to get a mediocre politician from the party’s right appointed as Governor-General?

Tags: politics, the 'what the?' files