Vile judicial appointments and the need for serious public scrutiny
Mar 11th, 2008 by Rebecca
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.
so are you saying that the way a woman dresses has no effect on a man????? wouldnt that have been the “point” of the judges’ comment “sitting on a bar stool in a skirt that short, weren’t you embarrassed”…..
i dont think that in any way condons rape….. but it does bring in an element of responsibility for women to dress attractively AND modestly…( how come the word modest is considered so “dirty”)
yup! men are responsible for their own actions & self discipline… but women have a responsibility in their behaviour and character also.
i dont think the above comment means the judge is a male chauvinist! just politically incorrect…. which seems to bring out a bigger witch hunt than being a murderer!!!!
…wow.
Um, yeah. I or any other woman are perfectly entitled to dress however the hell one wants without that being taken as an invitation to be assaulted. Responsibility to dress modestly my arse. What is this, the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints?
The label of “politically incorrect” is so often merely a term to weasel out of justified charges of ignorance and bigotry towards oppressed groups, and so it is here. He’s a Supreme Court judge, for gods sake. He’s expected - or bloody well should be - to, y’know, be pretty down with the whole “women are human” concept.