Mood:
a-okTopic: election Oz 2007
We noticed the Sunday nightly news disdain for the Glenn Milne "Shock confession" story trawling over aspiring Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard's ill fated private life some 15 years back. We think it might also effectively trespass on her obligations of solicitor client confidentiality so she can't answer back in full.
The Big Media seem to know it's a beat up: So much so that Danielle Ecuyer (with her own News Ltd live blog no less) via barracker, err sorry reporter, Saffron Howden, has even cheekily run a tell all story today in the shadow of the Milne shemozzle arguably to avoid a similar beat up on her in the last week over the marginal seat of Wentworth. Her News Ltd blog looks very dignified and diplomatic stuff too. The woman has brains and guts and looks (and so does the reporter). No wonder people want to marry her (3 times it seems). Now we notice Ms Ecuyer has her own website as well courtesy of a 'friendly' picture story by Caroline Overington at the Oz (offline it seems).
This morning we wrote this on a Sydney Indymedia string and notice the reference to Cobber Grattan/Fran Kelly there in point 4:
Julia Gillard story most likely a beat up with whiskers
There are some fatal problems from a sceptical point of view about this attack on Gillard on the front page of the Sunday Telegraph , and I apply some media and legal experience on this:
1. If she did anything wrong chances are she would have been totally smashed professionally in the Victorian parliament working for the ALP there over 15 years back. Didn't happen. Only splashed 2 weeks out from a federal election. The timing looks crap as far as credibility goes.
2. She might know lots about who really did what in the AWU including Wilson but there's one sticky problem - solicitor client confidentiality. You can't just go blabbing about your client's wrong doing. Our whole legal system is based on lawyers acting for clients. AND NOT BREACHING CONFIDENTIALITY. You could be struck off for that. And by definition clients sometimes need lawyers because they (the client) break the law.
An aspect of this is the reported house purchase by the unionist. Unions buy property as a way of doing business. Of course they do. Just like they run super funds and invest members money. Yes solicitors need to be on their toes as to being compromised and positioned by sleazy operators, but here's the thing. The more idealistic one is the more you want to believe your client is a good person too. You want to even when you are actually disappointed by them ie mugged by reality. The crucial thing is to act once you do find out, or be an accessory after the fact. Go to point 3 for the question of being an accessory
3. Which raises a whole new aspect - if she was in on any fraud chances are she would eventually have been struck off by the Victorian Law Society and lost her practising certificate, and likely all it would take would be a critic to lodge a complaint eg the defrauded AWU or business operator or conservative politician and God knows they have plenty of lawyers in there (at least that's the process in NSW, then the LawSoc investigate).
4. Michelle 'cobber' Grattan who is Melbourne based and renowned as a fair commentator reckons the story won't go on, saying to Fran Kelly on Radio National this morning, in Cobber's terms "it didn't get lift off yesterday" or similar. And she is right about that. I watched all 4 tv nightly news yesterday and only saw one oblique reference on SBS with Hockey slyly raising it to back off it, though 9 and 7 clashed a bit so hard to watch both clicking between both. Indeed I think we could in rare form congratulate the Big Media for some real integrity except of course for cipher Glenn Milne who ran the trash as news.
5. It's quite well known in the precedents of Big Politics for lawyers to have had a few spills earlier in their career. Chief Justice Sir Garfield Barwick was a declared bankrupt at one point in his career, and then went on to be Attorney General for the Coalition side of politics and then Chief Judge of the High Court. He also used to publicly argue that paying taxes was a legal but not a moral obligation, while enjoying public health services, traffic lights and all the rest.
