To Absent Friends

Idealism Unclean, Sacrificed Justice and Paradise Lost?

The inactivity generally of Western Australian lawyers, academics and "intellectuals" following the contempt for natural justice and fair play and the carnage caused by the political activists at Corruption and Crime Commission is a reflection of the selfishness of our society.

Too much power always results in excesses. Surely there must be good people in the CCC who are appalled at the bias and disregard of the CCC senior officers for fairness and proper treatment of those it investigates.

Who stood up for Michael Moodie?
Who questioned his and many others treatment in the hands of the CCC?

The famous statement attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) could equally apply to the Corruption and Crime Commission activities.

They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Where are the civil libertarians in the Labor movement or are they all just lining up for parliamentary careers and too scared to offend the controlling and powerful Left?

The gutless are frightened by strength and consequence and are stricken by fear. They eschew justice for the safety of the gang, loyalty to the strong - not the just. Weakness against tyranny is their hallmark.

Let' lament absent friend's, not in Robbie Burns the working mans' poet's words, but those another Scot who evoked the Australian spirit:

"Absent Friends!" -- The lost legion that lies in the grave;
The friends who were false and the friends we forgave, --
Whose words had the edge of the enemy's knife,
To torture the heart and poison the life; --
The friend who lay dying and never could know
That we loved at the last as we loved long ago!

So each across his wine-cup bends,
And silently, and tearfully,
We pledge our "Absent Friends!"
Will H. Ogilvie (1869- 18630

The Farce of Regulating Lobbying

Lobbyists - Business as usual

Legislation to "control" lobbyist in Western Australia has always been ineffective. Geoff Gallop's puny register of lobbyists nets only about 10% of lobbyists actively working in Western Australia.

Independent Liz Constable's two very potent and probably very effective Bills were both ignored by the Labor and Liberal Governments. The Corruption and Crime Commission has failed to have a public or private inquiry into lobbying and its extent in Western Australia. Such an inquiry would have been more effective than the pursuit of high profile political enemies of the ruling elite of the time.

Readers may be surprised to know that some of our most prominent lobbyists are former Prime Ministers.

Bob Hawke has sold his lobbying services to many foreign governments. He was a regular golf partner of the Burmese Generals in his early days. In recent years he has praised the military junta and been silent on Aung San Suu Kyi and didn't raise human rights on his most recent visit.

Paul Keating has long had a client list of foreign governments and government controlled company on his consulting services list going back many years. One company of which he was a lobbyist or shall we use the euphemism "business associate" was a Chinese Government company Aldoga Aluminium Smelter Pty Ltd.

Kevin Rudd became a lobbyist after he fell out with Queensland Premier Wayne Goss. Rudd was his Principal Private Secretary. Rudd promptly went to work for the Chinese Government consulting in Africa.

What Chinese interest was Rudd serving when he went to the Sudan on the Chinese Government's behalf when the Sudanese government backed militia were slaughtering refugees in Dafur?

Former Prime Ministers and other politicians should not be allowed to work as lobbyists without some form of effective parliamentary oversight.

We certainly have not got that in WA - by design, the Desert Rat thinks.

Michael Moodie loses everything - McGinty rewarded

Phoney CCC charges thrown out of Court - Moodie vindicated but broke, no job and poor health

Michael Moodie who was central to attempts to bring some accountability to Jim McGinty's IT bungles at WA Health, paid a heavy price for his efforts.

Moodie the fearless bureaucrat was crushed by a fruitless Corruption and Crime Commission prosecution which left him penniless, bankrupt and still without a job at WA Health, despite being found innocent.

Why was Moodie really prosecuted?

Moodie's trouble started in 2006 when he was put in charge of WA Health IT. He uncovered the mess under McGinty Health Ministry and immediately began a searching audit process [Michael's first BIG mistake!].

Moodie demanded that Treasury run the tender process.

Moodie also uncovered that Fujitsu was preparing the WA Health Department tender "in such a manner that would ensure an ongoing role for itself - a yearly contract of some millions".

Veteran Nationals MP Max Trenorden said in the Legislative Council that the charges brought against Michael Moodie were nothing more than a side show, a diversion to to get him out of the Department of Health and finish him off financially, to destroy him.

The Desert Rat believes Michael Moodie was the goods, and IT in WA Health would be quite vibrant if he were still there. He was shafted first by the doctors at PMH and then by senior health bureaucrats and finished off by the Corruption and Crime Commission - under McGinty's watch.

Without the maverick Michael Moodie, the culture of intransigence and wasting money which was the hallmark of WA Health under Jim McGinty, continued.

Why hasn't Moodie been reinstated in his WA Health job after being found innocent? Double jeopardy. Was he fucked-over because he wasperceived as an enemy of the State - like Grill and Burke?

Meanwhile unrivaled fool and Left Labor hero Jim McGinty (the former Health Minister) who stuffed-up badly on many fronts (including this one) is now advising Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon.

What financial black holes has Roxon given this idiot to superintend?

The Desert Rat presumes this sinecure is worth at least $200 000 a year - plus more?? This, on top of his $2 million plus parliamentary superannuation payout?

The Desert Rat regards this as double dipping on a grand scale. What next? An Order of Australia for services to the nation?

Sad greedy people.

Incompetent McGinty's Improper Conduct Costs Taxpayers $115 million

No CCC Inquiry over health record shambles.

During former Labor Minister Jim McGinty's stewardship of WA Health, the Auditor General has revealed that not only did he hand out a $115 million contract for an electronic health records system without a tender, but he also failed to have a business case prepared to justify that expenditure - as required by his own Health Act.

Bit Smelly?

Will the Corruption and Crime Commission Chairman Len Roberts Smith inquire into this improper conduct or possible corruption?

The decision by Jim McGinty and WA Health to award the Patients Admission System (PAS) to British Company iSoft without a tender was a disgrace. WA Health called a meeting of all prospective vendors at which it was expected that the tender would be announced. Instead WA Health said there would be no tender and that they had already awarded the work to iSoft.

Bit smelly?

Imagine if Brian Burke or Julian Grill did this. The CCC and Robert's Smith would be down on them like a tonne of bricks, investigating for evidence of a kick backs, corruption and improper conduct.

As well as criticising the omission in awarding the contract, under Jim McGinty's stewardship the Auditor General said WA Health failed to monitor the contract, he criticised the alarming inadequacy, sometime absence of important financial records. Incompetence after bungling incompetence is documented in the Auditor General's report. see www.audit.wa.gov.au

The contempt for taxpayers by these braggadocios and their foolish incompetence is no surprise to the Desert Rat.

The Auditor General clearly lays the blame at Jim McGinty's feet when as Health Minister Parliament appropriated $335 million for the electronic health records system in 2004 but McGinty stuffed it up; he dropped the ball.

Jim McGinty it would seem has political immunity when it come to investigation by the CCC - why?

Shades of the Führer?

The Rancorous Spite of Roberts-Smiths Secular World:
"Do unto others, as you wouldn't have them do unto you."

Every day the CCC looks more like a single party dictatorship based on totalitarian and autocratic ideals. Like the CIA the CCC refuses to confirm or deny the existence of listening devices, hidden camera, email and fax monitoring devices long after the excuse for them has lost credibility.

These devices and software allow the CCC to undertake unrestricted surveillance of their perceived "enemies of the State". Disturbingly, all communication is monitored from love-making to privileged communication between defence lawyers and the CCC's victim. All those involved in the Smith's Beach Inquiry are still being monitored by Dad's Army; Len Roberts-Smith band of overpaid, under-achieving, toadying incompetents.

After 7 years they still do not know if they are being monitored. Even if they defeat the last desperate appeal, we can be sure Roberts-Smith will not inform them that the investigation is at an end. That would be seen as a potential public admission of failure. Despite over $100 million being spent to "expose" assumed corruption associated with the Smith's Beach development (Brian Burke, Julian Grill, David McKenzie; and media manipulation to ensure enough mud (propaganda) has been thrown to destroy their reputation, to soften-up and convince the public that their is no question of innocence, the victims can only assume they are still being spied on by the CCC surveillance machine.

Fiannaca's Appeal against Dismissal of Charges against Grill & Burke

Fiannaca - In Pursuit of Glory or Ignominy?

The conduct of Bruno Fianacca the deputy DPP, has goaded the Desert Rat back into action.

Fiannaca was an important player in the bringing of the CCC corruption charges against Julian Grill and Brian Burke. Fiannaca is central to the current appeals against the dismissal of the recent charges against Grill and Burke, where a Judge Michael Murray a former Crown prosecutor found that the they had "no case to answer".

Fiannaca has a very grubby record of draconian activity in relation to a number of high profile criminal fiasco’s, including the Mallard appeals and the JWRL case among other. He has been an enthusiastic soul mate of the Court Jester Major General Len Robert-Smith.

Just as well this idiot is a lawyer and not a surgeon or nurse where rigour and protocol are critical if you want avoid havoc and destruction and continue to practise those professions.

The need for Fiannaca to feed his massive ego and his incompetent pursuit of position and status beyond his ability, has created unnecessary misery for many honest and innocent citizens of Western Australia.

Fiannaca Record- When Integrity's Absent, Malice Reigns

Fiannaca's Earlier Disgrace

Senior prosecutor denies 'stifling' Mallard appeal

Posted ABC Wed Oct 24, 2007

Prosecutor Bruno Fiannaca has denied trying to stifle Andrew Mallard's murder appeal. (ABC)

A senior prosecutor who contested Andrew Mallard's first attempt to appeal against his murder conviction has denied deliberately stifling efforts by the defence to subpoena material which cast doubt on Mr Mallard's guilt.

Bruno Fiannaca is giving evidence to a Corruption and Crime Commission Inquiry, which is investigating Mr Mallard's wrongful conviction for the 1994 murder of Pamela Lawrence.

The inquiry has heard that in 2002 Mr Fiannaca was asked by the Director of Public Prosecutions Robert Cock to consider a petition to launch an appeal from Mr Mallard's legal team.

Mr Fiannaca said although several aspects of the case had not been disclosed to the jury at trial he advised Mr Cock to oppose the appeal.

He said he was inundated with subpoena requests from Mr Mallard's legal team and at times found their actions unreasonable, but he denied trying to stop their attempts to find information which would have cast doubt over Mr Mallard's guilt.

The inquiry has been shown a report sent to Mr Fiannaca from a British forensic expert confirming that despite the prosecution case at trial, a spanner drawn by Mr Mallard could not have been used to kill Mrs Lawrence.

The report was not provided to Mr Mallard's lawyers until six months after it was written, but Mr Fiannaca has denied "sitting on it", saying he needed to clarify some things and it was always his intention to disclose it.

"Pigs might fly?"

Fiannaca - Misconduct by DDP Prosecutor?

Fiannaca get the biggest Shellacking Ever of a Senior Prosecutor by a Senior Judge

from Crikey.com




13 September 2010
Justice takes a back seat again in WA
by Greg Barns

Last Friday was not a good one for the Western Australian Office of the DPP. Its conduct in a case involving a young man aged 17, who had been given a two-year suspended sentence after being found guilty of a serious assault that resulted in the death of the victim, was described by the Western Australian Chief Justice Wayne Martin as a “a conspicuous departure from appropriate prosecutorial conduct”, and as “patently indefensible”.

The case known as State of WA v JWRL was a high-profile one in Perth. Steven Rowe, a 17-year-old, was killed in 2008 after a fight in a suburban park. Rowe was bashed over the head with a garden stake by the defendant, who cannot be named because he was not 18 at the date of the offence. A widely reported Supreme Court trial in 2009 saw a jury acquit JWRL of murder and manslaughter but find him guilty of assault.

The case was yet another from the West that involved the prosecution failing in its duty to disclose all relevant evidence to the defence. This has been a common theme in a handful of high-profile Western Australian criminal trials over the years — one involving Andrew Mallard, a man wrongfully convicted in 1995 of murder, being the most prominent. Here the DPP’s office received new information from a witness shortly before the trial but did not disclose this to the defence. Chief Justice Martin described the DPP’s office’s conduct as patently unjustifiable and that it was a “conspicuous departure from appropriate prosecutorial conduct”. Of other submissions made in the appeal by the DPP Chief Justice Martin peppered his judgment with words such as “pedantic” and “utterly without foundation”. He described another submission as “extraordinary”.

The DPP’s appeal in this case was argued by one of WA’s most senior prosecutors, Bruno Fiannaca, who has prosecuted former premier Brian Burke and who ironically argued the appeal on behalf of the state against the overturning of Mallard’s conviction by the High Court in 2005. Given the fact that the state’s most senior judge is so relentlessly scathing of the conduct of DPP’s office in the JWRL trial and thought its appeal was without any merit, WA Attorney-General Christian Porter, a former prosecutor himself, might care to ask some very hard questions of the office responsible for running the state’s criminal cases. With the JWRL decision, the roll call of miscarriages of justice in WA just grew by one — and that’s one too many.