Hiding under rocks

Qld AG insists there's no rape of teenagers in Pineapple Land jails ... Silk's daily rate for the crown ... Canberra firm fails in early round to squelch picketing client's Mum ... Justice Bromberg's vital statistics 

Bleijie: teens should know better

Young teenage prisoners sighed with relief at the news that they will not be, and have not been, raped in Queensland jails. 

They have the word of the state attorney general, Jarrod Bleijie-Petersen - barely out of short pants himself. 

Jarrod dismissed concerns by the children's commissioner for the HRC, Megan Mitchell, that in sending ripe and juicy kiddies to adult nicks the Queensland government is breaching some tiresome UN convention. 

Nonsense, says Young Jarro. He is not aware of any rape in a prison in the last 12 months, and he has visited prisons, first hand. 

"I reject that rape happens in jail," the young poppet and devotee of the monarchy, told a wireless station. 

"Jails are not meant to be nice places, but there are adequate staff to ensure those sorts of things aren't happening and prisoners have their own cells and so forth." 

Anyway, he added, 17-year-olds, "should know right from wrong". 

Prison reform do-gooder and lawyer, Debbie Kiljoy, said the AG must have been "hiding under a rock and ... he doesn't know what's going on in his own state". 

The ABC reported that a former prison guard (who did not wish to be named) had the temerity to say that Bleijie "must be living on another planet" if he thinks inmates are not raped in jails. 

Under rocks, other planets - where does the AG actually live? 

On the Sunshine Coast, it seems, where long exposure to the harsh rays can turn a man to putty. 

The prison guard explained that young offenders in jail try to make friends with older prisoners. 

"They are bashed, some are gang raped, some are stabbed." 

They don't take their complaints very far because the system doesn't back them up and the justice system lets them down. 

It got better, or worse. 

Dr Wendell Rosevear from Brisvegas' Stonewall Medical Centre, claimed to have treated over 1,000 men who say they have been raped, many of them in Jarrod's jails. Doc Rosevear added: 

"I've never seen a rape victim in prison go through the court process because it is too scary. They don't want to be murdered as well as raped." 

Unabashed, the dazzling young attorney for Pineapple Land said that criminality in prisons "will not be tolerated". 

All's good. 

*   *   *

A helpful reader has volunteered some statistical information about John Marshall's ground-breaking $1,054,501.25 in fees from the NSW crown last year.  

Marshall topped the poll of the crown's civil earners, coming in at almost three-time the quantum of the next of the list, Rick Burbidge, who harvested a miserable $388,593.32 for 2012. 

We asked Marshall the nature of the work he did for the state during the year in question, but have yet to hear back. 

However, it looks like he made a massive commitment. 

If we assume a rate of $4,000 a day, which is a recognised tariff for silks, it would mean Marshall worked 263.6 days in that year for the NSW government. 

That leaves only 28 percent of the rest of the year in which he wasn't working for the state, including weekends and public holidays. 

That is devotion to duty. 

However, should he have charged higher than the usual daily rate for silks, say $5,000 a day, he would have only worked 211 days for the crown and had 154 days free for other things (i.e. 42 percent of the year). 

I'm not sure what all this means, other than the higher you charge the more days you can get off for the other things in life. 

*   *   *

I was distressed as the next person to discover that Canberra law shop once known as Bradley Allen and now Bradley Allen Love, went down in its application for summary judgment against Ms Min Li Wu.  

Keith Bradley, and his colleagues John Bradley, Bill McCarthy and Susan Proctor (the old Bradley Allen) pleaded defamation and injurious falsehood against Wu after she launched a concerted campaign between 2010 and 2011 of picketing the law shop with pamphlets and placards, such as: 

"9th floor Canberra House - Keith Bradley Allen Lawyers - swindled money from my daughter's trustee fund left by my deceased husband. Give me back my $107,780.11." 

The shop acted for Wu's daughter, Alice Perry, and is resisting the allegation that any of the partners took money "to which they were not entitled". 

They asked the court for summary judgment on the injurious falsehood count. 

It was a long-shot and it failed - with Master David Harper saying, rather cruelly, there were issues on the pleadings as to whether the statements made by the defendant were false, whether they were published maliciously and whether the plaintiffs suffered actual damage or loss. 

Heather Ross, an employee of the shop, swore she had a conversation with Wu in the street, where the defendant pointedly said: 

"I lose money, they lose business." 

Wu deposed that she just wanted to let people know what the firm had done and to get back the money for her daughter. 

Harper found that the evidence did not establish any actual damage to the firm. Therefore no injurious falsehood, so no summary judgment. 

"The defendant, on her evidence, has a genuine belief that she has been overcharged by the solicitors. I suspect that she has lost all faith in lawyers, and takes little, if any, comfort from the available powers of the Law Society, taxing officers of the court or indeed the judiciary - lawyers all." 

Ain't that the story?  

*   *   *

People frequently ask me for details of the height and weight of Fed Court Justice Mordy Bromberg - the famous Bolt case jurist. 

Fortunately the information is available on his Wikipedia entry. 

Under the alluring link, Mordy Bromberg's statistics, we find:  

"Height 183 cm. Weight 83 kg." 

Presumably that was the relevant data at the time HH was a St Kilda AFL player. 

Is he the only Australian judicial officer whose online biographical entry records these important dimensions? 

Wikipedia is looking for the information to be "expanded".