ICAC's new commissioner

Changing guard at the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption ... The life story of Justice Megan Latham ... Inspector Dave battens down the hatches ... Plan B for Abbott & Co ... Political crime sleuth Alex Mitchell reports 

Megan Latham: idealist

MEGAN Latham is the second woman to be Commissioner of ICAC, the anti-corruption watchdog known to its enemies as either a Kangaroo Court or a Star Chamber. 

The first was Irene Moss, wife for the Macquarie Bank co-founder Allan Moss, who was commissioner between 1999 and 2004.

She was chosen for the job by Premier Bob Carr (1995-2005) who later served in the Senate and became Australia's Foreign Minister (2012-13).

On the face of it, Latham is the perfect choice. She has a law career brimming with authority, practical intelligence, shrewd knowledge of the law and an heroic work ethic.

Born in Cronulla, she attended MLC Burwood (originally the Methodist Ladies' College) before studying arts-law at the University of NSW, where she graduated in 1979.

While most in her law school year headed to the Sydney CBD and jobs in the big corporate law shops, Latham went to Leeton, the fruit and rice-growing town near Griffiths in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area, and joined local solicitors Maguire & Martin.

At 23 she was appearing for clients in the District Court.

"Like all idealists, I wanted to go on to work with Legal Aid to ensure people who didn't have resources were properly represented," she told the UNSW Law Alumni News in 2011.

In the event, she joined the Lands Department and in 1987 she was called to the bar and appointed a Crown Prosecutor and the director of the criminal law division of the Attorney General's Department.

Her policy work on law reform, family law and child protection caught the attention of attorney general Jeff Shaw, who appointed her to the District Court in 1998.

In 2005 Bob Debus sent her to the Supreme Court, with enthusiastic support from Spiggsy Spigelman CJ. She soon impressed colleagues with her mixture of toughness and humanity.

At the swearing-in ceremony, then bar association president Ian (Hormones) Harrison, now a Supreme Court judge, recalled appearing before Latham and remarking ...

"respectfully that Your Honour's analysis did not appear, to me at least, to be entirely logical. You had no hesitation in dealing with my comment by saying very descriptively and very convincingly, 'Mr Harrison, if the world were a logical place, men would ride side-saddle'. For some reason, I have never been able to get that remark out of my head."

A decade ago her sentencing provoked a misguided attack in the Bearpit by shadow attorney general Andrew Tink. The uproar was featured in Justinian (see below). 

Will Latham follow the example of outgoing commissioner David Ipp to "name and shame" miscreants or will the emphasis be on corruption education? 

Lots of both, we hope. 

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Tink: wanted government to withdraw Latham's appointment to the Supremes

AS a reminder, here's the edifying parliamentary exchange in  mid-2005 on Justice Latham's Supreme Court appointment: 

Andrew Tink: My question is to the Premier. Given that three years ago he attacked District Court Judge Megan Latham over the manifestly inadequate non-parole sentences of four years and three years given to two violent pack rapists, will he now discontinue his appointment of her to the Supreme Court?

Bob Carr: What a disgraceful attack! Not content with attacking the police commissioner, not content with attacking senior public servants at every opportunity, members opposite now start attacking judges. It ought to shame every female member of the Coalition. Under the Coalition Government the appointment of women to judicial posts was so rare as to be a public holiday event. In the entire period of the Coalition Government one female was appointed to the Supreme Court and three to the District Court.

Mr Speaker: Order! The honourable member for Willoughby will come to order.

Bob Carr: I am proud to say that this government has increased the proportion of female judicial appointments from 12 per cent under the previous Government to 30 per cent under Labor …

John Brogden: Who cares? We want good judges.

Bob Carr: ... including the appointment of 11 female judges to the District Court. And the Leader of the Opposition says, “Who cares?” Let that be reported in Hansard…

There is no doubt that Judge Latham is a person of the highest legal training and academic record. Her personal integrity has never been questioned.

Andrew Tink: Point of order: The words I used in the question are the words from the Premier, taken from of Hansard. You attacked Judge Latham, I did not.

Mr Speaker: Order! There is no point of order. The honourable member for Epping will resume his seat.

Bob Carr: Calm down, Andrew! Deep breathing, Andrew! Otherwise nurse will be here again with her trolley and her big needle, and you will be calmed by another means. Judge Latham is a person of the highest integrity. Are Opposition members positing the position that no judge who has ever had a decision overturned on appeal can be appointed …

John Brogden: No, criticised by you.

Bob Carr: ... or whose decision has been criticised, can ever be appointed to a higher judicial post? In other words, they are putting forward the proposition that no judge who has had a decision overturned on appeal or who has been criticised by the government of the day can be elevated to a higher court… I look at her record. She is a former Crown advocate, a Crown prosecutor, and an executive officer of the New South Wales Child Sexual Assault Task Force. She has served on the District Court bench since 1998 and has carried a heavy load with, as I understand, relatively few appeals against her decisions. The most recent appeal of which I am aware was an appeal against what was alleged to have been an unduly harsh sentence on Wollongong identity Neville Hilton.

Her appointment from the District Court to the Supreme Court was undertaken in full consultation with the Chief Justice and with the relevant professional bodies The honourable member for Epping, hostile to women being appointed to the bench, is now seeking to throw her on the scrap heap on the basis of one controversial decision in the enormously difficult area of the criminal justice. It indicates why the Coalition has made no progress whatsoever in getting more women in prominent positions in the law.

Carl Scully: Point of order: Following the use by the Leader of the Opposition yesterday of sexist language, today he has used words which are an affront to all women in this Parliament. Reflecting on who cares if a woman gets promoted to the bench is unparliamentary and should be withdrawn by him.

Mr Speaker: Order! All members should use language that uplifts the standards of the House.

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Inspector Dave: leaving SORC

FORMER NSW Supremo David Levine AO RFD QC has resigned after seven years as chair of the Serious Offenders' Review Council, a Wran-era creation advising on the security classification, placement and case management of inmates sentenced to more than 12 years in the slammer.

He has also left the NSW Art Gallery Society Council to which he gave distinguished service and before that he was chairman of the Friends of the State Library.

But far from stepping back from public service, the former manager of the Supreme's defamation list is taking on a new role - inspector of the ICAC.

He became inspector of the Police Integrity Commission in 2012, which earned him the nickname "Inspector Dave". 

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FACED with defeat in the Senate for his legislation to scrap the carbon tax, Prime Minister Abbott has periodically menaced Labor, the Greens and voters with the threat of a double dissolution election.

The threat to send the country back to the polls to elect both houses has now stopped. Why?

However, the latest Morgan poll shows the ALP on 53 percent (up 0.5 percent) increasing its lead over the Coalition on 47 percent (down 0.5 percent) on a two-party preferred basis, and confidence in the government has slumped to its lowest point since Abbott was elected on September 7.

Coincidentally, threats of a double dissolution have now ceased. 

Team Abbott has now moved to Plan B.

On July 1, when the new senators take their seats the Coalition, with the support of various rag-tag independents and Palmerites, will be in a stronger position to roll out its unvarnished programme (carefully drafted by the Institute for Paid Advocacy and its PR agents in the Murdoch press): new workplace laws, deeper cuts to federal agencies, more outsourcing and job cutbacks, weird changes to the school curriculum, privatisation of Medibank and boning the public broadcasters. 

It is hoping that Labor's recurrent scandals - Craig Thomson, Eddie Obeid, Ian Macdonald and the construction workers - will provide a shield and a distraction.

So far the polls show that the government will need more than Labor's shame to get the electorate to swallow its flat-earth agenda.