Australian Politics
Single happy photo of freed Jarryd Hayne posing with his wife and lawyers sparks a furious war of words - as his high-profile barrister staunchly defends her client
I am glad to see a high profile defence of the man. Ever since the Barry Mannix case in 1984, I have always taken a particular interest in miscarriages of justice and false accusations. I have previously argued that Hayne was a victim of a false rape accusation:
https://australian-politics.blogspot.com/2024/06/was-footballer-jarryd-hayne-victim-of.html
Jarryd Hayne's barrister has become embroiled in a furious LinkedIn row where she launched an extraordinary attack on his rape accuser and defended the rugby league star's character.
Margaret Cunneen SC shared a celebratory image of Hayne, 36, with his wife Amellia Bonnici and solicitor Lauren McDougall to LinkedIn last week, with the group posing in front of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
In her caption, Ms Cunneen celebrated 'justice at last' - after the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal quashed his rape conviction - and described the freed former Parramatta Eels star as a 'fine and decent man'.
But that did not go down well among some members of Ms Cunneen's professional network, with another senior lawyer, former barrister Michael McDonald, furiously objecting to the veteran barrister's characterisation of Hayne.
Mr McDonald said that he was pleased Hayne's 'appeal has been upheld and hope the persecution of him is finally over.'
But, he added: 'Respectfully, 'fine and decent' men do not engage in the type of conduct in which Jarryd Hayne engaged.'
Ms Cunneen fired back: 'You don't know what happened'.
She then went on to claim the footballer's trousers were unopened during his ill-fated encounter with his female accuser at New Lambton, in Newcastle, in 2018.
Mr McDonald was referring to Hayne's conduct on the night which resulted in his being charged with rape.
Hayne's criminal trials were told that he paid a taxi driver $550 to wait 46 minutes while he went into a house to have sex with a young woman.
The encounter resulted in three rape trials, two convictions and 23 months' jail time. Both convictions were eventually overturned, the latest last month.
One of the three NSW Criminal Court of Appeal judges who heard Hayne's appeal, Justice Deborah Sweeney, was opposed to putting the case before another jury, arguing a fourth trial 'would not be in the interests of justice'.
The DPP decided against running a fourth trial on June 25.
Ms Cunneen specifically thanked Justice Sweeney in her photo, saying Hayne was celebrating 'justice at last'.
But she took a different tone with Mr McDonald. 'You have not seen (the accuser's) fingernails - filed to points more than a bishop's mitre. Total 2 years? Please.'
During Hayne's trials it was alleged the woman was left bleeding after the sexual encounter, and when she complained via text she was 'hurting really badly', Hayne texted back 'go doctor tomorrow'.
Mr McDonald then replied, 'my comment comprises two sentences, let me reverse their order'.
'To be clear, his prosecution has been an absolute travesty and, like in the late Cardinal Pell's case, I was confident that he would eventually be cleared on appeal.
'However, in my humble opinion, a 'fine and decent man'; especially when he is married, and a father, would not have placed himself and his relationship with his wife and children in the place that Jarryd did.'
Hayne was not married to Amellia Bonnici in September 2018 when the 26-year-old woman who accused him of the Newcastle rape claimed she had been sexually assaulted. They were, however, already a couple.
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After A Trillion Tons Of CO2, The Great Barrier Reef Hits Record Coral Cover Third Year In A Row
Written by Jo Nova
Sixty Percent Of All Human CO2 Emissions Have Been Emitted Since 1985 But Today The Corals Are Healthier Than Ever.
In 1985 humans were emitting only 19.6 billion tons of CO2 each year, and now we emit 37 billion tons. In the meantime AIMS have been dragging divers thousands of kilometers over the reefs to inspect the coral cover.
These are the most detailed underwater surveys on the largest reef system in the world, and they show that far from being bleached to hell, the corals are more abundant than we have ever seen them.
As Peter Ridd points out, when the reef was doing badly, AIMS was happy to combine the data on the whole reef, so we could lament its demise.
But lately AIMS splits it into separate sections and if Peter Ridd didn’t check the numbers, who would know it was a record across the full 2,300 kilometer length of the reef?
And that may be exactly the point. As Ridd reminds us, in 2012 the AIMS team predicted the coral cover in the central and southern regions would decline to 5 – 10 percent cover by 2022. Instead the whole reef is thriving at 30 percent.
Meanwhile Preposterous Power Games Continue
UNESCO has been threatening to slap an endangered label on the reef for years. They would have looked ridiculous if they had done this whilst corals were at a record high.
But that didn’t stop them demanding tribute and conditions anyway, as if Australia can’t manage the reef by itself. Our Prime Minister should have laughed at them and cut UN funding until they start making sense.
The UNESCO recommendation that the World Heritage Committee not prescribe the reef as “in danger” at its meeting next month no doubt has come as a big relief for government but it still has plenty of strings attached.
To keep favour with UNESCO, governments must ban all gillnet fishing by mid-2027 and more closely supervise land activities stretching hundreds of kilometres inland from the coastline, and further still from the reef itself. It must also keep the billions of dollars flowing for research and reef management.
Who runs the country, is it our elected government or a foreign committee at the service of third world dictators?
The Greens, unfortunately, still struggle with big-numbers, or any numbers at all:
The Greens say the UNESCO decision is a “triumph of lobbying and spin over science”. “The burning of fossil fuels is literally cooking our oceans and degrading marine ecosystems across the globe, and nowhere else has this been more politicised than on the Great Barrier Reef,” says Greens spokesman Senator Peter Whish-Wilson.
And who is politicizing The Great Barrier Reef more than The hyperbolic Greens themselves? No wonder Greens voters were the most confused in the AEF survey.
Ten years after our corals hit a record low, our survey showed that half the country didn’t realize the reef has recovered. Only 3% knew the corals were at a record high, and nearly half the Green voters were as wrong as they possibly could be — they thought coral cover was at a record low.
The full AIMS report will be released in August. There have been some bleaching events both before and after the survey, and as is normal, we won’t know for months whether any corals actually died or whether it was just the normal home renovation that corals go through when they get stressed.
It’s common for corals to throw out the zooanthellae as temperatures change and let in newer house-guests that are better acclimatized. Since sea levels near Queensland were 1 -2 meters higher 6,000 years ago, and the world was a lot warmer, corals can clearly look after themselves.
As Peter Ridd says the biggest threats to the reef are cyclones and crown-of-thorns starfish plagues, neither of which appear to be any worse now than they were years ago.
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Serious concerns about competence and character of top Aboriginal legal agent
Amid all the concern about domestic violence, he gets convicted of it but with no conviction recorded
The head of Australia’s largest Aboriginal legal service has been condemned by a judge for failing to hold down a job, sparking fresh criticism of his appointment, and raising serious concerns about his competence.
North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency chair Hugh Woodbury has faced growing calls to step down after The Australian revealed he bashed his pregnant partner by standing on her stomach, pushing her to the ground, slamming her arm in a door and calling her a “c..t” in front of their two-year-old child.
Coalition MPs have also raised questions over whether Mr Woodbury, who handles about $30m in federal government funding a year despite having no official legal qualifications, has the appropriate background to restore the embattled organisation after it was last year forced to suspend services in Alice Springs due to a staff exodus.
In sentencing remarks during Mr Woodbury’s abuse proceedings, Northern Territory local court judge Greg Borchers described Mr Woodbury as “someone who doesn’t stick at jobs”.
“I am not sure how I am to consider that you have had so many jobs, but you have never stayed at one,” Judge Borchers said when sentencing Mr Woodbury in October 2020.
“You come to this courthouse, as you have, Mr Woodbury, almost each and every legal practitioner in this court house has one job, as a legal practitioner. You have had so many jobs and you have never stuck with any, apart from a long period of time with Parks and Wildlife.”
Before working at NAAJA he had spent time managing Aboriginal hostels, working as a fencing contractor, labouring, working in a bank, and held positions within the Federal Circuit and Family Court and the Central Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service.
“I don’t know why, but that’s a record of someone who doesn’t stick at jobs,” Judge Borchers said.
Mr Woodbury was fined $200 and sentenced to a 12-month good behaviour bond. No conviction was recorded.
The sentencing remarks revealed Judge Borchers was hesitant to convict Mr Woodbury because “a conviction in itself is a serious sanction and it does have an effect upon people’s futures”.
“I do accept that you may, at some stage, wish to consider entering a legal course,” he said.
He also did not convict Mr Woodbury “because of the attitude to your wife, who says that you are very supportive of her”.
“You are a good father and that you need some help,” he said.
South Australian Liberal senator Kerrynne Liddle criticised the appointment of Mr Woodbury, and said there was an issue within community-controlled organisations where senior management are appointed because of their heritage.
“Indigeneity cannot be the only thing on their CV, or they can’t be appointed just because they happen to be interested in the job or are available,” she said.
“This is about an organisation who is supposed to be helping the most vulnerable people, and they are failing in doing that.”
Senator Liddle called on both the Territory and federal governments to strip funding from the organisation, especially if the current board remained.
“They (the governments) hold the keys to the money, and keep handing over taxpayer money to the organisation,” she said. “Surely in the legislation they have smart enough people to try and find a way to stop taxpayer’s money being handed over to an organisation where there have been issues being raised for long periods of time.”
A NAAJA spokesperson said Mr Woodbury “understands the needs of our communities”.
“He is young, smart, and passionate about empowering Aboriginal communities. We need more young Aboriginal people in leadership roles, not less,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said Mr Woodbury has “extensive experience in the legal and community service sectors in the Territory, having worked as an Indigenous family liaison officer for the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia and as a welfare rights officer for the then Central Australian Legal Service”.
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Going AWOL at RIMPAC bares our lack of fight-readiness
The collapse of Australia’s military contribution to the world’s largest maritime exercise has laid bare just how woefully unprepared our current Defence Force is for any serious conflict in the region.
This is a fundamental failure of national security that Australians will have to live with for the next decade. If a conflict should arise in that period, we don’t have enough warships or submarines that work or enough personnel to crew them.
Nothing could more starkly illustrate this new reality than the government’s inability to send more than a single ship, a plane and a handful of personnel to the most critical US-led maritime exercise in our region.
The biennial RIMPAC exercise, which runs for the next month, is by some distance the most important military exercise Australia participates in. Involving 29 nations, 40 surface ships, 150 aircraft and some 25,000 personnel, it is an exercise that China truly hates because it does more than any other to prepare countries across the region to repel any military adventurism from Beijing.
China’s state-run mouthpiece the Global Times fumes that this year’s RIMPAC will “sabotage, not safeguard, peace and stability in the region” because the exercise will practise drills aimed at sinking a Chinese aircraft carrier.
Yet at a time when the Albanese government claims the rise of China has delivered the most frightening strategic outlook in a generation, Australia cannot muster more than symbolic military support for this year’s RIMPAC.
At the last RIMPAC in 2022, we sent 1600 personnel, three warships, a Collins-class submarine, two P-8A Poseidon aircraft and an army amphibious combat group, together with mine warfare and clearance diving teams.
This year we are sending 320 personnel, a single warship, and a single air force P-8A Poseidon maritime reconnaissance aircraft.
In other words, Australia is providing one of the 40 surface ships involved in RIMPAC, just one of the 150 aircraft involved and just 1.29 per cent of the personnel.
It is a shamefully microscopic contribution for a supposed middle power that spends $55bn on defence a year and harbours ambitions to become an operator of nuclear-powered submarines.
When the government was criticised late last year for refusing a US Navy request to send a warship to help defend the Red Sea from attacks by Houthi rebels, it claimed the decision was made because it wanted to focus on security in our immediate region.
No military exercise focuses more specifically on regional security than RIMPAC and Australia is all but AWOL. This is the result of a decade of neglect on defence that has been blighted by inadequate funding, botched projects, delayed decisions on replacing warships and subs and a failure to recruit personnel.
Australia cannot send a sub to RIMPAC because corrosion problems have sidelined three of the navy’s six ageing Collins-class submarines for the rest of the year.
It cannot send an Anzac frigate because they are ageing quickly, forcing the government to mothball one and a second ship in 2026.
The situation will become worse before it becomes better because although the government has announced grand plans for its new AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines and a new fleet of general purpose frigates, none of these will arrive this decade.
Australia has to hold its breath and hope a conflict does not break out soon. Our token contribution to RIMPAC tells regional neighbours we are struggling to pull our weight in our own backyard.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
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