Piers Akerman: Kick out Dan Andrews and his team and bring in an administrator
The Andrews government’s widely criticised handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has made headlines for weeks. Now the Lawyer X scandal has uncovered serious questions about Victoria Police. We simply cannot wait for the 2022 elections to kick out the Victorian government, writes Piers Akerman.
Opinion
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Victoria is a failed state led by a hopeless Premier in Daniel Andrews, whose policy failures have contributed not only to the majority of deaths from coronavirus in this country but to the ongoing national economic catastrophe.
Not to mention his role in prolonging the immeasurable ongoing psychological damage to people of all ages, and the permanent damage being done to the educational outlook of our young.
Such an unprincipled leadership, dependent on rejected socialist ideology, has consequences which affect the nation but are reflected within the state’s public service, from the health department to the police.
The most shameful public act of the past few days has been widely-viewed handcuffing of a pregnant woman who did no more than post on social media her desire to see the economy reactivated.
Although protests are banned in the state, the excessive action of the Victorian Police reflects a politicisation totally unacceptable in anything other than a totalitarian state.
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We have learned through the inquiry into Victoria’s irrefutably disastrous hotel quarantine program that a team leader seconded from the Parks Department was given a one-hour course in diversity and inclusiveness but taught nothing about personal protection equipment to prepare for his task.
We have heard evidence that Victoria rejected an offer of defence force support to manage quarantining and we have heard a health official say he supported the Black Lives Matter protest which saw 10,000 people gather in a public demonstration while the police stood by and made no effort to persuade the protesters to go home.
Now, thanks to the Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants (RCMPI) — the inquiry into the Lawyer X scandal — we have learned more about the senior echelons of the Victorian Police.
It is now common knowledge — thanks to the perseverance of the Herald Sun newspaper — that the Victorian Police recruited lawyer Nicola Gobbo to act as their paid informant and provide information to them which she had gained from her clients.
Daniel Andrews’ government supported the Victorian Police’s efforts to suppress this scandal and fought expensive court battles in the Victorian court system to attempt to block reports.
The case brought against Cardinal George Pell is indicative of the quality of justice to be expected in Victoria and, as in the Pell case, it required the High Court to clear the way for justice and freedom of the press.
According to the submissions released by the RCMPI, chaired by the former President of the Queensland Court of Appeal, Margaret McMurdo, neither Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton nor his predecessor Simon Overland feel they should be questioned about the matter.
Yet hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions were flowing out of their budgets to pay Gobbo and their own lawyers who were trying to keep the lid on the scandal.
Because Victorian Police were being fed information by Gobbo about her clients — information which was absolutely covered by lawyer-client privilege — all the convictions they won against her clients or cases in which they used information gleaned by Gobbo from her sources are now open to challenge.
In legal terms the convictions fall under the doctrine of fruit of the poisonous tree and are therefore tainted.
The High Court has ruled that evidence illegally obtained will generally be inadmissable if it has been obtained as a result of a serious breach of the law.
There is a defence of noble cause — that the illegal acts were undertaken for the greater good — but that is a very high bar for a court to accept. According to the RCMPI, an astonishing 1011 people may have been affected by the police actions.
So where’s the Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions?
According to the submission from that office despite its “otherwise close working relationship” with the Victorian Police, “Victoria Police were able successfully to avoid any prosecutor learning of Miss Gobbo’s role as a police informer”.
The next election is not until 2022 but the whole state should be placed in administration until a competent, law-abiding government can be formed.