Deadline: The lawyer paedophiles most revile

A lawyer hitting paedophiles in the hip pocket has fast becoming the man most hated by Australian child sex offenders.

Andrew Carpenter is earning the ire of child sex offenders. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

Mark Buttler and Andrew Rule with the latest scallywag scuttlebutt.

Carpenter hammers pedos

Andrew Carpenter is not just another lawyer but a well-known face in Melbourne’s mixed martial arts circles.

The fighting lawyer has served as pre-fight sparring partner for Adelaide hard man Mike “The Turnernator” Turner. But, these days, he sticks to commentating and ring-announcing when in Melbourne.

But he has quite a “rep” out of the ring. It seems Kid Carpenter is becoming known as the man most hated by Australian child sex offenders.

One reason is that he has recently played a key part in a big push for federal laws allowing victims of paedophiles to take the superannuation of their attackers as compensation.

Sexual predators have for a long time got away with holding onto their nest eggs while many of those they hurt go without.

The fact is, Carpenter had been upsetting such reptiles long before the legal change was ratified last month.

That’s because his specialty is launching legal action to extract their assets to aid victims.

Sex offenders with long pockets and short arms who are unwise enough to contact him to make threats are met with a swift counterpunch from the legal eagle.

His favourite response to paedophile aggression is best not repeated but it’s fair to say the callers quickly learn where they stand, which is lower than a snake’s belly.

“People have this stereotype that lawyers are small of stature,” Carpenter explains. “Paedophiles are used to control. They think they can use their abuse and controlling skills.

“The thing they can’t deal with is survivors standing up (to them).”

The “peace maker” has been told he’s well on the way to being the man most loathed by such individuals. This is not a problem for him.

“You know what? I’ll print that on every business card.”

A note left beside a memorial at the tragic Wonangatta campsite.

A small cairn of stones gathered by grieving friends and family members.

Wonnangatta site revisited

There’s a good reason why the doomed lovers Russell Hill and Carol Clay camped exactly where they did in the Wonnangatta Valley in early 2020.

As a well-known mountain cattleman told Deadline this week, the “murder site” is the ideal spot, sheltered and near water. That’s why it was used by the cattlemen when they held grazing trials in the high country in the past and he and his friends and family have camped there several times over the years.

In fact, when the cattleman went back to Wonnangatta this week, his group of three camped at the spot despite what happened there almost three years ago.

They noted that the spot has been marked with a small cairn of stones gathered by grieving friends and family members who have also left heartfelt handwritten tributes.

“Love,” one message begins, “We leave you in this beautiful place but nothing makes up for the way we lost you. RIP xxxx”

Romantic AFL interlude

One personal best you won’t be hearing about on any club websites is the AFL player who recently put in a big performance on a night out.

The player had been out with teammates for some morale-boosting sherbets when he decided to do some bonding of another kind.

He was caught in the toilets of the venue entertaining a new companion.

It was furrowed brows all round as the player and his female friend were ejected from the premises.

The AFL player and his new female friend were caught entertaining one another in the toilets of the venue.

The brakes are off, say Harry White’s mates

Jockeys often get a bad wrap.

There was a time when certain clubs (hello Royal South Yarra) wouldn’t let professional jocks (or Japanese visitors, among others) in the door, and when jockeys were automatically barred from serving on juries.

Deadline knows this because a relative who was a jockey in his teens used the excuse to duck jury duty for the rest of his days.

But for every villain in the saddle, there’s one who is nature’s gentleman. And few were nicer to horses or to their fellow man than the late, great Harry White.

White was raised in poverty by his grandparents at Camp Pell, the notorious public housing in the old army camp set up in Royal Park during World War II.

The young Harry was naughty as an apprentice but changed his ways after getting a long suspension, married his wife Lauris, and set about becoming one of the finest distance riders in the land, if not the world. He did, of course, win an equal-record four Melbourne Cups.

He once told his best mate, one-time VFL ruckman Peter “Crackers” Keenan, that he did pull up a horse once … on the orders of legendary punting trainer Bart Cummings.

Harry White holds the aloft after winning the West End Adelaide Cup race at Morphettville Racecourse, aboard Ideal Centreman in 1991.

Harry came so close to being outed that he vowed not to do it again. In fact, he won on a flying machine named Happy Kitten despite Bart asking him not to because the trainer had missed getting the juicy odds and wanted to punish those who had “pinched the market” in early betting.

So why did he get the moniker “Handbrake Harry”?

It’s simple: it comes from riding work on a headstrong horse named Gladman. It bolted around the Flemington sand track one morning with White unable to stop it, and work rider Bobby Ball yelled, “Use the handbrake, Harry!”

A drunken racing writer known as Harry The Horse overheard the joke and liked the sound of it, so he used it on a radio report for no reason other than it seemed funny. It caught on after a pig-headed owner blamed White for his horse losing after White warned him, correctly, that it wasn’t sound.

A jocular reference last week to “Handbrake Harry White” on Channel 7, by someone who started watching races about the time Harry retired, grates on White’s friends and family.

It’s a little known fact that White invested $500,000 to generate income to help injured jockeys. Racing is full of multi-millionaires who wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing.

If anything, he should be called Handout Harry, because he quietly helped people in need. Anyone who wants to argue might like to call Crackers Keenan.

A title no one wants

Our spies at police headquarters report stares and whispers about the identity of the mysterious Degani 150.

As mentioned recently, an inspector had been given that name after spending vast amounts of time drinking coffee at a cafe in the Spencer St headquarters.

Degani is a cafe at the bottom of the building and 150 is the radio code for an inspector.

One respected detective turned himself in and cleared the air about any possibility he is the Degani 150.

“That’s wrong! I’m the Code Three 150,” he said.

Needless to say, Code Three is another cafe at the base of the complex.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus. Picture: Martin Ollman

Going swimmingly

Never let it be said that Deadline does not hold the powerful to account, a commitment that extends to the nation’s top lawman.

This time last year, we reported Mark Dreyfus MP — then in Opposition — had clocked a modest 36 minute, 34 second time for the Club 2 Club swim off Aspendale.

Mr Dreyfus’ concerned representatives later got in touch with some dubious excuse about his completion of the 1.8km open water race.

The reason, they said, was that he’d barely got any sleep because of an all-night parliamentary sitting before he hit the Bay.

After investigating times for this year’s event, held last weekend, it appears Mr Dreyfus may not have slept for months since getting into government and being appointed Attorney-General.

He posted a time of 44 minutes and 34 seconds to come in 255th of 281 competitors.

Before his people approach us again with more excuses, it should be noted conditions were pristine for the big event.

In fairness, the AG is 66 and was still rolling the arms over when most of his pampered parliamentary colleagues would have been dragged into a rescue rubber ducky.