By Kishor Napier-Raman and Noel Towell
It’s usually media outlets that find themselves at odds with in-demand defamation barrister Sue Chrysanthou, SC.
But this time, the silk is in trouble with her own peers, after the NSW Bar Council resolved to give her a formal reprimand for unsatisfactory professional conduct.
In Chrysanthou’s case, the reprimand stems from her decision to act for former attorney-general Christian Porter in his aborted defamation suit against the ABC over historical sexual assault allegations, which he denies.
Adelaide Writers’ Week director Jo Dyer, a friend of the deceased woman who accused Porter of rape while they were teenagers and a potential witness in the case, sought a court order restraining Chrysanthou from acting for him on the basis that the silk had already advised her.
Federal Court justice Tom Thawley restrained Chrysanthou from acting for Porter, a decision upheld on appeal last year well after the original defamation case was dropped, leaving the former minister on the hook for legal bills in the hundreds of thousands.
Dyer separately made a complaint against Chrysanthou’s acting for Porter to the Bar Council through her lawyer Michael Bradley, with the body resolving to reprimand Chrysanthou at a meeting in June.
Detailed reasons for the decision have been made available only to the parties, which seems inconsistent with the whole open justice schtick lawyers are always on about.
It’s not the first time in recent history that Chrysanthou and Bradley have been on opposing sides. The silk was Lachlan Murdoch’s barrister during the News Corp co-chair’s dropped lawsuit against Crikey, with Bradley leading the media outlet’s legal team.
The bar council declined to comment, and Chrysanthou didn’t return CBD’s calls on Wednesday, so we’re not sure whether she intends to appeal to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal. But we doubt the reprimand will do much to dent her reputation as the first port of call for billionaires with bruised egos.
Such reprimands are little more than a delicate slap on the wrist. Just ask Rob Newlinds, SC who in 2018 received a reprimand for his conduct while acting a little too robustly for jailed powerbroker Eddie Obeid, but has since put all that behind him and recently landed a spot on the District Court bench.
TUDGEING OFF
With the royal commission report into the robo-debt disaster due on Friday we’re now happy to report that Alan Tudge, the Liberal minister most closely associated with the scheme – rightly or wrongly – is moving on with his life after politics.
After quitting politics, Tudge kept a low profile during the byelection for his once-safe seat of Aston in Melbourne, dramatically snatched by Labor’s Mary Doyle.
Now, Tudge is rekindling his pre-parliament career as a consultant – he worked at Boston Consulting Group for seven years before politics – offering advice on education and migration, two of the portfolios he held when he wasn’t fronting human services as the worst excess of the ill-fated payment recovery scheme became public.
We gave Tudge a shout on Wednesday, but he was not keen to chat about the new gig.
“No interest speaking to you,” the former minister messaged CBD. “I don’t want my clients named or harassed.”
Must have been something we said.
LYLE ON
Look out penguins, Lyle Shelton is making a comeback.
The face of the No campaign against same-sex marriage, who most recently made headlines after accusing Sea Life aquarium of creating fake gay penguins to indoctrinate children, is still searching for a political future, and just filed an application with the NSW Electoral Commission to register Family First as a party.
The former Australian Christian Lobby boss ran as an independent for the upper house at the most recent state election because Family First couldn’t be registered in time. Shelton joined the resurrected far-right political outfit as national director last year, and told CBD the party hoped to be ready to appear on the ballot box for next year’s local government elections as part of its rebuild.
And in an increasingly godless Australia, that rebuild seems to involve ginning up more outrage about trans people.
“We want to put the values of family, freedom, faith and life at the ballot paper,” Shelton said. “The major parties can’t define a woman, let alone a family.”
NOT CRICKET
As England enters its fourth day of sooking over Australia’s second Ashes Test victory, former military lawyer and candidate for Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party James Unkles found himself at war with Facebook.
The Mark Zuckerberg-owned platform threatened him with sanctions after he reacted to a post on the Alex Carey/Jonny Bairstow saga with the time-honoured Aussie-ism “Pommie bastards”.
OK, that sounds worse in Silicon Valley than in, say, Diamond Valley. These are sensitive times, we get it.
“It reflects Australian culture in the tradition of sporting rivalry against England, in all codes,” he told CBD.
A Facebook spokesperson told us Unkles’ sledge, which he voluntarily deleted rather than face restrictions, probably fell foul of the AI algorithm policing Facebook content these days, which can struggle to pick up some nuances in a spirited sporting discussion.
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