What is the ACT government afraid of in the Sofronoff case?

Walter Sofronoff KC, inset, and Shane Drumgold.

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What message does the ACT government want to send to the people of Australia? That the administration of justice is not taken seriously by the elected representatives in that jurisdiction? It sure sounds that way after the ACT government’s intervention in a Federal Court case on Tuesday.

Walter Sofronoff KC has brought an action in the Federal Court claiming the report by the ACT Integrity Commission, finding him guilty of “corrupt conduct”, is affected by jurisdictional error.

That finding by the ACT Integrity Commission is the gravest of allegations. It deserves the utmost scrutiny.

The ACT government says forget that, Sofronoff can’t challenge the report because it’s protected by parliamentary privilege.

In other words, a bunch of politicians are telling a citizen facing serious findings of corrupt conduct by a quasi-judicial body that those findings can’t be challenged in a real court of law. End of story.

Only in the ACT.

From the very start of this salacious and long-running saga, one single principle has been under examination by this newspaper: How is the administration of justice faring? How did the proper administration of justice fare when a young woman went to the national media before finalising her allegation of rape with ACT police? How did the proper administration of justice fare when the prime minister of the day rose in parliament to apologise to Brittany Higgins – just months before an ACT jury was asked to determine the fate of Bruce Lehrmann, the man facing jail for alleged rape? How did the conduct of then ACT DPP Shane Drumgold affect the proper administration of justice?

This most precious, yet delicate thread – the proper administration of justice – distinguishes a criminal justice system from a roaming, baying mob. And now it’s under another cloud.

Remember that Drumgold challenged Sofronoff’s final report into his conduct as ACT director of public prosecutions in the ACT Supreme Court.

Yet the ACT government is saying Sofronoff cannot challenge in a court of law the ACT Integrity Commission’s final report about Sofronoff.

The ACT government argued on Tuesday that Sofronoff should have commenced an action for judicial review or some such other legal remedy when he was notified of proposed adverse findings.

Barrister Alison Hammond, acting for ACT Speaker Mark Parton, who is representing the ACT government, said the legislation establishing the ACT Integrity Commission reveals a “close functional connection between a report prepared by the commission … and the work of the Legislative Assembly”.

A close functional connection? What about the proper administration of justice?

What does this intervention of the ACT government, trying to stop dead Sofronoff’s legal action, say about the ACT government’s confidence in the Integrity Commission’s report? That it would prefer that a judge of the Federal Court, governed by the vast array of legal rules, and following the law, does not review the serious matter of whether a quasi-judicial body acted legally when it made findings that an esteemed jurist was guilty of corrupt conduct?

Many people regarded the ACT Integrity Commission reviewing Sofronoff’s report into Drumgold as akin to the ACT marking its own homework. The full story of how that report came to be written by the ACT Integrity Commission will be told – by me. One day. Why would the ACT government not want to know how well its quasi-judicial integrity commission is working? Why would the ACT government not want to give its citizens the assurance of knowing that commission is doing a fine job – by putting it to the test of being overseen by a real court? What is it afraid of?

The ACT government has intervened in this case as an amicus. The full phrase is amicus curiae, Latin for “friend of the court”.

This intervention suggests that the ACT government is no friend of justice.