By Kishor Napier-Raman and Stephen Brook
Disgraced former High Court judge Dyson Heydon is disgraced no more, at least as far as some senior members of the judiciary are concerned.
Nearly five years ago, this masthead revealed Heydon had been found by an independent High Court inquiry to have sexually harassed six female associates.
An inquiry found Dyson Heydon had sexually harassed High Court associates.Credit: AAP
But after a period of relative exile, the former judge self-published a hefty textbook, Heydon on Contract: Particular Contracts earlier this year, and there’s nothing like a legal tome to seemingly provide a ticket to redemption.
The book has been popping up in barristers’ chambers and law firms around the country. As CBD reported earlier this year, it received a glowing foreword from Heydon’s High Court colleague Michael Kirby, while guests at a book launch included the Federal Court’s number one media darling Michael Lee, of Bruce Lehrmann defamation trial fame. More recently he has been busily savaging Qantas in its illegal outsourcing case.
And Heydon himself was recently invited to Friday after work drinks at the Federal Court, something which wouldn’t have gone down well a few years ago, when the legal profession was still pretending to take matters of sexual harassment seriously.
Now, the latest stop on Heydon’s rehabilitation tour is in Perth, where he will be a speaker at conservative legal pressure group The Samuel Griffith Society’s annual conference in August. It’ll be a chance to hobnob with other eminent figures, with current High Court judge Simon Steward and former Western Australian premier Richard Court also on the speakers’ list.
An email to members sent this week announcing Heydon’s appearance also contained a hefty plug for his book from the society’s president, Allan Myers, KC, a top barrister, philanthropist and former University of Melbourne chancellor.
“Those who wished to stifle Dyson’s work have failed. They have failed because he has written Particular Contracts. They have failed because you, all of you, and all of those whom you will influence, will purchase Particular Contracts,” he wrote.
“By purchasing the book you will acquire a work of great scholarship. You will support a heroic legal scholar. You will stand up for integrity in legal publishing in Australia.”
Who knew all Heydon needed to do was write a new textbook?
New job who dis?
The federal election was only on May 3, but one vanquished Liberal MP has already found a new job.
Or make that a new/old job.
Defeated Coalition MPs without an investment portfolio or private family company to fall back on face a tough job market, considering the strength of the Labor victory. Which boss wants to hire someone on the losing side of an electoral landslide, particularly when the Albanese era could stretch beyond the electoral horizon?
Taking matters into his own hands is Keith Wolahan, the Liberal Party bright young thing who lost the outer Melbourne seat of Menzies to Labor’s Gabriel Ng after one term.
Former Liberal MP Keith Wolahan has a new/old job.Credit: David Caird/News Corp/Pool
The 47-year-old Wolahan has applied and successfully been readmitted to the Victorian Bar’s roll of counsel, with the Irish-born former army commando taking up a position in Dever’s List, the grouping of 250-odd barristers that traces itself back to 1860, when Theophilos Druce began operating as the barristers’ clerk.
Wolahan fronted the ABC’s Insiders on the morning after the massive defeat, keeping a commitment even though he looked like losing his own seat, using the appearance to gently remind his withered husk of a party that most Australians live in the cities.
“The law has always been my profession,” Wolahan said. “I return to it now with experience from parliament and an open mind about what lies ahead.”
He is happy gigging on commercial and public law matters.
Troika turf war
A bruising election defeat reopening old wounds. Bitter recrimination. Months of factional bloodletting on the horizon. Nothing has changed for the NSW Liberals in the last three years.
This time, however, the division remains under federal control since last year’s disastrous failure to nominate for council elections, with the state executive replaced by a troika of party veterans – Richard Alston, Alan Stockdale and Peta Seaton (the only non-Victorian, and the only one not in their 80s).
We’re not sure who thought that putting a couple of superannuated Victorians in charge of the NSW Liberals would produce anything good, and in the aftermath of this month’s election drubbing, Moderates, most vocally Upper House MP Chris Rath, have called on the committee to “go back to Melbourne”.
But with the committee’s tenure set to expire on June 30, elements of the hard right, still smarting after their boy Angus Taylor lost the Liberal leadership contest to Sussan Ley, are pushing for it to be extended.
This week, Edwin Nelson from the conservative Artarmon Branch (last spotted wearing a MAGA hat last November), was busy on various Liberal WhatsApp groups urging party members to write to Stockdale and request the administration continue until a new constitution is ready.
“We need as many people as possible to help … This is crunch time,” Nelson wrote, displaying all the self awareness of that Japanese World War II solider still fighting World War II on the Pacific island of Lubang in 1974.
As the rest of the world knows, the good ship Liberal sailed (or rather sank) back on May 3.
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