Freedom

A month in Darwin's Berrimah jail, from March 12 to April 8, sheeted home several undemocratic truths to former print journalist ROB INDER-SMITH.

The sight of the exit gate to freedom came as my head was giddy with mixed emotions.

The triumph of a plan unhatched and about to be fulfilled swirled with the rage just conjured up by Officer Move Out!, who could not let me pass through "Checkpoint Charlie" without one final act of bastardry.

Here I was, a 28-day political prisoner, about to turn my back on his workstation, Berrimah Correctional Centre, and he had just confiscated more of my papers.

"I'm keeping these," he said, as he clutched a fist-full of documents I immediately recognised. Included were shopping and to-do lists, for this very day, plus letters already processed and vetted by Officer Ten Gallon, the prison censor. They'd accompanied me safely from the "mainstream" M-Block to my one-man B-block bunker, aka solitary, where I spent my second
fortnight, so why was Move Out! taking them from me now?

We both knew that this final confiscation was unjustifiable and I was livid.

At the same time, I was almost jubilant with relief at seeing that what was not in his grubby outstretched hand, were my unravelled shorthand notes the ones I was attempting to smuggle out and which seemed at this late stage, just seconds after my sixth and final strip-search in the penultimate mantrap, to be as yet undiscovered and on their way with me out the gate.

Move Out! and his band of uniformed rubber glove-wearing screws aka prison officers, but something entirely different in prisoner parlance were demonstrating that even as a prisoner is all but free once more, it is they who are ultimately unaccountable.

"You can't do this!" I said, outraged with indignation, yet thankful my booty seemed to have slipped through under their noses, and just to be sure, I dug into the plastic bag just handed back to me.

My relief instantly became joy the object containing my precious notes was safe and sound.

Then, with one last, albeit not entirely full-blooded protestation, "that's my intellectual property", Berrimah's henchmen frogmarched me to my freedom.

Getting the notes out had been a case of second-time lucky. Soon after my arrival, while still in an M-Block dormitory cell, I had tried to smuggle out letters and news stories with a prisoner due for release in a few days,who happened to be a neighbour of a mate, Stuart Highway, one of Australia's best-known political and human rights activists.

Also included in the soon-to-be-deemed contraband, was a letter from Annum, an Indonesian fisherman, who saw our "arrangement" as a last resort.

Over the previous 12 months, he had written at least three times to Highway, with all his letters returned by screws who told him, "You cannot write to this person because he is a political activist and trouble-maker."

As well, he was told he was not allowed to telephone Stuart, so when he got wind of the arrangement, he leapt at the idea.

But as often happens, the plan came awry. Screws frisked Parny the way they did me and our letters sealed in envelopes addressed to the Ombudsman, which should have rendered them untouchable were opened and never made it outside the prison walls.

As punishment for our audacity, Annum and I ended up behind those in "Sepcon" separate confinement.

Perhaps the most ominous "parting shot" was delivered by the screw escorting me out the gate.

"You activists get what you deserve," he said.

Coming from a man I never even knew, the words left me dumbstruck.And I realise that they were not just meant for me.

♂ The author was convicted of “Intentionally disrupting the (NT) Legislative Assembly while it (was) in session, in February 2002”.

Clare’s epic shame job about to peter out

I’m still free and my embarrassment would know no bounds, except for the fact that it should be theirs that led long ago to the plug being pulled on the travesty that is my own saga.

The words “state” and “embarrassment” seldom go together, this we know. Modern terms of reference that conveniently constrain the state and its alter ego, “robust democracy”, do not allow for the triflings of compassion, wisdom or notions of a better society, so why do I think that the Northern Territory Government’s five-year pursuit of a group of human rights activists through the courts and into gaol has taken it armpit-deep through the swamps of embarrassment? Why should Clare Martin et al feel such a pointless emotion just because their apparently collective reaction to our five-minute disruption of their precious parliamentary procedure was at first based on a popular misconception and then, after a few weeks’ doubtlessly serious consideration, on one straight from the John Laws and Andrew Bolt book of do-the-crime, serve-the-time? The only reason a criminal charge was ever laid against us – and this I admit is supposition - was because of the subject matter. Numbers might have had something do with it. But even so, parliaments everywhere - robust democracies at work from here to Timbuktu – have been disrupted before by individuals and lobby groups so why have they never been charged with “intentionally disrupting the Legislative Assembly while it was in session”, for which, in the NT, there is a maximum three-year gaol term? The Network Against Prohibition seems to have proved the exception to the general rule of who cares (if and when parliament is disrupted)? Might the dubious precedent have had something to do with the fact that my friends and I were protesting (about) drugs, and specifically, protesting for drug law-reform? With judgment day past and gone, the ultimate sanction now awaits – incarceration for trying to prevent the commission of a wrongful act, it being the passage of the US-drafted and widely discredited “drug house” legislation. Was the charge that was a) clearly political and b) prompted by a spectacularly effective, albeit restrained, walk-in, the result of the immediate and undeniably pathetic assumption that the “parliament invaders” as the Speaker termed them, and as they became in next day’s banner headlines, were unemployed wastrels who wanted to see drugs legalised to further their own drug-peddling agendas?

This is the only conclusion that can be drawn following the passive (at least on our part) events of May 14, 2002 – the ones that apparently caused such shock and horror to the members, even though at least one in Opposition wears a broad grin on the parliamentary video of the incident. Perhaps the charge was prompted by embarrassment after all – embarrassment at the dishevelled abandonment of dignity displayed by the elected representatives, who disgraced themselves with their own lack of control. What they will never admit to, is seeing certain things - one being what was nothing more than a verbal altercation between the youngest member of the group, Aaron Stallard-Bryce, and Marion Scrymgour. The Member for Arafura was to perjure herself in court by declaring that he had assaulted her during that argument. Aaron was charged, found guilty and convicted.

Members would have seen – but again, never in a million years would they ever admit to seeing - Ema Birkeland-Corro grabbed from behind around her breasts by the parliamentary clerk Ian “Lumpy” McNeil, who suddenly changed hats for the day and decided to become a roughneck bouncer, frog-marching her toward the exit door, before letting her go and standing by and watching as she was assaulted again, this time by one of the security guards, who threw her around as he would a rag doll. All this after she had been kicked by then detective Bert Hofa, who happened to be in the chamber on other business. At least three times Ema came to helpless grief as men acted like thugs and targeted her because as a woman, she was obviously the weakest and most defenceless protester. Like Aaron, Ema was charged with assault. She was convicted of jumping from the Speakers table on to the back of another security guard, Aaron Wigmore, who swore under oath that she had injured him in the process.

None of these assaults is on camera. The sexual assault sure is. In any other circumstances, it would be, to say the very least, regarded as highly embarrassing and incriminating of the perpetrator. Strangely, Ema’s complaint was never followed up by police when she reported it. Yet it is these actions, not the walk-in, that remain breathtaking examples of supposedly responsible and cool-heads losing control. Did Lumpy lose his? Only Stui and he know if he really did say quietly in Stui’s ear, “get out of here cunt”. I know whose word I took.

That the “invasion” was later thrown into the arena of the NT police, proves that Clare and her bovver boys – then Attorney-General Peter Toyne and deputy Syd Stirling - meant that they were going to be seen to be tough on drugs. “Zero tolerance zero sense” might be what leftie criminologists say, but in the NT, zero tolerance rules is the official and well publicised line. They were going to show the disrespectful reprobates that their approach to crime was, if not responsible, certainly effective in dealing with the likes of us. The ensuing and indefensible transference of the case from the political arena into the hands of the NT police meant that just one more moral imperative – political and social debate about a subject of vital importance to society – went conveniently down the shooter.

As it disappeared into the tropical ether, Ms Martin was able to blithely turn the blowtorch of criminal sanction on to the nine placard-wielding pinkos who, led by NAP originator Gary Meyerhoff and Ema, strolled into the hallowed parliamentary chamber.

Clare was not acutely embarrassed by any of this. Before anybody or any group can feel such a thing, they must be seen and exposed red-faced in a spotlight, and her government has seldom been subjected to a spotlight, certainly not the one of media scrutiny. Not really. Toohey, in The Bulletin, has kneecapped her two times that I know of. But the almost total absence of a credible, hard-questioning media has been a handy accomplice for recent Territory governments – robust democracies – like Ms Martin’s, which has been allowed to bleat and act with impunity on anything it wants, from redirection of a river for the benefit of mining, to the degradation and squalor in Aboriginal communities brought about by decades of racist government policy.

So unaccustomed to being nailed is the NT’s chief Minister, she didn’t even blush when I elicited an apology from her in the witness box during the initial magistrates court hearing when yet another video replay proved that she, like all the others, had exaggerated when saying we all ran and-or were running (through the chamber). Red faces are left for exposure on six o’clock television and “drug-user” is one of their primetime pigeon-holes. Even though few actually change colour, at least not from embarrassment at being sprung on national television for their recreational activities, their fuck-you attitudes generally make for good camera fodder because they enhance the audience’s hunger to hate, despise and scapegoat, and has the double advantage of boosting TV ratings.

Absence of exposure and lack of debate helps Clare and Co. avoid public scrutiny, too, so she can also remain acutely unembarrassed by the cost of the trial to the public purse. Each of the nine or so pollies we successfully summonsed were in the box for up to two and three hours, some for half a day. What would their presence have cost? Actually, they did do something – they gave us, the self-represented, the great satisfaction of seeing and hearing how otherwise once principled people change their spots when they acquire a bit of power. One, I’ve got to admit, did turn red. Poor Syd. Under cross-examination by the drug-pushers, he didn’t know where to look. It soon became apparent that up at the ceiling was his direction of choice.

No embarrassment was felt by the magistrate, or the prosecuting lawyers, or successive Supreme Court judges who read the transcripts – or at least should have read them – at the witness protection racket that had been conducted just across the way in the maggots court. Without question, that 20-day trial was unfair and a new low for the justice process. To use the usual metaphor, justice was bashed and left battered and bleeding in the gutter.

Yet nobody has flinched - none of the lawyers, none of the sheriffs, none of the bailiffs, none of the court staff and certainly none of the bewigged appeal judges, has given a damn about the criminality of the way the case was handled, and what transpired in it. I for one am curious to know what exactly the only other person apart from the Napatistas who would have read the original transcripts in their entirety, Peter John Thomas, thinks. He as well as us, would know what the magistrate did – or would he? Perhaps he didn’t re-read and cross-reference, which in lieu of having a superhuman memory, was the only way of recognising the cronyism. I will forever wonder what PJT, the unrelenting jackhammer of a cross-examiner, thought about Magistrate Dick “Zealous” Wallace’s conduct. It was obvious Wallace SM covered for all the witnesses – bullshit artists and wafflers everywhere would say he did a great job. But what did PJT think? Did he understand anything the politicians said, or any of the supposed evidence they gave? Mr Wallace certainly did, or at least he pretended to. He was the one, the only one, who seemed to have a handle on what was being said in his courtroom throughout the farce. And it was farcical not just because of frequent clumsiness by the defendants, or because they didn’t swoop when they should have. It was farcical in terms of a trial being seen to be fair. I never recognised what Wallace was doing because like most of my co-defendants, there were long periods when I was too jaded to care what was being said. Toward the end and fearing the worst, minds turned a little gloomy.

It had to be Wallace pretending. Transcripts show that much of the evidence was claptrap - circuitous gammon in Pythonesque prose. Some of my questions were stupid and irrelevant. But witness outpourings were Orwellian duckspeak. A typical example is this exchange on March 7, 2003, between me and the Member for Port Darwin, Sue Carter:

RIS: Okay, but you said that person was jumping, you specifically used - - -?

SC: They were light in step.

RIS: Light in step?

SC: Mmm

RIS: So that’s not a jump, is it a jump or is it not?

SC: Perhaps not a strict definition of jump, but they appeared to me - and we are going back many months in recollection, but as opposed to stomping around on the table they were light in step.

RIS: Light in step. Well, there’s a big difference you understand between jumping and being light in step. So were they jumping or were they not - we’ve used the term jump?

SC: All right, well, I’ll withdraw the word jump and rephrase it as being light in step.

Wallace tolerated this. But whenever we tried getting to the heart of a matter – like asking the Attorney-General the direct question, who drew up the drug house legislation? – he cut us off, deftly changed the subject and generally sabotaged cross-examination. He tailored his interruptions depending on who was in the witness box and who was doing the cross-examination. Generally they followed a pattern with “just not an issue”, “I am just not interested”, “I have no interest at all”, and “who cares?”, his way of telling us that our questions were irrelevant to his court. Cavalier dismissals, arbitrary over-rulings, and veiled and not-so-veiled threats to defendants were obviously the gentleman’s agreement silently struck with the witnesses. How to respond to such stonewalling? You can only force the issue so much, which we did repeatedly. Then, not being able to recall exactly who said what, we were often forced to end our gambits with, “I’ll move on”, or “I withdraw the question”.

The death’s head of testimony came three days earlier, on March 4. It centred around duckspeak by Toyne who as it panned out, was the organ grinder; Syd Stirling, the monkey, even though he fluffed the script on one occasion, saying that the person who drew up the drug house laws, was “the Attorney-General”. This contradicted the man himself who, in answer to a direct question from Gaz, had said: “I don’t actually write legislation.”

Right.

Later, Wallace confirms this by saying: “No, he says he didn’t write (the drug house legislation)”.

He then adds, “Parliamentary council/counsel (does) . . . that’s the evidence.”

However, later in the day, with me questioning former police minister Stirling, Wallace announces: “On the contrary, the Attorney-General said it was his bit of legislation”.

He repeats the bombshell to me: “No no, he said it was his piece of legislation that was actually written by . . . parliamentary counsel that he put it through.”

Two days later, Wallace was still certain Toyne had drawn up the drug house laws, telling me, “it’s his Act”. Just in case I hadn’t got it, he added with only the slightest acerbity: “What more do you want from there?”

Unfortunately for us, it wasn’t until much later – long after our first Supreme Court appeal had failed – that we realised how Wallace had worked us over and how well he had done it.

Was he biased? Do ducks quack? This is what he said on May 19 while I was questioning the Chief Minister, a former ABC journalist:

HIS WORSHIP: Mr Inder-Smith, it’s a well known fact, I don’t know if it’s true but it’s a well known fact it’s reported in newspapers and in government reports that hydroponically grown marihuana is - I don’t know, the figures quoted are wild, but there - everybody says it’s greatly more powerful today than it was a generation ago. As I say, I don’t know that it’s true, but Ms Martin has access to the same material that you and I do read on that, whether we believe it or not is another question.

This was what I wrote for our Full Bench Appeal:

That must take the golden roscoe for the most absurd stream of consciousness to have emanated from any one set of human vocal chords during the entire three-week hearing. It is stellar in its banality. If there were a hall of fame for imbecilic utterances, that 90-word masterpiece would be welcomed with a red-carpet and canon fire. It is as disturbing in magnitude as it is jaw-droppingly ignorant and head-rattlingly convoluted. If the criminological tenet “language structures thought”, were at play during the emission of that flatulence, Mr Wallace’s tongue and cerebral cortex must have shared more than just a spliff of Clare Martin’s dreaded hydro, they must have dropped a tab of new-age LSD. If there had been a bullshit meter in the corner of his courtroom, it would have started smoking, then melted into a fused heap on the carpet. The really worrying thing is that it came not from the morons posing as witnesses, but from the man who was weighing up the evidence, with the view to sit in judgment and later pronounce sentence on the accused.

For asininity it beat anything from Elferink, Carter, Kiely, Toyne, Stirling, Aagard, Burke or Henderson as the biggest load of pretentious, ill-informed, vacuous bilge to spew forth from ANYBODY let alone a Darwin magistrate.

Whatever that tripe was, it manifested in his consistent ability to decipher the indecipherable and comprehend the incomprehensible. It’s all there in the 2000 pages of transcript, which ironically, we were able to acquire and post on the web free.

That’s democracy for you.

If PJT noticed anything untoward, he probably wouldn’t admit it. He’s part of the state, he and his beard don’t do red face. And besides, he and Dick are mates - that came out in court before the trial even began, and was the basis for our repeated requests for him to stand himself down. But in private, I wonder if PJT flinched at the lie his mate told for the Attorney-General. When it came, which was during his summing up, I don’t think any of us spotted it. Even if we had done so, we would have been powerless to challenge it, anyway. The lie came two days after Wallace’s champagne moment of oratory. This is it:

“The evidence consistently was that (the drug house legislation) was the Department of Justice, Attorney-General’s bill, not a police bill.”

Following is another extract from the appeal Stui, Gaz and I took to the Full Bench:

How dare he lie like that. That was the second shocker he told on the subject. How can he get away with that? Consistent?! That is an outrageous statement. The chance of it being a police bill wasn’t even RAISED in evidence, so why should he mention the police? And wasn’t it interesting how ownership was now with the Department of Justice as well as the Attorney-General? That in itself is ridiculous, an ambiguous and inconclusive furphy. One is a department, the other an individual. Which is it Mr Wallace?

Amid all the disgusting mayhem one common denominator stands out like the proverbials and that is me – Rob Inder-Smith. That’s because Wallace didn’t like me. He hated me from the first time I asked, nay demanded, that he stand himself down from hearing the trial. It was a request I made several times. He couldn’t contain his festering antipathy for me, which exploded at several points during the trial. And that’s the result – lies and fabrication and smug assertions that HE had a handle on the testimony. Each time I tried to get a name from Toyne, Stirling and-or Burke, Wallace haughtily put me in my place as he “clarified” what had clearly become the unclarifiable. He was spiteful and vindictive, and many of his remarks to me were uncalled for. His silent rage brought him undone more than once, the Scrymgour and Elferink questions being two disgraceful cases in point.

The pathetic charade demonstrates the whole incestuous nature of the trial. Wallace’s manipulations seemed innocuous at the time. Indeed, they were so innocuous that they never rang alarm bells with the Justice Angel. I doubt that Your Honours have had your alarm bells set off by them. Yet they came from the man who was to sum me up as “unwilling to be explicit in . . . answers, professing failure of recall (and) deliberately misunderstanding the drift of questions” (May 22, p.39).

Certainly it was me – us the defendants – and not the witnesses who were on trial. But Mr Wallace’s failure to mention THEIR evasiveness speaks volumes. Once again, one could speculate that this failure was deliberate.

Mr Wallace covered himself, in that he was SEEN to be conducting a fair and open trial. He gave us our head – me included - in what was often clumsy cross-examination and irrelevant questioning. But what he gave on one hand, he took away with the other by constantly overriding and generally subduing otherwise determined attempts to get to the truth of relevant matters. In the bitter end, it all came down to the mysterious committee – the same one I was referring to all along.

The whole insidious display dragged the case to hitherto un-plumbed depths, reeking of back-scratching, bastardry, cowardice and duplicity as it went.

What was that about separation of powers?

Financial costs of the whole catastrophe can only be guessed at by those in the know. Five-years’ courtroom procedure, paper work and backroom preparation wouldn’t be peanuts. What do court orderlies, the equivalent of ball boys and ball girls, get a week? The NT Government’s Crown Prosecutor, Greg McDonald, made intermittent appearances - what does he cost per hour?

More than 12 months after Wallace’s unsurprising finding of guilty as charged, the hearing moved up to the Court of Appeal before a Supreme Court Judge (Angel J), with a new pair of more senior prosecutors and more senior black-jacket ball boys and ball girls. Still guilty, Angel J declared, and gaol terms remained unchanged. Higher up again to the Full Bench (Thomas J, Martin CJ, Riley J) went the co-appellants, who were down to five and still free on bail. We struck out again: still guilty, still going to gaol. The three wise agents of the state went to script, unashamedly, and oh so gravely. Repeated attempts beginning early last year to reach the High Court of Australia involved many hours’ work by the Registrar Ruth Cheetham, who ultimately ruled that the application filed by appellants Highway and Inder-Smith was again unsuccessful. The last roll of the dice was the appeal against sentence, which was where NT Legal Aid lawyers were engaged. That final step, handing our case over to Legal Aid to appeal the sentence, was exactly how Gary intended it would be, at least for him Stui and me – events had followed the Gaz Plan to the letter.

Back in the Court of Appeal (Southwood J) the co-appellants, down to four following Gaza’s death last October, watched and waited as another Supreme Court trial caravan lumbered from the blocks. Like the lower-court hearings, that, too, dragged on. But this time, successive adjournments – a re-sentencing procedure that went for another month – made it seem as if even the state at last, was finally beginning to feel a bit giddy, just a bit weary from it all. Stui said to me, “they don’t want to put us in gaol”, and he was probably right. But a judge’s gotta do what a judge’s gotta do. This, even though the whole fiasco could have been aborted at any stage, simply by dropping what was clearly a trumped-up charge to begin with.

When the appeal was upheld and Wallace’s sentence finally set aside, it was on one hand a huge victory for NAP. Two appellants – Highway and Corro – had their five-month gaol terms fully suspended. Me and Ishmael Lambe, however, must serve a month together – me, because I was free on bail at the time of the offence; Ishmael, because the judge properly recognised him for what he is, even declaring in his judgment that he had to be incarcerated.

I therefore am on the threshold of becoming a political prisoner. But as Gary used to point out, because most laws are gammon, most people behind bars are political prisoners, so I’ll be no Robinson Crusoe. My sentence – reduced by three days because of my wrongful imprisonment - will cost the tax-payer how much? When I eventually get out in mid-April, what will this whole roller-coaster ride have cost? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? And Clare’s red face? The agents’ red faces? They remain at large, as they have done since European colonisation. Do they know no shame? You bet. Do they feel guilt? Give myself an uppercut at the absurdity of the question.

I didn’t have a life to catch and was very tempted to appeal my re-sentencing on the grounds that I’ve already suffered enough, what with five years’ stress, harassment and inability to find long-term work. Almost as bad are the conditions Southwood J imposed on us, and these are/were worth appealing alone. Stui and I are not to associate for 12 months and both of us are banned from parliament for two years. That, one might think, would not faze me. But the State Reference Library happens to be part of the Parliamentary building and I’m fond of its facilities, especially its excellent newspaper microfilms. So, once I’m back out, I’ll have to go back to court to try to sort that mess out. I believe such conditions are egregious and unjustifiable because they are useless to lowering and-or deterring crime.

Yet they are common. Learned judges everywhere, apparently, impose them to sever “criminal ties”. Outside court, Ian “Rocker” Read and Glenn Holden, our re-sentencing lawyers, said they disagreed with them but hey, that’s the story Rory. Tough luck Stui and Rob.

“Have you thought about a sea change?” Rocker asked me, still in his cloak.

Stui’s and mine are one thing. But what Chief Justice Brian Martin ordered another activist-friend and parliament invader, Scott White, to do while sentencing him last year, was off the graph. Scott lives in Tasmania, his parents are long-term Darwinites. Scott was told not to come to Darwin, lest the suspended 10-week sentence he had just been handed be activated as a prison term. The unasked question of what if Scott wanted to visit his parents?, did not even register on the embarrassment meter.

Crime and punishment, embarrassment and shame. Which formula applies here? One of the longest-running, most expensive trials in NT history is about to peter out and end not with a bang but a whimper, and if it weren’t for the immutable chronicle of the internet, would have gone entirely unnoticed by the outside world. Not one Australian newspaper deemed the case newsworthy enough to investigate or even monitor, and the only paper that paid it anything more than lip service was the Grimsby Telegraph, in England. To its great credit, and in classic tribute to good old-fashioned local-boy-makes-headlines news sense, the “local rag” published several stories over the years because it featured Gary, the former Grimsby boy who still has relatives there. They even did a tribute on him when he died, aged 31, from AIDS.

Despite appearances, I am not bitter. Nor is my anger terminal.

Has it all been worth it, we might ask. Before I try to answer that, I must advise caution and pre-empt anybody who wasn’t there by suggesting they defer to history and let that be our judge. I am on record as saying I have no regrets and of course it was easy to say that before the spectre of gaol reared up as it has done now, well down the track. In one way, I still am unrepentant, no question. But as Stui told the ABC as he was walking, he probably wouldn’t repeat the stunt knowing what we know now, and I guess the same applies to me.

I know one thing: being locked up for walking into a big room and climbing on to a table is not and will never be anything to boast about among hardened cons. And doing a paltry three weeks four days – now that will be the embarrassment.

One day in the future I’ll undoubtedly see the past five years in a different hue. Hindsight puts things into a new perspective, yeah? Right now, I have no regrets about what I did, and indeed, remain proud of what I did. I am proud of everybody else who went in with us and I am most of all proud of Gary Meyerhoff and will be forever grateful to him for what he did for me. He opened my eyes to a new reality, a shocking and merciless reality that’s called the war on drugs. It is prosecuted by violence of a different nature to that in Iraq – courtroom violence, which is manifest in inhuman and unjustifiable jail sentences handed down by barbarians called magistrates and judges. If society knew the horrifying cost of this war – financially, spiritually and morally – people would immediately call for the release of all non-violent drug offenders. Then they would rage against those who have hoodwinked them so long: the media, the politicians, the judges, the maggots, the cops – the state. The mainstream media is probably the most culpable. It is “journalists” – my former breed – who have perpetrated this ignorance by leaving the issue of illicit drugs unexplored, and not pressing editors to report on the legions and legions of victims all around the world. Instead, they have focused on the minority, the problem drug-users, demonising and damning them to the roar of public approval. The Jews crow whenever the word holocaust is mentioned. Well when Bush snr and Regan ratcheted up the war on drugs, and the “civilised” world followed suite, nobody listened to voices of reason that predicted this holocaust, of which Schapelle Corby and the Bali Nine are victims, and for which Indonesia is simply doing its bit by hanging traffickers. Ignoramuses who swallow everything they read and see, the huntin’ and fishin’ rednecks, would say, “well gaol is at least better for them than being shot dead and having their bodies dumped on the side of the road”. That’s what the state does in Thailand, all in the name of the war on drugs. Closer to home, my co-crusader Stuart Highway has written at length about Margot Laughton, a grandmother and victim of the stolen generation. If ever a disgusting shame job of police entrapment, law enforcement and judicial procedure played out in Darwin, her case is it.

If Mr and Mrs Public knew about her and the Vicki Rosepilers of the world, they would do more than just walk into parliament and climb on a table - they would demand an immediate end to drug prohibition and call for the dismissal and summary execution of they who wage this relentless campaign with their hysteria, lies and misinformation.

Confucius said that at the end of every long journey a traveller finds only himself. This journey has been replete with mystery, and questions abound. Two of the more curious are:

● Why was one of our nine-party crew – a strapping young Aboriginal man – never charged, providential as this “oversight” was?

● Why did the cops not investigate the sexual assault of Ema?

ABC journalist Rebecca Morse told Ema she had seen detective Hofer kick her while she was on the floor. It remains speculation, therefore, as to why Ms Morse happened to be transferred interstate a few days after the incident.

Another question is, why did no lawyer want to touch Stui’s, Gaza’s and my initial attempt to get compensation for being wrongfully imprisoned for 46 hours on the night of November 1, 2004? The arrests were the result of a Supreme Court bungle, while we were still free on bail between appeals. In the ensuing weeks, at least two lawyers interviewed us in their offices, but both meetings ended with us being shown the door and told that they couldn’t help us. Our letters of demand for compensation to Peter Toyne resulted in him writing back telling us to wait for the case to take its course. It has now taken its course, and while my “compensation” is a slight reduction in my month’s gaol term, Stui remains in limbo. Will he be compensated for an act that is generally associated with the words Gestapo and which used to take place only in the formerly Eastern Bloc countries of the Cold War?

On Monday, March 12, my bail runs out and I shall invade the nearest cop shop to hand myself in. How ironic that this whole protracted nightmare began with a quiet walk and is about to finish with one.

For now, I’m philosophical. But see how I feel this in a few days’ time. That’s when memory and lots of time for hopefully quiet contemplation will be put to the test as I begin my vegetable-only diet and dry out in my four walls wash basin prison cell.

ROB INDER-SMITH

Darwin

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Bitter-sweet win for activists.

The Network Against Prohibition had a bitter-sweet victory in the Northern Territory Supreme Court yesterday, after its appeal against sentencing was upheld by Justice Southwood.

Two of the last four “parliament invaders” of May, 2002, Ema Birkeland-Corro and Stuart Highway, had their five-month jail terms reduced and fully suspended.

But the other two, Rob Inder-Smith and Ishmael Lambe, must serve a month.

While Highway and Corro walked free, the NAP regards conditions imposed upon them by Justice Southwood as harsh and unfair.

They are not allowed to associate with each other, or their co-appellants, for two years. In January, 2006, Chief Justice Brian Martin made a similar demand of another one of the nine people who walked into the NT Legislative Assembly, Scott White.

White’s sentence was also suspended.

The non-violent protest, staged by NAP to oppose the Martin Government’s widely discredited US-drafted “Drug House” laws, was described by then Speaker Lorraine Braham as an invasion.
Though not the first time the NT Parliament has been disrupted, it was the first time charges have been laid.

NAP says the case began as a political trial and degenerated into farce, when the NT Government pursued the activists through the higher courts as they represented themselves during successive appeals.

The result would have left NAP’s founder, Gary Meyerhoff, with mixed emotions. Meyerhoff, who passed away last October with an AIDS-related illness, was also gaoled for his role in the parliamentary walk-in, and maintained that the charge - intentionally disrupting the Legislative Assembly while it was in progress - was trumped-up and politically motivated.

He said it was laid because it embarrassed the Martin Labor Government.

Outside the court, Inder-Smith said he was relieved for Highway and Corro, but added that they should never have been charged.

“We were simply trying to prevent the commission of a wrongful act,” Inder-Smith, 47, said. Referring to an apology mooted by Justice Southwood last week, but rejected by he and Highway, Inder-Smith said it was the NT Government that should be apologising for “their stupid drug laws”.

The trial was a milestone in NT criminal justice history.

Soon after NAP’s formation in 2002, a series of well-publicised “actions” incurred the wrath of police, politicians and the judiciary, who responded by laying more than 120 criminal charges, most of which were either dismissed or unsuccessful. They included “failing to cease to loiter”, “bill pasting” and “criminal damage”.

Meyerhoff was subjected to threats of violence by the police, one of whom told him during a drug raid on somebody’s flat that he was lucky they didn’t give him a “flogging” every time they came across him.

About the same time, the Ombudsman issued a stinging report stating that the 27-year-old had been wrongfully arrested during his group’s first “smoke-in”, in Raintree Park, staged to publicise human rights and the Drug House laws.

At the tumultuous sixth smoke-in, in October, 2002, police disrupted a peaceful demonstration, making five arrests.

Highway served three months in Berrimah in 2005-06 for his alleged role in the affray.

White and Inder-Smith were harassed one night by a police van that tailed them during a 30-minute drive through the eastern suburbs that included a bizarre five-lap chase through the two Nightcliff round-abouts.

When both vehicles were parked, Inder-Smith approached the driver of the police van to ask why they were being pursued.

He says the driver wound up his window and drove off.

In November, 2004, while free on bail, he, Highway and Meyerhoff were arrested late at night and wrongfully gaoled for two days because of a Supreme Court clerical error.

The trio tried to seek compensation but then Attorney-General Peter Toyne refused, telling them to await the outcome of the trial.

Justice Southwood said he would take this into account when handing down his final re-sentencing of Mr Inder-Smith on Tuesday, February 27.

Legally, the case has been historic for several reasons.

Not only is it one of the longest-running in NT history, its political nature has grave significance for political and human rights activists.

Before the Magistrates Court began in October, 2002, the defendants pulled off a coup by successfully summonsing nine of the sitting members, including chief Minister Clare Martin, her deputy Syd Stirling and Mr Toyne, who were forced into the witness box to be cross-examined.

Their repeated claims that the protesters had “run” into and through the legislative chamber were contradicted by the Parliamentary video of the incident, prompting Ms Martin to apologise to NAP in court for exaggerating her evidence.

For Highway and Corro, yesterday was the end of a stressful five years that has seen them harassed by police and hauled through the courts for their human rights beliefs.

Inder-Smith said he was considering an appeal in the trial that has almost universally been ignored by the interstate media.

White feels sting of judicial contempt

Written by Rob Inder-Smith on January 10, 2006 but was not published until January 21. We apologise for the delay in getting this published - NAPNT Web Team

The Northern Territory’s Chief Justice Brian Martin has refused to accept an 11th-hour legal argument by the “sixth Parliament Invader”, Scott White.

As well, Justice Martin refused to explain his decision, dismissing Mr White’s submission in the NT Supreme Court earlier today as “having no substance”.

The submission consisted of two previously untendered documents and included comments made by Queensland Premier Peter Beattie that question the validity of the law under which Mr White was charged.

Mr Martin said: “(This document) has no validity whatsoever . . . it is without substance.”

Asked why by Mr White, Justice Martin said: “I don’t propose to give any further reasons . . . it is ruled invalid.”

Mr Martin’s blasé dismissal of Mr White’s new argument flies in the face of Premier Beattie’s comments, made in December, in which he questioned the validity of an identical law on the Queensland statutes – Sections 56 and 57 of the Criminal Code.

Like the NT’s Section 61, it carries a three-year jail term.

Mr Beattie described the law as “ambiguous”, saying it “should be amended” and that it was not applicable to political actions.

The equivalent NT law, Section 61, was used to charge Mr White and eight others following a dramatic protest in the NT Legislative Assembly in May, 2002, in which a total of 10 people walked into the NT parliament, disrupting it for five minutes.

Soon after, Mr White moved to Tasmania with his young family, and nine protestors were charged under S61, “intentionally disturbing the Legislative Assembly while it is in session”.

They were dealt with in protracted Magistrate’s Court hearings and various plea bargains, five - Michael Lambe, Robert Inder-Smith, Gary Meyerhoff, Stuart Highway and Ema Birkeland Corro – were handed partly suspended jail terms.

They are free on bail pending Full Bench appeals.

Mr White elected to have his case heard in the Supreme Court, and pleaded guilty when Justice Martin failed to acknowledge his submission.

Justice Martin’s actions typify the judicial contempt that has been the hallmark of the handling of the marathon case ever since it began in Darwin Magistrate’s Court in late 2002.

Mr White will re-appear before Justice Martin on Thursday morning where, because he has pleaded guilty, he is expected to be represented by an NT Legal Aid lawyer before being sentenced.

The protest, dubbed by the local press, the “Parliament invasion”, was organised by the controversial Darwin drug law-reform group, the Network Against Prohibition, which was protesting the Labor Party’s newly legislated and widely discredited “Drug house” legislation.

Conditions prove CJ Martin out of line

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the mutual flagellation society that masqueraded yesterday as a Northern Territory Supreme Court hearing, were the conditions that Chief Justice Brian Martin imposed upon the “fifth Parliament invader” Scott White.

After handing Scott a 10-week fully suspended prison sentence with a two-year good behaviour bond, Justice Martin then announced the three conditions associated with the bond.

The first was that Scott return to Tasmania “in a few days” (he was staying with his parents at their Stuart Park home). The second was that he not have anything “directly or indirectly” to do with any of the other eight convicted parliament invaders (some are his friends and three have served their sentences). The third was that Scott not participate in any Network Against Prohibition activities and “not get involved” (with them) for the next two years.

The second is the most outrageous. Justice Martin pointedly named every one of the nine people charged with walking into and disturbing the NT Legislative Assembly that terrifying day back in May, 2002.

The first three names were Luke Masters, Aaron Stallard-Bryce and Andrew Deacon. All three were in their late teens when charged with “intentionally disturbing the (LA) while it (was) in session”.

The trio have “served their time” as they say, mainly through community service. None is in involved any longer with NAP, which staged the protest to draw attention to the Martin Government’s absurd and widely discredited “Drug House” laws.

That Justice Martin should issue such a dictate speaks volumes of the judiciary’s view of the progressive human rights and political activist group.

If ever there were any doubt about it being the proscribed and certified enemy of the state, yesterday’s farce sheeted home the cold truth.

The state and its operatives – including the NT Legal Aid commission, which supposedly represented Scott – detest NAP.

Ironically, it took the Crown solicitor Gemma Beggs – who, while merely doing her job, made it clear at the outset she wanted Scott jailed – to cut through the hyperbole with a simple truism.

While explaining Scott’s role in the protest, she said NAP believed that “using illicit substances (was) a personal choice”.

In walking into parliament and waving a placard around for 60 seconds, she said, Scott was “protesting the government’s actions”.

The tenor of the hearing was what depressed most, given that it demonstrated how these things go, and how people’s fate hangs on a thread when they come before a judge.

Every day, the Justice Martins of the world slip easily in and out of messianic mode, forgetting they are human, donning the crown of thorns and adjusting their tones to suit their exalted messages.

It would be interesting to know how Scott would have been dealt with, had his parents not been present in the front row of his court room (there was no question he would have known who they were).

Only he knows if his words were tailored to suit their ears. But it was a co-incidence that in passing sentence, he used the word “family” several times, and how his actions – for which of course, he was “responsible” – had brought them stress.

He even went as far as saying: “You are now living with a woman who fathered your child.”

It was as if Justice Martin were trying to convince Mr and Mrs White that while dispensing the best of Westminster justice, he could be a compassionate god as well as a harsh one.

His summing up reeked of paternalism – it was like a ping-pong match between the forces of virtue and darkness.

“You are entitled to credit by mitigation,” he said referring to the “limited role” Scott played in the protest, and the four days spent behind bars in Tasmania and Darwin during his extradition back to the NT.

But somber was he when dismissing the claim by his lawyer, Ian Read, that he was contrite and no longer involved with NAP.

“I do not accept that,” he said sternly, in a concession to Beggs, who had reminded the court that Scott ran as a NAP candidate in the seat of Casuarina at last year’s NT election.

Ms Beggs also referred to the NAP website (www.napnt.org), which she said proved that Scott was still critical of the “justice system”.

Of Mr Read’s claim that his client was simply “misguided” in committing an “unfortunate” act, Justice Martin said: “I do not believe that.

“You were an adult who disrupted the proceedings of a democratically elected parliament.”

His best censorious voice was saved for the old hoary toad: “You have a right to protest lawfully . . . I emphasise lawfully.

“But you crossed the boundary of what is lawful and that is a serious offence.”

Then he flipped to the other side of the coin and returned to good Scott: “It must be said (that) you are a person who has a strong public conscience. You act upon your views to the detriment of your family.”

His tone was almost cheerful as he described the defendant’s new life of responsibility, family devotion and community-mindedness in Tasmania.

But back to bad Scott: “Had you voluntarily returned to Darwin and pleaded guilty (earlier), you would have saved your family stress.”

Good Scott: “You continue to be a person with a social conscience.”

The good judge couldn’t have tried harder to labotomise those present if he’d had an operating table and a kit full of surgical tools . . . Big Brother is good . . . NAP is bad . . . you must love Big Brother.


The universal attitude was that NAP was very much the enfant terrible, a point on which both lawyers even agreed, as evidenced by Mr Read’s own diatribes, during which he told the court that despite his role in protest activities, Scott was or had in the past been involved with “respectable” groups such as police youth and land care.

To his credit, Read’s summary of the “good Scott” was one of only two highlights of the morning, the other being the fact that Scott was free to go.

After describing Scott as a former champion middle-distance runner in Queensland, being ranked nationally in the 400 metres and 800m, he moved on to his three-year stint in the Australian army from when he was 18, during which he attained the rank of lance-corporal.

“He enjoyed the camaraderie and oddly, the discipline,” was the patronising way Mr Read put it.

As for Justice Martin, he saw an opportunity to grandstand and grabbed it, which is not surprising from the former South Australian league footballer, who is known to be fond of an audience and fonder still of holding one.

His comments at the death typify the fear the state has of NAP. How dare he order Scott not to associate with people who are his friends (one of whom is in jail because he, too, is a man of principal)?

What purpose will this order achieve and how can it be workable?

His order was delivered with all the malicious intent of somebody who himself has overstepped the “boundary” – to use his word - of his authority. What he did when handing down the three conditions in sentencing Scott, was a blatant attempt to socially engineer four men known to one another with varying degrees of familiarity, and not have them bump into one another and discuss “old times” for the hell of it, all while the threat of prosecution hangs over them if they are seen and-or heard doing so.

The decree undeservedly impugns the state of mind of three young men, Masters, Stallard-Bryce and Deacon, and are as unjustifiable as they are despotic.

The bewigged trio choreographing the action yesterday went to bed last night knowing that it was all just another day at the office.

Judge: case closed - legalise now!

Book: Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs
Author: James P. Gray (judge)
Reviewer: Hemsley Rajala

Judge James P. Gray performs heroics in the title alone of his compelling book, Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What we Can do About It.

Just to make sure readers are left in doubt about the subject matter, he adds the sub-title, A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs (Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 2001).

‘’Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed’’ is more than just a refreshing voice of reason arguing for drug law-reform – it is a call to people in similarly high office to end the dreadful fiasco that is prohibition. The message is transcendent, the source unimpeachable, and the voice, a judisprudential mix of somber here, angry there.

It is echoed by high-profile public officials including other judges, lawyers, politicians and senior law enforcement officers, most, if not all of whom, have ventured down the same road to Damascus as the ''progressive conservative'' author.

Unfortunately, for reasons he alone knows, Judge Gray couldn’t bring himself to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and this solitary but substantial failing remains moot.

Appointed to the superior court in Orange County, Southern California, in 1983, the 60-year-old has fought for reform to drug policy on more than 100 radio and television programs, as well as numerous drug forums across America.

He wastes no time by declaring a truism: ‘’. . . when . . . people realise the huge and unnecessary costs, both human and financial, that we are paying because of our failed drug prohibitionist policy, they will demand its repeal’’ (page 4). He cites first-hand experience, wide-ranging resource material, and comprehensive newspaper archives on which to base his formidable case.

Optimism shines through from the outset, and he likens a post-drug war future to the way we now look back on slavery '’. . . or the days when women were prohibited from voting – and we will wish fervently that we had not waited so long to abandon these failed and destructive policies.’' (p.5).

Like the outstanding US-based LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition [www.leap.cc]), and Judges Against the Drug War (www.judgesagainstthedrugwar.org) Grey presents a courageous and unique perspective, straight from the front line – as a servant of the state and one expected to be as merciless behind the bench with gavel in hand, as the operatives in the field hauling in miscreants.

'’Drug Laws’' is a sweeping four-part 106,000-word panoply of drug-war related issues, covering everything from the appalling environmental and ecosystem destruction in Third World countries, to the ultimately futile savagery (reviewer's words) of zero-tolerance policing. Treatment and maintenance programs for drug addicts are shown to be proven and effective, and Gray advocates matter-of-factly for regulated distribution, as well as ‘'deprofitisation’' of the illicit drug trade.

One of the principle tenets of his tome is that he has seen with his own eyes, too much entrenched corruption and incompetence for the status quo to prevail.

If prohibition ended tomorrow, there would be a minimum (my emphasis) drop in crime of 35 per cent (p.246).

Above all, Gray keeps an open mind and one of his clearest messages is that we should experiment with reform options – but not with drugs, because the good judge “hates’’ them and is probably teetotal, to rub salt into the wounds.

‘‘These drugs are dangerous and can be very harmful,’’ he counsels, suggesting that he hasn’t had any eccies for a while. (p.11)*

But he acknowledges the havoc wrought by alcohol on society, points out the hypocrisy of those who use alcohol while condemning illicit drug users, and rightly exposes Regan and Bush snr as the barstidoes (sic) who ratcheted up the war on drugs.

Gray traces the history of opium- and morphine-dependence back to the American Civil War, during which “hospitals in the south mostly used whiskey because they were not as well financed as those in the North. However, due to the wide availability of and ignorance about these drugs in the North, many war veterans who began using narcotics for legitimate medical reasons often became addicted (and addiction) was often called the ‘soldier's disease’ ". (p.21)

Included is an appendix of reports, commissions, investigations, inquiries and laws (passed) since 1894.

Highly laudable though Gray's stand is, it is his own blissful ignorance and predictions for the future that turn his polemic in on itself. One of his recurrent themes is that over time, drug laws will be changed – ie, the war on drugs will end. Yet he bases this hugely admirable optimism on the naïve premise that the system he so commendably tears to shreds, will allow this to happen.

‘'Drug Laws’' is a tumultuous work of principle and logic – yet it falls in a heap when pinning its faith, astoundingly, in something like the Food and Drug Authority, saying that under regulated distribution, the FDA would ‘'monitor and ensure the quality of the drugs, just as it now does our foods and prescription medicines’'. (p.223)

It is the second half of that sentence that betrays Gray's ignorance. The judge might not be aware, but the FDA is driven by conflicts of interest and pharmaceutical agendas. It is very much a monstrous machination of Big Brother.**

Yet on song, he bravely foresees change, knowing full well that “we are up against decades of rhetoric’’ and that people have been calling for reform for more than a century:
‘’Every major neutral study in the United States in the past 100 years has recommended that some form of drug decriminalisation be adopted because of the dangers of (illicit) drugs, and because prison is the worst and least effective approach.’’ (p.12)

However, we the citizens can bring about change – by writing letters to the editor and calling talk-back radio (but be sure not to swear or raise your voice - p.237).

Paradoxically, while acknowledging that drug-dependence should be in the arena of health and not crime, Gray recommends drug courts . . . even more infrastructures to bolster and expand already sprawling, dysfunctional criminal justice systems. In his defence, though, are words of caution about such remedies (pp.187/189). Besides, as a veteran of the court system he still has faith in it, the same way a former print journalist still sees good in newspapers.

At least His Honour knows the size of the opposition, because it can’t get much bigger - the United Nations itself. In 1997, the UN’s International Narcotics Control Board released a report that advocated criminalising opposition (my emphasis) to the war on drugs. The plan has so far failed to gain legs - but only because other countries have not acted on its recommendations - yet.

Nonetheless, the spirit persists and we are still no closer to initiating global debate (p.147).

Despite all the gloom, the Good American in him proclaims proudly: America is a land of laws, not men. If those laws are broken, ‘‘. . . we . . . run the direct risk of falling into anarchy’’, which is an unfortunate line that is bound to invoke the ire of anarchists. (p.189)

In respect to clangers like that, Gray unwittingly reveals that there is an echo to the embarrassing, ‘‘by 1990, no Australian child shall (be living) in poverty’’ pronouncement by former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. It is in the form of an official US document, and was promulgated barely a year after Hawke’s ridiculous June, 1987, gaff, only the genius who conceived it looked seven years, not three years, into the future.

Coming in straight from Mars in 1988, America’s Public Law Number 100-690 section 5252 stated that: ‘‘It is declared policy of the United States to create a drug-free America by 1995.’’ (p212)
Risibility aside, it is the startling revelation, like section 5252, that gives pause for thought:
• The War on Drugs has resulted in the loss of more civil liberties protections than has any other phenomenon in . . . history; (p.2)
• So toxic are the herbicides being used over forests in Latin America, they kill not only vegetation, but have been blamed for the deaths of “large numbers’’ of whales, dolphins and fish; (p.87)
• The UN’s stated policy is to discredit medical journals that advocate marijuana for medical use; (p.147).
• Attempts to debate medical marijuana are being stifled in Congress, which it demonstrated in 1998 by trying to bar the vote-count on Initiative 59 (p.146).

Gray sums it up: prohibitionists are good at duck-speak rantings. But challenge them to a debate, and they cower and hide.

He closes Chapter three with a quote from Abraham Lincoln:
'’Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.’'

More recently, Canada's Ottowa Citizen newspaper began its June 9, 1998, editorial, thus:

‘‘Today in New York City, an act of almost indescribable stupidity will be committed. Eighteen years after Ronald Regan announced he would stamp out drugs, the 'War on Drugs’ will be declared once again.’’ (pp82,83)

This reviewer feels that the best person to round off the great but flawed work of Judge Gray should be a humanitarian colossus – Harry Belafonte. Belafonte, the legendary black singer and human rights activist, was made an honorary member of the Citizens’ Commission on US Drug Policy in 1999:
“Having grown up in Harlem during the great depression, I can say the real roots of drug abuse and addiction (have) more to do with poverty, alienation and despair than crimes of malice. Most of the violence associated with drugs stem from our policies of prohibition - just as the notorious gangsters of my youth derived their wealth through bootlegging alcohol.’' (p.219).

_______________________________________________

* Questions on Jim’s red, white and blue website confirm the judge’s “conservative’’ streak.

** see mercola.com, credence.com, and Health Wars - Day, Phillip, Credence Publications, 2001, pp136/57, 206/08

_______________________________________________

This book review was originally published in the NAPNT Email Digest Volume 2, issue number 2 on 15th April 2005.

We told you so – and Greens: you blew it!

Now that the farce otherwise known as the NT election has panned out exactly as predicted by the Network Against Prohibition, a few home truths linger, like gargoyles staring us in the face.

Each beady eye points at one and the same thing, both connected: the future of the Northern Territory - and the future of the NT Greens.

Last first. The greens, those perennial also-rans, preferenced me and co-Napatista Gary Meyerhoff behind the ALP in two important seats.

They gave them both to the incumbents, Matthew “the invisible man” Bonson in Millner, and Dr Chris Burns (Johnston). I believe the Greens did it for personal reasons. They will say it was some sort of “strategy”. Either way, and just for the record, what follows are signposts of green which despite the alleged party’s professed intention, do not, in my opinion, point to Nirvana.

I mainly read or heard them beginning Wednesday, June 15, the day preferences were issued. They showed Gary and I third behind Bonson and Burns.

From then on, it was a succession of quotes which cry out for analysis and which to me were the pits.

Taken in context of the “personal calibre” of the contestants, which the Greens boasted was the reasoning behind their decision, they reek of stinking hypocrisy.

As everybody knows by now, NAP does not issue preferences. But reality checks?

We’ve got bulk.

Especially for the Greens.

With the hooplah over and Territorians settling once more into the kind of lifestyle they have known and loved for 30 years, it is apt that we deliver.

The first “quote of concern” came on the Wednesday. It was:

“We weighed up that we preferred the ALP's candidate to the independent candidate or the CLP in Millner."(1)

That’s innocuous enough. But in the same press statement was this:

“The way that our preferences were decided was a combination of how our members felt in the electorates and how our candidates felt about the personal calibre of the other candidates" (my emphasis).(2)

If ever there were an award for Quote of the Campaign, that would surely be it. What were the Greens trying to say about the other candidates? That they didn’t like them for some reason? That they thought they were preferencing the better man?

It didn’t end there. The flier wedged in my letter box, on Aralia Street, Nightcliff, was replete with its own astounding revelations. It arrived the next day and contained one short, three-word sentence that has to be read to be believed. I’ll get to that. I will say, though, that this one small line is probably the Everest of junk-mail moments in political campaigning. For the moment, I shall deal with a sentence on the bottom of page two of that pale-green (what else?) flier, which was this:

“Parliaments, with a mix of small parties and independents (my emphasis) are more likely to achieve accountability and openness.”(3)

In any man’s language, that is a noble sentiment. But it is right about here that things begin to turn in on themselves. It appears that either the Greens forgot that they’d made all the preceding statements, which they summarily contradicted with their preferencing, or their own publicity machine contradicted them in lieu.

One reality check we can freely dispense, is this: Gary and I cared nix about who the Greens preferenced. We knew it would make absolutely no difference in the big scheme of things. It has reflected badly upon the Greens, not us. Certainly, NAP was surprised the way they turned on us. But hey, we’ve been turned on by better people than the Greens.

That the Greens preferenced the ALP – NAP’s jailers – before us is one thing. That one of their choices went to somebody who is happy to throw the term “poofter” across the NT Legislative Assembly, is another.

And if the word poofter, used by one man to insult another – in parliament – is not enough to register on the Greens’ “personal calibre” meter, then let’s take a flashback to last October, when Dr Burns was at it again, this time challenging the opposition’s John Elferink, again in parliament, to “move outside”.

“You watch yourself . . . I’ll have you . . . move outside,” he said to Elferink.(4)

There we had it: a sitting member of parliament using homophobic terms and threats of violence against another politician, in the so-called sacred chamber.

Nevertheless, despite this appalling and embarrassing backdrop of yard-dog politics, the Greens put their thinking caps on and disgorged their preferences. Contenting themselves with the suicidal premise that people’s memories are short, they then explained their decision with typical duckspeak.

That act demonstrated the Greens’ self-destructive streak. Not content with the golden gong for self-delusion, they played their hand of personal bias. Not even Alice in Wonderland believes in the system, much less that she could win a seat in the supposed democratic process that creates and feeds it. And that’s what the Greens are all guilty of. Their repeated attempts to “win a seat” serves only to bolster and support the whole corrupt, disgusting system.

And yet they had the gall to talk about the calibre of other candidates . . . of NAP’s calibre!

Had they let their preferences speak for themselves, without smashing them to pieces with accompanying press statements, nobody would have been the wiser. But it was those disgraceful attempts at justification - and then the claptrap in their campaign flier – that went beyond the pale.

I hardly know Matty Bonson. He seems a likeable bloke with whom I’ve been known to chat across a crowded check-out. But he is and has been for years, a “do-nothing, say even less” politician. His claims to fame have been outside parliament and almost made him a cult figure. He got into a punch-up with a teammate in a basketball game once, and in a footy match, took a leak behind a bush.

The Greens might know him better than I, and opted to vote him up because they regard him as a personal friend. The absurdity of that argument is self-evident, regardless of how contrived the system is. As far as antics go, Bonson’s might have raised a few eyebrows - but those of his party, combined with its morally bankrupt policies and members of highly dubious character, make the Greens’ choice for Millner suspicious to say the least.

It was the Johnston card that beggars belief. This was the chief act of unmitigated treachery committed against people whose actions speak louder than words, and who are the only force in this town seriously trying to do something to instigate real reform and change.

Chris Burns is somebody I know even less about than Matty Bonson. But as far as I’m concerned, his antics – which are on record as constituting antisocial behaviour – demonstrate the mark of the man.

To me, his media hits are sufficient indictment of his character. To put it piscatorially, Burns, Labor’s former chemist-turned-Transport Minister, is an entirely different kettle of fish – and suitably on the nose.

Yet the Greens announced that they thought he was/is the better person for whatever job he was/is supposed to do. What was it Greens? Was rating a member of NAP right behind your own candidate, Kate Neely, too shocking to contemplate?

I hope that was the only reason because you hardly know the NAP candidates. I can tell you this: Meyeheroff might not be a saint. But he is no gutless homophobe.

Burns should have been last on the card. He should be the one in jail. But that’s another story.

When I saw what you’d done, I knew all bets were immediately off and that the rot had set in big time.

The Greens – they who were so vocal on matters of principal - flattened me with that decision. In making it I wondered if they were also in agreeance that some members of NAP should go to jail? Do you believe this Greens?

You do know that Labor’s stated intention is to jail us for our non-violent political activism, do you not?

And there’s the rub. In rating Burns and Bonson up, you also rubber-stamped Labor party policy. You do know this, too, don’t you?

Tempted as I am, I shall not get personal, as I believe you did with your preferences. What I will say is that if you didn’t already know, you are definitely not up to yard-dog politics. That’s all we’ve had in Australia for 30 years, and that’s all we’ll be getting up here in the tropics for the next four years, at least.

If you’re not already there, you’re fading into irrelevancy. You’re going the way of the Democrats. And don’t think you couldn’t disappear like them, leaving not so much as a vapour trail.

You’re there just to make us look democratic. It pains me to say it, but NAP knew that your precious preferencing would make not one iota of difference in the long-suffering big picture.

We know – and so probably do you, deep down - that you don’t really want to make the world a better place. If you did, you would be shouting from the cliff-tops that the current state of government, governing and governors in this country sucks.

I confess that there is one answer that remains at large. It is the answer to the question of how somebody who was once sacked from a good job for committing a courageous act of principal 17 years ago, can cast off principals and vote for a homophobe ahead of a committed activist.

That explanation remains somewhere in the bioplasmic universe, at least for the time being.

What the Greens did to NAP in preferencing was a shame-job, and that’s what they should feel – shame.

Failed and one-time Opposition Leader Terry Mills has just the t-shirts for you. They come in two colours – pink and orange – and you can pick them up for $30 a pop from stores like Attitude, in Darwin. You might get five cents change, but if you tip the shop assistant, who is on not much more per-hour as a permanent part-time-casual-on-call-temp, you’ll feel better for the experience. As well, she’ll welcome the coin.

The hype and hooplah, and all the talk of principals and integrity has gone until the next campaign. What is not gone is the hopeless betrayal of which the Greens are guilty. They promise so much, election after election, and continue to deliver zilch.

And this time, they sunk the boot into the only truly progressive group of people in this town. Whichever way you cut the mustard, NAP’s arguments are unimpeachable.

Contrary to how the Greens feel, NAP is triumphant.

This is because we never betrayed anybody. We know and so do they, that we never let our supporters down. That, I suspect, is the prime “reasoning” behind the Greens’ precious preferencing.

The second worst thing to come out of all this is the legacy the Democrats have left to their founder, the great Don Chipp. He would have turned in his grave, had he seen the feeble showing by the poor old NT branch, which failed to register in time and had the ignominy of seeing their candidate listed simply as an independent.

The worst thing that came out of last week’s coma olympics was that the Greens have now become a hindrance to real agitators pushing for reform.

Greens, you are a joke – a softcock patsy that still believes in the system and couldn’t care less about the environment. For instance, why is it that you have never drawn attention to the devastation being caused to the forests in Latin America by defoliants being sprayed upon them plane-load after plane-load as part of the Australian-backed American War on Drugs? And guess what: it’s not just the jungles that are dying – it’s fish and marine life, too.

Dolphins, even whales, are falling victim to the toxic run-off.(5)

Perhaps your interest meter that gauges issues of serious concern such as this has gone the way of your personal-calibre barometer of NT politics.

And that’s what it is all about – politics. This leads me back to those three telling words – that one prophetic sentence, the very first, that was on the election flier that one of the Greens’ loyal letter-boxers plopped in my letter-box last week.

It hit me between the eyes and when it did, I could have wept.

The very first sentence on that flier was:

“Politics is boring.”

Fortunately, I had my trusty bucket-bong on hand to deal with this incoming madness. Congratulations Greens, I thought, in one succinct declaration of rare honesty, you have showed your true colours. You couldn’t have destroyed the last shred of credibility you had with NAP if you tried.

To qualify my own reference to the “coma olympics”, I shall say that yes, politics is boring - on one level.

But it’s boring not because the ebb and flow, the parry and thrust, the thrill of the contest, is not worth observation and experience. It is boring because modern plutocracies, with their tawdry “democratic” election campaigns, have made it so disgusting and revolting that people categorise the subject with that one simple word, simply to avoid arguments at barbecues and dinner parties.

The flipside to the argument - and this is the cogent point – is that political science should be taught at primary schools so that we as adults, might have a better understanding of they who would control and legislate us, and their modus operandi. Children should be allowed to vote the moment they learn to read, write and comprehend the world around them.

Yes, people do see politics as boring – but for entirely different reasons to the ones you touted and offended me so much with in your so-called campaign flier.

And now that the streamers have come down and the chardonnay is all drunk, real social reformers like NAP will still be out there to remind you of how ashamed you should be and how much more work there is still to be done.

You’ve done yourselves more harm than you’ll ever know.

RIP Greens.

PS: Thanks to those who voted for me.

(1) Greens press statement, headed “NT Greens to give preferences to Labor”, broadcast Wednesday afternoon, June 15, 2005, by the ABC and on line.

(2) Ibid

(3) Greens election flier, authorised by C. Dubrow, 5/60 Aralia
Street, Nightcliff. Printed on 100 per cent recycled paper.

(4) Northern Territory News, October 15, 2004, page 7 – “Dishonourable members’’.

(5) “Why Our Drug Laws have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs”, Judge James P. Gray (Temple, 2001), Page 87.

Stop the static, dump the lot

I never used to vote for one good reason: none of the talking heads that were either incumbent or aspiring politicians deserved my vote.

Ever since I was a teenager, I remember wondering why it was that so much of their energies were devoted to trying to whip up interest in what to me was nothing more than static.

As I grew older, I realised that this was what populist politics was. And the old saying, “we get the politicians we deserve”, seemed not quite right for some reason.

After an election campaign too many, the penny finally dropped. What the saying should really be is: “We might deserve the people that go in one end of the sausage factory of politics, but we definitely don’t deserve what comes out the other end”.

We still don’t and never will – nobody, latent stupidity and selective ignorance notwithstanding, deserves to be treated with the contemptuous disregard that has become the hallmark of Australia’s politicians.

Politics is very much a sausage factory, and in this respect, it could be argued, by the plutocrats and their offspring, for instance, that our politicians are really nothing more than silly sausages.

But a more sobering and infinitely sadder argument is that it’s hard to muster an argument in defence of a populace that has allowed itself to be duped, deceived, lied to, ripped off, downtrodden, dumbed-down, disempowered, mocked, insulted, oppressed and appalled, time after time, the way Australians have over recent history – by populist plutocratic politicians in the name of populist plutocratic politics.

If I were a church-goer – the real name for a person who boasts that they are “Christian” - I would say our current crop of political leaders was spawned in hell.

If I were a fisherman, I would say they are nothing more than crab bait.

Like fishermen, you toss away what is of no use to you. That’s what we should be doing with this lot.

That way at least the static would stop. What happens after that, is too hard to predict. But it’s a tantalizing prospect and one we should act upon.

A few previously unseen things might even start to blip on the radar. Real debates, ones thrown into the good old public arena, could flare – imagine that?

Issues such as the War on Drugs, the lunacy of zero-tolerance policing, and the evils of our sectarian and religiously-influenced education systems might once and for all be wrested from the control of the plutocrats, and be subjected to real scrutiny.

As I told Magistrate Dick “Zealous” Wallace, before he sentenced me to a five-month stretch in the stripy hole in 2003, you may say I’m a dreamer.

But I’m not the only one :)