NAP's resident journo on
the Parliament Invasion
June 2003
The imprisonment of Pauline Hanson and her deputy David Ettridge is a dark day in Australian political history.
It is also an ominous sign of what might be in store for the Network Against Prohibition, following its uncompromising campaign of anti-establishment activities over the past 18 months.
The bottom line is: If every politician in this country were to be imprisoned for criminal activity, Bob Brown would be debating with himself in Parliament House in Canberra tomorrow.
The plight of Queensland senator Mal Coulston sums up the modus operandi of this land’s plutocrats (administrators and rulers).
Far from being imprisoned when sprung several years ago for seriously rorting his expense account – and ie the tax-payer – Coulston was shunted into the just-ignore basket where he languished cosily until his death. The reason he never ended up in the stripy hole wais no secret: he had dirt on EVERYBODY.
Pauline Hanson was a tactless dimwit with breathtaking self-sabotage skills. Her advisors and speech writers were criminally stupid.
But what then does that make Australia’s foreign ministers since 1975? Does their having turned a blind eye to Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor not make them co-conspirators to genocide? And what of Government legislation, promulgated and passed by the majority of our elected members, that over time proves harsh and destructive to the bulk of Australians? In the least, does that not make those members criminally negligent, and by extension, guilty of treason?
The answers to these questions, and to the obvious one - where was the consistency with Hanson? – certainly did not spring from the mouth of Queensland Premier Peter Beatty. Commenting to ABC radio on her jailing yesterday (Wednesday, August 20) Beatty not only rejected notions that it was a political decision, but sounded almost indignant that the suggestion had even been made.
Perhaps it would be apt at this time to plagiarise from the Bible that Beatty et al would all clasp to their chests each Sunday morning at prayer:
‘Vengeance is ours sayeth the plutocrats’.
FOLLOWING is the story The Age, in Melbourne, refused to print. It proves that plutocrat card-carrying editors have infected Australia's once esteemed newspapers, and not just the Murdoch press.
It is dated. But nothing has changed and NAP is simply playing the waiting game.
A David and Goliath struggle has reached its half-way point in a tiny courtroom in the Top End of Australia.
Darwin Magistrates Court 6 has never seen or heard the like of that which has amused, embarrassed and infuriated in this trial, in which a local activist group is taking on the Northern Territory Labor Government.
Every other Australian government is watching the case closely which by default, makes them the adversary. The Network Against Prohibition v the State is a test-case battle royale between a minority group and the plutocrats.
At the heart of the stoush is draconian drug-house legislation, which NAP sees as an insidious extension of the 'police state'. The new bill, which has widely been condemned by law reformers and described as 'absurd' by the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, boosts police powers and targets small-time marijuana users.
Three young men who pleaded guilty were dealt with separately and are back in the community on good-behaviour bonds.
But the six remaining defendants face a possible three-year jail sentence.
One has already served four days in custody after being extradited from Tasmania and shipped to a prison in Darwin six months after the case began.
The extradition is seen as proof of how seriously the prosecution regards the matter, the timing of which, given the prevailing political climate, is perfect.
The trial is fascinating for so many reasons.
The charge - 'Intentionally disturbing the Legislative Assembly while it is in session' - has never before been laid in Australian constitutional history.
The activists are representing themselves and their witnesses have included the NT's Attorney-General Peter Toyne, as well as Opposition leader Denis Burke, and other senior politicians and police. In the May round of hearings, the Territory's most senior MP, Chief Minister Clare Martin, and Police Commissioner Paul White are due to give evidence.
The underdog landed some big early blows.
First, it was granted permission by Magistrate Dick Wallace to summons its handful of high-profile witnesses. Then a few days later, a copy of the parliamentary video of the alleged offence was made available to the defendants in a change of mind that stunned the prosecution and thrilled NAP.
The four-minute 50-second footage is crucial to both camps. NAP says the tape was 'doctored', and whether it was or not, the prosecution argued tooth and nail to have it remain parliamentary property.
There is no question the film has been selectively edited, possibly to conceal what NAP claims were off-camera assaults committed by a security guard and the 183cm 110kg Parliamentary Clerk known as 'Lumpy'.
Despite his granting of the two momentous pre-trial concessions, Mr Wallace might still be NAP's jailer.
He himself is under scrutiny for erring in a 2001 case in which he ordered the imprisonment of a young Legal Aid lawyer who was defending an Aboriginal man at the time.
The lawyer appealed against Mr Wallace's decision and at the recent hearing, the magistrate was found to have been 'over-zealous'.
His zeal could cost the NT Government a damages bill of up to $100,000.
Mr Wallace has been lenient with the amateurs in this case, tolerating angry outbursts and shouts from the solitary woman on trial of the f word, the c word, and 'effing dogs', in reference to those who prepared - doctored? - the controversial parliamentary video tape.
The woman, Emma Corro, has reason to feel aggrieved. Played out in a previous court case was her assault charge against the same security guard, for which she was given a suspended jail term.
The video clearly shows Ms Corro, 23, being grabbed from behind around her breasts and frog-marched toward the front door.
Yet when she tried to press charges, the police weren't interested.
That the footage does not show 'everything' that occurred inside the chamber proves to NAP the video was tampered with.
Its release, when it came, was exploited brazenly by NAP, which immediately made as many copies as possible and the following Sunday, offered them for sale at the group's regular market stall.
Playing repeatedly on a TV and video recorder set up especially for the 'launch', was the infamous Parliamentary walk-in: an exclusive screening in the court of public opinion.
The star-chamber witnesses have not enjoyed being subjected to a different type of question time. Three have made no secret of what they think of their cross-examiners, responding to questions with stony silences, stern-faced stares and predictable evasive answers.
One, deputy Chief Minister Syd Stirling, was accused of perjury when he described how a petition was once 'shoved under' his nose by a NAP member.
That afternoon's ABC radio report said Mr Stirling 'looked uncomfortable' while giving evidence.
The witnesses' tendency to exaggerate has been swooped upon by NAP.
Some of Mr Stirling's colleagues swore that they saw somebody 'jumping' and-or 'bouncing' up and down on the parliamentary table. Yet the video clearly shows no such thing. Three activists, including Ms Corro, are seen walking around on top of the table. But at no stage is any of them seen to jump or bounce.
Off the record, the ABC's reporter for the respected current affairs program Stateline has described the case as the 'theatre of the absurd'. Of course NAP is claiming that as another victory.
But it's a fair call. Nonsense has come from both sides.
Asked if the NT was Australia's most over-policed state, Mr Burke replied: 'On a per-capita basis yes, but not on acreage.'
The court was spared the obvious pun about desert wildlife behaving suspiciously.
Some questions by NAP's would-be Perry Masons have been clumsy.
But others, particularly those from NAP co-ordinator/founder Gary Meyerhoff and co-defendant Stuart Highway, have been direct hits that caught their witnesses well off guard.
The case that has become known as the 'LA job' began in the spacious courtroom three. Inexplicably, it then moved to Court Five and then to the tiny, by comparison, Court Six. The defendants' names were left off the notice board . . .
The explanation from court staff was that it was simple inefficiency. NAP says it was done to throw-off its supporters.
Mischievous as the moves proved to be, NAP's spirits soared with its two pre-trial wins, which reverberated through the courtroom and into the corridors of power.
By the start of the second week, from March 3 to 7, the trial was hotting up. Depending on who was being quizzed, emotions ran high in the Parliamentary Chamber at the time of the alleged offence, which in the next-day's front-page banner headline was called an 'invasion'.
The irony of that word is being fully exploited by NAP, as is the notion of parliament being the 'people's house'.
There is no doubt that the NT's elected representatives are disgusted with the gall of the group.
Unrepresented, unprepared and flat-broke - impecunious is how NAP fondly describes itself - it has led the prosecution a merry dance.
Except for the initial report, Darwin's only daily newspaper, the Murdoch-owned Northern Territory News, has ignored the case, as has Murdoch's national daily, The Australian. But the electronic media has loved it.
When the balloon began to go up, the bevy of young beauties reporting for the ABC and commercial television were in court daily, furiously scribbling notes before dashing out, then dashing back for hourly updates.
Within days, Meyerhoff was the 'ringleader' and his associates were being portrayed as folk heroes on unusually sympathetic prime-time TV.
Stateline described NAP as a 'rag-tag bunch' led by Meyerhoff, 'public enemy number one'.
In essence, 10 people (allegedly) strolled single-file, unannounced, into the Legislative Assembly one day last May while Parliament was sitting. After waving placards about, they left the way they had come in. Two months later, all were charged, except for a strapping Aboriginal man. Nobody knows why he was overlooked.
Two of three other young men who pleaded guilty are being dealt with separately. While the sentence of the third, a 26-year-old, was recently reduced to a $500 bond, the consensus is that the hardcorp will be jailed. This is where NAP has rocked the political establishment: ostensibly, it is on trial. In reality, it is the nation's justice system that is being tested.
The prosecution case in the LA Job is cut and dried. The video clearly shows a group of people walking into the Legislative Assembly holding up placards and shouting slogans. At some point, three of them wind up on top of the speaker's table.
But several big questions remain unexplored, including that of intent and provocation. Also unasked is the tantalising: do you regard the (perpetrators) as potential terrorists?
NAP - left-wing, pro-human rights, pro-drug law-reform - maintains the charges are politically motivated and is running provocation as the basis of its defence.
It does not expect and says it cannot get a fair trial.
In what should be the third and final hearing at Magistrates Court-level, beginning on May 19, Clare Martin is sure to be asked why security wasn't beefed up after the notorious Andrew-Louise affair, in which Martin's former media man, journalist Andrew Kilvert, admitted to entering the Parliamentary Chamber after dark and having sex with his girlfriend in the Speaker's Chair.
The widely publicised confession made a laughing stock of the government, with assertions coming soon after that security would be tightened.
But just months later, as Meyerhoff said in his opening address, he was able to walk into the chamber unchallenged. A female security guard said, 'They're coming in Madam Speaker', and the dangerous Meyerhoff gang sauntered right on in.
NAP has so far succeeded in its plan to draw out proceedings and intends to appeal what it sees as an inevitable guilty verdict in the Supreme Court.
The second round of proceedings came at a volatile point in Australia's parliamentary history, with New South Wales Labour backbencher Wayne Swann being ejected from the Federal Chamber early in March for calling Prime Minister John Howard and his government 'thugs' in their discussions about Iraq.
Up in the tropics, a less visible but no less significant fight has made a change from dinner-party talk of tourist-eating crocodiles and cyclone-watch stories.
NB: The author, Rob Inder-Smith, is one of the defendants.
