The Queensland Law Society (QLS) has advised airport baggage handlers to lodge a complaint against Schapelle Corby’s former lawyer after he admitted in the Nine TV documentary that he fabricated the defence that baggage handlers put the drugs in Corby’s bag. Here, a Brisbane airport baggage handler tells their side of the story:
I spent days and then weeks buried under the barrage of constant accusations of baggage handler impropriety by Corby’s mother, sister, friends and supporters every time the TV or radio was on, and the front page of every paper.
I saw Mrs Corby as a regular camper in the foyer of the airport’s administration.
The media took her side instantly, and we were badgered and harassed and brow-beaten on radio and TV — including by pollies and media commentators — for our sins.
People were running around demanding help for this poor innocent waif. CCTV footage? Stat Decs from baggies? Police investigations? It was if “we” were the ones on trial.
I saw people from Brisbane Airport company being frog marched around by media looking for camera angles while they tried to defend us, and the way the CCTV systems, and security processes work, answering witless crap scenarios and posturing by every idiot conspiracy theorist, while all the time the Feds here were saying the case was pretty clear.
I have no doubt pollies were also advised of Corby’s likely guilt or involvement, but we all know what courage they would have to say it publicly.
Meantime, someone needs to ask what the consequences and costs of this are to Australian aviation.
For one thing, it mixed irreversibly the concepts of airport “security” and airport “criminality” together and totally slandered those of us working behind the scenes.
The Corby circus had everything but dark satanic links and a cameo appearance by a dingo clutching a flaming baby.
We were picked on to become examples for fools to pontificate about “wot is rong with Airport Security” and no doubt drove many pollies to blindly support more absurd and hysterical security measures that had nothing to do with risk assessment and proportionate response and more to do with populist policy on the run.
I could go on, but you get my point! People think even if they just haul bags. We hated this hysterical, dishonest rubbish that was piled on us. We knew a full sh-t circus was going on and we are still p-ssed off.
If Corby is innocent (I have an open mind) where does that leave us gormless flocks of geese handing over our vulnerable property to the tender mercies of airlines with no proof or guarantee whatsoever that what goes into the black hole will come out unadulterated hours or days later? We put up with risking our lives if one of these infallible transports with us on board should come to a sticky end, but we don’t bargain on risking them by firing squad if our bags don’t come up to scratch following a sojourn in airline possession with all onus on the passenger. With nil, zip, zilch, relevant data bearing on the fate of one’s personal property in this limbo (not to mention credible allegations of a similar kind in other cases) of course any half-decent lawyer (or tenth-decent, if Corby was stuck with that) would question it. We need officially recorded weights before and after and video, for starters. Anyone else with bags in their custody, ie staff, needs it too. Did Corby have these basic protections? No. Would they have helped her if she is innocent? Probably would have saved her a 20-year sentence. Have we got these basic things now as a result of this case? I bloody well hope so, for our sake and yours, you whining nellies.
Oh cry me a river princess. Corby’s lawyer was doing his job – offering every reasonable alternative scenario to the court. No particular other person was named, just a group in general. Everyone forgot it fifteen minutes later. Suck it up and get back on the carousel
Spot on Hakan!