Attorney-General Christian Porter has once again sought to draw out the trial of Canberra lawyer Bernard Collaery with a last-minute intervention to delay the opening of the trial.
Porter’s lawyers have obtained a directions hearings with ACT Supreme Court judge David Mossop this afternoon to demand that the opening of the trial, set for December 11-13, be vacated. The dates were set, with the Commonwealth’s agreement, back in August, but Porter is now demanding that the trial be further delayed so he can — he claims — consider Collaery’s response to his efforts to have the trial kept secret.
In mid-November, Collaery’s legal team lodged affidavits arguing that Porter should not be allowed to impose bizarre secrecy orders that would see Collaery prosecuted, with the risk of jail, using documents that neither he nor his legal team, nor the jury, would even be allowed to see.
Porter waited 10 days before suddenly demanding that he needed more time for his legal team — which has previously threatened the judge and his staff with 10 years’ jail if they don’t comply with secrecy orders — to respond to the affidavits.
Since approving the prosecution of Collaery and Witness K in May 2018 in relation to the revelation of the Howard government’s illegal bugging of the Timor-Leste cabinet, Porter has repeatedly intervened, entirely independently of the Director of Public Prosecutions, to delay and drag out the trial.
In February this year, Porter’s lawyer was rebuked by the then-magistrate Lorraine Walker for delaying the approval process for Collaery’s lawyers to be given access to national security information. “I think a finger needs to be pulled out to make it happen as quickly as possible,” Walker told Porter’s QC, who claimed that the problem would be resolved within “weeks, not months”. In fact, it did take months, many of them — all the way until August.
Porter’s goal in delaying the case at every possible moment with procedural manoeuvres has been to increase the psychological pressure on Witness K to plead guilty, even though the prosecution has yet to actually detail precisely what K is guilty of, and to punish Collaery by curbing his Canberra legal practice.
With the long-established start date of December 11 vacated, the case against Collaery is unlikely to go ahead before 2020, making it almost two years since Porter first launched the vexatious prosecution that even his predecessor George Brandis had baulked at.
We can hardly be criticizing Poland for its democracy and legal system, or lack of it, when we have goons like Porter and his team of thugs behaving like this
Wojciech Sadurski doesn’t seem to have been publicly drawn on this farce, but I doubt he supports this.
It would be nice to see Porter disbarred for conduct unbecoming – what a weasel.
The rot begins right at the top for this lot….
Porter’s legal team threatening Judges with 10 year jail terms over secrecy provisions! The whole system has been turned on its head. People being charged of unspecified crimes that their defence council is not allowed to know and all hearings and findings to be kept secret, if UnChristian Porter has his way. How good’s a Police State?
The hood…I agree with your comment…Porter is turning into a little dictator. If all of the ‘stuff’ he is responsible for since his appointment as Attorney General is taken into account, where is he taking us?
Certainly far removed from a liberal democracy…we should all be concerned.
“…documents that neither he nor his legal team, nor the jury, would even be allowed to see.”
So who can see these kryptonite documents ? What a disgrace that we can even consider such a thing. Maybe Assange is better off locked up in the UK.
Note to Christian Porter: if Witness K is not guilty in December he will still not be guilty in a few months…or years. Or anytime.
This has gone beyond obscene.
Now it just looks like harassment, petty and juvenile, with unfortunate real life consequences.
What do they do in Cabinet, sit around dreaming up new ways to be bastards.
Tiny, tiny minds.
And it’s harassment done on the public’s tab…all this frankly juvenile Porter bullshit floated by the bank of Australia’s mums and dads.
We pay for the Liberals to settle one of their scores.
It’s an obscene abuse of incumbency.
No wonder Porter can’t set up a credible integrity commission. He demonstrates his lack of integrity constantly.
You have to remember that Australia’s “mums and dads” don’t or can’t read Crikey…
doomed to read nine’s Fairfax or the limited news Corp
“Now it just looks like harassment, petty and juvenile, with unfortunate real life consequences.”
Correct. It is harassment and it is punishment.
Porter and co, seem to leap into the unknown, and then find themselves in difficulties.
This is what happens when you appoint a barely qualified solicitor as the Attorney General.
He and in fact, the majority of this government, demonstrate the definition of ignorance, which is, “You don’t understand what you don’t know, and you lack the good sense to seek advice from more senior learned friends.”
To put it simply “Stupid is what stupid does”.
There are a lot of advisors who have been giving strategies on how to break Witness K and Bernard Collaery, as payback for dropping the LNP government of Howard and Downer in it, regarding the $5,000,000,000 that was stolen by Australia, from Timor Leste,one of the poorest nations on earth.