Posted on 01/13/2022 3:10:09 PM PST by canuck_conservative
... but Australia seems prone to allowing the frenzy of the mob (and about the Mob, about which more later) to affect the course of justice....
Consider two Aussie criminal trials that garnered global attention, those of Lindy Chamberlain and George Pell.
Chamberlain’s was the famous 1980s “dingo” case, where she was convicted of murdering her infant daughter in the wilderness... The Chamberlains were Seventh Day Adventists and their minority religious faith was used to whip up public indignation against them....
Even at the time of the original trial it was evident that the prosecution case was incompetent and unprofessional. But Australian public opinion had been emphatic, and Chamberlain had been sent away....
In 2013 [Victyoria police] set up Operation Tethering, which was an investigation into Cardinal Pell, even though there were no accusations against him....
In the event, justice took its perfervid course and Pell was convicted, spending more than 400 days in solitary confinement....
In April 2020, Australia’s High Court, in a unanimous decision rendered in lightning quick fashion, excoriated the entire prosecution case and released him.
The Pell case was like the Chamberlain case. Public passions were inflamed — Pell as a scapegoat for Catholic misconduct and mishandling of sexual abuse, Chamberlain as a member of a supposedly suspicious sect....
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalpost.com ...
But finding quick scapegoats doesn't look good for ANY modern "democratic" country!
When even the Canadians are embarrassed by their Aussie cousins...
No matter the country, the left ALWAYS effs things up.
ALWAYS.
And no matter the country, the left should be treated in the same manner. And that manner is not painless. For them.
For your reading -
“... The Victoria state police was revealed in 2018 to have engaged in an astonishing corruption of justice for nearly 15 years in organized crime cases. The people wanted action against the Mob, and action they got. The highest levels of the Victoria police used as a confidential informant the very defence lawyer of the accused they were prosecuting. They lied to cover up this breach of fundamental justice.
When the High Court became aware of these perversions, it characterized the Victoria police conduct as “reprehensible,” saying it “debased fundamental premises of the criminal justice system.” It was this police force that led the investigation into Cardinal Pell.
A royal commission had to be called to figure out just how corrupt justice in Victoria was — or still is. Djokovic may have passed his time in hotel quarantine reading that report.”
I hope all those cops in Australia, especially the over-zealous ones, realize that at some point in the future, they, and their fellow officers end up in the position of having to rely on members of the public to personally help/assist them, and I hope that members of the public remember how they were treated over all this time, and tell those cops to go shove it up their ass. Not long ago I saw a video where an Australian or New Zealand cop had somehow been handcuffed to a pole, and although he begged profusely for someone to help him, the people who passed him by either taunted him, or ignored him. Don’t know how long he ended up being cuffed to that pole, but I hope it taught him a lesson.
But it is all very state specific - and other states don't deserved to be judged on the examples of our worst states (Victoria and Western Australia - and to a far lesser extent Queensland).Nor does the federal government. People outside Australia just do not understand how our system of government works here - there's no real reason they should because we're not that important on a world scale, but it does get very very irritating when people seem to assume the nation is a monolithic entity, which it isn't. The concept really didn't exist in 1901 when Australia federated but really it's more like the European Union than a nation - the six Australian colonies (which became the six states) were already close to sovereign independent nations in their own rights, and they chose to federate under a weak federal system where the federal government had powers only over very limited areas - but the colonies/states did not give up most of their independence, or the semi-sovereign status they had already achieved.
In a very real sense, except in time of war, or when it comes to international trade and diplomacy, Australia is really eight different countries in a lot of ways.
You're Canadian, so I'll just give a couple of examples that might make this make a little more sense to a Canadian. They illustrate the different nature of the independence of the Australian states and compared to the Canadian provinces.
Your provinces have Lieutenant Governors, appointed by the Governor General of Canada - that reflects the fact that constitutionally your provinces are subsidiary to the federal entity of Canada.
Australian states have Governors, appointed by the Queen - the Australian Governor General (also appointed by the Queen) - has no role whatsover in their appointment. This is because the states are not generally subsidiary to the federal entity of Australia, except in a handful of areas.
A second example - when it was decided to amend the laws relating to the succession to the Crown about ten years ago now, the Statute of Westminster meant the consent of all the Commonwealth Realms had to be obtained. In Canada, this was a fairly straightforward process - the Parliament of Canada simply passed an Act.
In Australia, each of the six state Parliaments had to pass separate Acts of Parliament specifically authorising the Commonwealth to act on their behalf, before the Commonwealth Parliament was allowed to pass its own Act. This is because the states remain sovereign and independent.
There's a lot of issues in Australia, but a lot of them are very much only in parts of the country, and really shouldn't be seen as national level issues. Framing them that way allows the governments that are actually responsible for those problems to avoid international blame and scrutiny.
In the ongoing Djokovic case, for once, the Commonwealth does actually have some power - entry to and from Australia is their primary responsibility. But they still have to navigate the requirements set by the state governments over which they have no power, and it's all being seen overseas through a lens distorted by state government actions that the federal government had no control or influence over. People seem to be seeing it as an issue of 'freedom'. It really isn't. It's border security.
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