Queensland, nice place to live, but...

Time for more teeth grinding over the woeful things that happen in the Queensland legal system.

The Dr Patel inquiry is all up in the air because a couple of the bureaucrats didn't like being questioned in a slightly sarcastic and rude sounding fashion. Poor boys.

As the News Ltd story says: "Justice Moynihan stressed in his written judgment that it was not important whether Mr Morris was biased, only whether a "fair minded" observer would perceive him to be so."

And strangely, Premier Pete says he won't appeal. (Given the number of times controversial decisions in Queensland courts are overturned on appeal, I would have thought it might be worth a shot!)

I can appreciate that the law has to be based on appearances here, since you can hardly just go and ask the commissioner himself whether he is "really" biased. However, it seems unsurprising that a commissioner in an enquiry like this, where he has statements of most (or all?) witnesses before they go in the box, and has a truth seeking mission that is completely different from what court trials are about, can give an appearance of bias if he questions a witness aggressively.

As it happens, I think Tony Morris was putting on too much "showmanship", and a part of me is a little happy to see him rebuked. However, overall his behaviour did have a positive effect on the victims who finally felt that they were receiving a very public, and very sympathetic, hearing. I also expect that the two bureaucrats who didn't like his style will ultimately gain nothing from this result. I cannot see that the facts against them can be read by anyone in a substantially different fashion.

So, despite misgivings about the Morris style, the judge hasn't done anyone any favours in this whole exercise. There was certainly room to make the decision the other way, and that's what he should've done.

And then there is the Di Fingleton case. She gets substantial compensation and a magistrate's job back. In any earlier post, I argued that having someone on the bench who has been in jail is not a good idea. Lots of room for perceived bias there (probably against sending convicted persons into jail. Or maybe she will be too keen to send some in, just to show she is not biased.) Not to mention that she will presumably be having magistrates conferences where the other magistrates, who were glad to see the back of her, will also be in attendance. A few post-conference drinks, and we could have something that will make the Brogden affair look trivial!

This is a bad mistake. Surely they could have come up with some other job for her. But then again, she admits to being combative and aggressive in style, and maybe now that her former champion Matt Foley is out of the government, no one else in the government was willing to put their hand up to take her.

The Beattie government is on a downwards spiral here. It's just a pity it is so far from an election.