‘Drew’s Adventures in Wonderland’[1]
Part 2
By Louise Greentree
As I wrote at the commencement of Part 1, there are some interesting parallels between the trial of the Knave of Hearts in ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll, presided over by the Red King and his Queen (she with the fondness for ordering ‘Off with their heads’ for no reason other than a momentary irritation) and attended by a number of odd and interesting witnesses Alice has previously met in her adventures, and the ‘trial’ in Drew’s case which has been set down for a two-day hearing in April 2015 by three members of the Anglican Church Sydney diocese Disciplinary Tribunal.
Let us continue the conducted tour of the two ‘trials’.
‘Call the first witness,’ said the King; and the White Rabbit blew three blasts on the trumpet and called out, ‘First witness!’ ….
‘Give your evidence,’ said the King: ‘and don’t be nervous, or I’ll have you executed on the spot.’ This did not seem to encourage the witness at all; …
‘Give your evidence,’ the King repeated angrily, ‘or I’ll have you executed, whether you’re nervous or not.’
In the trial of the Knave of Hearts, threatening and intimidating witnesses is clearly acceptable. In the directions hearings for Drew’s case we see another form of threatening and intimidating persons attending the hearings in support of Drew and Pippa as well as members of their legal team.
The deputy president and his tribunal colleagues have used, or condoned with silence, threatening and intimidatory behaviour notwithstanding statutory declaration evidence in front of them that Drew came close to committing suicide because of intimidatory and bullying tactics used by Lachlan Bryant. Why do they risk forcing Drew into the same position? Do they want to appear at a Coroner’s Inquest into his suicide where they will be subjected to a searching examination of their behaviour as members of the tribunal?
In the second directions hearing we saw the deputy president use hectoring words and demeanor towards Machelle Dobbs who was there assisting her husband, Dr. Scott Dobbs, who is the solicitor appearing for Drew.[2].
The deputy president has continued in this vein towards others of Drew and Pippa’s supporters, pushing them without authority into making undertakings not to disclose what went on in the directions hearing. However, sensibly, these undertakings extracted on threat of excluding these people from the hearing room, when he had no power to do so, have not been treated as binding as to comments on the process. Complaints about what has been going on in the hearing room have been made strongly and clearly by these people of unimpeachable Christian reputation who have been shocked by what they have witnessed.
The deputy president has at least acknowledged in later directions hearings that he has no power to make orders nor compel compliance with the so-called suppression order and Mr. Easton’s complaints about my writings (and those of Drew and Pippa even before the ‘order’ was made) and told Mr. Easton he would need to go to the Supreme Court to get an enforceable suppression order. He has referred several times to a solicitor that he, in the State Supreme Court, was committing to jail (over Christmas, said he) for breach of a suppression order: it turns out that the suppression order was made to protect some otherwise privileged commercial-in-confidence information that would have grave consequences if it became public knowledge. This is a long way from ignoring an ill-conceived and unenforceable suppression order in the disciplinary tribunal. What could the possible relevance of his comments be? Why is he giving legal advice to the Promoter and the barrister for the diocese?
The model of a Christian Judge:
The very best Christian Judge that I had the privilege to see when, long ago before my lengthy career as a law academic I was in practice as a solicitor, was Justice Richard Gee. He was unfailingly courteous to everyone who appeared in his courtroom, from the nervous novice to even the most disorganised and most inadequate of self-representing parties to the most professional lawyers and expert witnesses. That is not what you see and hear in the directions hearings in Drew’s case. Even submissions to Justice Gee that might be doomed to failure were given a hearing without interruption and courteously discussed; by contrast we have seen constant interruption and gleeful trashing of submissions in the directions hearings in Drew’s case, in some cases before a submission has even been allowed to be completed.
Justice Gee also handed down solid and well-considered reasons for each finding and decision. In Drew’s case, in one of the directions hearing the tribunal promised to hand down reasons for a decision: this has not occurred and it is not likely to occur given later comments by the tribunal member who gave that undertaking.
One would expect that Justice Gee’s behaviour would be a model for the kind of behaviour that would apply in any Christian church organisation quasi-judicial body. Clearly it is not. No wonder the tribunal members are so keen to try to stop reporting of what has been going on in the directions hearings and trying to gag fair comment using this behaviour in substitution for actual authority.
Part 3 follows immediately.
[1] All quotes from ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll are from my copy Puffin Books published by Penguin Group 1997. First published 1865.
[2] I was incensed by this and posted a comment on this website ‘Disgraceful behaviour by Deputy Chairman of Disciplinary Tribunal Sydney Anglican Church’ – which I later replaced.