Monday 28 November 2005

Calls for silence at moment of execution, The Australian, 28 November, 2005. Additional reporting. Page One.

Call for silence at moment of execution: [2 All-round First Edition]

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As momentum grows for Australians to stop and recognise the execution, John Howard warned Singapore yesterday thatAustralians' anger would linger if Van was executed.
The former Melbourne salesman will be executed on Friday at 6am Singapore time, or 9am in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania, 8am in Queensland, 8.30am in South Australia, 7.30am in the Northern Territory and 6am in Western Australia.
Friends Bronwyn Lew and Kelly Ng arrived in Singapore yesterday wearing ribbons and Van's lawyer, Lex Lasry QC, said he would be wearing one when he arrives in Singapore later this week. A campaign for a minute's silence was yesterday supported by church leaders and Liberal backbencher Bruce Baird, with Attorney-General Philip Ruddock and federal Labor deeming the gesture appropriate.

Wednesday 23 November 2005

Happy ending for model, but story still unsold, The Australian, 23 November, 2005.

Happy ending for model, but story still unsold: [1 All-round Country Edition]

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UNDERWEAR model and convicted drug user Michelle Leslie had two Cinderella moments on her return to Australia yesterday -- first losing a shoe in a media scrum at Sydney airport followed by a happily-ever-after reunion with millionaire boyfriend Scott Sutton.
Amid continuing efforts by her media manager Sean Mulcahy to sell her story, something even John Howard said yesterday he was opposed to, Leslie arrived in Sydney from Singapore determined to keep her powder dry.
Mr Mulcahy, who was hired by Mr Sutton immediately after her arrest three months ago to handle the media, said Leslie finally met Mr Sutton and her parents yesterday afternoon somewhere on Sydney's northern beaches.

Saturday 19 November 2005

Payout deal to make Alvarez a millionaire, Weekend Australian, 19 November, 2005.

Payout deal to make Alvarez a millionaire: [1 All-round Country Edition]

Stapleton, JohnWeekend Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 19 Nov 2005: 3.

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Ms [VIVIAN Alvarez], who came to Australia in 1984 with husband Robert Young and became an Australian citizen in 1986, was found in a dishevelled state in the northern NSW town of Lismore in March 2001. She was taken to a psychiatric unit before being mistakenly deported. In May this year she was found living in a hospice in The Phillipines.



ORIGINAL:

John Stapleton 

VIVIAN Alvarez was on a single mother's pension when she was found wandering the streets of Lismore in a dishevelled state. She was picked up and taken to the psychiatric unit of Lismore hospital in 2001.
She is soon, courtesy of the taxpayer and as a result of her mistreatment, to become a multi-millionaire.
Legal fees are also likely to run into the millions - from the lawyers and barristers representing her to their colleagues, the lawyers, barristers and legal assistants from the Department of Immigration.
An Australian citizen since 1986, Alvarez was subsequently wrongly deported back to her country of origin the Phillipines and became a cause celebre for critics of the already scandal ridden Immigration Department.
Recognised by a priest in a hospice for the dying in May, 2005, her lawyers, led by the magisterial former Federal Court justice Marcus Einfeld, refused to bring Alvarez back to Australia until the arbitration process was agreed on, ensuring that her case, with the ready assistance of the media, remained a thorn in the side of the Howard government until it was resolved.
That her legal advisers refused to bring Alvarez back to Australia, and instead were happy to have her housed at an Australian Commission flat in Manila, may at first seem paradoxical but was integral to the success of her legal teams strategy.
As a result of adroit moves by her solicitors, Alvarez is likely to become a multi-millionaire as a result of a hefty compensation payout.
In a win win situation for everyone but the Australian taxpayer, the lawyers themselves are likely to be very well compensed for their part in the drama.
How that deal was done is a story in itself; and shows some extremely clever legal maneouvering and a profound, if cynical, understanding of how the Australian court system operates.
The arbitration process to determine compensation, to be held in private and presided over by former High Court chief justice Sir Anthony Mason, will be conducted in secret, or ``private'' as the lawyers prefer to put it.
Parties to the proceedings have all signed confidentiality agreements.
In other words, a process to cost the Australian tax payers millions of dollars will not be open even to the normal journalistic scrutiny of a court case.
But for every day that passes in this process her legal team, including Einfeld, a ``team'' of barristers and her high profile lawyer George Newhouse, will all be paid their standard fees, which can easily run into thousands of dollars a day.
Her team can expect to fully recover the monies they spent travelling to the Phillipines and making contact with Alvarez and her family.
As Einfeld pointed out at the one and only press conference held since her return - a press conference where his client did not speak a single word - Alvarez would have had almost no chance of obtaining proper compensation if she had returned earlier and been left to struggle through the court system.
For by the time she had mounted a compensation claim through the civil courts, and the case had bounced around the higher courts on appeal, many years could have passed before Alvarez saw a single cent. Meanwhile, already in a wheelchair and allegedly suffering considerable pain, she would have had no means of properly caring for herself, much less mounting a complex legal claim.
Instead of leaving her case to the vagaries of the Australian legal system Einfeld and his team were determined that she would have a Rolls Royce ride through to the compensation dollar.
This ride, as Einfeld was happy to declare, has been made very much easier by the government and especially the Prime Minister's apology and admission of liability.
Folded into this is compensation for an alleged car accident, which arguably led to various injuries and a serious deterioration Ms Alvarez's condition and which was untreated due to her mistreatment and deportation.
Beyond her alleged injuries, there is little proof of the car accident. There was no police report filed, no one came forward to say they had run into a pedestrian and were concerned about her condition, and Ms Alvarez is unable to describe what sort of vehicle may or may not have hit her.
That Ms Alvarez was expriencing problems prior to the alleged accident is evidenced by the fact that the previous month she had failed to collect her son from a Brisbane day-care centre. That child is now in foster care. Another boy, 17, lives with his father.
With so little evidence, it is lucky for Vivian and for her lawyers that the issue of compensation for her car accident has been folded, by agreement, into the compensation claim for wrongful deportation.

Thursday 17 November 2005

In boom times, good things come in threes, The Australian, 17 November, 2005.

In boom times, good things come in threes: [1 All-round Country Edition]

John Stapleton, Leticia MakinThe Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 17 Nov 2005: 5.
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Liberal backbencher Malcolm Turnbull said a strong economy had been fundamental to the turnaround. "The best guarantee that families have and the best encouragement to have children is a strong economy," Mr Turnbull said yesterday at a Sydney conference on demography and generational change.
Mr Turnbull, weighing into another policy area favoured by Treasurer Peter Costello, said an ageing, dwindling workforce created a significant and expensive social problem for the nation's fewer and fewer workers.
The Northern Territory was the most fertile state with 2.24 births per woman, while the Australian Capital Territory was the most unproductive with only 1.64, well below the replacement birthrate of 2.1.

Wednesday 16 November 2005

It's for the students, say teachers - IR REVOLUTION, The Australian, 16 November, 2005.

It's for the students, say teachers - IR REVOLUTION: [1 All-round Country Edition]

John Stapleton, Dan BoxThe Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 16 Nov 2005: 8.
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In Victoria, 100 schools closed completely and 1500 others operated on reduced staff levels as 20,000 teachers attended the nation's biggest rally in Melbourne's CBD.
While half the teachers at Ultimo Primary School in inner-Sydney attended the rally, the others remained as a skeleton staff to supervise children.
NSW Opposition Leader Peter Debnam said the decision by 2500 truck drivers and transport workers to block Sydney's M4 motorway yesterday morning was the work of "ratbags".