Nicola Roxon must resign. She has disgraced the office of Attorney-General with her highly inappropriate involvement in the Peter Slipper case. The latest revelations that Roxon commandeered her department and the Australian Government Solicitor to protect Peter Slipper and slander James Ashby is a new low for the Attorney-General. She knew of Slipper’s text messages months before he finally resigned yet continued to support him.
Roxon has politicised the Office of the Attorney-General and dragged her office through the mud. Her behaviour would be unacceptable for a junior official in the department; it is unforgivable in the Attorney-General herself.
Roxon has shown poor judgement throughout, compounding her errors as a second-rate lawyer.
She is unfit to be Attorney-General and should resign or be dismissed. Her file should be stamped: “never for ministerial position again”.
I agree that her position is untenable and that she is a disgrace in the role of A-G. But a resignation is just not going to happen unless there is a massive shift in this government’s thinking on good government, integrity, responsibility, honesty, accountability and truthfulness. So, Buckley’s.
The rest of us are left to ponder Tony Abbot’s role in all this. Because, believe me, they will find it.
Megan
17 Oct 12 at 7:37 am
Lord Almighty (am I allowed to say that) SJ…..there were at least 9 misogynistic terms you used there…she/her.
And your comments beg the question, what structure can we put in place whereby useless, incompetent, lying, slandering, hypocritical, sexist members of parliament can be dismissed by the electorate if a general election is not called?
NoFixedAddress
17 Oct 12 at 7:38 am
Just because she is totally incompetent does not mean that she should no longer hold her position. Just because she has made statements against information that she knew to be true is also no reason for her not to keep her position as an assistant to the janitor.
Wait what she is the Attorney General. It is misogynistic to hold her to a lower standard than a male. Sack her now.
Angry God
17 Oct 12 at 7:48 am
This thread is a misogynistic attack on Nicola Roxon because she’s a woman. You wouldn’t be writing like this against a male A-G.
Gareth Hamilton
17 Oct 12 at 7:57 am
I think the best the Oppostion can achieve from now on is to ask direct Questions to the A-G and PM that require a direct response (Yes/No answer).
I realise that they will not respond to the Question – they will ‘wander off the subject” . They will say anything that comes into their heads that will attempt to denigrate Abbott.
But I believe it will enable the Opposition at a later date to show unequivocably that the Goverment are sustained and unashamed liars treating the electorate as fools.
Mike of Marion
17 Oct 12 at 7:57 am
Great work with your satire Hammy, you’ve once again reinforced the strength of argument being made by the commentor.
Token
17 Oct 12 at 8:05 am
The fact that Roxon participated in a few meetings dealing with the Ashby case directly is sufficient for resignation. That the DCS and the permanent head of AG’s allowed her to do so speaks volumes for the lack of respect for probity in the senior ranks of the public service. I think quite a few heads need to roll when the liberals are elected.
Keith
17 Oct 12 at 8:06 am
This is what happens when you have an affirmative action attorney-general appointed by an affirmative action prime minister.
Files seem to have gone missing in relation to both women’s various decisions.
These two are far worse than Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
C.L.
17 Oct 12 at 8:06 am
I don’t like what this mob of morons is doing to the institutions and trust in government.
We can’t afford to have a compromised Atorney General & Solicitor General.
Knowing this government they will try brazen out the crisis and as a result undermine the institutions these people represent.
I noted yesterday that most people now feel that there really is 2 standards under the law, one for the Brahma class (ALP, trade unions, ALP alligned lawyers & journo’s), and another harsher law for the rest of us.
Token
17 Oct 12 at 8:11 am
Token, if hammy gave share tips, we’d know what to short.
Keith
17 Oct 12 at 8:15 am
roxon house also mislead the house, on at least two occasions.
Yes, her position is untenable.
Will she resign?
Of course not.
Rabz
17 Oct 12 at 8:17 am
Ignore hammygar. He is clearly having a lend of you
Has Anyone ever resigned from this governmant despite all the screwups? (ie ministers)
Dan
17 Oct 12 at 8:18 am
Oh bleep – roxon has also mislead…
Rabz
17 Oct 12 at 8:22 am
Hammy you’re wrong. I would be calling for a resignation of of some alternative AG Nicolas Roxon if he had behaved as Nicola Roxon. The evidence against her is overwhelming.
samuel j
17 Oct 12 at 8:24 am
Too true, he has Gillard-esque ability of finding and choosing the worst of all options every time.
____________________
From memory the only sackings to occur in 5 yeasr were Rudd’s understandable dressing down of Belinda Neale for being a troll and Gillard’s sacking of Robert McClelland for being a competent AG & decent person.
Token
17 Oct 12 at 8:25 am
it raises the issue of whether we should make a constitutional change that automatically bars anyone with a legal degree, or a member of a legal fraternity, from standing for election to any local, state or commonwealth (if we still have a commonwealth) parliament.
NoFixedAddress
17 Oct 12 at 8:25 am
Roxon could eat a baby and she still wouldn’t be sacked.
ar
17 Oct 12 at 8:37 am
Seeing as the job of parliamentarians is to draft laws, that would be moronic.
m0nty
17 Oct 12 at 8:44 am
Hang on NFA, that’s not fair
Not all lawyers are dishonest and incompetent; and not all dishonest and incompetent people are lawyers
M0nty
And your point is? The legislation isn’t written by MPs but by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel; and given some efforts from the clowns employed by that sheltered workshop for inept, one-eyed morons; we’d be better off without.
Cato the Elder
17 Oct 12 at 9:02 am
There was one more resignation – Rudd dropped Fitzgibbon from the ministry after his foreign indiscretions.
Keith
17 Oct 12 at 9:14 am
@cato
not suggesting we shouldn’t refer to lawyers…..nor am i suggesting that lawyers are dishonest…..
i am merely suggesting that it should be non lawyers who debate the laws.
at the moment we are in the thrall of lawyers in parliament.
and mO, tell me what fucking politician lawyers have helped Australia…..
we are being buried under ‘smart’ lawyer crap…..
immigration…..hahahahaha
carbon tax……hahahahahaha
united nations…hahahahahaha
workplace laws…hahahahahaha
defence……….hahahahaha
justice……….hahahahahaha
welfare……….hahahahahaha
border protection….hahahahahahahahahaha
education…….ahhhhhhahahahahahahaha
health……….hahahahahahaha
you only have to look at the centrist ways of the federal government to know that we are being ripped off.
and the dockwits who want to get rid of the states and have one warm and cuddly “commonwealth” government……get stuffed.
if we were truly serious about productivity we would hand income taxing powers back to the states.
NoFixedAddress
17 Oct 12 at 9:29 am
Oh I see, you’re just an idiot.
m0nty
17 Oct 12 at 9:36 am
Lurch isn’t a lawyer, but he only burnt down houses, so no biggie.
Keith
17 Oct 12 at 9:41 am
Why should Ms Roxon lose her job when c.thomson is still there.
candy
17 Oct 12 at 9:42 am
Point taken NFA.
The first problem is that working lawyers (like doctors) are particularly prone to narcissistic personality disorder.
Law degrees have also become fashionable amongst some chattering classes (normally not working lawyers) who still have the belief that they can make things better by passing more laws – when usually they can only make things worse
On balance I’m happy to give it a go – for the same reason lawyers can’t serve on juries – they insist they know what’s going on and then stuff things up.
Cato the Elder
17 Oct 12 at 9:46 am
1. Their job is to represent their electorates.
2. They don’t personally draft laws.
You think Oakeshott and Swan sit down at night and write laws?
C.L.
17 Oct 12 at 9:49 am
Emerson seems to spend all his time on Twitter & showing off what he learned when playing Guitar Hero.
When would he get time to write legislation?
Token
17 Oct 12 at 9:53 am
@candy…..with respect
because, as far as i know, he is still representing his electorate.
ms roxon may have misrepresented the commonwealth.
to me that is vastly different.
NoFixedAddress
17 Oct 12 at 9:57 am
They do have to debate and review them with a certain level of expertise, though. The Senate is full of ex-lawyers who uphold its function as the house of review.
m0nty
17 Oct 12 at 10:02 am
Oh, so they’re no longer “unrepresentative swill”, eh, mUttley?
Rabz
17 Oct 12 at 10:11 am
@C.L.
Believe it or not, Joh (Biden) actually ‘kick’ started Qld from our ‘deep north’ into a position where others could come along and build on what he started.
These two are part of a mob that is dragging us back to their stone age friends.
NoFixedAddress
17 Oct 12 at 10:12 am
monty
The tax code is literally as high as a fully grown man.
There is nothing “clever” about this at all. There is nothing to gain bar putting accountants into relatively unproductive tax planning work. The laws regarding the GST are high handed but remove the need for so many attempts to close loopholes.
Some reform would be good. It is no good having so many laws that a qualified solicitor cannot even tell you 100% of the time if you are breaking a law or not.
You don’t even consider that we should be repealing some laws instead of adding to an ever growing pile of laws and precedence.
.
17 Oct 12 at 10:18 am
@cato
i truly believe it is one of the first degrees that should be completely funded by the participant.
No taxpayer subsidy at all.
NoFixedAddress
17 Oct 12 at 10:21 am
Complexity = more loopholes = lawyers picnic
Does this explain why so many lawyers love the statist party?
Token
17 Oct 12 at 10:21 am
Nope.
They love it for the same reason most other statists do – because they are stupid.
So far as I can see (after 35 years in practice) lawyers are no more than averagely inclined to peculation. The country might be better off if they (we) were – at least then they (we) could be bought off. But they (not me!) think “it’s the right thing to do!!”
FMD, there are some seriously stupid people with law degrees.
Cato the Elder
17 Oct 12 at 10:26 am
I’d extend it to everything. If people want a medicine degree, they’ll make a motza and can pay for it.
OTOH, if they want a useless Yartz degree, then can pay for it.
Cato the Elder
17 Oct 12 at 10:28 am
Apparently, the role of the Attorney General is to use the untrammelled power and unlimited resources of the State to protect the government. By government I don’t mean the Crown, but the labor party.
That the AG has used the power of the State against a citizen in this manner ought put a chill up the lot of us.
Pickles
17 Oct 12 at 11:00 am
“peculation”. I had to look it up Cato the Elder and found it is categorised as obsolete, since the 18th century. I’m impressed.
Only because I am anonymous here I’ll admit to having a couple of lawyer mates, including one I encountered when we did post graduate studies in another discipline at Sydney in 1972. I have carted him with me for decades from corporate to executive to consulting to proprietor phases because he is so very bloody good at what he does. Our only disagreement has been during and since my conversion from Laborism to Capitalist Piggery – he remains astonished.
“peculation” is a word he would nonchalantly throw out there over lunch, purely for his own amusement. We’ve argued for a long time about the often redundant use of “that” and agreed on the unfortunate under-use of “adduce”.
Well done.
Mick Gold Coast QLD
17 Oct 12 at 11:17 am
The main problem with lawyers is that they have had their intelectual ability reduced and standardised by preparation at schools and attendance at universities. They may not be stupid to start with, but most untrained minds are not equipped to carry the weight of collectivist blanket heaped on them at the institutions.
This blog demonstrates that many university shaped minds can remain free of the collective monoculture, or at least grow out of it with experience. But most people are like sheep, who need to be told what to think. By lawyers and social workers.
Lenin said capitalists were so greedy they would (paraphrase) ‘sell us the rope we hang them with’. Subsidising universities (or ABC etc) is is like giving them the rope for free.
Jannie
17 Oct 12 at 11:30 am
The concept of Ministerial responsibility is totally foreign to this pack of incompetent amateurs masquerading as a “govenment”.
Election now.
Pedro the Ignorant
17 Oct 12 at 12:27 pm
It’s interesting to recall that while Roxon was apparently mired in all this, err, malarky, both the ABC (Australian Story) and The Monthly (author Anne Summers) chose to show/print panagrics to her.
Des Deskperson
17 Oct 12 at 2:45 pm
err, ‘panegyrics’
Des Deskperson
17 Oct 12 at 2:47 pm
During the mid-1980s dairy farmers decided there was too much cheap milk at the supermarket. So the government bought and slaughtered 1.6 million cows. How come the government never does anything like this with lawyers?
– P.J. O’Rourke
blind freddy
17 Oct 12 at 3:19 pm
That’s a bit unkind to align lawyers with social workers.
NoFixedAddress
17 Oct 12 at 3:25 pm
That’s the new National Party policy.
Infidel Tiger
17 Oct 12 at 3:31 pm
‘Her file should be stamped: never for ministerial position again’
What file? Missing, apparently.
James In Footscray
17 Oct 12 at 5:36 pm
Hammy..you weren’t a pinata in a previous life were you?
Steve of Glasshouse
17 Oct 12 at 9:17 pm
Dear Mr Samuel J,
I would have thought that the text messages disclosed to the AG were done so pursuant to the disclosure requirements of the Court and, as such, would have been subject to privilege until placed on the public record by the Court.
Are you suggesting that the AG should have broken the law and disclosed such material? If so I bet you would be writing a similar article about her perceived incompetence, particularly as doing so would have in all liklihood compromised the proceedings before the Court.
Maybe you suggest the Government should have sacked the Speaker based on teh AG ‘s knowledge and not disclosed a reason. I assume this would have resulted in a “knife in the back” campaign from those disposed to do so as well as a liberal dose of the Governemnt not respecting the Parliament.
If you want to make comment about what someone should or shouldn’t do whihc invovles legal obligations research the law first. Otherwise you should resign or be dismissed from writing again. Your file should be stamped: “never for a position where he can air incorrect nonsense again”.
tasch2
18 Oct 12 at 10:25 am
Hello Hello remember the old boys club, that is what all lawyers adhere to . You do not win against the lawyer, only the QC barristers and lawyers get the funds $700,000.00 donated by roxon not a bad pay packet to keep all very sweet. Pity the Judge of the Court decided to meet out to Roxon on the Car Park, more money maybe required, to grease hands further up.
lorraine palmer
19 Oct 12 at 7:10 am
Tasch2 has a point; but it’s a distraction really.
Yes, documents obtained through disclosure are not available for any purpose other than the litigation, so Roxon should not have made them public. OTOH, she also should not have maligned Ashby, nor brought a strike out application that had no real prospect of success. When the text messages became public through being read in Court she was always going to look like a fool.
The whole thing is a triumph of tactics over common sense, quite common in big firms such as Maurice Blackburn.
Cato the Elder
19 Oct 12 at 7:24 am
Nicola Roxon is just continuing the same self preservation and protection that was evidenced during the 13 years of the Howard government. Remember tat Peter Reith was not sacked over the misue of his Commonwealth funded phonecard and no one was held accountable for the wharf dispute, chilren overboard and AWB scandals.
Greg
27 Oct 12 at 6:58 am