I watched Four Corners’ interview with Marcus Einfeld last night. I’ve had an interest in the matter throughout. Einfeld was sentenced on Friday for perjury and will spend the next 2 years in gaol.
I’ve already speculated that Einfeld is a “denier” rather than a “justifier” (see this post for explanation). The interview confirmed for me that he has strong denier traits – someone who exclaims, ” No, I didn’t eat the cookie!” even when he is found with his hand in the cookie jar and cookie crumbs in his mouth. I am a justifier – someone who confesses but gives a justification: eg, “Yes, I ate it, but I was about to die of hunger, Mum.”
It was evident that Einfeld has stood up for people who are marginalised or dispossessed, an admirable trait. People spoke admiringly of his willingness to speak out for refugees, and his advocacy on behalf of indigenous people. Should something as small as trying to evade a speeding fine cancel all that out? Einfeld admits he told a lie, but says to the interviewer, “I don’t think I’m the slightest bit dishonest. I just made a mistake.”
And yet, and yet… I just cannot get over the fact that Einfeld not only swore a false statutory declaration, he made a point of going to court to confirm it. He could have just paid the fine at that point.
Then, when his story started to unravel, he came up with all kinds of extraordinary excuses – he was actually talking about “Therese” Brennan, he was driving his mother’s car, someone else was driving his car. That’s more than just a “mistake”. It proves Mark Twain’s pragmatic and cynical point that it’s easier to tell the truth, because that way you don’t have to remember the lies you’ve told!
I just couldn’t feel comfortable watching someone hoist by their own petard so thoroughly. What a sad and stupid undoing.
Update:
The Witty Knitter was seriously unimpressed by Einfeld’s performance.
In comments, Jeremy has noted that it is hard to understand how someone could effectively judge the truthfulness of others if he had such a malleable concept of truth himself. I wonder this myself.
Update II:
The more I remind myself of the facts of the case, the less impressed I am with Einfeld’s interview. As I’ve indicated in comments below, the prosecution alleged there were 4 incidents where he had sworn statutory declarations stating that his car was being driven by another person after he had received a traffic infringement. There is a definite pattern – the alleged drivers were all academics who lived overseas.
I’ve found the Crown’s opening submissions which allege the following:
- Traffic offence of 4 September 1999 (falsely nominated Professor N D Levick as driver of the car);
- Traffic offence of 4 February 2003 (falsely nominated Professor Teresa Brennan as driver of the car);
- Traffic offence of 29 November 2003 (falsely nominated Dr Tim Oliver as driver of the car);
- Traffic offence of 8 January 2006 (falsely nominated Professor Teresa Brennan as driver of the car).
Further, it was also alleged that he forged the signatures of various people on his statutory declarations.
The 8 January 2006 offence was the one where he later went to the Magistrates’ Court and perjured himself. He pleaded guilty to perjury in relation to that offence and it was in respect of this he was gaoled.
The Crown submissions make interesting reading. The Crown alleged “that Einfeld changes his story whenever he is caught out lying.” (para [149] of submissions).
His initial story when he went to the Magistrates’ Court was that he had been in Forster that weekend, and Professor Brennan had been driving his car.
When a reporter from the Daily Telegraph contacted him to ask him how it could have been Professor Brennan because she had died the day before, he said that it must have been another Terese Brennan who also lived in the USA and had also died in a car accident.
When the police began to investigate, his story changed again: it was said that he met a “Terry Brennan” through Austcare who borrowed his car. Accordingly, he said, he used his mother’s car instead (although the police had evidence to prove that his mother’s car had not left the carpark).
Therefore, his claim that it was a “moment of madness” does not stand up very well. I note that the interviewer asked him about the prior incidents, but did not press him very hard on it. I suppose they didn’t want the plug being pulled on the interview altogether.
Einfeld’s conduct looks even worse when it is noted that he passed judgment on a perjurer when he was a Judge of the ACT Supreme Court in 2000. Unfortunately the judgment is not available online, but it has been reported as follows:
“Lying on oath and importuning witnesses to give false evidence are not matters which can be regarded lightly or as credible,” said Einfeld while sitting as a judge on the ACT Supreme Court in 2000.
It was an offence of the “most serious kind” and deserved “significant punishment”, Einfeld told the man who had been called as an alibi witness by a friend on trial for bank robbery.
“To tell a deliberate lie or series of lies . . . regardless of the obligation imposed by an oath to tell the truth, and to participate constructively in the administration of justice and the ascertainment of the truth, is at best arrogant and at worst a complete rejection of law and order and the consensus of the community which alone enables our society to live in freedom and democracy,” Einfeld told the man.
Apparently the prosecution raised these words in the sentencing. “Hoist by his own petard” doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Update III:
I recommend James Farrell’s post on this at Club Troppo.
79 Comments
A friend who was living and working for the UN in Sarajevo when Einfeld visited in his refugee-advocate capacity told me some stories at the time that stood my hair on end. The only thing that surprises her about this latest episode is that nemesis has taken so long to arrive.
It’s odd, isn’t it, the way we all cling to the notion that ‘good’ (or ‘bad’) people should be ‘good’ (or ‘bad’) all the way through, even though the evidence to the contrary is constantly before our eyes.
Re paying the fine, wasn’t the real issue the fact that he would have lost his licence? The fine and the cost of taxis would hardly have made a dent in his wallet — surely it would have been more about pride and ego and loss of face than it was about the money.
I thought that the 4 Corners interview was soft. The interviewer did not ask him:
1. About his fake PhDs, directorships, and awards
2. About the harm he caused in encouraging or allowing others to make false statements to try to protect his lies. Angela Liati has been convicted and is awaiting sentencing on this and Vivian Schenker and his mother could have been prosecuted.
3. About whether he told all the lies because he thought he could get away with it, and whether his real regret is getting caught
4. In any detail, about all the other traffic offences that he blamed on other people over the past decade
As for Einfeld, he seemed to be in a state of complete denial, refusing to admit any other wrong doing except perhaps in “one other case” and complaining that his lies were not dishonest, but only “a mistake”‘. It was a cringe inducing performance. He seems to have learned nothing.
Yes, his licence was at risk.
It is hard to see how any other sentence would have been appropriate with respect to perjury on that scale. I don’t agree that a higher standard should apply because he was a judge. But equally, nobody should be left in any doubt that he did not receive any special benefit from being in the club.
Watching the interview – the one on the 4 Corners website is better than the somewhat over-edited one squeezed into last night’s programme – makes me wonder if he isn’t also a fantasist (according to your analysis) or some other weird fourth category.
His approach seems to be that it isn’t lying to you say things that might be true (or, perhaps, could plausibly have happened, even if you know they actually didn’t.) He even applied that bizarre approach to factual propositions that were actually impossible.
He’s such a terrible liar (in every sense of the word) that you have to wonder how on earth he judged others’ credibility when he was on the bench.
I’ve blogged this too. It was such a revealing interview, with its revelations of habitual lying, but he clearly has no self-awareness. My son who has recently arrived in Sydney from Europe and NZ, and had never heard of Einfield before he arrived, was riveted. He couldn’t believe that the man had once been held in such high esteem.
JB, you’re right – he wasn’t asked if he feels guilty that Angela Liati got caught up in this too. I was wondering how he would have held up to a rigid cross-examination in court…
Jeremy, I agree. Sometimes when you’re a kid, if you repeat an excuse enough times you start to half-believe it. I think he’s one of those people who believes his own BS.
I haven’t watched the extended interview yet, although I mean to do so.
I do wonder how he judged the credibility of others if his own concept of the truth was so malleable.
I long for the day when we see a front page photo of Einfeld eating prison food. The sad thing about this whole saga is that Einfeld will go to the grave without sharing his secret of how to raise the dead.
There is no higher level of schadenfreude than when the imposters get snagged.
By his professional life’s work Marcus Einfield was obviously a force for great good. For this he was hated by many in government, the bureaucracy, the media and the judiciary. They got their revenge.
His not uncommon, quite human failings allowed him through unusual conjunctural circumstances to be hunted down with sadistic pleasure by the Murdoch press in particular which treated him as starved crazed wolves would fatally wounded prey.
The Australian’s triumphant, despicable, personally cruel editorial last Saturday made me ill.
Not having seen the interview (or being able to follow the case properly from over here), I think LE’s ‘denier’ or ‘justifier’ rubric has a fair bit of merit.
I’m a chronic justifier — indeed, I can’t think of a time when I’ve ever denied. I’ve always provided reasons — sometimes pretty poor reasons — but they’ve always been there. I’ve learnt, too, that sometimes it’s better not to provide reasons: I do admire the most recent incarnation of Ricky Ponting’s captaincy, where he often says straight up that ‘we played badly. I played badly. End of’ when Australia lose. It’s very attractive, but also (I suspect) very hard to do consistently.
I wonder, too, how much of the angst with Einfeld comes from people like LE and me, who justify rather than deny. Are justifiers commoner? I’m not making excuses for his behaviour — he’s been a spectacular cock — but I am doing my usual trick of walking in someone else’s shoes, and working out what I’d do in similar circumstances.
A point here that should be allowed, is that he has damaged an institution that others hold as a justice.
Not because of his “inattention”, because of a standard.
I don’t that deny he is a denier, that is more than half the point and explanation. I’d heard ages ago from legal people, including judges who knew and worked with him that he was a more than a bit of a tosser and not well liked for all the reported reasons but, really, if obnoxious personal behavior is a primary criterion for judging people good or bad holus bolus then we haven’t really progressed much have we in the wisdom stakes.
There is no doubt in my mind that the crime he committed was paltry but that it had much broader legal implications and that the law has successfully achieved what by its own logic it aimed and had to do.
But this does not detract either from the fact that there’s been a huge delight in bringing this man down, and given his commendable life’s work, his current circumstances, state of health and age, I do feel sorry for him and feel disgusted at the way he’s been humiliated in the media, aided and abetted by his no doubt vast army of slighted colleagues, (like Chris Sidoti, spare me!) acquaintances, and class enemies who’ve all gleefully lined up to be part of the gauntlet that has so brutally thrashed him.
Posey, that’s what made me feel a little ill about the whole thing. I don’t really enjoy watching people fall, regardless of whether they are arrogant tossers or not. There is a part of me which feels sorry for the man. Another part feels sorry that, out of all the things he has done (good and bad), it is probably this incident for which he will be remembered.
Nonetheless, Einfeld is in large part the author of his own downfall. Sure, a lot of people stuck the knife in as he fell, but ultimately, he is his own worst enemy. There were also points in the 4 Corners report where I felt like shaking him with frustration.
As a lawyer, I just cannot fathom what possessed him to do what he did. As Einfeld himself noted, our legal system works on the basis that we tell the truth when we affirm an oath to do so.
And, as Lang says, this kind of behaviour does damage the standing of the judiciary more broadly.
Just watched the edited version on the 4 Corners repeat showing.
Goodness me, he was silly to do this interview. Not that 4 Corners is viewed by the broader public, but enough people interested in this sort of thing would have watched, in disappointment, disbelief, or disgust, depending on their angle.
I’ve followed the story on and off over the last few years, and could never understand why the false stat dec, why the evidence… Why not just pay the fine, or cop the licence suspension like everyone else? The interview showed that he still doesn’t get it, he couldn’ answer straight questions, and as another poster has said above, he probably believes his own BS now.
I, too, get no pleasure from seeing someone like this undone… it’s not as if he’s a US banker into credit default swaps who’s undone the global economy…
He seems to have done good in his professional life. People seem to hate him for things other than his character and personality – his religion and politics for example.
However, just because he’s been a judge and a lawyer doesn’t make him a saint… one only has to listen in to legal community gossip occasionally to realise that those who presume to judge don’t always uphold the same standards they apply to others. And let’s not get started on the habits of barristers.
He’s going to spend the next 2 years paying for this mistake. I’m not saying this isn’t appropriate. But it gives me no pleasure.
Sad and ridiculous, both at once.
One of the columns, probably in the Oz, had the story that the 4C producer was a next door neighbor of ME, which explains how he came to agree to do the programme and also why it tended to be sympathetic.
I’ll watch the interview when I get home. I have wondered how much this was partly a result of seeing so many people get off because of false statements to the court that could not be proven. Barristers especially make vast numbers of false and deceptive statements to courts and suffer no penalty. Justice Einfeld’s “mistake” was making a false statement that could be proven false, in a statutory declaration.
It often looks what matters in court is the right form of words, not like truth or justice – the W.A. “self defense of others” head butting a policeman is an example. How could a good barrister resist making the “right form of words” statutory declaration to avoid the embarrassment of losing his licence?
I dunno, Posey. I take no pleasure in this. I’m a relatively new Australian and wasn’t familiar with all the good he’s done until recently. But the justice system operates on the basis of people saying what they understand to be ‘the truth’ in matters before the court, If a judge deliberately lies in matters before the court, and maintains those lies even in the face of contradictory evidence, it kind of throws a shadow back over his whole career of passing judgement on other people who’ve lied to protect themselves from the consequences of their actions. I think that people are angry, and do feel betrayed. And I think he deserves pretty much all that I’ve read and heard about him.
I’m sorry M-H, I can’t share your outrage. If everyone who broke traffic laws and did their level best to evade fines, demerit points and loss of licence were jailed… well, just think, and do the maths.
And I don’t hold anyone to higher standards than everyone else based on their position. The role of judges is to administer the law, not be personal models of it. Einfeld did what many people at his level do without blinking and who mostly don’t get caught. We’re talking about traffic offences here.
And as for his public service and activist record. Well, that encompasses a very volatile and important part of the past couple of decades w/r/t to issues such as the enormous social neglect of Aboriginal communities, the desperate plight of asylum seekers and other refugees, the needs of the people of East Timor, the abuse of prisoners’ and the role of a body like the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission of which he was President. As limited as is its statutory authority due to the inadequacy of the well-meaning but ineffectual anti-discrimination laws it administers, all federal governments have loathed it and done their best to cut it off at the knees. It’s been pretty much dead in the water since Howard’s election in 1996 when he promptly took a structural, leadership and budgetary axe to it.
Posey, that’s where you and I diverge. I think that if you are judging other people, you should try your best to abide by the law. Unlike an ordinary person, you can’t argue that you don’t know the rules. And if you are sitting in judgment upon others, it is rank hypocrisy to behave as though the rules don’t apply to you. I don’t think public figures should use their position to get out of fines and infringements. I’ve heard of it happening before, and I disapprove greatly.
Further, I don’t buy the “just a traffic infringement” argument. Traffic rules are there for a reason. My sister got hit by a car when she was 9. I was standing just behind her at the kerb. The car was going at about 55km/hr, but if it had been going any faster, she would have been killed. As it was, she suffered concussion and a broken leg. As the big sister, I was supposed to be looking after her. It really messed me up.
And I think that the way you behave with small offences translates to the way you behave more generally. In the course of a post about sentencing and sexual offenders about two years ago, I wrote:
Legal Eagle, I got hit by a car when I was 11. It was an accident. If any one was to blame, and I blame no-one, it was my parents for letting me cross on my own a busy road to get to a beach where I would swim unsupervised. I did more damage to the car, so the story goes, than it did me. It was a Volkswagen and even then I was an Amazon.
LE, the greatest criminals in our society are not traffic offenders and the like and they go unpunished. So it has always been and always be until there are very substantial changes, not in the law, but in power relations.
The Einfeld case is a complete beat-up, tragic for him and a deliberate revengeful kick in the teeth to generations of left activists by the establishment.
Ah, if the car had hit me, it probably would have come off worse – I’m a lot bigger and more sturdily built than my sister. I did blame the driver in that situation – it was in front of a school, and there were school kids milling everywhere trying to get on the bus. The driver was going too fast and too incautiously for that area. I recall that he was devastated, but he didn’t contact us afterwards – as I’ve said in this post here it would have been nice if he had said sorry, but our legal culture doesn’t encourage that.
He refused to come clean, and At 12 minutes in the extended interview seems to think that being caught is the “committing a crime”:
Davidp, that was a really weak part of the interview, I agree. That was one of the parts where I wanted to shake him and say, “You call that being honest?” He did say earlier that he lied, but he really didn’t want to talk about the details of how and why he lied.
Has information about how many prior speeding tickets (if any) Justice Einfeld had where he declared his car was being driven by a person from overseas / some other person? This is relevant to his claim that this incident was quite out of character.
Davidp, I understand that the prosecution alleged were 3 prior incidents where he had sworn statutory declarations stating that his car was being driven by another person. There is a definite pattern – the alleged drivers were all academics who lived overseas.
I’ve found the Crown’s opening submissions which allege the following:
* Traffic offence of 4 September 1999 (falsely nominated Professor N D Levick as driver of the car);
* Traffic offence of 4 February 2003 (falsely nominated Professor Teresa Brennan as driver of the car);
* Traffic offence of 29 November 2003 (falsely nominated Dr Tim Oliver as driver of the car);
* Traffic offence of 8 January 2006 (falsely nominated Professor Teresa Brennan as driver of the car).
Further, it was also alleged that he forged the signatures of various people on his statutory declarations.
The 8 January 2006 offence was the one where he later went to court and perjured himself. He pleaded guilty to perjury in relation to that offence and it was in respect of this he was gaoled.
Therefore, his claim that it was a “moment of madness” does not stand up very well. I note that the interviewer asked him about the prior incidents, but did not press him very hard on it. I suppose they didn’t want the plug being pulled on the interview altogether.
I have a mate who is a prosecutor. He reckons that any random member of the public would definitely not have got a sentence anything like as harsh as what Einfeld got under any circumstances.
He made the point that if I went out right now and assaulted a police officer or even committed a sexual offence I might get 2-3 years for it.
It’s also interesting to see that Stephen Linell got a suspended sentence for a far worse example of perjury – he was actively and intentionally undermining the integrity of his office and organisation by his lies, whereas Einfeld was trying to get out of a parking fine and any undermining of the integrity of his office was indirect and consequential:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/03/25/2525606.htm
I still think Einfeld is good at heart. His traffic offences can’t wipe and shouldn’t wipe out all the good he has done or tried to do.
Likewise, a person who kills another person commits one bad act. But to use that bad act and say he is a bad person, ignoring their life of goodness is not fair.
Interesting short article about Einfeld’s state of mind
http://www.smh.com.au/national/inside-the-two-heads-of-marcus-einfeld-20090326-9blx.html?page=-1
Theodora: Ben Newell’s idiotic comments in that SMH article reveal a woeful ignorance of human psychology especially coming from a tertiary level psych teacher and speak volumes about the limitations of cognitive psychology and its laughable use of mathematical modelling to try and understand human consciousness, motives and desires.
How embarrassing for him.
Newell “”I don’t want to sound like a pop psychologist but …” Too late, too late.
There really should be some academic tribunal that publicizes dopey things academics say. No penalty or anything, just ridicule.
Linell was smarter than Einfeld and played the system. Einfeld just kept refusing to admit he’d done wrong, and making up crazier and crazier excuses. From a pragmatic point of view, you’ll get off much more lightly if you roll over at an early stage and admit you were wrong (as Linell has done). I am sure that’s part of the reason why Einfeld’s sentence is heavy and Linell’s is light.
As I’ve said before, saying sorry is an important aspect of criminal law, and of the law of wrongs:
Einfeld did not plead guilty until it was almost certain that he would be convicted.
The committal hearing was strongly contested. The offences relating to previous statutory declarations were taken to the Court of Appeal and Einfeld was successful on a technicality (swearing a false stat dec was not perverting the course of justice because there was no investigation yet in train).
If the CCTV had not caught his mother’s car in the underground carpark on the day he claimed to have been driving it, he probably would gone to a full trial, pleaded ‘not guilty’ and committed more perjury.
Even in his Four Corners interview he is still dissembling. He seems to think the real sin is that he was caught, and even he blames his [implicitly unfair] fate on being Jewish or on revenge his views as a social activist.
LE @ 25. What were the previous traffic offences for? Speeding? If so, woopy doo he habitually sped (unlike most drivers) and he was in denial about the seriousness of that.
The man is obviously a monster. Lock him up, spit on him, tell all and sundry that his entire professional career and other lifetime achievements mean nothing, are a gob of spit, and let’s all feel righteously holier-than-thou about the slippery slide into evil that speeding and trying to evade penalties for it represents. It is by far the worst crime that a public figure can commit and don’t we all know it.
Posey@33: disobeying traffic signals and speeding were the original offences.
The issue isn’t the original traffic infringements. Everyone speeds, disobeys traffic signals etc at some point (unless you don’t drive). So what?
It’s (a) the lying on oath and (b) the hypocrisy given that he gaoled others for the same crime (perjury) and talked in no uncertain terms about the moral opprobrium which attached to lying on oath.
It’s not the worst offence on earth. After all, that guy who sexually assaulted a 4 year old girl got off a lot more lightly than Einfeld. But the thing that sticks in my craw is that he argues that it wasn’t really wrong at all – it was just a “mistake”. I think I’d feel a lot more sorry for him if he’d have fessed up in the first place and paid the penalty then (as per my comment @ 31).
One thing I do want to say – there have been calls to charge Einfeld with an offence because he was filmed apparently not wearing a seatbelt. I think that is petty and going into witch hunt territory.
L.E: “he gaoled others for the same crime (perjury)”
The crime of perjury is undifferentiated is it? It matters not one whit the seriousness of the context in which perjury is committed or its impact?
Is that what the law intends in its prosecution of the crime of perjury?
So, LE, you are saying that breaking the law is not the problem, that that is a “so what” sort of thang. But that it’s *lying* to legal representatives about breaking the law that is the real crime?
Is that what you are saying?
Yes, it does matter. So in the case over which Einfeld presided as a judge, the perjurer was a witness who gave false evidence in an armed robbery trial. From that point of view, the original offence was far more serious.
However, the context can also be used in the Einfeld case to say that his perjury was serious despite the petty nature of the original offences – he consistently denied the truth over a long period of time in various fora, and only pleaded guilty when the writing was on the wall. Further, he was a person who should have known better than any other the rules with regard to perjury.
Not quite. Breaking the law through a traffic offence is still breaking the law. But it’s certainly less serious, for example, than committing murder, theft or rape or something like that.
However, you’re right – the really serious bit is the lying on oath to legal representatives about the original contravention. When we swear an oath, we have swear to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. As Einfeld himself said, to tell a deliberate lies after swearing an oath to tell the truth represents a rejection of fundamentals of our system of law and order.
The other much weirder involvement Einfeld had in someone else’s perjury was his representation (in the High Court) of Kala Subramaniam, who… wait for it… swore a false statutory declaration to get her employer (a practising lawyer) out of a red light ticket. The HCA case was heard and decided in 2004, in the midst of Einfeld’s own offences. How weird is that?
(BTW, the lawyer got off due to lack of evidence, as the only evidence was Subramamiam’s own admissions. She was convicted, but the HCA quashed on the grounds that she may not have been fit to plea, due to her deteriorating mental state. See: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/2004/51.html)
Jeremy, I remember the Subramaniam case. I didn’t realise Einfeld was representing one of the parties!!! Curiouser and curiouser.
Well, then the law is a hypocritical ass.
Heh, don’t blame me, I don’t make the rules – but part of the point is that Einfeld himself did when he decided that earlier perjury case!
What’s curious? It’s completely consistent, ffs.
All of which suggests what’s been obvious for a long time and that is until the law and legal practitioners can incorporate any comprehension of human psychology, it’s always going to be pretty primitive stuff and amenable to outrageous political manipulation, as in this case.
The four cases of false declarations in the Crown’s opening submissions are only the ones the Crown could prove were false. Given Einfeld’s claims in the interview, I had not expected any proven false ones – he’s really in denial. He was claiming a moment of madness, when we have a clear pattern of repeated false declarations about traffic offences. It would be interesting to know how many traffic offences he made declarations about that the police could not disprove.
People who misuse the legal system to keep driving dangerously are a danger to all of us, as well as undermining the easy to use system for handling offences that we have at the moment.
LE and SL, you need an open forum. Anyway, I listened to this:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bigideas/stories/2009/2519704.htm
today and it was quite interesting, but it got me thinking about why lawyers are so fond of international law and the ICC. I’ve always been uncomfortable with the idea of the ICC and I worked out why today. Be interested to hear what you think.
Speaking for myself I take great delight in seeing Mr Einfeld go to jail. He accused me, and thousands of other Australians who worked in detention centres of being no better than the SS in WW2. Just think about the stupidity of a statement like that.
He also alluded to “many concerning files he had of atrocities” which somehow he never seemed to find serious or relyable enough to launch proceedings over. But never dampened his enthusiasm for sliming hundreds of hard working people.
I’ve got a fairly long post on one of his refugee speeches he gave.
http://tizona.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/perjurer-goes-to-gaol/
thefrollickingmole, that is quite possibly the bestest blog handle I’ve ever seen
And yes, it appears that Einfeld badly failed the Godwin test there. That really is pretty poor. Not everyone knows in any detail exactly what the SS got up to during the war, so sticking up a few images that they took themselves and clearly took pride in is suitably instructive.
Way to sink your own case, Einfeld.
Frollickingmole, I understand why you’d be angry to be compared to the SS (who wouldn’t be angry if they were compared to mass murderers and genocidaires?)
When I was a teenager, I used to call people “fascists” if they made rules I didn’t like. My Mum heard me and took me to task. She reminded me that the fascists were racist totalitarians who murdered thousands of innocent people, thus “fascist” is not an accusation to be thrown around lightly. I took it to heart.
I’m reading a book called “Lenin, Stalin and Hitler” at the moment – it’s really sobering reading.
thefrollickingmole, Marcus Einfeld made this speech in September 2002 at the very same time that Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) which ran six Australian immigration detention centres including the one at Port Hedland had its contracts withdrawn because of the shocking allegations of human rights abuses and other problems documented by the Australian Ombudsmen, numerous professional medical and psychiatric organisations, church groups and well informed activist networks. ACM and its US parent company are an international disgrace and byword for human rights abuses and mismanagement.
The activities of many of it staff here were indeed thuggery, though I note that Einfeld said in the sentence immediately before the one you quoted that:
“These camps are not concentration camps. A Holocaust is not occurring in them, and the suffering of the people, although great, is not to be compared to the Jewish and other victims of the Nazis.”
Marcus Einfeld is a 5th generation Australian Jew, a pro-Israeli Zionist and as Wiki recounts:
So I’d reckon he can be exempted from Godwin’s law on the basis of all this and of what he actually said in the speech quoted.
Posey
So you seriously think thousands of Australians, working under government scrutiny with Federal police oversight managed to engage in illegal acts for years with only aout 6 officers (rightly, I testified against one) convicted of abuse.
I might also point out the ombudsman (one in particular) took allegations made by detainees and printed them as facts.
You may also want to consider the impact of certain “crusading” lawyers (one Ms Marion in particular) having detainees pretend to go insane, have them committed (all “cured”within 2 weeks) and then take out injunctions to prevent them being sent back to detention. So spare me if Im a little unimpressed by the allegations you reffer to. Theres plenty that should have been done differently, plenty of stories that cast the last government in bad light. The only problem is 99% of the stories arent black and white.
Heres a couple I have put down to give you an idea. If I had any tallent as a writer Idve done a book by now…
http://tizona.wordpress.com/2008/05/10/a-true-story-and-a-sad-one/
http://tizona.wordpress.com/2008/05/21/port-hedland-stories-again/
http://tizona.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/another-wander-down-memory-lane-a-deportation/
Heh, I couldn’t actually access the original of Einfeld’s speech – when I clicked on the link last night, it told me piously that it was Earth Hour and I should have the lights off. As I said last year, what a crock Earth Hour is…
I’m glad Einfeld added the caveat before he compared detention staff to the SS, but I still think it’s a bit strong.
Frollickingmole, your posts are very interesting – just shows that the situation is always grey, not black and white…
Ah, in today’s “Sydney Morning Herald” the Sydney barrister, writer and film producer Charles Waterstreet’s brave and true riposte to the mob, the uncomprehending and the inhumane.
Btw, not unrelated, I have nothing but praise for Charles Waterstreet’s memoirs – “Precious Bodily Fluids” and “Repeating Leaving” – two deliciously comic, wise and forgiving memoirs about growing up Catholic in rural Victoria.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/the-mob-shows-no-mercy-20090328-9ew3.html?page=-1
thefrollickingmole writes in his forensic, lucid take down of Einfeld’s September 2002 speech that Einfeld could go and “suck the barbed cock of satan and be buggered by a randy donkey”. Doesn’t sound grey to me at all.
Thuggery Noun. Violent or brutal acts as of thugs.
Einfeld didn’t define the form of thuggery, he likened it to that of SS guards, not all of whom would have actually killed Jews and others in the death camps but who enacted other forms of thuggery. Violence is a continuum, but I agree you can’t equate all its forms and the institution/organisation/group leadership is always to blame much more so than individuals who are part of those institutions, many of whom often relatively blameless.
At the time Einfeld wrote this speech 407 children under 18 were subjected to arbitrary detention because they were children of asylum seekers. This illegal detention was of course contrary to international human rights laws signed by Australia as well as being completely immoral and indescribably cruel and unjust. Some of these children spent the first five years of their lives in detention without having committed a single offence.
Posey.
Im sorry but if you state one thing isnt like the other, then state but parts of it are you are engaging in rhetorical wankery.
He raised the worst example he could dredge up then mealy mouth says “but it wasnt “quite” the same”, wink wnk.
Yes i invite Mr Einfeld to suck the barbed cock of satan etc. I mean it as well. 90% of the trouble in immigration detention was caused by fewer than 10% of the detainees.
The trauma you wail about was CAUSED by the troublemakers. I can assure you when you are 15 officers on nightshift looking after 900 people (800 of whom are able bodied men) you dont go out of your way to start trouble.
I dont blame you for your views, but if you wish to engage properly then bring up nearly ANY incident that you are aware of from 98-2002 and i will give you what I know about it. If it happened at Port Hedland I was very likely to have been personaly involved in the incident.
So go on, I invite you to find out another version of nearly any story you have heard.
Posey, seems to me you can attack the little guys (the people employed at the centres) or you can attack the people who institute these policies. I’d prefer to attack the latter. As you concede, it is a continuum, but to my mind, if inhumane treatment occurred at detention centres, this was a result of management as much as the individual concerned (see Philip Zimbardo’s prison experiment.
This article in The Times explains
So we should be attacking the system if it produces inhumane results, including the politicians who institute it. We should also be praising those staff members who speak out against inhumane practices. Frollickingmole says that he (she?) gave evidence against detention centre staff who were abusive, and thus I can understand his/her anger at being compared to an SS member.
Ah yes, human beings are the pits, aren’t they. There always seems to be that small minority of damn troublemakers.
The central role of the agitator-troublemaker was acknowledged in a famous judgment of another of other best legal practitioners, Justice Lionel Murphy of the High Court of Australia, who famously reversed a sentence of six months hard labour given to an Aboriginal activist for swearing and spitting:
LE, you don’t think that the detention centres which including the incarceration for years of children including many under 10, were at all inhumane?
And we are talking about Iranian, Iraqi and Afghani child refugees here many of whom were eventually forcibly expatriated back with their parents back to their countries of origin. I wonder what happened to these political and economic refugees?
Posey, I have a definite sympathy for agitators and whistleblowers myself…
Dr Julian Burnside AO QC is another high-profile prominent legal practitioner who devoted a lot of his private time to refugee advocacy along with 100s of lesser known legal worker activists who worked tirelessly around this hugely important issue during the Howard years.
In fact, the only lawyers I know of who defended Howard on his mandatory detention policy were Liberal MPs and above all the Minister for Immigration and Attorney-General himself, Philip Ruddock.
Perhaps there were other lawyers who publicly defended Howard’s illegal regime at this time. Any one know their names?
As far as I’m concerned, it’s fine to call detention itself inhumane. I’m not comfortable with detaining people who have not actually committed a criminal act, and who may well have a legitimate basis to seek asylum. I support the Rudd government’s intentions to scale back detention centres, restricting them to people who pose a risk to the community (eg, those who have repeatedly breached their visa conditions or those who pose security or health risks).
But I don’t think it’s productive to compare staff members to the SS. And the staff members were acting according to law as it stood at that time – therefore, I think the better thing is attack the law itself and lobby for its change. And I also think it’s better to ask staff to speak out about any abuses rather than getting them offside with hyperbole.
As a matter of pragmatism, we do have to look at asylum seekers carefully to assess which ones are really refugees. It’s based on the notion of ‘desert’ – some people are more deserving of refuge than others. This is because we have limited resources.
Of course, on a case by case basis, there’s some really hard issues. I know that sometimes, people have been sent back to their country of origin and been persecuted, tortured and killed, even though they were deemed not to be genuine refugees. And sometimes, too, the seeking of asylum leads to tragic results (as Frollickingmole’s post about the poor Syrian fellow illustrates). But by the same token, I don’t think we can just accept every asylum seeker’s story at face value either. We just simply don’t have the resources to do so.
LE: “But by the same token, I don’t think we can just accept every asylum seeker’s story at face value either. We just simply don’t have the resources to do so.’
This is about as honest an admission as can be expected, I guess, that the policy is/was not based on humanitarian or even any legally indisputable grounds, but purely on economic expediency and convenience. Of course it wasn’t even that because the incarceration of these innocent men, women and children cost the Australian taxpayer a bucket of money.
Mind you we are only talking about was ever no more than a mere handful, a minuscule number of people who could have been easily assimilated into this vast, rich continent, And there were more than enough Australian citizens at the time willing and able to help and personally pay for them to do so, alas to no avail though and to the eternal shame of all Australians.
Legal Eagle
In one of those shades of grey you mentioned,the bloke I gave evidence against was a good man who snapped and did a terrible thing. He pled guilty and copped an appropiate sentence.
However the injustice of the case still rankles with me. The riot in which this bloke was convicted of bashing a detainee was started by the detainee in question .
I should know, I was the officer he bit.
In addition another female officer had her shoulder broken (by an identified detainee, so it was witnessed) and thousands of dollars damage done.
When the detainee who triggered the riot was removed he was assaulted by the officer.
The resources used to convict the officer were considerable. A team of 3 Federal police, a DIMIA team, and Sydney management were involved. I stated what I had seen happen, but the whole thing was obviously set up to try and intimidate officers into going witness. Towards the end of my interview I asked the Feds if there were any other charges being laid, such as assault, criminal damage etc.
They couldnt keep straight faces and muttered about “ongoing investigations”…
Not one detainee was ever charged, the Feds made a grand total of 1 other effort to prosecute a detainee and told us it wasnt worth their while.
It was a federal facility, State police didnt want to do anything either.
So by doing the right thing and testifying against my (at that time he was 2nd in charge of the centre) boss I helped pave the way for effective anarchy inside the centre.
That my friend is shades of grey.
Posey
How can a system which accepts 90 plus % of applicants be considered anything other than humane?
Australia is a great country to dissapear in, what % of unsuccesful applicants do you think would have hung around to be deported if they were in the community?
We had some extremely bad people released into Australia based on the story they told, with no documentation to back that story up.
90% of detainees were fine, no beter or worse than the majority of the community. 1% were saints, that leaves 9% as total thugs.
The refugee system is extremely bad at filtering out thugs. I cant stress that enough. People who would never be allowed to obtain a legal visa can and will use the refugee system.
thefrollickingmole, what were you doing at Port Hedland, and what were/are you qualifications for pontificating on any of this?
I meant, sorry if I wasn’t clear, what was your role as an employee and which companies did you work for?
Another question, if I may. Did you or any of your fellow officers ever have any doubt that the very nature and purpose of the institutions or centres in which you were working were at all problematic or objectionable? Or, perhaps, that their set-up was in any way flawed, dangerous or counter-productive?
If not, why not? If yes, then for what reasons?
I’d be really interested to hear your views on this, thefrollickingmole.
Posey
I was a detention officer for about 4 years through most of the crap. My employer for the majority of that time was ACM, easily the worst run company in Australia.I was at times, activities officer, shift supervisor, escorting officer (for deportations) as well as having attended numerous pickups of new boatloads. I takre great pride in the fact in 4 years I used a baton exactly once, and never struck a detainee and was mentioned in Hansard for probably saving a detainees life, being injured in the process.
Most deatinees were happy to be in Australia, and were prepared to wait the (usualy, although this was at peak times), 4-6 months it took if they were accepted first go.
Detainees needed more reassurance-support if they were unsuccessful and had to wait the (usualy) 1 year it took for the automatic review, which saw many more released.
It was the people who were unsuccessful who were the biggest challenge to manage.
Things which could have been improved?
Many, many many, things. Some of the biggies
Leaving known troublemakers and violent thugs in with normal people.
Boredom and way tolittle resources for both education and recreation.
Limited communications for detainees who were past first interview stage. (Telstra refused to upgrade where Port Hedland IRPCs phones joined in, so only 3 public phones for up to 900 people).
Worst of all, allowing prison officers to be seconded to detention facilities. Many of them were incompitent and believed their job was to somehow punish detainees. Woomers was largely staffed by these as was Curtain, 2 places where problems broke out first.
Useless management, we had 13 managers/deputy managers in my last 2 years there.
Giving things to shitheads in an effort to broibe them to behave. This led to decent detainees literaly saying to me “well Ill go and break a window and management will give it to me then”, all I could do was agree.
One of the biggest misconceptions outsiders have of detention is that detainees and staff hated/didnt communicate with each other. This is (majority) completely incorrect. I hated the Taliban before 9/11 based on the stories of hazara boys.
I cant emphasize enough the foolishness of leaving rejected applicants in with new arrivals, and the extroadinary difficulty in removing people found not to be refugees.
Massive understaffing as a cost saving tool by ACM.
I dont want to tie up this post any more with detention issues as I think Ive monopolised it a bit to much already.
If you want to drop in on my blog and ask questions Ill be happy to reply, unless SL wishes me to continue.
Thanks, thefrollickingmole.
How did you distinguish between “known troublemakers and violent thugs … {and} normal people.” in the centres? I mean, what made some troublemakers and violent thugs, do you think?
frollickingmole, your comments are some of the most insightful I’ve read on this topic, and make much of the posturing by people on all sides look like just that — posturing. If I’d come upon this thread earlier, I’d have asked you for a guest post… unfortunately, I’m neck deep in thesis and OULJ, which has diverted my attention somewhat.
Their actions. Gravitation towards other known troublemakers, and partcipation in violent events.
Funnily enough most troublemakers made themselves known within the first few weeks , usualy by assaulting other detainees or smashing items. It was rare for a troublemaker not to have “outed” themselves before they reached the compound.
We had a number of people who swung in and out of trouble, it may suprise you to know it was rare to hold a grudge against a stressed detainee who had a “one off” or occasional smash up/fight. I took a prolonged period of bad behaviour to earn a troublemaker tag. Some of the worst incidents were ethnic/religous in origon with the Mandaleans copping the brunt of it.
I acstually left my job dur to some serious death threats which included assaults, weaponry displays and constant harrassment by a group of 4 well known thugs at PH. They had previously harrassed a lesbian couple out of the centre and drove another officer to the point they came withing seconds of him slitting their throats. (it was only an interruption by another officer that prevented it, were talking standing on the threshold of their room with a knife in his hand).
Ok, that sounds terrible for you and everyone. I acknowledge that.
But my point was were you ever given any background information or data on these people which might have gone some way towards explaining to officers such as yourself why they acted so aggressively?
Almost never, we had detainees transferred to us from prison (usualy causght in the community then slated for deportation later) where we had absolutely no idea what they had been imprisoned for. Often the same with inter centre transfers.
I know you wish to blame their home country for their behaviour, but if i can point out a few ethnic differences we had at PH.
Afghani: extremely seldom a problem unless they were Pashtuns.
Packistan: Extremely rare not to have problems, not large numbers so maybe we only got a samplre of bad boys.
Iran: Generaly good, some noteable standouts.
Iraq, again generaly good.
African/various, generaly good.
Palestinian, far and away the worst group, all from various secondary countries, same attitude. Probably the only group id singlr out as nearly always troublemakers.
The training we recieved on the nationalities was a ring binder with about 3 pages on each nationality, 90% of whom we never saw.
You should take up skepticlawyer’s offer, thefrollickingmole, and write a guest post for this blog on your experiences and conclusions about this whole episode in Australian history.
And, for the record, I would be the last person to dismiss eyewitness reports and accounts of the lived experiences of workers in any workplace and your comments and observations are invaluable.
I might take SL up onr the offer, just not yet, need a couple of quiet days to sort it out.
Would you believe I contacted the ABC on this topic a couple of times offering written reports, access to other officers who would also speak out and never heard back?
Must be no public interest eh? Either that or (in my opinion) the ABC wasnt interested in shades of grey, but wanted only to discredit the last government.
Apologies for the typos, trying to look like Im working with the boss around
Yes, I think a guest post would be an awesome idea. Thank you for sharing your insight with us, frollickingmole.
Re your comment at 65 – in a sense, it was the system and the management which created the situation which led to your colleague assaulting a detainee – you said he was not by nature a bad person. But ordinary people can snap when put in bad situations. They would have been better off putting resources into preventing the problem arising in the first place.
@Frollickingmole:
I’m reminded of the question asked of Hannah in “The Reader:” Why did you take the job? I can see you are offended at Einfeld’s accusations against guards in camps which were generalized and (if you choose the most extreme actions, not simply of guards, but Einsatzgruppen), but quite frankly my sympathy for your offended dignity is mitigated by the fact that you volunteered at a time of peace, prosperity and high employment to assist in in the detention of people who were convicted of no crime, were detained possibly indefinitely and arguably in breach of Australia’s international obligations in a harsh environment. I don’t think you can even say you were only following orders.
The other question which interests me is why is it that the “troublemakers” in your view coincide with the nationalities/ethnicities most likely to be sent back (or, in the case of Palestinians, possibly incarcerated in Australia for life)?
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[...] [Note by LE: We invited thefrollickingmole, a contributor at The Tizona Group, to write a post for us about his experiences as a officer at a detention centre after the discussion he initiated on the Marcus Einfeld thread.] [...]