Opinion
Even by the standards of the Canberra Bubble, this one’s a jaw-dropper: disgraced former ACT director of public prosecutions Shane Drumgold has been appointed as a lecturer at Canberra University. Even more astonishing, he’s teaching a unit on the law of evidence. Which makes about as much sense as getting Golriz Ghahraman to teach Ethics.
Just to remind BFD readers: Drumgold was forced to resign as DPP last year after damning findings of misconduct by the Sofronoff inquiry. An appeal by Drumgold resulted in a Victorian Supreme Court judge, sitting in the ACT Supreme Court, finding that seven of the eight findings against him should stand. The findings that Drumgold deliberately flouted laws of evidence was one of them.
Even some in the Canberra Bubble are shocked by the sheer scale of this nepotism.
Academics at the university have expressed astonishment that Mr Drumgold will be teaching students, particularly in an area of law which he was found by the Sofronoff inquiry to have deliberately flouted.
“Being appointed in the middle of this godforsaken mess to teach evidence law is just – wow, you can’t make it up,” one faculty member told The Australian.
“It’s funny how academia doesn’t think (the Sofronoff report) is a real thing – it’s just staggering.”
If it wasn’t so shocking, it would be almost darkly comic.
The former DPP is teaching a unit that “introduces graduate students to the law of evidence” with a particular focus on the ACT Evidence Act 2011, including pre-trial obligations, privileges and exceptions to the rules.
Among the findings of the Sofronoff inquiry were that Mr Drumgold was guilty of a serious breach of duty by failing to comply with the “golden rule” of disclosure by failing to disclose documents under the Evidence Act 2011; that he “kept the defence in the dark” about the steps he was taking to deny it the documents; and that he “constructed a false narrative to support a claim of legal professional privilege”.
Mr Drumgold was also found to have made representations to Chief Justice Lucy McCallum in the criminal case against Bruce Lehrmann that were untrue and “an invention of his own” and presented evidence in the form of an alleged “contemporaneous” file note to the Chief Justice that was false and “knowingly lied” to her about it.
It’s not as if his new employers didn’t know, either.
All of these findings were upheld on Monday by judge Stephen Kaye in response to a legal challenge by Mr Drumgold to the Sofronoff inquiry’s report that he was in breach of his duties while prosecuting allegations that Mr Lehrmann raped Brittany Higgins on a couch in Parliament House.
But that’s just the way the leftist lobster-pot works.
“He’s teaching evidence and all of this [Mr Drumgold’s admissions in the inquiry and Sofronoff findings] is on the public record,” the faculty member said, acknowledging that colleagues at the university were reluctant to make an issue of the appointment.
“You don’t speak up about this sort of thing because if you have a view that’s anywhere in the centre of politics … best of luck to you,” the staff member said.
The Australian
“You don’t speak up about this sort of thing because if you have a view that’s anywhere in the centre of politics … best of luck to you”
This only adds to the damning weight of evidence that the legal system in the nation’s capital is hopelessly corrupt. It’s not about this job for disgraced boys, but that the ACT legal establishment did nothing about a rogue prosecutor. The only reason the Sofronoff Inquiry even happened was because, in an act of astonishing hubris, Drumgold demanded it.
Neither the ACT Bar Association nor the ACT Supreme Court can hide from Drumgold’s evidence and admissions. Yet, neither the barristers’ body nor Chief Justice Lucy McCallum has taken any steps to admonish Drumgold for making false statements to a court. If continued, what message would this send to barristers and prosecutors?
[…] And what should citizens of the ACT make of any continuation of public inaction in the face of Drumgold’s admissions? But for this public inquiry, and the hard work by Sofronoff, Erin Longbottom and the legal team behind them gathering evidence, questioning witnesses and extracting admissions, Drumgold would, in all likelihood, still be chief prosecutor.
The Australian
Well, that’s Canberra for you.