When REAL law is administered by a REAL court:
Judge rejects Prior appeal, tells lawyers to end QUT case now
Cindy Prior, right, at the Federal Court in Brisbane. Picture Glenn Hunt
- The Australian
- 12:00AM March 4, 2017
- Save
- HEDLEY THOMAS
National Chief Correspondent
Brisbane
A senior Federal Court judge who yesterday ended Cindy Prior’s last-ditch bid to restart her 18C case criticised the Human Rights Commission, a solicitor and a university for not telling students they were embroiled in a long-running racial hatred complaint.
Judge John Dowsett also demanded that the lawyers involved in the case stop litigation that subjected the young men to unnecessary stress.
He said in Brisbane that lawyers for Ms Prior and for the former students must use their knowledge, experience and skills “to bring these legal proceedings to an end”.
Justice Dowsett handed down a 56-page judgment which comprehensively rejected Ms Prior’s attempt to run an appeal against a lower court’s summary dismissal last November of her bid to sue the students for $250,000 over Facebook posts. The judge said the “young people have suffered more from legal proceedings than any other young person would have suffered in a lifetime”.
Justice Dowsett ordered Ms Prior pay their legal costs and said he was “very serious about it — this matter has to be brought to an end. It is a great pity that it has not been brought to an end before now”.
Alex Wood, Calum Thwaites and Jackson Powell were sued by Ms Prior under section 18C for Facebook posts that were put up in May 2013. Three other students each paid $5000 to Ms Prior after her solicitor, Susan Moriarty, said they would be spared the court proceedings if they confidentially paid.
The court heard that the office of federal Attorney-General George Brandis had recently contributed $4500 towards Mr Wood’s costs. Mr Wood’s solicitor, Damien Bourke, said later that the sum was provided after he made a formal request under a provision covered by legislation.
Ms Prior ejected Mr Wood and other students from an indigenous-only computer lab at the Queensland University of Technology’s main Brisbane campus on May 28, 2013, prompting a Facebook post about segregation.
Justice Dowsett said Mr Wood and Mr Thwaites “only became aware of Ms Prior’s complaint in late July, 2015. Mr Powell became aware of it in late August 2015. It seems that Ms Prior’s solicitor (Susan Moriarty), QUT and the commission all knew that the (students) had not previously been notified of the proceedings in the commission”.
“To say the least, it is surprising that those parties assumed that it was appropriate to proceed in this way.”
HRC president Gillian Triggs has repeatedly rejected criticism of the failure to notify the students at any stage of the process, and refused to apologise. She told a parliamentary committee the decision not to notify the students was to “protect” them.
Justice Dowsett said Mr Powell’s posts, including one in which he wondered “where the white supremacist computer lab” was located, were irony.
He said that “to suggest that humour or irony cannot blunt the most outrageous of statements overlooks the history of such devices, and the extremes to which comedians, authors and speakers commonly use them today”.
Justice Dowsett said Mr Powell was not suggesting “that there should be a computer lab for white supremacists. Rather, he was asserting that such a proposition would be absurd. It is fair to say that he used such absurdity in order to demonstrate his opposition to the provision of separate computer facilities for indigenous students.”
Justice Dowsett found that the post by Mr Wood, who was ejected by Ms Prior and posted soon after on Facebook that the indigenous-only lab was “segregation”, was not racist.
Ms Prior’s lawyers had wanted Justice Dowsett to find that it was unlawful under section 18C to “say or do anything” which calls into question the appropriateness of special measures which advantage an ethnic or racial minority.
The decision yesterday and costs order, in addition to cost orders from the earlier proceedings, mean the total bill facing Ms Prior, who went on stress leave and did not return to her QUT job, will be more than $200,000. She faces bankruptcy unless the money can be raised.
After reading the judgment, Mr Wood, who was forced to seek public help to raise funds for his legal bill, said: “Bloody brilliant.”
Mr Thwaites said he was glad the case appeared to be finally over. Ms Prior did not attend the court.
A lawyer for two of the students, Tony Morris QC, had earlier described the legal arguments advanced by Ms Prior’s lawyers as “wrong in all their glorious absurdity and monstrosity”.
