The Centre for Ethics Newsletter Term 4 2013

The Centre for Ethics

Newsletter Volume 71 - Term 4, 2013

Fundamental questions of justice Over the past couple of years, The Centre for Ethics has hosted three significant events where fundamental questions of justice have been examined. In 2010, Walkely Awardwinning investigative journalist Colleen Egan spoke about her book Murderer No More: Andrew Mallard and the epic fight that proved his innocence.

This struggle for justice received enormous publicity and was featured on the ABC’s Australian Story.

Bret Christian of Post Newspapers Closer to home, and very closely related to the cases discussed by Colleen Egan and Malcolm McCusker, are those examined by Bret Christian in his new book Presumed Guilty: When cops get it wrong and courts seal the deal. We are delighted that the Perth launch of the book will take place in the school chapel as part of the Centre for Ethics programme.

As readers no doubt know, Bret Christian is a founder and the editor of Post Newspapers. The Post is essential reading for those wanting to know what’s going on in the suburban community within which our school is placed. Christ Church students, staff and parents regularly appear in the paper.

Miscarriage of justice

Every parent’s nightmare

In 2011, Malcolm McCusker spoke to a packed chapel about “Miscarriage of justice”. Mr McCusker discussed cases where there have been wrong verdicts. He outlined the impact on those involved, not just the convicted person but those surrounding him or her. He also discussed the difficulties people face in having a wrongful verdict overturned and the compensation for those who have been wrongfully imprisoned.

Mr McCusker talked about the importance of paying more than lip service to the principle underlying our criminal law: the presumption of innocence.

Earlier this year, Australian Story producer Belinda Hawkins, Tom Percy QC and Simon Palfreeman were here to discuss the issues associated with Belinda’s book Every Parent’s Nightmare: Jock Palfreeman and the true story of his father’s fight to save him from a lifetime in a Bulgarian jail.

In 2009, young Australian traveller Jock Palfreeman was found guilty of the murder of Andrei Monov, the only son of two people well connected in the Sofia legal fraternity. He claims he went to the defence of gypsies being attacked by Monov and a bunch of soccer hooligans. The Bulgarians claim it was an act of cold-blooded murder. As Belinda Hawkins shows in her book, the case that followed Jock Palfreeman’s arrest was one where vital evidence was kept out of court and crucial witnesses never called.

More gruelling than labyrinthine town-planning brawls The Post was established in 1977. As it grew in circulation, so too the issues it covered became more complex. There were some terrible crimes committed in this area and murderers were made to account. As Bret Christian says in his introduction: “Local crime turned into a challenge even more gruelling than labyrinthine town-planning brawls.

Our paper’s catchment happened to overlay the hunting grounds of three serial killers, the first being one of Australia’s most notorious.” The local community, indeed Perth itself, was traumatised.

Darryl Beamish

Not police bashing

Alison Fan: who better?

Bret Christian begins this disconcerting book with the tragic story of Jillian Brewer who was murdered in Cottesloe in 1959. He goes on to outline the inconceivably wrong arrest and conviction of a young deaf man, Darryl Beamish. Charting in extraordinary detail the procedural errors, inflated egos and often deliberate obfuscation of truth that took place in the Beamish conviction, Christian reveals the startling array of pitfalls that continue to threaten the execution of proper justice in our society. Readers will become aware of badly interpreted forensics, biased testimony, mismatched and botched statements of fact, and downright dirty tactics. All at once horrific, mindblowing and puzzling, the stories Christian has unearthed might well be fiction but, tragically, are all true.

The book is not an exercise in police bashing. But as Bret Christian started to pick apart the investigation into the murder of Jillian Brewer he was shocked at the behaviour of some investigators. “What I learned about the work of certain devious detectives shocked me to the core. Almost impossible to reconcile with this new knowledge was the high regard I held for the many police officers I encountered as a newspaper reporter and on the streets. Most cops I met were dedicated, hardworking, mostly smart, compassionate and justifiably proud of their work. They dealt daily with the crims on our behalf.”

The evening with Bret Christian will take the form of an interview. Who better to pose the questions than Perth journalist Alison Fan? When it comes to this topic Alison has seen it all. As a reporter, presenter, columnist and producer in both the electronic and print media, Alison has covered just about every major court trial in western Australia over the past several decades. This includes the WA Inc Royal Commission. She has been tear gassed in California and shot at in riots in San Francisco so we are confident that Alison is well and truly up to the task of interviewing Bret Christian about his fascinating new book.

Juries: the worst way

Lindy Chamberlain

For Bret Christian, one of the most urgent tasks in bringing about reformation of the justice system is that of abolishing juries and what he calls the legendary and much prized notion of a “copper’s instinct”. As he writes, “Sadly, science and hindsight have shown that copper’s instinct is no more than cognitive conceit wrapped in blue.” As for juries, “that sacred bulwark against injustice is also very vulnerable as it turns out.

Despite the quaint instruction by judges to ‘hearken to the evidence’, science has now proven that lurking in every juror is a dangerous potential for prejudice…not just for or against the accused person, but also for the evidence of police, civilian and expert witnesses and even the personalities of the lawyers at the bar table.

Alarmingly, the consensus method employed behind the locked doors of jury rooms has now been scientifically proven to be the worst of ways to reach a good verdict.”

Bret Christian’s final remarks in this book are cautionary even as he recognises that some progress has been made. He recalls Lindy Chamberlain “convicted because of junk science and the knowledge illusion. Now that we know about it, we have no excuse for repeating these errors; but we do daily, and a continuum of devastating justice errors proves it.” He revisits his call for police to avoid the dangers that are behind false impressions, the knowledge of illusion and other traps of our intuition. “Thirty years of insight provided by cognitive science cannot be forever ignored. We cannot go on believing that we know if someone is telling the truth just by looking at them, and then allow wrecked individuals and society to live with the dire consequences.”

Heartbreaking story Clearly, the Darryl Beamish story touched something very deep within Bret Christian. As a journalist, he has covered many tragic cases but “The heartbreaking story of Darryl Beamish was the grandfather of them all…a case I discovered contained almost every element of what can, and does, go wrong with police investigations and the court hearings that follow.

Darryl, born profoundly deaf, was adroitly framed for a murder he did not commit, then sentenced to hang.”

Brian Martin The epigraph for Presumed Guilty comes from Justice Brian Martin QC who said on the 1st of November 2012: “The criminal law is replete with miscarriage of justice caused in cases reliant on circumstantial evidence, particularly when the heart of the case rests on interpretation of forensic evidence.”

Trial by Google Another matter of deep concern for Christian is what he calls “trial by Google”. No doubt he will elaborate on this subject during the launch of Presumed Guilty.

Tom Percy QC The warm up act for this evening is Tom Percy and his band, Gang of Three.

Frank Sheehan School Chaplain Director of the Centre for Ethics

Bret Christian Bret Christian has been a newsman all his working life, beginning his career on The Daily News (Perth), and working in Melbourne and Sydney before returning to Perth to start his own suburban Post Newspapers group at the age of twenty-eight.

Writing about murder in the western suburbs of Perth fuelled his interest in this mysterious human act of evil. His search for answers led him to unearth many extraordinary injustices, some of which he helped put right. Bret has been a commentator on numerous episodes of the ABC television

documentary programme Australian Story where injustices in his home town have featured. He lives by the sea at Cottesloe with his partner, Jane, where they have raised six children and more pets than he can count. He is still a reporter.

The Centre for Ethics is delighted to host the launch of Bret Christian’s book Presumed Guilty with Alison Fan interviewing Bret on Friday 18 October at 7.00pm in the School Chapel. All are welcome and bookings are not required.

Compassion Compassion is an international Christian child development and child advocacy ministry committed to working in partnership with local churches around the world to foster the spiritual, economic, social, physical and emotional development of children living in extreme poverty in over 26 developing countries.

These local congregations can best

identify the specific needs of children in their community and are able to contextualise our programs to drive change in their own community.

This ministry was born during the Korean War, when American evangelist Rev. Everett Swanson’s heart was broken by the destitution of Korean children orphaned by the

war. As Swanson walked through the streets of Seoul, he watched as piles of rags were loaded onto a garbage truck, then realised that they were the bodies of homeless children who had died overnight from exposure amid the rubble of war.

12 Gardens Neil and Jenny Delmage are the creative team behind awardwinning Western Australian company Naturescape Creative Landscaping, and this book showcases their beautiful work.

The pair’s passion for creating water-wise gardens is obvious here, as is their approach to gardening from a sustainable and ecological perspective.

They deem soil preparation and watering infrastructure such as drip irrigation as their most important considerations, and many years of experience has provided them with an extensive list of plants that thrive

in low water Western Australian gardens without compromising on style.

In Australia’s dry climate, how do you create and maintain a beautiful yet waterwise garden?

Neil and Jenny have been setting the standard in garden design for more than twenty years, creating sustainable, biodiverse and waterwise gardens. Their innovative ideas and tried-and-tested methods produce stunning gardens that fit the natural environment. Vivid photos and beautiful layout combine with useful tips and

in‑depth advice in this book, to satisfy both the hands-on gardener and the armchair gardener.

Tim Winton Winton draws his prime inspiration from landscape and place, mostly coastal Western Australia. He says “The place comes first. If the place isn’t interesting to me then I can’t feel it. I can’t feel any people in it.

I can’t feel what the people are on about or likely to get up to.” His themes often centre on an issue which is described by the character Gail in The Turning when she says that “every vivid experience comes from your adolescence”.

Winton was born in Perth in 1960 and is the author of 13 books – novels, short stories, non-fiction and books for children.

Winton has been named a Living Treasure by the National Trust and awarded the Centenary Medal for service to literature and the community. He is patron of the Tim Winton Award for Young Writers sponsored by the City of Subiaco in Western Australia.

He has lived in Italy, France, Ireland and Greece but currently lives in Fremantle with his wife and three children.

When he was at Curtin University of Technology Winton wrote his first novel, An Open Swimmer, which won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 1981. He has stated that he wrote “the best part of three books while at university”. His second book, Shallows, won the Miles Franklin Award in 1984. It wasn’t until Cloudstreet was published in 1991, that his writing

career was established. Breath, was published in 2008.

In 1995, Winton’s The Riders was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, as later was his 2002 book, Dirt Music. Both are currently being adapted for film. He has won many other prizes, including the Miles Franklin Award a record four times: for Shallows (1984), Cloudstreet (1992), Dirt Music (2002) and Breath (2009).

Cloudstreet is arguably his best-known work, regularly appearing in lists of Australia’s best-loved novels.

He is now one of Australia’s most esteemed novelists. All his books are still in print and have been published in eighteen different languages.

His work has also been successfully adapted for stage, screen and radio.

On the publication of his novel, Dirt Music, he collaborated with broadcaster, Lucky Oceans, to produce a compilation CD, Dirt Music – Music for a Novel.

Winton is actively involved in the Australian environmental movement. He is a patron of the Australian Marine Conservation Society and is passionately involved in many of their campaigns, notably their work in raising awareness about sustainable seafood consumption. He is a patron of the Stop the Toad Foundation and contributed to the whaling debate with an article on the Last Whale website.He is also a prominent advocate of the Save Moreton Bay organisation, the Environment Defender’s Office, the Australian Wildlife Conservancy and the Marine Conservation Society, with which he is campaigning against shark finning.

In 2003, Winton was awarded the inaugural Australian Society of Authors Medal in recognition for his work in the campaign to save the Ningaloo Reef.

Winton keeps away from the public eye, unless promoting a new book or supporting an environmental issue. He told reviewer Jason Steger “Occasionally they wheel me out for green advocacy stuff but that’s the only kind of stuff I put my head up for”.

Photo: POST Newspapers

Kids learn there’s more to life than a tip A Kenyan rubbish tip was a confronting side trip for members of a visiting Australian party led by led by Tonya McCusker, wife of WA governor Malcolm McCusker.

One of the visitors was Akram Azimi, a University of WA student, Young Australian of the Year and ambassador for the So They Can charity.

Akram wrote of his shock on encountering starving children: “During my trip to Kenya and Tanzania, I visited a rancid rubbish dump.

“Unlike our landfills here, this decaying place housed many families.

I talked to them, heard their stories.

What they said broke my heart.

“Children here sniff glue from a very young age – not to feel good but to suppress the gnawing pangs of hunger.

“Indeed, when they are brought in from the dump and placed in the orphanage they cry out for glue, not food, because they are not used to the thought of food satisfying their hunger.

“From what I saw, there was no dignity that came with living in extreme poverty’.”

“For those living in extreme poverty in Kenya and Tanzania, only a single pleading look was etched on their gaunt faces: ‘Please, get me out of here’.”

On the trip were Michael Sheldrick, also a UWA student and Young Western Australian of the Year, and Christ Church student James McCusker (13) Tonya’s son.

Michael said that as the group travelled through Kenya and Tanzania with So They Can, an educational organization chaired by Australian investment banker and philanthropist Peter Hunt, it sensed a spirit of optimism and dynamism.

Thanks to the collaboration between So They Can and the local community, children who once lived on the rancid rubbish dump now have safe shelter, nutritious food, a quality education and hope for a better life.

“Australia, as a generous and wealthy nation, can and should do its part to

remedy this injustice,” Michael said.

“Our aid can ensure these kids get an education so they can live up to their full potential and so they can lead lives worthy of inherent human dignity.”

Akram added: “In the midst of all this bleakness, I also saw part of the solution.

“I visited schools that gave these kids a quality education. These schools offered these kids a chance – a chance to break the cycle of extreme poverty once and for all and lead lives worthy of inherent dignity as a human being.

“In countries like these, where there are so few doors of opportunity, the phrase ‘a quality education is the key to life’ takes on a grand significance.

“Education is not a preparation for life – it is life itself.”

Courtesy of POST Newspapers.

The Centre For Ethics

Calendar Date Friday 18 October

Event and topic Book launch Presumed Guilty

Speaker Bret Christian Alison Fan Tom Percy QC

Time

Location

7.00pm

Chapel

Tuesday 29 October

Eyrie Tim Winton’s new novel

Tim Winton

6.30pm for 7.00pm

Chapel Tickets: Lane Bookshop 9384 4423

Thursday 31 October

So they Can

James Tonnison

9.00am

Chapel

Friday 1 November

EcoCare Climate Justice

Anglican Board of Mission

Morning

Classrooms

Tuesday 5 November

Ethics Book Club

Frank Sheehan

7.30pm

RSVP 9442 1705

Thursday 14 November

Compassion child development and advocacy ministry

Frank Sheehan

9.00am

Chapel

Tuesday 19 November

Leadership

Greg Mitchell

Morning

Classrooms

Wednesday 20 November

12 Gardens

Neil and Jenny Delmage

7.30pm

RSVP 9442 1705

Wednesday 4 December

Advent service

Carol service

7.00pm to 9.00pm Chapel

Tuesday 24 December

Nativity play

10.00am to 11.00am

Tuesday 24 December

Christmas Eve service

8.00pm to 9.00pm Chapel

Chapel

Please contact Teresa Scott on 9442 1705 beforehand, in case there is a change in the programme.

A map of Christ Church Grammar School is available on our website www.ccgs.wa.edu.au/about-us/our-location/campus-map