“In Tasmania the game of ‘cover up’ is played with more intensity than in Canberra – publishers get phone calls threatening ruinous defamation proceedings unless articles are taken down and journalists get fed error-ridden press releases,” writes legal columnist HUGH SELBY.

Imagine that you run a business. You receive a report that lays out how some of your trusted staff have been working together for years to rip off customers.

It shows how a customer was set up, falsely accused, reputation destroyed – all of that by your trusted staff.

You have always believed that that customer was guilty.

Now the facts laid out before you demonstrate that those trusted stuff were intent on hiding their mistakes.

Do you want to know which is right: that the customer was, or was not, falsely accused, that your trusted staff deserve that trust?

What should you do?

Do you put the report, unread, in the bin?

If you do that, would others be right in thinking that you are unfit to lead, that you are a coward?

Or, do you read the report, check it out, so that you can make the right decisions for your business – its growth, its reputation, and its customers?

We all know the right answer, the answer we are entitled to expect from those we elect and pay to serve our interests.

It’s easier to do nothing

Which makes it so sad that both Liberals and Labor in Tasmania pretend that there’s nothing to see, nothing to do about years of incompetence and lies by “trusted” officials.

Only some independent members in both State Houses, along with federal members Jacqui Lambie and Andrew Wilkie, have had the guts these past few years to keep asking questions.

Not that their efforts have been fruitful. No matter what is uncovered nothing happens.

In that respect it mirrors how megadebtor Barr and his team respond to every issue: ignore it, deny it if that proves necessary, bury it in inertia, let the news cycle move on.

It’s a strategy that works. Think about the red tram costs, elective surgery waiting lists, underpaid school teachers, planning decisions that benefit only developers, prison malpractice (both adult and youth), year by year budget mismanagement – all of these exposed time and time again, all ignored with impunity.

This week the Greens have decided that it’s not good for them to be too close to Andrew: there is, at last, hope.

In Tasmania the game of “cover up” is played with more intensity than here in Canberra. 

Publishers get phone calls threatening ruinous defamation proceedings unless articles are taken down. 

Journalists get fed error-ridden press releases.

Influence is used to ensure that Auntie doesn’t cover embarrassing news: a scheduled interview is cancelled moments before it is due to go to air.

The Parole Board imposes a gag that prohibits claims of innocence. Who put them up to it?

All of that to keep the lid on the farce that is the wrongful conviction of Sue Neill-Fraser for the murder of her partner on their yacht on Australia Day 2009.

What the evidence now shows

Here’s the real position about her case, the reality that the major parties, the police, the prosecutions office and the Parole Board are determined to keep from the public, both in Tasmania and elsewhere:

1. The new science puts Ms Meaghan Vass on the yacht. Ms Vass’s recanting of her admission no longer matters.
2. There is no evidence that Neill-Fraser was on the yacht when her partner disappeared.
3. There is strong evidence that known others were with Ms Vass: they went aboard to steal.
4. All the courts in this saga have been conned by: rubbish science; false equipment reconstruction; prosecution/police failure to disclose the changing DNA science; police investigative shortcomings; and, mere speculation about DNA deposits being presented as reliable prosecution evidence. 
5. The police have used every possible excuse these past few years to refuse to release relevant documents about DNA issues and failure to follow up obvious lines of inquiry. What are they hiding? We can assume that it helps Neill-Fraser.
6. The new science plus the non-disclosure shows Neill-Fraser’s conviction to be unsafe. She deserves an acquittal.
7. Those on the yacht with Ms Vass may have committed murder, or it might have been an accident. It’s time the police and the prosecutors did their job.
8. Why haven’t they done it? Because the embarrassment to the police and the prosecutors is much more than that of the Parole Board this week over its AI-generated submissions to keep Neill-Fraser quiet.

For all the disgraceful detail is here. 

You should ask: “If I or someone I care about is falsely accused and convicted in Tasmania, what will the major party politicians, police, prosecutors and parole people do about it?”

The answer is that they will go out to lunch at taxpayer expense.

Maybe, but faintly, after the recent AI screw up at the Parole Board, the attorney-general will appoint an independent senior barrister to go to the Supreme Court and help Sue Neill-Fraser to make a fresh appeal to clear her name.

But it won’t happen unless the Tasmanian State Government is forced by public pressure to do the right thing.

Don’t hold your breath.

Former barrister Hugh Selby is the CityNews legal affairs columnist.

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