“It is now, as it always has been, so easy for the powerful to deceive with false weights.” Legal columnist HUGH SELBY returns to the vexing question of justice for one woman and the cowardice of those looking the other way. 

I admire the traditional scales of justice for the fine metal work and the collection of carefully calibrated, varying metal weights placed on one side to determine the true weight of the material on the other side.

I admire, too, the blindfolded woman who holds those scales: she embodies independence, trust in the accuracy of the weights, and a lack of corruption.

But it is now, as it always has been, so easy for the powerful to deceive with false weights.

These people will get away with it when those supposed to check are incompetent, lazy, gutless, compromised, or see their ambitions better rewarded by looking the other way.

An example, about which I have written before, is the saga of incompetence, deceit and cover up in the rotten apple isle. 

There, injustice and a questionable justice system endure because of ambition, a need to cover up lest there be hell to pay, favours owed and favours wanted. 

On the afternoon of Australia Day 2009 Bob was alone, repairing the yacht he purchased with his partner Sue (who had gone ashore), for a long, overseas voyage.

The yacht looked empty and it was boarded by two or more teenagers who arrived on a dinghy that one of them – known to police – could get at any time. That dinghy was seen by several observers.

They were there for petty thievery, such as the alcohol to be found on moored yachts that sit empty and silent most of the time.

We don’t know what happened between Bob and the teenagers, but he’s never been seen since. We do know that whatever happened, the young girl left a large amount of her DNA on the metal deck. The young man with access to the dinghy had sufficient familiarity with boats to know how to scuttle them.

He used that skill, and then the two or more left the sinking yacht (which was found barely floating the following day), and returned to shore in his dinghy.

This is a simple, straightforward, reasonable explanation for the tragedy on that yacht. It may be a murder case. It may be a tragic accident.

The credibility of a yacht break-in-gone-wrong explanation is now much stronger because of recent developments in the forensic science of DNA. 

We now know that DNA was likely left, by her, on Australia Day, not any other day.

On the scales of justice this explanation, which exonerates Sue Neill-Fraser, sits comfortably on one side.

Looking at the weights used to convict her, we now know that the exoneration explanation is stronger and more credible than the police and Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions’ speculation that someone else picked up the girl’s DNA and left it on the deck either on Australia Day or several days later. They offer another vacuous alternative, also devoid of evidence, that the girl left it several days later.

Making the teenage “break-in” explanation even more credible is the lengths to which the police and the ODPP have gone, and are still going, to hide the failures to properly investigate the teenagers likely to have been involved, and to refuse to release the results of their interstate and overseas inquiries seeking support for their flawed explanation of how and when that girl’s DNA was left on the deck.

It’s obvious that if they had support for their speculations then they would have triumphantly released it. Nothing.

When the weights used to convict her are found to be false then the scales tip decisively in Neill-Fraser’s favour.

So, why is it that the now paroled Sue is prohibited, as a condition of her parole, from commenting upon her case? This is a deliberate abuse of power. Who suggested it and why?

Why is it that the Tasmanian premier, the attorney-general, the minister for police, all of them fully informed in writing of all the detail of this blot upon their state’s justice system, choose silence?

Why is it that the opposition too pretends not to read, not to hear, not to look?

Why is it that the police, their forensic service, the ODPP are all immune from accountability for substituting speculation for evidence, false forensic science, false equipment reconstruction, and the deliberate, repeated and continuing failure to comply with their duty of disclosure to the court?

Why is it that even the court that has been deceived is silent?

Perhaps all those who do nothing have been deceived by the police and ODPP measures of justice, so that they see as shiny and accurate that which is a fraud upon the public? Surely not. Any high school educated person can read the papers tabled in the parliament that expose the plot.

It follows that they know, but don’t care. Shameless and gutless. The very core is rotten.

Hugh Selby, a former barrister, is the CityNews legal columnist. 

Why I believe Tasmania’s DPP needs to resign

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