“Surely you are appaled at these reports of misconduct and corruption, spanning the entire life of these unauthorised proceedings by your corrupt legal regulator and a tribunal where its “masters” consistently (as Greg Garde damningly did on 5 October 2012) say that they can do what they like to … citizens … without having to consider the scope of their letigimate powers and authorities and processes (effectively making themselves Star Chambers of unlimited powers) because basic issues such as the scope of their powers to do things are for appeal courts to decide after VCAT has “finished” with its victims and not before VCAT it starts to do things in purported performance of its defined public duties and (any) defined public powers.
This is not government “for the peace, welfare and good government” of the people by bureaucrats acting according to law and according to lawful delegations as agents for an elected representative Parliament. This is self-appointed tyranny by privileged men from privileged families. This is self-appointed tyranny by men who belong inside prison cells, not in positions where they can put men in prison cells …
Clearly you as Attorney General, and the entire Parliament, must act on this information in Mr Schorel-Hlavka’s memorandum (and hundreds of other such reports that are begging for audience for far too long). Clearly you cannot afford to “trust” any of your existing bureaucrats who are tainted by years of inaction. Clearly this is something that your oaths of office and profession and your personal sense of honor and dignity commands you to initiate and see to proper conclusions.”
James Johnson
B.Ec (Hons). LLB. Mem CLA. Mem MEAA. Journalist. Whistleblower. Independent Documentary Maker
Mail: PO Box 6137 Point Cook Victoria Australia 3030 Mob: +61 (0)401 865 914
“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Truth is a weapon, to be picked up and used against injustice.” – James Johnson
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29 January 2013
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URGENT – PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL FOR VCAT HEARING 2:00 PM TOMORROW
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The Hon Robert Clark MLA for Box Hill Attorney-General for Victoria 24 Rutland Road, Box Hill Victoria Australia Dear Mr Clark |
BY FACSIMILE: 03 9890 7180 | 03 8684 1100 (Email: robert.clark@parliament.vic.gov.au Telephone: 03 9890 6606 | 03 8684 1101) (4 + 22 = 26 pages) |
All the Attorney-General’s Men – VCAT Political Crime Spree (Show Trial J134/2011)
I thank you once again for accepting this commission to represent me before your own bureaucrats at VCAT at 2 pm tomorrow.
I attach for your information copies of media releases of 28 January (3 pages) and 29 January (1 page) as authorised by me and issued by FRIENDS OF JAMES JOHNSON.
I am sure you will be very disturbed by the content information. But that information, which you can so easily verify from the source (Court transcripts) will readily verify my veracity and the monstrous nature of these criminal misuses of (non-existent) powers by your LSC and VCAT staff.
I also attach a damning 18 page whistleblowing statement of past and present witch hunting vendettas by the criminal minds of these same government agencies against the leader of the non-lawyer defence team that spoke up for me at the VCAT hearings in August, September and October 2012 – the angel advocate, “village elders” who dared to stand up for me where no qualified legal practitioner dared to tread (for fear of being put on the point of the pitch forks just like I, and now Mr Schorel-Hlavka again, have been).
I ask that you see that the protected disclosure provisions of the Whistleblowers Protection Act are invoked and extended to Mr Schorel-Hlavka, just as they should all along have been extended to me.
Surely you are appaled at these reports of misconduct and corruption, spanning the entire life of these unauthorised proceedings by your corrupt legal regulator and a tribunal where its “masters” consistently (as Greg Garde damningly did on 5 October 2012) say that they can do what they like to government admnistrators let alone citizens, alike without having to consider the scope of their letigimate powers and authorities and processes (effectively making themselves Star Chambers of unlimited powers) because basic issues such as the scope of their powers to do things are for appeal courts to decide after VCAT has “finished” with its victims and not before VCAT it starts to do things in purported performance of its defined public duties and (any) defined public powers. This is not government “for the peace, welfare and good government” of the people by bureaucrats acting according to law and according to lawful delegations as agents for an elected representative Parliament. This is self-appointed tyranny by privileged men from privileged families. This is self-appointed tyranny by men who belong inside prison cells, not in positions where they can put men in prison cells.
Clearly you as Attorney General, and the entire Parliament, must act on this information in Mr Schorel-Hlavka’s memorandum (and hundreds of other such reports that are begging for audience for far too long). Clearly you cannot afford to “trust” any of your existing bureaucrats who are tainted by years of inaction. Clearly this is something that your oaths of office and profession and your personal sense of honor and dignity commands you to initiate and see to proper conclusions.
At the VCAT hearing tomorrow I ask that you:
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Request the presiding VCAT official to make the draft orders as I furnished with my correspondences to you of 20 January 2012. (These will be no surprise to your LSC or VCAT staff since the drafting remains unchanged, though fully and repeatedly ignored, since 3 October 2012.) The gist of these draft orders is to have this whole vexatious and false prosecution thrown out and costs / compensation ordered in my favour.
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Request the signed, sealed and delivered resignations of VCAT Senior Member Jonathan Smithers, immediate past Acting President John Bowman (a double resignation as both VCAT bureaucrat and County Court judiciary – an obvious Constitutional violation) and “new” VCAT President Greg Garde (another double resignation and obvious Constitutional violation).
- Ask the presiding VCAT official to respond to the points of law and morality raised by Mr Schorel-Hlavka in his attached 18 page memorandum. Clearly, any points of law that the VCAT official does not 100% agree with, clearly they are a mule-ish stubborn lot, are points on which you can either direct them, or if they resist your Ministerial directions too, both the points and those resistances are issues for a Court to decide, like all the other points of law and objections to jurisdiction before VCAT moves a muscle against me, so to speak, not after VCAT exhausts all its pitch forks.
- Ask each of those gentlemen (you can of course make arrangements to ensure that they bring themselves to the hearing) to show cause why they should not be prosecuted under sections 320 and 321 of the Crimes Act (contempt, misconduct in public office, perjury, conspiracy etc) amongst other laws – multiple counts of each, as clearly and undeniably etched in the transcripts and VCAT documents produced during the course of these witch hunting proceedings. It is truly alarming that men studied (if not educated) in the law could do such things. The public needs to be protected from them. And examples need to be made of them to ensure that none of your bureaucrats every engage in these sorts of criminal abuses, neglects and contempts of public office, ever again.
At some stage in the proceedings tomorrow, I ask that you also:
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Inquire as to the lack of apparent progress in processing the applications for full review, for re-opening and for appeal, that I filed with VCAT (and cc’d to you) by facsimile on 21, 27 and 31 December 2012 respectively; and
- Inquire as to the failure of your VCAT staff to provide proper audio CD recordings for the hearings on and after 6 July 2012 – and failure to provide any audio CD at all for the very important hearing (VCAT or Supreme Court or both or whatever) impromptu and to all intents and purposes “pretended” to occur without any notice or submission opportunity or due process or respect for the law, or for VCAT or for the Supreme Court for that matter, off the cuff on the afternoon (or so I am told) on 5 October 2012. (You might also want to ask them to justify their snap decision in late November 2012 to stop issuing audio CD’s for any VCAT hearings, requiring tribunal participants to spend thousands of dollars on typed transcripts (like in the Supreme Court, which is the opposite of the “fair efficient” “low cost” “justice” that VCAT was supposed to deliver).
I can’t imagine that your bureaucrats will play hard-ball and resist any of these directions from you as their responsible Minister. But then again, they have done some pretty freaky things to date so I imagine the ‘sky is the limit’ for these purposes.
Should your VCAT and LSC bureaucrats choose to disregard your Ministerial status over them (just as they delude that I am not a “whistleblower”) then I ask that you point out a swag of legal issues that require adjudication from a (legitimate) judicial body before VCAT can take even a millimetre of a step towards its “slam, bam, pay the government thousands of dollars” order that it intends to hit me with tomorrow (creating “anti-Dietrich / “anti-Miranda-clause” laws) on the basis that what it is empowered to do, the ambits on its power and its procedural requirements to exercise any powers (not that it has any) are not relevant to it, it can do what it likes and then it is up to me to get all the rubbish set aside by spending multiple millions (non-existent) on multiple lawyers (to fearful to engage) over multiple years on court appeals (before lawyers, solicitors, barristers and especially judges, just like them, because they are related by birth, school or other family ties and think just like they do):
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The first of these is the pretty obvious point that VCAT is not Constitutional. In theory, it is open to the Parliament / Governor in Council to create a “VAT” (a Victorian Administrative Tribunal) to administer its administrative staff. But it would have to have the right structure, conduct and performance to meet minimum Constitutional requirements for valid existence / valid legislation. VCAT fails that test on all three levels. For example, having “judicial members” of a “non-judicial body”. For example, having ouster clauses purporting to make VCAT final and conclusive on determination of facts (no full review on appeal to the courts), and a whole swag of other structural lack of natural justice concerns. Ditto the even greater avoidances of due process as a matter of conduct, and then as to performance, both conduct and performance unconstitutionalities being beyond the relevance of this correspondence. But no government agency can administer civilians. That is a “judicial” function. There can be no “C” in “VCAT”. The unconstitutional combining of “judicial” and “non-judicial” functions and staff, especially in the same beings, are additional grounds for striking out the whole “VCAT” not just the “AT”.
- There is a pretty obvious “reasonable apprehension of bias” through all of VCAT given that I am rightly demanding resignations and apologies of its 3 relevant “judicial members”, being Mr Greg Garde, Mr John Bowman and Mr Jonathan Smithers and that they be tried and sentenced “for the terms of their natural lives” for violations of State and Federal and International laws (including sections 320 and 321 of the Crimes Act (Victoria) and the Whistleblowers Protection Act – and that their lands and estates be confiscated by the state and liquidated to compensate me for the wrongs they have done me (rather than triple wronging the public first by payments of their salaries all these years, secondly by payment of compensation to me, thirdly by leaving these men at large in the community and in government to wreak even more of their own brand of crime and corruption on less educated and less articulate members of the community than I have been fortunate enough to turn out to be. I think that this, for starts, is “reasonable apprehension of bias” material (you might put it a hundred times higher than that) within the Johnson v Johnson 2000 (no relations) High Court authority on this point. Reconstitution with any existing VCAT Members, or any persons associated with them (ie any members of the legal profession exposed to potential pitch-forkery such as scared the entire legal profession (even those who profess legal ethics and adherence to “cab rank” rules) from speak up, let alone actually representing me – yourself excluded of course Mr Clark) just recreates the basis for the same kind of Johnson v Johnson apprehended bias. The Tampion v Anderson frame of reference might be a way around the impasse – but of course the really proper process is as per the previous set of 1 – 5 numbered points (viz “throwing out” this McCarthyist attack, costs / compensation ordered in my favour etc etc).
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Any suggestions that my appeal documents (any of the 3 streams) were not filed within time limits is a question of law requiring judicial determinations. On one set of customs regularly applied by your VCAT bureaucrats (so I am told), I am not even entitled to file appeal documentation at all on the guts of the wrongs asserted to have been done to me thus far by the LSC / VCAT until after the “issues on the table” for tomorrow’s hearing have been VCAT’ed (which cannot be until after they have been adjudicated in the Supreme Court).
- If this nonesense proceeds further than a “thrown out and Mr Johnson compensated” etc as per the draft orders I drew up in October and represented to you and to VCAT this month, then there will be an issue as to the composition of the judicial bench and the tribunal members will need to be addressed, whether for rehearing or reopening or for appeal. I suggest that the story in Tampion v Anderson 1973 and reported in the Victorian Law Reports is a useful frame of reference, in that non-judges were ‘deputised’ especially for the tribunal and court hearings. I say “frame of reference” because in the circumstances I suggest that all, and not just even a majority” of either / each bench should be non-lawyers of the calibre of Judge Jackson (a non-lawyer US Federal Judge) who presided over the Nuremberg trials that cleaned up the corrupt lawyer bureaucracy that operated the Nazi-German legal and political system.
- You might please clarify what the custom of your VCAT is regarding “stays” of execution of its challenged orders in unseemly circumstances where VCAT denies validity (existence) to the High Court principles in Dietrich’s case (to the effect that everything it has done towards me is nullified on account of being denied my Constitutional rights to independent legal advice funded by the state (not the vice versa funded by me absurdity they wish to create tomorrow). Presumably stays are automatic, as a matter of law, justice and common sense, and your Model Litigant Guidelines (consistently ignored by your bureaucrats through this entire witch hunt process). I say “presumably”, so as not to prejudice the (full) rehearing, the reopening and the (full) appeal to the higher level of the VCAT (5 members?) as well as out of respect to High Court made laws, such as Dietrich’s case. As I have learned nothing can be taken for granted, especially common sense, when dealing with bureaucrats with (unlawful and criminal) political agendas, like these.
- On the “you are not a whistleblower Mr Johnson” from your frightened and deluded bureaucrats, I am sorry but my public record speaks pretty loudly “yes I am”. Perhaps the term “whistleblower” is limited in your bureaucrat’s eyes to one who holds a tin whistle pursed lips rather than one who exposes corruption affecting them and / or others, and at great peril to their own welfare, life and liberty as my circumstances amply demonstrate? Perhaps you might want to ask at VCAT tomorrow to inject a little amusement into the proceedings what your bureaucrats think the words “whistleblower” mean and whether this is a question of fact or law (ignoring that what the law is, is a fact too)? Perhaps another threshhold question of law – it being unseemly that your government agency charged with ensuring all your other government agencies comply with the State’s human rights and anti-discrimination laws can engage in processes that might be (as in my situation surely are) criminal reprisals prohibited by the Whistleblowers Protection Act without getting judicial clarification before “killing the Mocking Bird” – leaving it to the dead Mocking Bird to get law and order restored via uphill prohibitive judicial proceedings of the kind that VCAT was purportedly created to replace … Perhaps as a matter of fact or law or both, they have a similar stricto literal absurdo concept of “Minister” that will not amuse any of us sensible people either.
I do of course have other issues to raise with you regarding my personal rights to legal aid so that I can wrap up and out these VCAT proceedings and bring to an end the cryogenised Victorian Supreme Court proceedings for which this VCAT stupidity is the payback reprisal. We must also discuss the future (ie abolition for the second time in 15 years, effectively) of that den of corruption running (again) by the name of the Law Institute of Victoria (Limited) and the investigation and abolition / substantial reorganisation and re-culturing of the other lawyer- government agencies in your portfolio – the actions I touched on in my letter to you of 20 January 2013. And the scope and extent and timing of the various Nuremberg-style investigations and prosecutions. These all go beyond the immediate needs and bounds of this communication.
As noted in my earlier letters this month, I look forward to assisting you, as I assisted several of your predecessors with projects of similar magnitude, helping you to get your Lawyer Ministry and law government agencies reorganised and recultured and “serving”, rather than “serving-up (to lawyers)” the people of Victoria.
Yours sincerely
Harold James Johnson
Journalist – Whistleblower – Law Reformer
Independent Federal Candidate for Lalor
Solicitor and Barrister of the High Court of Australia
(Celebrating 20 Years of Legal Practice 1990 – 2010)
Friends of James Johnson 