High Court Justice Michael Kirby, a member of the nation's most senior legal body, has pulled off a quinella of infamy with his outrageous graveside support for the disgraced Sydney lawyer John Marsden and the corrupt former Labor senator, federal attorney-general, High Court judge and ALP icon, Lionel Murphy.
In the embargoed text of the eulogy he was to deliver for Marsden yesterday, Kirby hailed him as a "an example of courage ... to homosexual people and other minorities in Australia".
"John Marsden's life will not alone change the attitudes of hate and shame," he added, before attacking those who might actually consider Marsden's life to have been less than exemplary.
ReplyDeleteHe later said he had two friends "hounded by accusations succumb to fatal cancers. One was Lionel Murphy and the other was John Marsden".
If Kirby feels Murphy, whom homosexual activist David Marr courageously pursued as editor of the National Times in 1984 and 1986, and whose corruption Murphy's ALP colleague "Diamond" Jim McClelland was later to confirm to Marr and journalist Wendy Bacon, was hounded by such accusations, he should present evidence to demonstrate that they are false.
Better, he could campaign for the revocation of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (Repeal) Act 1986, so that secret evidence about Murphy can be revealed. As it stands, the Hawke government became party to one of the biggest cover-ups in Australian history when it sealed the Murphy commission of inquiry documents for an unprecedented 30 years on his death on October 21, 1986, during the hearings.
As for Marsden, two former NSW premiers told me that they had no doubt about his corrupt practices. They both said he was an influence peddler who proclaimed to his clients that he enjoyed privileged access at the highest levels of NSW government.
One of the former premiers said that Marsden would bring clients to public occasions and leave them within view while he made small talk with senior government figures. Marsden, the former premier said, would then return to his client and claim that he had mentioned whatever problem concerned the client and say it could be fixed – for a consideration.
Kirby is no doubt unaware of such practices but he could not have been oblivious to the fact that Marsden, a self-confessed promiscuous homosexual and drug-user, boasted of his sexual conquests of young men, though he strenuously denied for the public record that they were under-age.
In a conversation with this writer however, he laughed and said he never asked to see any proof of age and questioned whether heterosexuals were concerned about the age of their sexual partners. It was plain that he didn't understand why such behaviour would be considered nauseating.
Kirby defends Marsden for his work as president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties and on the NSW Police Board, but his presence damaged both bodies.
Marsden later boasted that while on the Police Board he was tipped off at every stage of a 1995 investigation into his pedophile activities, demonstrating what an insane choice he was for the role.
He was lucky in enjoying the support of John Fahey, his former law partner (they successfully defended Backpacker murderer Ivan Milat early in his criminal career) who was later premier and federal finance minister.
He was also cheered by those on the darker, dank side of NSW Liberal politics, personified by former police minister Ted Pickering, who appointed him to the Police Board after Marsden, an admitted user of marijuana and amyl nitrate, promised he wouldn't keep marijuana at his own home while on the Police Board.
Pickering's abysmal judgement cannot be sufficiently condemned.
Marsden said that a lot of his sexual partners were clients of his "one way or the other", and that there was nothing unethical about such behaviour because "that's what the Law Society rules are".
He also admitted giving police a false name when arrested over an indecent act in a public toilet in 1967, but claimed it was due to his inner turmoil over his homosexuality.
Among those who have delivered tributes to this monstrous character are NSW Premier Morris Iemma, the Law Society and Campbelltown Mayor Russell Matheson, who will apparently nominate him for the city's new Business Hall of Fame.
Marsden managed to enmesh many people in his rotten passage through this life and now he has managed to drag a High Court Justice into the mire. Kirby's remarks show how out of touch he is with Australian society.
As a practising homosexual, Kirby would have better served the public yesterday had he addressed the UN's statistics released last week which showed that Australia's AIDS epidemic is not easing, and that this country's annual HIV diagnoses have reverted to the alarming levels of the early 1990s.
Unprotected homosexual sex was largely responsible for the rise in new infections, the report said.
Kirby should have used his status as a prominent homosexual and a member of the nation's highest court to address this issue, not for finding praise for a polluted and hugely unlamented personality such as Marsden.
akermanp@sundaytelegraph.com.au