Is Clare Martin just another apparently racist or opportunistic leader in one of our parliaments?

by Kevin R Beck

http://forums.delphiforums.com/pollies/messages/?msg=2219.1

About twenty two years ago an aboriginal named Tommy Neale was tried for murder and sentenced to life in Queensland. Police interviewed Mr. Neale, and speaking no English he was (euphemistically speaking) represented in the interview by a local reverend. This person signed the confession on behalf of Mr. Neale.

The lawyer representing Mr. Neale at trial was inexperienced and did not challenge the confession and nor did he argue manslaughter in the absence of premeditation or motive. Mr. Neale was in the wrong place at the wrong time (someone’s home) and was attacked. At best the situation warranted a few years in prison, not life. Life designated at twenty years and then parole.

Subsequent legal appeals ignored the matter of the representation, tainted confession and questionable trial and judicial advisory process. The Queensland government after pressure, and many years, arranged an `independent enqiry’.

The very justice who had tried Mr. Neale handled this enquiry and despite the wart on the legal profession’s nose, they found no miscarriage of justice or circumstance to warrant a new trial. Tommy Neale was incarcerated and forgotten.

An aboriginal in a white dominated politically sensitive society where law and order is always good political capital in a scared and ill lead society. The man would have been forgotten but his family lived in Alice Springs, Northern Territory. With great compassion the Queensland and Northern Territory governments agreed to transfer Mr. Neale to a facility near his family.

Tommy was duly transferred, but no one told Tommy that the Northern Territory was passing a law that mandated truth in sentencing and life meant life. No one told his lawyer and his lawyers it seemed never bothered to check. Tommy went into gaol in the NT and added another twenty years, plus to his sentence.

Clare Martin (as predicted by this scribe) won the election and to her credit moved to have the Neale matter reviewed. The white minority press, since there is no black press, fixated with crocodile killings, crime and the detritus of local politics rather than social morality and justice got on the law and order bandwagon and railed against the government.

Ms. Martin, showed when tested that she is a typical modern politician and most reprehensibly the typical Labor political leader with an eye on minority white votes and influence. She went to water. Tommy waits in gaol for her magnitude and attention. She is busy with her mini- fiefdom and her own myopic political self-interest. Tommy’s life ebbs away because of corruption of process, poor jurisprudence and jelly backed, opportunism.

Two months ago I wrote to Ms Martin, the Chief Minister, asking by what right she degraded the system of justice in Australia and degraded the Australian labor party and the nation. A swift reply that my letter had been referred to the responsible minister.

They have filed my letter treating it’s a yet another communication from an annoying, self-opinionated no body, really not worth worrying about. Now the politicians in the NT are a long way from reality and have little intelligence gathering resources and this is indicative at their surprise when they won government. So I wait till hell ices over for a reply from another inward looking and unware government. Sad that it is a labor one.

Time to take Clare and Labor electronically to the next level

Like Tommy I have lots of time to tell a story about what appears on the face to be a racist predominantly white government and the injustices and denigration of Australian justice of the case of Tommy Neale and by inference and participation, the degradation of the Australian Labor party.

Day after day the story goes onto web sites, news lists and in the international media, into company board rooms, to a thousand places with the marvel of electronics. The world of technology is wonderful and collectively its resources value and what it offers is far greater than the paltry resources, and intellectual capacity, of the spin doctors of the Chief Minister and the responsible minister who are oblivious.Their world is nothing compared to my world of spin resources

(http://users.bigpond.com/KEVINRBECK)

Simon Crean wonders how to make mark and prove himself as a leader, yet he misses every moral opportunity and takes the political conservative road, standing for not much, onward to oblivion. He could publicly demand that Ms Martin gets a spine and applies normal justice to the case of Tommy Neale, but he will not. Simon Crean simply appears unable to see the big picture opportunities. He is also locked into the political strait jacket that says a small labor politician (not in charge of a state, just a very little territory) can hold sway over the moral legitimacy of the Australian justice system and the Australian Labor Party..

Predictions I write about politics constantly and communicate to many in federal and state parliament. There is little access and communication in our governance system but we plug away grinding the axes. I write and predict things like the falsehood of the new technology economy and the likely failure of promises of things like the national electricity market. I accurately predicted, and published the Brack’s win and Kennett’s fall, three months prior to the last Victorian election, Clare Martin’s rise in the NT and the wins in South Australia, the election of three independents into the federal parliament and the fall of the Democrats.

I have documented the swing of 35%- 40% of the population to the minor parties, independents and Greens and in the coming NSW state election Carr will suffer a swing of 7% and Simon Crean will be deposed as leader of the Australian Labor party come May 2003 and:

Tommy Neale will receive a new trial and be given back his life.

Kevin R Beck

Australian Political Mosaic

http://forums.delphiforums.com/pollies

PO Box 383

Woden, ACT 2606

tel 0412 451 029

Murderer causing headaches for governments

PM - Friday, August  23, 2002

MARK COLVIN: A convicted murderer is causing headaches for both the Northern Territory and Queensland Governments. 43 year-old Tommy Neale was sentenced to life in 1981 for murder, making him the Territory's longest serving prisoner.

Under Northern Territory legislation, murder carries a mandatory life sentence, with no parole. But Neale was originally sentenced in Queensland, and he wants a transfer back there where he has a better chance of release.

As Anne Barker reports, Queensland today refused his application.

ANNE BARKER: Depending whose side you take, Tommy Neale is a heinous murderer who deserves to die in jail, or the hapless victim of a cruel injustice. In October 1980, at the age of 20 and drunk on a mixture of rum and methylated spirits, he broke into a house in Mt. Isa to steal food.

The home's 81 year-old owner was found dead inside the next day, from head injuries. Tommy Neale was charged with murder, although the trial judge urged the prosecution to accept a plea of manslaughter. The prosecution refused, and Tommy Neale was convicted and sentenced to life in jail.

DAVID BAMBER: If he had stayed in Queensland, he would've been out years ago.

ANNE BARKER: Under Queensland law his lawyer, David Bamber, says Tommy Neale would almost certainly have been released within 15 years, and today would be a free man, but in 1987 Neale applied for transfer to the Northern Territory to be closer to family, and wittingly or unwittingly he came under a new jurisdiction where murder carries a mandatory life sentence.

DAVID BAMBER: It was prison welfare authorities that helped him with his transfer. He didn't know what he was coming into. He should have been advised of it before he was transferred.

ANNE BARKER: With no hope of parole in the Northern Territory, Tommy Neale applied for transfer back to Queensland, where he could reasonably expect to be released, but today Queensland's Police Minister, Tony McGrady, again refused to take him back, citing his poor behaviour in prison.

TONY MCGRADY: I have to be certain that that person could be rehabilitated, and that he would not pose a danger to either himself, or indeed, other members of the community. I've come to the conclusion, rightly or wrongly, that he's not ready yet, to go back out into the community.

ANNE BARKER: The Queensland decision has reopened an ongoing and controversial debate about the Northern Territory's mandatory life regime, and whether life prisoners should be eligible for parole after 20 years. The Territory's Labor Government has promised a review of the system, but until then Attorney General Peter Toyne is satisfied with Queensland's decision.

PETER TOYNE: I think they've made an appropriate decision according to the facts they had before them.

ANNE BARKER: What sort of justice is this for a man who, defence lawyers say, if he'd been tried in the Northern Territory originally, he might not even have been convicted of murder?

PETER TOYNE: The fact is that Tommy Neale did kill a person. He was convicted of murder. He was given a jail sentence, and then chose to transfer to the Northern Territory prisons.

ANNE BARKER: What sort of pressure then, does this put on the Northern Territory Government now, to speed up the review of the mandatory life regime?

PETER TOYNE: No pressure, in that what we've got to avoid at all costs doing, is to make a hasty decision because of a particular political situation.

ANNE BARKER: Lawyer David Bamber has accused both governments of putting politics above justice out of fear of losing votes in a community where crime is a burning issue. He's now considering challenging the Queensland decision in court.

DAVID BAMBER: There was a Haig duty of the authorities to advise Tommy before he walked into the catch-22 he's walked into. On Tommy's instructions, that was never done. There may be an action in damages for failure to exercise properly the duty of care of the correctional facility

Racist Misinformation

NT COUNTRY LIBERAL PARTY       

16 JULY 2002       

STATES REBUKE FOR TOYNE FOR TRYING TO FACILITATE TRANSFER OF CONVICTED MURDERER

http://www.clp.org.au/media/Media%20releases/2002/jul02/1607
_jc_convicted%20murderer.html

Shadow Corrections Minister Jodeen Carney said Territory Justice Minister Peter Toyne has been rightly rebuked by other States and Territory Corrections Ministers for trying to facilitate the transfer of convicted murderer Tommy Neale to Queensland where he could be considered for early parole.

Ms Carney said yesterday’s decision by Australian Correctional Services Ministers to band together to stop prisoners jumping between jurisdictions to gain early release was clearly targeted at the actions of Territory Justice Minister Peter Toyne.

"The other States and Territory’s have given Mr Toyne a clear message about what they think of his shabby attempt to gain early release for a convicted murderer," Ms Carney said.

"Mr Toyne has been put in the embarrassing situation where he is out of step with the rest of Australia.

"It is hypocritical of him to say he now agrees that he doesn’t want to see a situation where prisoners shop around states and Territory systems to get the best chance of a parole arrangement as early as possible in their sentence.

"This is exactly what Mr Toyne is trying to do with Tommy Neale."

Superb misinformation: Tommy was actually sent to the Territory where he copped the Territory's Mandatory Life Sentence, despite committing the 'murder' in Queensland where a Life Sentence is twenty years. The CLP are just tapping into the 'Law and Order' paranoia in the NT, to gain support from a demonstrably racist electorate. NT Attorney General Peter Toyne -- is not noted for his political courage.

 

Ends. 

Contact: Gary Shipway Phone: 08 - 8901 4183 Mobile: 0418 - 890 114

Another case comparison

Monday, 18 March, 2002

The hostel was destroyed by the fire

Drifter Robert Long has been sentenced to life imprisonment for killing 15 young backpackers in an arson attack on a hostel in Australia.

Long, an itinerant fruit picker, was found guilty on Friday of starting the fire in Childers, southern Queensland in June 2000.

The trial judge said Long, 38, should serve a minimum of 20 years in jail for his "callous and cruel" crime.

Among the lives claimed by the blaze in Childers were five backpackers from the south of England and two from the Merthyr Tydfil area of south Wales.

The fruit picker is alleged to have hated backpackers

Prosecuting lawyers said Long's hatred of backpackers was a compelling motive for starting the blaze.

Justice Peter Dutney, who sentenced Long at Brisbane's Supreme Court, said it was the worst case of arson in Queensland history.

He said: "I'm happy to concede you had no intent to kill but death was such an inevitability in the circumstances that to light those fires displays callousness and cruelty that is hard to imagine."

Long received 20 years in prison for the murder of 27-year-old Australian twin sisters Kelly and Stacey Slarke.

And a concurrent sentence of 15 years was handed down for arson.

Confession

Senior prosecutor David Meredith said he wanted the punishment to reflect the loss of 15 lives, not just the sample two.

He called Long a "small-minded and cowardly man whose actions had an extraordinary effect on the lives of the families of his victims".

As well as the twins and Britons, the blaze also killed another Australian, one Irish, one Japanese, one Korean and two Dutch.

He was not charged with the 13 other deaths because the two was sufficient for the maximum sentence.

Gary Sutton, 24 from Bath was killed in the fire

The Palace Backpackers Hostel in Childers, 180 miles north of Brisbane, was more than 100 years old and survivors of the fire have criticised security and safety arrangements.

The trial heard how Long verbally abused the guests at the hostel and made several threats to set the building alight.

He had vowed to drive the backpackers out of town.

While being arrested five days after the fire, he was shot in the shoulder in a struggle with police.

Warning

And he initially confessed the crime to police.

He was jailed in 1994 for a maximum four years and three months for abducting his child from his former lover's home, but was paroled in January 1997.

But the judge in this case warned the authorities to take great care in releasing him after the minimum 20 years.

Long had denied murder and arson, but was found guilty unanimously.

The seven Britons who died were:

• Gary Sutton, 24 of Twerton, Bath
• Mike Lewis, 25, from Bristol
• Natalie Morris, 28, from Cefn Coed
• Sarah Williams, 23, from Aberfan
• Melissa Smith, 26, from Thatcham, Berkshire
• Adam Rowland, 19, from St Leonards, Sussex
• Claire Webb, 24, from Ascot

Source