Post by NFA on Dec 9, 2023 8:50:00 GMT 8
Security guards left begging in Higgins mess
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Among the most honourable people in the unique ecosystem of the nation’s parliament are the security guards who protect it.
Every sitting day, they endure babied politicians who set off security’s metal detectors but refuse to empty their pockets and go back through the arch.
When strangers throw tantrums in the Marble Foyer because they want entry into the private corridors of members’ offices without ID, the guards handle it. They are the ones who deal with patchouli-perfumed protesters who glue themselves to windows and rails, and are frontline against more serious threats.
And as we know now in excruciating detail, thanks to the litany of court cases to have sprung from former Parliamentary staffers Brittany Higgins and Bruce Lehrmann, they also have to deal with deluded, entitled, ego-drunk staff, high on silly little thoughts about being the next PM, rocking up in the early hours to “bring the party back to parliament”.
Most of the guards are paid two-thirds of what the junior staffer earns, around a quarter of what Members and Senators bank, and about an eighth of what Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus takes home.
They have been horribly denigrated since The Project aired, when they did nothing but their jobs.
Pedophile illegal immigrants received lawyers on the Albanese Government account but not those security guards and other staffers whose careers were obliterated by two people who went to a pub and then a nightclub and then to their bosses’ office at 2am on a Saturday.
While “NYZQ”, a man who came by boat and had his temporary visa cancelled after being jailed for child sex offences, had a government funded lawyer fight for his freedoms, those caught in Bruce Lehrmann’s and Brittany Higgins’ orbit have had to pay their own mounting legal bills, or go without lawyers at all.
There was no taxpayer-funded lawyer for the security guards.
They felt bullied out of their old jobs, were subpoenaed from their new jobs and left at the mercy of a team of top silks fighting Lehrmann’s claims.
Lehrmann and Higgins’ former boss Fiona Brown, the only person who took contemporaneous notes, is forced to rely on volunteer pro-bono lawyers who will not even be in the same country as her when she gives evidence.
The highest legal adviser in the land, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, who personally signed off on NYZQ’s Commonwealth-funded lawyers, denied righting the scales of justice to parliament staff.
First, he refused to allow them to defend themselves over Higgins’ claims in mediation. Now, they have no assistance in Lehrmann’s defamation proceedings.
Dreyfus ticked off on Higgins’s $2.4m payment that we now know is not compensation for an alleged rape or a breach of duty of care, but he has yet even to bother to approve an application for legal representation for other former staff that they are entitled to. Book deals, payouts, free rent, wealthy benefactors, and overseas trips have all occurred as former staff have been denied the right to defend themselves in mediation and courtrooms in which they were villainized.
Higgins and Lehrmann might have the Midas touch but every other passenger on this trainwreck, the psychologically-damaged, embarrassed, burned or career-destroyed former associates, have been lumbered with lead.
One former associate was quoted $5000 for legal advice to appear as a witness. Another begged their new employer to cover their soaring legal bills. Another was quoted $25,000 to keep their name off text messages that were sent to them.
And the only stone-cold sober people at Parliament House that night have been treated disgracefully.
Witnesses were subpoenaed out of retirement to give their account of what Higgins and Lehrmann did when they came to parliament, either “10 out of 10 drunk” like Higgins claimed, or not drunk, according to a 25-year veteran security guard and former bouncer, who said under oath if he believed them to be overly intoxicated he would have refused entry. Yet NYZQ is so protected he has never been named. The other 147 released criminal detainees have had their privacy protected so well that the Albanese Government won’t tell us what they did wrong.
Not a single witness on the defamation list has received this liberty or protection. In defending his decision to fund NYZQ, Dreyfus argued: “It is a fundamental principle of our system of law that the government cannot deprive a person of their liberty without positive authority conferred by law.”
Yet there is a crowd of people who have been crushed because they were diligent, sober and attentive to the actions of two deluded presumptive staffers who had a big night out on the tiles. If only they were an illegal immigrant convicted of child sex offences, then they would get a lawyer.
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Among the most honourable people in the unique ecosystem of the nation’s parliament are the security guards who protect it.
Every sitting day, they endure babied politicians who set off security’s metal detectors but refuse to empty their pockets and go back through the arch.
When strangers throw tantrums in the Marble Foyer because they want entry into the private corridors of members’ offices without ID, the guards handle it. They are the ones who deal with patchouli-perfumed protesters who glue themselves to windows and rails, and are frontline against more serious threats.
And as we know now in excruciating detail, thanks to the litany of court cases to have sprung from former Parliamentary staffers Brittany Higgins and Bruce Lehrmann, they also have to deal with deluded, entitled, ego-drunk staff, high on silly little thoughts about being the next PM, rocking up in the early hours to “bring the party back to parliament”.
Most of the guards are paid two-thirds of what the junior staffer earns, around a quarter of what Members and Senators bank, and about an eighth of what Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus takes home.
They have been horribly denigrated since The Project aired, when they did nothing but their jobs.
Pedophile illegal immigrants received lawyers on the Albanese Government account but not those security guards and other staffers whose careers were obliterated by two people who went to a pub and then a nightclub and then to their bosses’ office at 2am on a Saturday.
While “NYZQ”, a man who came by boat and had his temporary visa cancelled after being jailed for child sex offences, had a government funded lawyer fight for his freedoms, those caught in Bruce Lehrmann’s and Brittany Higgins’ orbit have had to pay their own mounting legal bills, or go without lawyers at all.
There was no taxpayer-funded lawyer for the security guards.
They felt bullied out of their old jobs, were subpoenaed from their new jobs and left at the mercy of a team of top silks fighting Lehrmann’s claims.
Lehrmann and Higgins’ former boss Fiona Brown, the only person who took contemporaneous notes, is forced to rely on volunteer pro-bono lawyers who will not even be in the same country as her when she gives evidence.
The highest legal adviser in the land, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, who personally signed off on NYZQ’s Commonwealth-funded lawyers, denied righting the scales of justice to parliament staff.
First, he refused to allow them to defend themselves over Higgins’ claims in mediation. Now, they have no assistance in Lehrmann’s defamation proceedings.
Dreyfus ticked off on Higgins’s $2.4m payment that we now know is not compensation for an alleged rape or a breach of duty of care, but he has yet even to bother to approve an application for legal representation for other former staff that they are entitled to. Book deals, payouts, free rent, wealthy benefactors, and overseas trips have all occurred as former staff have been denied the right to defend themselves in mediation and courtrooms in which they were villainized.
Higgins and Lehrmann might have the Midas touch but every other passenger on this trainwreck, the psychologically-damaged, embarrassed, burned or career-destroyed former associates, have been lumbered with lead.
One former associate was quoted $5000 for legal advice to appear as a witness. Another begged their new employer to cover their soaring legal bills. Another was quoted $25,000 to keep their name off text messages that were sent to them.
And the only stone-cold sober people at Parliament House that night have been treated disgracefully.
Witnesses were subpoenaed out of retirement to give their account of what Higgins and Lehrmann did when they came to parliament, either “10 out of 10 drunk” like Higgins claimed, or not drunk, according to a 25-year veteran security guard and former bouncer, who said under oath if he believed them to be overly intoxicated he would have refused entry. Yet NYZQ is so protected he has never been named. The other 147 released criminal detainees have had their privacy protected so well that the Albanese Government won’t tell us what they did wrong.
Not a single witness on the defamation list has received this liberty or protection. In defending his decision to fund NYZQ, Dreyfus argued: “It is a fundamental principle of our system of law that the government cannot deprive a person of their liberty without positive authority conferred by law.”
Yet there is a crowd of people who have been crushed because they were diligent, sober and attentive to the actions of two deluded presumptive staffers who had a big night out on the tiles. If only they were an illegal immigrant convicted of child sex offences, then they would get a lawyer.