Oh clapton, I suppose I should ‘fess up on a very important point.
But before I do, in an amazing coincidence I was flicking through the June edition of the NSW
Law Society Journal (Vol 46 No. 5) yesterday, and jigger me with a barge pole if there’s not an article headed
In-house ethical dilemmas are many and varied. (see pp14-15) It’s based on a ‘Legalwise Seminar’ given by an academic from UTS (not one of those evil private lawyers). I commend to you the following paras:
On the other hand, from an ethical viewpoint, there is obvious potential for conflict between an employer as legal client, and boss. Asked to do something improper, an in-house lawyer would find it more difficult to say no. Saying no might mean leaving the job instead of just ending the retainer.
…
If you are very entrenched in an organisation as in-house counsel, how can you bring detachment to the position?
To me, it’s more difficult when there’s client wrongdoing when you are employed by the client than in a traditional relationship …
That’s at least two of us who can spot the difference.
And you must stop putting words in my mouth, clapton.
First, I didn’t say that ‘private lawyers have a monopoly on acting with integrity’. I just said that in the circumstances, the General Counsel of CASA had a patent conflict of interest. Your reasoning seems to be that private lawyers sometimes do bad things, therefore the General Counsel didn’t have a conflict in the circumstances. That does not follow. If you don’t agree with me, we’ll just have to agree to disagree. (As to your question about in-house lawyers, go to The Age website and do a search for the terms ‘General Counsel’ and ‘DMO’).
Secondly, I have never expressed an opinion as to whether there were any breaches by Mr Toller. Please clapton, read that twice. Your evident involvement in this is affecting your objectivity.
But now to my admission. (Drum roll) I confess to being emotionally involved in this, because I find it all so
side-splittingly funny. I’d thought all the entertainment value had been extracted out of this years ago, but now I’ve got the opportunity to get some more laughs out of the revival tour!
What lies at the heart of this storm in a teacup? Is it regulatory breaches (if there were any)? No, it wouldn’t have mattered if Mr Toller was the most qualified C208 pilot on the planet.
What lies at the heart of this storm in a teacup is that Mr Toller, as the head of CASA, was silly enough to take the controls of an aircraft being operated by an organisation regulated by CASA. It’s like the Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer having a go at an operation while on a tour of new hospital.
Now as it turned out, he wasn’t the most qualified C208 pilot on the planet, and the journalist in the aircraft was not overly impressed by the ‘firmness’ of the landing.
But is the response to admit the mistake and learn a lesson? Oh no.
And from there, it snowballed into the immensely amusing mess of inquiries this and opinions that, and Skehill this and Sherman that, and questions on notice this and press release that, all of which focused on the ‘management’ of the potential regulatory breach issues and all of which avoided the important issue.
It reminds me of The Simpsons episode in which Homer crashes the car while driving home drunk from Moe’s. The insurance investigator asks Homer: ‘And this ‘Moe’s’ place. What is that?’ Homer thinks really hard and says: ‘It’s a pornography store. I was buying pornography!’