Legal war on home front
ANYONE who has not been under fire or experienced close hand the sheer terror of an IED would be hard pressed to understand those circumstances let alone explain them.
Except perhaps lawyers whose all- encompassing knowledge allows them to be experts on anything and everything, without the immediate life experiences the rest of us are required to endure to reach similar understanding. There are notable exceptions. The hapless Tenterfield solicitor Major James Thomas serving as a Light Horse officer in the Boer War was handed the unenviable and inevitably hopeless task of defending mercenary Australian adventurers Harry Morant and Peter Handcock from British Field Marshal Kitchener’s determination to execute them for inexcusable, abominable crimes.
His undoubted combat experience counted little against his limited legal expertise and his clients faced a firing squad.
Then there was former military lawyer and federal MP Colonel the Honourable Dr Mike Kelly AM who, by his own admission dragged homicidal Somali war lord Hassan Gutaale Abdul from a judicial farce to a summary firing squad within 24 hours, well under the 14- day period even Somalia’s fragile legal system allowed for an appeal.
As Sir Humphrey Appleby would have opined, “How very courageous, minister”.
Just last week we endured the curious spectacle of a civilian coroner investigating the tragic deaths of three Australian soldiers in Afghanistan, grilling junior commanders and criticising their judgment.
Legal precedent faithfully observes hindsight.
Imagine you are commanding a patrol in Afghanistan – actually most of us will have absolutely no idea, including probably the lawyers who participated in the inquest – when you have completed a day in excruciating heat and torturous conditions and you are attempting to give your Diggers some rest and relaxation.
Establish a picquet and partial stand- down, dress down from the heat, then organise some diversions before, without warning, a rogue local soldier, whose Taliban connections are known to others but not signalled to you, murders three of your Diggers then, without putting too fine a point on it, pisses off.
It’s hard to imagine a more difficult, life- changing experience than that for those involved.
Because the ADF now repatriates personnel killed overseas, receiving state jurisdictions requires coronial inquests into those deaths.
Overseen here by the same precious legal practitioners who have been stamping their collective feet for months believing they are all better qualified to be Queensland’s chief justice, a communally unedifying performance.
The ADF has specialised forensic expertise to investigate battle casualties and does not need duplicated, gratuitous intervention by militarily inexperienced lawyers driven by fees over outcomes.
One is reminded of an apocryphal coronial inquiry where a doctor was being grilled about the mysterious death of a lawyer.
“Were you sure he was dead?” the coroner demanded.
“Was he breathing, did he have a pulse, what steps did you take to ensure he was dead before you signed the death certificate?”
“Well,” the doctor replied, “His brain was in a jar on my desk but I readily admit he still could be out there somewhere practising law.”