Dominic Strauss-Kahn Pleads Diplomatic Immunity

When Nafissatou Diallo's rape case against Strauss-Kahn fell apart because it was claimed that she had lied in the past and lacked credibility, she filed a civil suit. Now DSK's lawyers have asked the judge to dismiss it on the grounds that he is entitled to absolute diplomatic immunity because he was head of the IMF, even though he had resigned.

Bradley Simon, a New York criminal defense lawyer said "I think his lawyers are feeling somewhat emboldened and are trying anything but I don't think it's got legs." He thinks that if the immunity defense had any legitimacy, his lawyers would have raised it early in the criminal case, before he stepped down as head of the IMF.

But his lawyers are citing a 1947 United Nations convention under which heads of specialized agencies are immune from civil and criminal suits, regardless of whether they are acting in their official capacity when the alleged offence took place. Although the US is not party to the UN convention, his lawyers insist that its absolute-immunity provision has "achieved the status of customary international law" and must be honoured.

When DSK returned to France on 17 September, he gave an interview on French television and said that the encounter with the Manhattan maid was consensual but added "It was a moral error and I am not proud of it."

Meanwhile on Thursday, he came face to face with French writer Tristane Banon who has accused him of trying to rape her eight years ago. They met at a French police station without their lawyers present, as investigators tried to get a better picture of what happened. "I looked at him constantly but he didn't dare look at me" she said. "I knew I'd be given a hard time, just as Diallo was in the US." She went on "In what kind of country do you attack my lawyer, my childhood, my family, my father, in order to explain that I wasn't the victim of an attempted rape?

When asked about what she thought of his request for the civil case to be dropped she said "It's just like him, I ask myself why would an innocent man need immunity, what does it mean - that you have the right to attack and rape women?"

Ms Banon was asked by her mother not to go ahead with the attempted rape charge eight years ago because she belonged to the same political party as Strauss-Kahn but she changed her mind and went ahead after the American rape case fell apart.

It's cases like this one that make a mockery of the American justice system. Just like OJ Simpson, if you have the power and more importantly, plenty of money to buy the best lawyers, you can't lose.

I hope DSK's legal team fail in their endeavours to discredit this young woman by digging up as much dirt as they can about her. The world is watching with interest to see how the French handle this sensitive issue that is crying out for justice.

Andrew Bolt Loses Racial Discrimination Case

Andrew Bolt is a popular Australian journalist with a huge following. He's a champion of the Liberal Party and has powerful friends. Yesterday he looked rather shocked and confused as he stood outside the court after losing a Racial Discrimination case that had dragged on for two years.

Yesterday Justice Mordacai Bromberg found that two of his newspaper columns were unlawful under the Racial Discrimination Act and News Limited, the paper he works for, has had to cough up huge dollars in legal costs.

In 2009 he jumped to a conclusion. In his opinion, there were Aborigines who could pass for white but deliberately chose to identify as black for personal or political gain. Judge Bromberg said that if Bolt intended to accuse people of having appalling motives, he better get his facts straight.

Bolt said that Anita Heiss (who is very light skinned) chose to be Aboriginal because it would help her career. She vehemently denied it and said "I have always identified and lived as an Aboriginal woman, I'm a Williams from Cowra, a proud member of the Wiradjuri nation. Bolt said she chose to be black so she could win plum jobs reserved for Aborigines at Koori Radio, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Arts Board and Macquarie University's Warawara Dept of Indigenous Studies. The facts are that she has a PhD in Media and Communication and none of the jobs he mentioned were reserved or identified as Aboriginal positions and the Koori Radio was voluntary.

Bolt's lawyers had to agree that nine of the "white" Aborigines named were not given any choice on how they were brought up, they were all raised as blacks from childhood. Bolt also made the incorrect assumption that Larissa Behrendt's father was a white German when in fact he was a black Australian and she was raised as a black child.

Judge Bromberg said Bolt made "gross errors" in the genealogy of the nine people involved and inferred that he used online research instead of making diligent enquiries to get at the truth.

Some people are saying that Bolt is now a martyr but it's clear he made mistakes and should say so. The nine "white Aborigines" said they don't want to sue, they don't want any money, they are happy with the public correction that this case has provided.

Woodside's Natural Gas Row in Broome

Carol Martin

The first indigenous woman to be elected to any Australian Parliament is Labor MP Carol Martin 54 who was elected to the seat of Kimberley in 2001. She has been called a "toxic coconut" in a newsletter and is so upset, she plans to leave politics and not contest the next election in March 2013.

Cranky Camel

We all love the Kimberley and having been there, I was appalled when I heard that the huge mining company Woodside was going to mine for natural gas in the area but it looks like they have convinced the traditional owners to go ahead. In June, they signed a deal to

relinquish their rights over land at James Price Point and in return, they will receive $1.5 billion in community, health education and employment benefits.

Carol Martin MP is right behind the Goolarabooloo Jabirr Jabirr people's decision to proceed after they voted 60-40 in favour of the project but it puts her at odds with her own extended family in a town where there is strong anti-gas feeling. Last week she was named in an anonymous newsletter as "brown on the outside but full of the ilk of the of white man's money on the inside." Her name appeared on a list of nine Kimberley Aborigines under the heading "toxic coconuts".

Broome sunset

Lindsay Greatorex is one of the traditional owners and an employee of Woodside and says it's upsetting to see Aboriginal people fighting among themselves. Concerns about the atmosphere of Broome being ruined and air quality compromised are not true, the project is not visible from Broome and is far enough way not to be a problem. But indigenous academic Dr Anne Poelina says 3,000 signatures were collected on a petition opposing the project on environmental grounds, so fighting continues.

But there is no doubt that this mighty project will go ahead, bringing hundreds of jobs and business opportunities with it. Broome didn't exist until 1883 and was created by an emerging pearling industry. If Woodside keeps its promise to honour the traditional owners' concerns about the environment, it should be a win win situation for everyone, not only for Broome, but for the whole country.

The seat of Kimberley is up for grabs and The Nationals hope to take it from Labor at the next election.

Westmead Hospital in the news again

Westmead hospital is in the news again for all the wrong reasons. When we threw out the state Labor government, we were told that conditions in hospitals would improve, especially in the area of patient care and waiting times. But now there is another scandal - letters from Westmead Specialists to GP's regarding their patient's care, have taken up to two years to arrive.

Westmead Administration knew there was a shortage of typists needed to type up Specialists letters to GP's but nobody did anything about it, so the correspondence backed up and up until it reached the ridiculous level where 700 people have waited up to three years for their letters to finally arrive back on their GP's desk.

A Sydney GP sent a woman with a skin cancer concern to a Westmead specialist on 21 August 2009 and didn't receive a letter from him until 16th September 2011, by which time, the woman had been dead for a year. The Westmead specialist doctor dictated a letter to the GP on the same day he saw her, the 21st August 2011, but it went into the queue for typing and arrived back on her GP's desk nearly two years later.

Dr Sheen who is the President of GP group Doctors Action leaked a letter to the journal Medical Observer, to be released today. "It is an absolute utter disgrace - the family doctor is the most important thing in the community, they are the ones who get people through the health system - how am I supposed to help a patient when the letter arrives nearly two years later?" he said.

Liberal Health Minister Jillian Skinner blames the previous Labor government for the mess. "This debacle has come about because the previous government kept slashing staff numbers in Sydney's west, even when it was clear that the system and its people were crumbling under the pressure" she said. She has told Westmead to hire staff immediately to shift the backlog and three weeks to bring everything up to date.

On Sunday we learnt that Westmead had tagged an 80 year old woman as a 58 year old man with cancer and after she was given the wrong medication, she died. Last month a boy died from a ruptured appendix after staff at Westmead Childrens and also Liverpool Hospital failed to notice a warning in the GP's referral letter. Then to top it all off, someone inadvertently closed one of the hospital water valves this month and there was no water for over six hours. Five dialysis patients had to be transferred to Auburn Hospital and elective surgery rescheduled as surgeons couldn't "scrub up".

No, this is not happening in a third world country, it's happening here in Sydney and it's a disgrace.

Kevin Rudd tipped to return as leader

Opposition leader Tony Abbott has told his front bench they will be gearing up for a political war with Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister before Christmas. It seems that Pyne, Brandis, Hockey and Julie Bishop believe that Rudd will challenge for the leadership.

Surely the Labor Party can't be serious? They would be admitting they made a terrible mistake by getting rid of him in the first place and then when things get tough, they want him to forgive and forget and come back to bail them out. It sure wouldn't put the so-called backroom powerbrokers in a good light, in fact it would become abundantly clear that they couldn't run a chook raffle.

It's also fairly obvious that Tony Abbott would prefer to deal with Julia Gillard as PM, Kevin Rudd would be a whole new ballgame. He could delay the carbon tax, change asylum seeker policy, break the alliance with independents - who knows what he would do - and the Liberals are trying to work out strategies on how to proceed if he gets re-elected as leader.

The Labor Party are saying they still support the PM and all this speculation from the Opposition is rubbish. But Andrew Wilkie's poker machine legislation is causing some angst in the caucus and it's thought that they will eventually put pressure on Julia Gillard to dump him.

Yesterday the AFL said it would team up with the NRL and join the clubs to strongly campaign against the bill during Grand Final week. Wilkie's proposed plan to self-regulate poker machines to help problem gamblers, although a worthy ambition - is an unpopular one. Clubs need that revenue to survive, especially the smaller clubs and the hundreds of community bowling clubs all across the country.

But Wilkie is a tough nut to crack. Just before Australia became involved in the Iraq war, he resigned from the intelligence agency he was working for because he said the excuse to invade Iraq what a sham and as we now know, he was right. And he's a self-confessed bully-boy, he has admitted that as a senior cadet at Duntroon Military College in 1983, he was involved in "bastardization" and set "some sort of record" for dishing out punishments and giving junior cadets a hard time.

And he hasn't changed a bit, he's threatening to withdraw his support if he doesn't get his way and will continue to hold Julia Gillard to ransom over this issue. The question is, can she stop him from bringing down her government?

Millionaire calls in loans from siblings

Remember last weekend when the millionaire's wife wept because their riverside mansion was passed in at auction for $4.9 million? Poor thing. She was the wife of Mark McIvor 55, a merchant banker and property investor who is one of the richest men on the Gold Coast.

McIvor has just launched legal action against his younger brother Wayne and sister Janeen Pelly in the Southport District Court. He says that he loaned his siblings around $465,000 over ten years and he wants it back - $259,429 from Wayne and $205,790 from Janeen. He insists that the loans were entered into under the condition that they would pay interest and repay the money on demand. And on 30th May this year, he demanded payment within 7 days so it looks like he didn't get it.

Mark McIvor (2nd from right)

Wayne McIvor was his brother's right hand man at Equititrust, the Gold Coast funds manager whose investors, along with others like City Pacific, have had their investments frozen since 2008. Wayne resigned as a director last year after 17 years faithful service and the brothers haven't spoken since.

McIvor owns three properties in the Gold Coast's most prestigious and exclusive suburb Cronin Island and a beachfront property at Palm Beach. Originally from the Darling Downs, the three McIvor siblings are children of former bookmaker John McIvor.

There is a lesson to be learnt here - never enter into a business transaction with a family member. While it can be very tempting, it usually ends in tears.

Sophie Mirabella's Will Dispute

Sophie Mirabella

When Sophie Panopoulos met Colin Howard, she was a bright 26 year old with a promising legal career ahead of her and he was a 66 year old brilliant constitutional law expert. But the 40 year age different didn't seem to matter and they became lovers in 1995.

When Dr Howard died from Alzheimer's disease this month at the age of 83, he left behind a mess for his adult children and for a man with an abundant knowledge of the law, he failed to ensure that his children were adequately catered for in his will. Instead, he chose to name Sophie Mirabella as the main beneficiary and executor of his estate. Now his children, Lesley and Mervyn Howard will mount a challenge in the Victorian Supreme Court to contest his will.

It is alleged that she received gifts from him valued at well over $100,000 to help her election to Federal Parliament in 2001 and another substantial sum to buy her Wangaratta farmhouse in 2007. If she is the sole beneficiary, she will inherit his home in Melbourne worth $1 million.

In 2006, after their affair ended, Sophie married Greg Mirabella, a former army reserve officer, and they now have two daughters.

But this is where this case gets bizarre - Mervyn and Lesley Howard insist they are not after their father's money because he made it clear to them that they would not get any. One wonders what his children did to deserve this. They acknowledge that their father's feelings for Mirabella never wavered, before or after her marriage, they just want to know if she did the right thing by their father.

Professor Howard was a man highly regarded by the Victorian Bar Association who put together an obituary outlining his achievements in law and academia. Originally born in England, he came to Australia at the age of 30 and from 1965 he was a law professor at the University of Melbourne and Dean from 1978 to 1983. He took silk while with Ms Mirabella and served as general counsel to the Victorian Government Solicitor.

A socially awkward man, Professor Howard spent the latter part of his life battling Alzheimer's Disease in an aged-care facility.