Greetings from "Government 2.0: Policy and Practice" at Parliament House in Canberra: http://www.katelundy.com.au/2009/05/29/public-sphere-2-open-government-policy-and-practice/

Senator Lundy organised this one day conference about creating a more participatory form of government in Australia. The event is has a live video stream and event wall (see the web site).

Comments are invited, during and after, to the event web site, as well as blogs taged publicsphere and Twitter #publicsphere.

I will be speaking on "m-Government 2.0 - Making government accessible online on your phone" in the afternoon: http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/mgovernment/

You can post questions for the presenters: a screen for the event wall set up at the front of the room. We are in the main Senate hearing room. There are about 100 people at the event in the room. There is a upper press gallery empty, so anyone in Parliament House can drop in and listen.

The first presentation was from William Perrin, Secretary of the Power of Information Taskforce Gov 2.0 in the UK: Policy and Status. He is giving us a salutary reminder that in amongst all the Web 2.0 jargon and technology we need to give practical examples of how the technology is useful to people. I will be giving some examples in my talk.

Labels: Australian Parliament, E-Government, mobile web, publicsphere

Lindsay Tanner, Minister for Finance and Deregulation just announced a Australian Government 2.0 task force with 15 experts chaired by Nicolas Gluin. This was at Government 2.0: Policy and Practice at Parliament House in Canberra.

Joe Ludwig, Special Minister of State, will provide more details. Disappointingly for a Web 2.0 announcement at a Web 2.0 event, I could find no details of the task force available online.

More at: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2009/06/australian-government-20-task-force.html

Labels: Australian Parliament, E-Government, mobile web, publicsphere

If readers follow other posts as I do, the piece on the “Kable Principle” and what was said in the High Court at that time, and the decision itself, should have pulled the plug on State Government as we know it and a brave new world, where honesty and integrity rule, should have been re-established. It has not happened, but it should.

Justice Gaudron, and all three other Justices in the majority, were adamant that the States do not have unlimited and unfettered legislative power, and by necessary implication, nor does the Parliament of the Commonwealth. Anyone who has an email address, and wants the documents, including the transcript, and decision of the majority, may email marygee78@yahoo.com and a copy will be sent asap.

Toohey J said: However the Act is invalid by reason of the incompatibility with Ch III of the Commonwealth Constitution that its implementation produces.

Gaudron J said: To this extent, at least, the States are not free to legislate as they please.

McHugh J said: However the Act is invalid by reason of the incompatibility with Ch III of the Commonwealth Constitution that its implementation produces.

Gummow J said For its part, the Parliament cannot legislate either to destroy the entrenched safeguards of Ch III or to itself assume the exercise of judicial power.

Since 1996, the High Court has simply pulled itself back into its shell like a snail, and refused all requests to come out. It has allowed the Parliament of the Commonwealth and all State Parliaments to legislate as they please, bringing the whole legal system into disrepute.

In 2002, Justice Gaudron and McHugh without referring to their previous decision, sided with Justice Hayne, to overrule a New South Wales Court of Appeal decision, finding that jury trial in New South Wales was a Constitutional right. The case was Gerlach v Clifton Bricks. For Gaudron and Mc Hugh so hated Kirby and Callinan, that they absolutely refused to remember their previous binding authority, and the galah barristers in front of them failed to remind them of their duty to do so

I think it is time that everyone realized that we are in a mess. We have nine states in Australia all thinking they are top frog in their own puddle, but in reality it is the Commonwealth which is the crane, and it should eat all eight of the other frogs, including some Commonwealth tadpoles at the same time.

I think Justice Mary Gaudron was so annoyed that she did not become Chief Justice, she no longer cared what happened to Australia, and Michael McHugh, may have been just forgetful, as he approached his retirement, but if they had upheld the decision of Justices Priestley JA Handley JA Giles JA, http://beta.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/nsw/NSWCA/2000/90.html no one would have had any doubt, what the “Kable Principle” is.

As I am a Christian, I believe jury trial, is an act of worship, and that we are entitled to it as of right. As this decision sits, so too did five out of eight Superior Court Judges, and two of the three Superior Court Judges who overruled their State colleagues, should have followed their previous decision. We were robbed. We are still being robbed daily by the Courts of both the Commonwealth and States because two twirps, got a bad case of the sads.

Kirby and Callinan did the right thing, but the other three did not, and they were wrong because they did not do their own due diligence, but relied on the barristers they allowed to come before them.

Government 2.0 should be concerned to allow anyone to engage a member of Parliament to raise questions of contempt, of Commonwealth laws, in the Parliament of the Commonwealth. S 80 Constitution is not working, because the Parliament of the Commonwealth is not respected, and S 13 and 15F Crimes Act 1914 ( Cth) do not give any rights, while jury trial is not as of right, in civil jurisdiction.

If any Registrar of any Court refuses to allow a matter to be filed, they are in contempt of S 43 Crimes Act 1914 ( Cth) a legitimate Order of the Parliament of the Commonwealth

What a brilliant idea, Nicholas Gruen, and Kate Lundy should both be congratulated. The qualifications of Mr Gruen in particular are impressive. Now we know that OLO is actually a wormhole, where ideas can be fed to the Commonwealth. Government used to get half its revenue from private law enforcement proceedings, and all the legislation to do so is still in place. It is enacted in the Crimes Act 1914 ( Cth) and the malfeasance reported earlier by the High Court where they refused to uphold the as of right access to jury trial, has robbed the Treasuries of all States, the Commonwealth and Territories of billions of dollars in revenue.

The Supreme Court in a State was a fantastic source of revenue, as the Qui Tam action as used today in the United States guarantees. It existed in Australia and particularly in New South Wales until 1970. In the past twenty four months, this particular ruling by two now retired High Court Justices has probably cost the State of NSW more than five billion dollars, money it has had to extract in other ways, and that has to be a bad thing.

The electronic media should be harnessed to allow online proceedings right up to trial itself, free from the personal biases of registrars and the idiosyncracies of individual Judges. If Australia is to become a truly modern and progressive nation, we have to have a threshing floor, where the wheat can be threshed from the chaff, churned out by nine separate and competing legislatures.

The superior laws of the Commonwealth, when legitimately made under the Constitution, should be easily and conveniently enforced, and each of the States to participate in this revenue bonanza, will each have to create their own electronic courthouses.

Lawyers worry about vexatious litigants, and want them stopped. The way to stop them is to take an action against them in a court and let a jury decide if they are really vexatious, of if it is in reality the lawyers who are doing the vexing. No one could complain about that process