cont'd ...

Shadow Minister,

The link I've given you tells us that - in an
article in the Australian Financial Review, the
newspaper's legal affairs editor Michael Pelly
asked in February, "Is Salvatore Vasta Australia's
worst judge?"

Pelly was revisiting what he described as "withering
denunciations"in appeal courts of 3 of Judge Vasta's
findings. Pelly has also reported on the "prospect of
a parliamentary inquiry in Vasta's fitness to remain
on the bench over concerns about his judgements.

If JCU is considering an appeal its lawyers may consider
that according to Pelly Judge Vasta has been "overturned
on appeal at least 15 times" since he was appointed in
2015 by then Attorney-General George Brandis, a conservative
politician.

Foxy,

Firstly, I don't think that you will find a single judge that has not had a few judgements overturned on appeal.

Secondly, even 15 successful appeals is still small percentage of judgements where 95% have not been modified by the appeal court.

Thirdly, an inquiry into the judge has not been initiated and is largely conjecture on the part of Pelly.

And finally, it is clear that you have not read the judgement or even the conclusions for if you had it would be obvious that the judgement was based on the contractual details where the EA holds precedence over any other internal regulations or "codes of conduct".

However, the clause 14 in the EA that overrode the charges against PR were entirely about the extent of Intellectual freedom that the professor was entitled to so the claim that the case was not about intellectual freedom is somewhat disingenuous.

As to how this applies to Folau, that RA subsequent to the signing of the 4 year contract with Folau, tried to add a clause w.r.to social media strongly implies that the contract is silent to this behaviour. If Folau has not ratified this and not directly broken any contractual agreement, RA has only two options, one let him continue to play, or pay out the $4m contract and let him go.

Shadow Minister,

An independent panel has found the Wallabies star
did commit a "high level"breach of his contract
when he made controversial social media posts.
It appears that Rugby Australia's decision has
been upheld by the hearing.
A decision has not been made yet as to how he
will be punished.

Foxy,

Once again you try and over simplify the situation. In the interim RA has offered Folau $1m to walk away, the tribunal has offered him a low level conviction if he removes his tweet and apologizes, etc.

RA has already spent about $400k on prosecuting Folau and is desperate to try and end the issue but Folau is sticking to his guns and RA is staring down an appeal, then if that fails, a trial, an appeal trial and a high court trial.