Dear Archivists and Readers
Without gainsay, on Wednesday 24 November 2010, I was invited by the Business Educators' Association of Queensland (BEAQ) to speak to some 65 Queensland secondary school teachers at the Bardon Professional Centre, Brisbane, on the unresolved Heiner Affair. It was part of their professional development. The title of the one hour address (with some Q&A's) was the significance of the Heiner Affair to best practice recordkeeping and the rule of law.
The teachers taught OP subjects: Business Communications and Technology (BCT) and Legal Studies.
Since 2009, the Heiner Affair entered the Queensland curriculum for Years 11 and 12 students in all Queensland secondary schools and colleges.
The address was well received. It is anticipated to have been a forerunner to another address to a much larger BEAQ gathering in mid 2011.
For the record, on the same program was His Honour Ian Dearden, of the Queensland District Court, who spoke about recent changes to Queensland's justice system in the wake of the Moynihan Report.
Regards
Kevin Lindeberg
11 Riley Drive
CAPALABA QUEENSLAND 4157
Phone: 07 3390 3912 or 0401 224 013
11 Riley Drive
CAPALABA QUEENSLAND 4157
Phone: 07 3390 3912 or 0401 224 013
Comments
Meticulously prepared allegations of the most serious misconduct by some of the nation’s most senior public officers, including the Governor General Quentin Bryce, the Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, and a raft of Queensland jurists have been received by every member of the Senate.
The allegations were contained in the Rofe Audit of the long-running Heiner Affair and e-mailed to every Senator on Australia Day.
The affair began with the rape of a 14-year-old Aboriginal girl who was in the custody of the Queensland government.
Though guilt was admitted, no charges were ever laid and evidence prepared for an inquiry into the juvenile justice system by former magistrate Noel Heiner was subsequently ordered to be destroyed by Queensland’s Goss government Cabinet.
For the past 22 years, the victim (who was paid about $120,000 in hush money by the Queensland government last year) has sought to have her day in court.
She is expected to travel to Canberra to make her case personally after Parliament resumes tomorrow.
Last year the Senate Privileges Committee voted to bury the matter but members and staff had read the submissions.
The Clerk of the Senate, Dr Rosemary Laing, in Advice 47, wrote last June that “there is no doubt the matter raised is very serious”.
Though the Clerk’s advice was made public, the submission on which her advice based was kept confidential - until now.
An attempt to have the matter debated in the Senate was stopped by the Labor Party and the Greens, with former Family First Senator Steven Fielding voting to stop the matter being raised.
The allegations raised about the Governor General Quentin Bryce’s conduct are far more serious and pertinent than those which led to former Governor General Peter Hollingworth’s resignation in 2003.
The Rev Dr Hollingworth was driven out of office after a vindictive campaign by senior members of the Labor Party who claimed he was not a fit and proper person to hold the post of Governor General.
In the extensive 2,800-page document, titled the Heiner Affair Papers, it is alleged (among other things) that Ms Bryce did not apply the law equally in the matter of destruction of evidence when she was governor of Queensland in 2005. The extensive secret submission was written by senior Sydney QC David Rofe.
A number of senators have confirmed receiving the massive document.
The general distribution of the material places the Senate and the government in a very difficult position. It is impossible for MPs to “unknow” what they have read.
Senior parliamentary officers say it is open for Ms Bryce to request a copy of the papers, indeed, arguably, she is duty bound to do so urgently given the serious nature of the charges and the fact that every senator is now in receipt of allegations which question her integrity and fi