AVO Scams – what to do
1.
Fightback! - Once you have filed your defence
you have 3 options. You can “do a Whitlam”(namely, accept the system has resulted
in an outcome that is “technically legal”,
but forever be bitter about the depraved awful unfairness of it all). Lawful but awful. Maybe join a men’s
rights group, or go to the pub for a few nights with your real mates rather
than fight the AVO - just let it wash over on an interim basis. That’s what many
folks do. Secondly you can “do a Latham”. Spread the word she is a nutter and
the magistrate was a complete buffoon, not a referee a*** hole at all. Don’t
address the Red Queen as “you sexist skanky ho” in court, but denigrating the
Magistrate in the community will inevitably occur, and at the pub she will be
henceforth known as “that Labor Party Far king hack”, rather than her honour
because “there is no honour in 3 minute skank justice”. Because the AVO is so
arbitrary very few challenges are made in fear that police are most likely to
(again) act in a capricious manner, and anyway you are diverted in the Family
Court and have limited resources. Maybe
you hit something (a wall, not a witnesses’ husband, or a taxi driver, even although it seems that once the absurdly false
accusation is made you may well feel “why not”). And no revenge porn postings
as that’s wrong, disgusting and unlawful.
http://www.cheaterville.com/?page=map&countryId=19#map
. You know, disgusting,
unless you work for the government:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/.
You and your mates will now just hate the neighbour forever and trash her
reputation. Maybe go to a golf, boxing or gun club and just get it all out on
the sports field. However a 3
rd , more viable alternative, is that
you can “ do a Keating “ and not roll over just because of the legal form in
which the property heist was carried
out- rather take decisive counter measures to deal with the real issues in
play, not simply those as framed by the Coup plotters (
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2005/s1501183.htm). If you proceed down the
“unleash your inner Keating path”
the options you should talk about with your
lawyer would appear to include :
·
subpoena
her lawyer as a hostile witness for you in the AVO scam and then ask the Family
Court to house them removed as there is a conflict of interests
·
publish, the identity of the idiots but not the kids etc.:
S 121 FLA 1975; S 45 of the 2007 Act; S
27 of the Defamation Act 2005 does not require extracts be balanced or fair;
·
You may be able to
raise the uber dodgy nature of the AVO claim under S 75 (2) of the Family Law
Act and ask for a nominal property adjustment for an egregious AVO arbitrage
claim. Matters of fault generally aren’t relevant but the Family Court judges,
“p”olitical beasts that they are, have
allowed no fault to seep back into the Family Court system if “violence” is involved: Kennon (1997) 22
Fam LR 1.There’s no reason you can’t take advantage of this wobbliness under
the high ball (Isn’t this an especially
fertile area of jurisprudence?).
·
ask for extensive
disclosure on the existence of
litigation funding “players”. They are lurking out there, a new breed
of Uber-puppeteer, a class even below the Wayang Puppeteers; even less
regulated; and certainly more intelligent, acting in the very manner Justices
Heydon & Callinan presciently warned that they would. (Look if you don’t believe
it, type “family law “ and litigation funding” into google.com.au, you spaz. Safe
harbour, sure it is?) These hyenas
specialist high yield investors, nobly assisting the meek, must be salivating
when watching our lovely Magistrates sitting there, comfy as can be, “satisfied” with their 2
minute noodles at lunchtime, and their 3 minute justice systems in the
afternoons. Yummy. But be aware that the hyenas
investors in the claim against your house, appear to fight any and all forms of
information disclosure to the death: Anyway ask in your AVO response for
disclosure of all emails, phone records and legal files.
·
I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky-There is an interesting legal argument that you can
sue a witness simply for not being “
a good neighbour” by failing to ask before dobbing. Kylie Minogue was,
of course, the very best Neighbour (and
very cute, in a pixyish kind of way, admit it); but this is a legal
concept that persons owe each other “duties of care”, pre court, as the law of
negligence requires that “everybody needs good Neighbours”.
·
Ask the Wallopers
for all emails and telephone bills to be produced for a reasonably related
period. Write and sue the witness’s
employers for defamation or misleading conduct claims if work emails
were used - wouldn’t their employer just love that one? Drag that out and offer to settle only if they get sacked as
part of that deal. They will at the next round of redundancies anyway as their
company cannot practically be sold while a defamation claim is in play for a
few years as no one can practically value it.
·
www.ratemyagent.com.au
·
Lay
a police complaint against the lawyer for conspiracy to pervert the course of
justice.
·
Forget mediating- your family lawyer will say that’s
what the Family Court will suggest. Ignore it, politely. File your marital
claim straight away. Mediation is a neat idea but no one ever successfully
mediated with Yasser Arafat. You know the saying – “lie once, lie once, and
okay pay, up-up” : http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KjmjqlOPd6A
·
Section
99 prevents claims against individual
police officers, save for actual fraud http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/capva2007347/s99.html. You can sue after the interim order
falls over subject to the DVO Act and LEPRA for the financial losses. You
should wait for “5-oh” to drop their inane interim AVO case as they will play
silly games and not drop anything if you may sue them. Maybe you can sue
the NSW Police Service for their
utter incompetence in it’s
“investigation” as there wasn’t one: Hill v Hamilton-Wentworth Regional Police
Services Board [2007] 3 SCR 12; http://eprints.qut.edu.au/19697/1/c19697.pdf. Nonetheless an elongated S 99 costs
order is your statutory right and should be done once police have withdrawn
charges. Keep notes of all the scams. Its
hard but if anything sends a message to the family lawyers and the family court
that there is a scam in play. It will infuriate your local magistrate.
·
Forget
appealing immediately on the merits - courts of review, to date, have run
scared of imposing any minimum levels of intellectual rigour on magistrates -
see the unpersuasive excuses as to why every case takes exactly the same 3
minutes (really, isn’t that odd??)
in AB v Magistrates' Court at Heidelberg [2011] VSC 61; Cunningham v Cunningham [2012] NSWSC
849; http://www.willisbowring.com.au/media/2519/apprehendedviolenceorderspaper.pdf. there is little hope in expensive
litigation; the appellate courts have been a policy free zone, unwilling to
carry out their supervisory role, and are likely to continue to be so. The
novel social experiment has failed and only political pressure will fix it up
as the legal industry connive in AVO unfairness, thereby debasing community concerns about domestic
violence claims.
·
Appeal the interim
order when dismissed. This gives you a chance to trash the uber dodgy magistrates
dilapidated reputation in public, thank
goodness. Appeals can’t be on the facts (weird) but can be on issues of law-
did you get a fair hearing ? Did you have a lawyer, can they justify their
actions, did you have any ability to confront your accuser, was the law used
for a proper purpose, did you get any semblance whatsoever of a fair hearing : Entick
v. Carrington. 19 Howell's State Trials 1029 (1765); Jago v District Court of
NSW (1989) 168 CLR 23; Dietrich v The
Queen (1992) 177 CLR 292. Magistrates get scared as that means they have to act
within the law, something they are absolutely terrified of being forced to do. They will say you gave consent to the original
order, but that’s twaddle- consent under duress is not consent.
·
Magistrates themselves can’t be sued simply because they
were busy dreaming about the type of kiwi sauvignon blanc they like. The Magistocracy just never liked Lionel Murphy since
he made them into global village idiots in Neals case anyway- and institutional
vengeance is always a dish best served cold ;
(1982) 149 CLR 305 (an AVO scam is pretty much what would happen to Mr
Neal were he active today). Now while you can’t sue a judge you can complain to
the Judicial Commission, which isn’t a toothless tiger but you are most likely
to be emailed a magnificent coloured power point diagram from them in response;
for the problem is more systemic than one judge. It’s institutionalised
failure, rather than many failures by the many. But lodge anyway. Maybe
someday, somewhere, at some point, the NSW Judicial Commission will get The
Wiggles to sing “Wake up Jeff” to the Chief Magistrate and get him to do
something, anything at all, about issuing practice orders for adequate
disclosure. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Chief Magistrate allowed the
Magistocracy to retake control of their own courtrooms from the police, the
divorce lawyers and the divorce support networks ? One day “respect” may even
return, Ali G. It’s a long way away at the moment but hopes springs eternal if
we flood the inbox: judcom@judcom.nsw.gov.au. Of course you could also argue the constitutional law
case set out below the next full
paragraph and thus ensure that
law students all over the common law world globe will “do a Fort Minor” re the somnambulant
magistrate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDvr08sCPOc.
·
“Historical Revisionism"- you
can get a retaliatory AVO against your wife , but that’s seen as “bad
form”. And its usually a private filing
as the cops just won’t file “against their own story” as a practical matter. That’s
why first to lie first to lie
file is important in AVO Scam Land. Some
blokes get in first: but we are most often neophytes. AVOs aren’t issued for
reasonable cause to believe (25%), or a likely occurrence (50%) or beyond reasonable doubt (99%), rather they are issued for fear that doesn’t
seem apparently bogus in 3 minutes (maybe a 3 % threshold). Allegations are often nutty and there are at
least 2 or 3 or 10 facts patterns that
fit “an alternative theory of the crime” for while claims have to appear to be genuinely
held they need only be genuine as to precaution,
not that there is any objective possibility at all the events will ever occur,
within 3 minutes or 300 years. So as a counter allegation for example that the
witnesses are themselves involved in a conspiracy to defraud you and cover up
the bashing of their own kids. So maybe get an AVO against one witness,
positing this alternate fact pattern. If their kids once told you mummy hits
me, well you are now in a position to
accept an adverse characterisation of them. So maybe get an AVO
protecting your kids against that witness for you being “genuinely concerned”
about child bashing.
·
Slur them good and
proper now, but be wary that such conduct can result in police acting in an
even more nutty fashion as the cops just aren’t challenged much and don’t care
what they are doing. . But do utterly destroy her reputation . Utilise the same
low levels of paranoia and fear “proof”
and don't state facts, state
"concerns and feelings". Some magistrates are of course unlikely to
throw a mummy on the street without notice because that’s only a power used
against people involved in divorces. It’s all part of the AVO game, and they
wanted to help your wife get a disproportionate share of the family assets so
why not give it a go as it doesn’t cost much at all, and its fun, so give it a
go. You’re not being frivolous, your just in a state of high anxiety and thus s
99 should protect you for its not as if you are claiming they are having sex
with Alsatian dogs or something. Or get
an “Anton Pillar Order” , also obtained surreptitiously, which allows you to
enter the witnesses house urgently looking for any of your missing personal
items. Nothing like a good police raid.
·
So what does
history teach us happens when courts fail and there is no outlet for justice ?
Surely someone soon will allow AVO targets to post redacted response documents,
and publish the names of the dobbers and
scam artists
·
How about we all file against Senator Conroy,
he’s perpetually angry about the NBN isn’t he ? www.malcolminthemiddle.com.au. Or Nicola Roxon when she has a bender ? saveunclekevin.org.au. Have
a go. It’s limitless fun. And harmless. Hell, the only people losing out are
the true victims of domestic violence, and thinking about it like a family
lawyer, that means anyone and everyone who enters your office, you know, asking
about how property evictions are carried out at short notice, and you “advise”
them about what the “law” um “requires”, and then coincidentally send them down the
road for coffee with the local drama coach.
·
You can, once the divorce is over, set up a
website giving the public a right to vote on an award. Say “Family lawyer most likely
to spit on Lionel Murphys grave” or “Magistrates
3 minute AVO bloopers, Award”; that sort of thing. It’s not defamatory: it’s
an opinion. It’s not contempt of the magistrate: it reflects the limits of 3
minute justice that is so beloved by the very weakest part of the judicial
system , who have decided that becoming pissant cultural warriors are the only
way the judicial oath can be given effect to. Be respectful, not defamatory,
and not contemptuous, and remember that many magistrates are competent and decent
people. Thus you can’t have an award for “Lawyer most likely to commit blatant
and pervasive AVO fraud”, or “Most Gullible Patsy on the Bench during an AVO Scam
Award” but we all get the idea. Name the
award after your wife’s lawyer, the AVO judge, whatever. In some sense it’s
free advertising for them to attract new clients, and they will try to write it
off as the bitterness of some men’s
rights loony. But a vote is a vote, not commentary. Given the AVO numbers
that’s more people getting AVOs per annum in our state, than any single
politician got as a first preference vote at the last Federal election-
stunning, huh – and thus you have a strong voice, and may help in early
retirement planning for members of the Bench Ocker-acy. Disclosure, naming and shaming, will finally
bring some scrutiny to an Industry that trades in secrecy, weird allegations,
and property fraud. It will assist
others who get a weird AVO to argue that the lawyer is “a well-known procurer
of highly disputed AVO arbitrage allegations on numerous occasions i.e. frauds
your honour”. Take the long view - AVOs will be reformed as every moral panic
recedes at some point: a website however gets cached by Google forever. Isolating the lawyer, holding then up to
public ridicule and private contempt, and limiting their future prospects is
the very least you can do. You cannot use the internet to identify your own
family dispute but neither can they. The
devastation caused by AVO scams requires righteous retribution. And will
counter balance the referrals provided by “the divorce support networks” (aka
scammers who have done this before). So
why not?
·
“The answer
is, mate, because I want to do you
slowly”. When the
witness tries to auction their own property in 3 years’ time, it is then that one of your
mates should arrange a critical builders report and turn up with it to their
auction, asking questions just when the bidding begins. Or just sue them for equitable
fraud for the scam AVO. After not all
witnesses are in on the scam but they decided to intervene without asking about
what was actually going on, and chose their joint tortfeasors- so sue them and let the lawyers charge them huge
fees anyway. For revenge is a dish best served ............. by a process sever
called Fuifui Moimoi’s Cousie-bro, on Xmas Eve, in 3 years’ time
on the door step. Yeah for AVOs. Yeah for Ochlocracy. Aren’t these dolts who engage in modern
versions of a Klu Klux Klan lynching, just great citizens ?
·
Exclude
your children’s future access to the witnesses- they may well be middle class meth dealers, child
whackers, who knows? You haven’t got time to find out. Anyway they are untrustworthy
undesirables , who thought they would be mates with your wife, but whose own
children can be excluded as part of the bargaining process in your child’s access
plan in the Family Court as you have residual concerns they hit their own kids:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_py6WbMV1k
·
Mindless, stupid
foul-mouthed grubs- anyway, the
pub, rather than the internet, is the best place to discuss their fraudulent
and bogus claims, and to announce that you are no longer a suburban soccer coach because of the slur of the 4 minute AVO,
noting whether the same, bludging, slack jawed, alcohol infused, neighbours are
oddly not stepping up to fill that de Tocquevillian community sports coaching
gap as they are, for yet another year, “ busy at home” (aka
porn surfing) . You know, if it’s true , “say it loud and say it clear ”, in
These Living Years.
2.
You aint seen nothing yet- But for goodness’ sake don’t be a vexatious litigant or a pest. Exercise the grace and forgiveness of former P.M.
Paul Keating to “do unto others as they “……well, as they helped you out in
modern Australia:
Reportataxscheme@ato.gov.au
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Huhne_and_Pryce
And if they parents or
siblings overseas, lodge globally:
Mostly the dobbers get
sorted out by social justice. No one can
trust them; for rather obvious
reasons as they invent evidence or are just naïve patsies . Whatever they are
social misfits and become even more so over time. Their kids will become social
pariahs with other parents legitimately terrified about their vengeance in
other cases.
The Lie of
the Land if it goes forward – Hello Mad Max
The interim AVO will then operate like
a good behaviour bond without the bothersome need for police to prove any
criminal act, nor any judicial requirement that the order itself be reasonably
detailed. No wonder police as are addicted to AVOs as they are to cronuts
Some neighbours don’t want to be involved in your defence.
Their wife’s will tell them , yes your
ex is a nutter, but that they must not be seen to volunteer contrary evidence
because if they do, well, well, their wife may well be excluded from the “key
mummies” social group at school . And,
”for gawd sake we have to live with her for 5 more years anyway”. Fine -
subpoena them straight away for the final hearing but you can’t get them after
the interim stage. You need your family
and good friends to go to print- her drinking, mental issues, unreasonable behaviour,
hitting the kids, trades on the AVO, anything you can vomit up in reply that’s
true, and that will kill no fault divorce.
The other neighbours can then be called to say you were normal. Subpoena them all.
The apprehension
should be real in a final case -O'B v O'B [1984] ILRM 1 . at the time the final
order is sought.
The legal standard is “reasonableness in the eyes of
the person being “persecuted”; not in the eyes of a reasonable person. So which
reasonable magistrate will you be allotted to determine reasonableness ? Read ‘ em , reasonably, and reasonably weep:
As the AVO law itself is meandering , the rules of
evidence have also been legislated out of existence. Thus all hearsay evidence,
or any evidence unless rabid beyond belief, is admissible in a Local Court.,
although the admission of spectral evidence hasn’t yet been tested in an AVO
hearing but is probably not admissible. R v Panetta (1997) 26 MVR 332,
336. But you just never know. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_evidence.
Oddly, in this international age,
there is no ability to take evidence via Skype or live teleconferencing. If you
want interstate or overseas witnesses you must fly them in at your cost (or perhaps ask one
of the witnesses if they would lend you
a broom stick).
If there is to be a court case call
all the witnesses own kids, parents, and acquaintances as counter witnesses. Ask
for extensive disclosure on all credit card bills (alcohol consumption),
telephone calls (conspiracy), academic records (fraud) emails (conspiracy) bank
accounts (fraud).
Police, who have limited familiarity
with civil litigation, assert that the appropriate level of disclosure is a
facially credible complaint before they lodge an AVO order, and thereafter they
are off the hook. But this legal interpretation, while it certainly allows
police to act in the slovenly fashion
they enjoy, is probably wrong. Proponents of the AVO regime argued that it’s akin to a civil injunction and if they
are right then, by analogy with civil injunctions, there should be fulsome
disclosure. Sure, S 99 prohibits a full analogy. But in any event it’s not
clear that Parliament intended that people simply “spin their cases”, but rather that they come
to court with clean hands, that being the quid pro quo for an abysmally low
standard of allegation making, and the admission of deeply bogus hearsay and
contrived group think evidence. From a public policy perspective, it’s unclear
why higher standards of disclosure providers of financial products, or apply to
makers of consumer TV sets, than to those seeking interim AVO relief, on a
change of heart, to throw someone out of the home. Normatively though the lack of transparency
does explain why Local Courts bumble so
frequently, and not being appraised of relevant facts is possibly why 45% of cases
are dropped .before a final order is sought. Indeed given the AVO operates
against some 32,000 citizens, pa, many of whom have absolutely no prior record,
what would you expect ? That’s what happens when its “Panic, Panic, Panic” .
- To
a man with a hammer, everything
looks like a nail- Most cop shops have dedicated AVO teams out
hunting for issues. Yet if a man hits another in the pub, it’s proved
beyond reasonable doubt, they are a first timer, they pay a lawyer $ 2K
and get a $500 fine or a good behaviour bond. If the same person doesn’t
hit anyone, but yells at his wife “you silly far king b*** you won’t get
90% of the far king house sale proceeds”, and that can’t be proven to the
criminal standard but can be asserted in front of a 58 year old female
judge on a “well 5% he said // she said”, but “gosh
the time the police
have allowed is up in my court your 3 minutes of allotted time is up,
I have something else distracting me right now” , then it’s “whack a mole time”. (Because we believe in the
rehabilitation principle or because we seek vengeance?). There is no basis
at all in law for the 3 minute show trials, the constant patterns of lack
of notice, and the dearth of information.
It just underscores that the Local Court isn’t really that at all: it’s
just the Local l Library. People leave documents there for collection.
There is almost zero law inside a Local Court and is more like a meeting
of justices of the peace. Nonetheless the Magistrates make all this up as
they go along, so as to justify their time management back solves, all
secure in the knowledge that all they have to say is that it’s
“precautionary”. Moreover , while “cheap” for magistrates themselves, the cost of the 3 minute scam justice system is:
·
Rental costs incurred and loss of rent on your house. The person
evicted has to pay to set up an entirely new house as the Family Court is
expensive and no one complies with property sharing orders for 2 years.
·
$ 20K in lawyers’ fees Family Court to see the
kids, and wait out the AVO in all practicality
·
Lawyers costs on the AVO another 20K
·
Families ripped to bits. Kids thrown out of
school as parents become even more bitter.
·
People drop out of community sports coaching for
fear of the spectre of the AVO slur.
·
Communities ripped apart as people decide that
the dobbers are social scum, which frankly in divorces let’s face it they
mostly are. Sides are taken. Grandparents marginalised. All the exogenous
effects we thought we ended with no fault divorce are back. With a vengeance
·
Loss of business income or your job
·
Loss of trust in other people. So fathers, deliberately
or as a result of shock go on an Ayn
Rand style capital strike. Mummy becomes poor. AVOs make the kids economic circumstances
miserably worse off. Lawyers, meanwhile, fly to Thailand to hold family law conferences .
·
Theft of most if your property , judicially
sanctioned, sometimes including financial records worth millions in Family Law
litigation
·
The Family Court having to rehash all this in
determining access to the kids, even if the AVO doesn’t relate to the kids,
just to the wife. The magistrates factual analysis is not only inept, it creates further tensions between couples ,
tidal effects in the breakdown , and that means even more stress sorting it all
out in the Family Court. Why domestics are not dealt with in a family court
setting as they are elsewhere continues to bamboozle. It’s another example of
too many layers of government in a country with a small population. Australia-
where middle class job creation means working for government.
·
Assets being locked up in the Family court
process longer than needs be due to mistrust and bitterness.
·
Police falling even further into disrepute in
the community, if that’s possible.
·
Lack of respect for persons who are real judges;
especially anger transfer directly into the Family Court system. It’s difficult to see why magistrates should
be regarded, constitutionally, as carrying out a judicial function of any kind
whatsoever. Perhaps it would be more
accurate if we just called them Senior Constable in Charge of Stapling Bits of
Paper Together, and did away with all the silly honorific nonsense. Really - 3
minutes- it’s a joke is it ? Why bother with magistrates at all and simply
incarcerate at will ? Either make some good faith attempt to do the job
properly or get of Mao Tse Tungs pot.
4.
AVOs
are not the return of no fault divorce; so they they say- So, just remind
me, why we have no fault divorce again ?
I mean just one more time. Oh yeah :
“Every day, in every superior
court in the state, the same melancholy charade was played: the
"innocent" spouse, generally the wife, would take the stand and, to
the accompanying cacophony of sobbing and nose-blowing, testify under the deft
guidance of an attorney to the spousal conduct that she deemed "cruel”. Universal disenchantment with the demeaning
nature of this command performance, and with the rule that demonstrable fault
is necessary to terminate the marriage relationship, led to extensive
legislative …” (efforts to abolish fault based divorce).
Per Justice Monk re the old days
of fault based divorce Marriage of
McKim, (1972) 6 Cal. 3d 673. This is precisely what an interim middle
class yelling AVO looks like, save that no one takes the stand, and there is no
notice. Onya Magistrates. Onya. Personally I wouldn’t trust you dolts to run the school
chook raffle, far less tell me you should be given much judicial latitude at
all. Ever. You are a danger to civil society.
Please stop this demeaning nonsense.
- Run, Chief Bromden, run- Problems with mental health are just way
too hard for an over worked system to deal with and it won’t be inquired
about. This not because the 2007 Act wants kids to stay with the mentally
ill. It’s just that magistrates are far too busy to apply the law, and
despite grandiose promise they can’t sort wheat from chaff at the interim
stage, so whatever is happening in the house they just separate people,
even though that’s not the point of the 2007 Act. So if your spouse
suffers mental health issues, sad as this is, the AVO system strongly
incentivises you to flee as fast as you can once you decide to divorce,
even if there are vulnerable kids involved. In the 50s the old system
enabled husbands and their doctor mates to lock up sane but difficult
wives, and was thus grossly discredited. Nowadays we do the opposite- we
don’t intervene in any mental health issues (in part liberty, in part
cost, in part no idea how to deal with this issue). Rather, as a spouse of
such a person, you run an appreciable risk that you will get AVO’d at whim
for staying in the marriage because confronting the deranged is often
perceived by them, or those who know very little, as giving rise to stress.
For such a person the breakdown of a marriage can be unfair, and it can be
confronting, and hence intimidating, to them. And that’s notwithstanding
you may have tried many other techniques over a 20 year period to placate
the melt downs, because the focus isn’t on 30 years, it’s not about your
kids, rather it’s a mono focus on
events as your marriage breaks down under the weight of coping with her mental
health issues. In march the
social
scientists mental health professionals
friends of Dolly Dunn with
their police boots and booz filled allegations to “deal with the problem” (er, um, of yelling, as ill defined
, my lud). This also applies if you are having a break down- send in the
blue boots, bash, bash, stomp, stomp, stomp a far king result. The social system of support of the
mentally ill is massively under resourced. Judges don’t have the time to think
through issues. Thus it will
inevitably transpire that the Wallopers find it considerably easier to
schedule a performance of The AVO Circus rather than reason with the
nutter. The Wallopers can then at least have a dialogue with you- a sane
person, as dealing with the real issue is quite beyond them. In a very
real sense AVOs are used to avoid a confrontation by the divorcee with
reality – using band aids to cover gaping symptoms, for lawyers find
labels easier than solutions to complex fact patterns. Angry spouses rarely get treated for
middle class mental health issues as they won’t submit themselves for
bipolar analysis, that being the very conundrum. Now sometimes, and in
some instances, some senior magistrates are worldly enough to realise that
when faced with 40 plus claims of marital yelling, fanciful stories ever
changing, nutty worries about noisy wombats on local trees (yes, this is
AVO Land),how other females are confronting and intimidating them with
“legal letters” (that being your
barrister), and all getting hysterical and wearing the same gothic black clothing
to court en mass, hair askew, with the accused being suburban soccer
coaches, university academics, church elders (Presbyterians mind you,
suspicious), all of whom are going through divorces , some 90 days after
the end of 20-30 year old marriages, that they might, just might, have
just have seen an Arthur Miller play about this , together with the rest of us, when they were 14.
On the other hand it’s much more likely that Ms Justice Meerkat will pop
up at this point, she who was asleep at the time The Crucible was being discussed in school (as she at
home, sick that day, immersed in Gullibles
Travels.) For it’s so much easier to make smug and glib
statements, and get the kids names wrong, than it is to think through
complex fact patterns. Look, Jeff Shaw QC never gave his mates in the
Magistocracy the tools nor the funding to deal with the real issues, even
if they had the skills, in the 3 minutes the police allow them to spot
it. And sure a little green Prozac
at $1.64 a time would be a shed load cheaper for society than the AVO
devastation but that’s what mono focus “preventative” labelling justice
delivers. What the document says
is “AVO at the end of a marriage” but what it’s really all about is “I
would rather you allowed me to get an AVO against God - I mean it worked
for Billy Connolly didn’t it: I
hate my life ”. The AVO judge never
sees any of this- phones and kids contact cut off (its Indian call centres,
it’s not me). All just drivel. Furthermore if your spouse is a drunkard
who hits the kids post the AVO you face a difficult situation. Ordinarily
you would deal with this, or once out of the house you would report this.
But an allegation, without substantive and definitive proof, is or may be
“harassment” by you once the AVO is issued. Aargh the truth, Jack Nicholson, the
truth. See, no one knows what the law is, the truth can be confronting and
hence irritating // intimidating, but it appears the lawyers favour kids
being belted by middle class drunks, for the lawyers can be paid worrying
about it all, and the judicial swagger itself ensures these sorts of outcomes occur
frequently, of course not all the time, but simply because female violence
is “down the agenda”. The saddest thing about these modern day re-enactments
of The Crucible is that
some magistrates actually think, yes occasionally they do actually think, that their sloganeering on “the
seriousness of the issue” and “the
process” is something to be proud of, rather than a sad reflection on the
systems utter inability and unwillingness by those same people to confront
the underlying issue at hand and the fact that, as bit part actors, who go
out of their way to be “fact-lite”, that they are most often interfering to
maximise, not minimise, negative
externalities. Like the Western Australian historians who got to write up
the crusades of the well-meaning AO Neville with part Aboriginal orphans, the
record won’t be especially pretty for this latest “intervention”
either. You see, in a very real
sense the system doesn't want you competing with it, and as horribly badly
as the modern social experiment of supplanting state for family is
progressing, frankly, you are
powerless to do much. The whole area is replete with grandiose statements,
the perspicacity of intellectual midgets, photo ops by the pollies, and
massive gaming by the lawyers. What a cynical, sad, way to actively
undermine community empathy for victims of actual bashing. But then again Australia takes “acts of
violence against women” seriously The Cacophony, will respond. Of course we
do, of course we do. Well something like that. For that is why Australian
society permits brothels to be de criminalised, and trafficking nowadays
to flourish uncontrollably, because we take violence against women – um,
seriously? Whoops they are working class women and aren’t apparently
interested in “cutting edge Australian feminist issues” (you know, like “who
is wearing a blue tie to Parliament this week” – get off it Ju-liar, I
actually voted for you so you could do something real; that’s why you got the Tijuana Brass,
you deluded twit). In this instance
it’s not the Men’s rights groups that are the extremists; rather it’s an
especially weak and moribund magistocracy, carrying out Joh’s view that
there is no separation of powers at all, and who have thus failed to
regulate boundaries around this new social experiment. It’s just way
beyond them to deal seriously with really serious issues.
http://www.city-journal.org/2013/23_4_otbie-psychiatry.html
But never fear, failed politicians are near: http://www.news.com.au/national/south-australia/natasha-stott-despoja-domestic-violence-a-national-emergency/story-fnii5yv4-1226767345164
- An
important 4 letter word- F***
this; there we go, its out. The AVO
Industrialists spend enormous
efforts focusing the policy dialogue on acts of physical violence that are
not being reported. Probably right,
but clearly quite innumerate, as the most commonly deployed part of the
legislation is not physical violence but rather the “interim intimidation
AVO slur, by way of allegation and no coherent attempt at analysis”. It’s
the easiest thing in the world to assert: you could claim a Martian
conspiracy and as long as it’s one of many allegations no one would read
it. Nutters Charter stuff. The lack of hearing is one issue- claims have
no procedural fairness. More worrying though is that everything you do is
potentially “intimdatory”. The AVO
intimidation regime distorts and disfigures the key libertarian value that
persons are free to act, save as proscribed by law- a set of intelligible
rules (whatever their complexity or fairness) that are known in advance
and relate to specified conduct. Just like the old Vagrancy Acts, it’s
vague. It’s the "rule of lawyers’ ambit claims”; not the "rule
of law". The sort of legal regime that Major Francis Grose would have
been proud of. Soccer dads accused of”intimdating me by disagreeing” , all
in a manner that make the Salem
witch trials seem like balanced, precautionary, jurisprudence. As seen
above, things like protection of Gladesville real estate agents fees are
asserted (well it was a female agent so … maybe he was wearing a blue tie
at the time; danger lurks everywhere doesn’t it ?). In Yorkshire, UK, they
tried to issue an ASBO (a pommy AVO) against the dad of 6 year olds
kicking a football in the street after 5pm. Nutty. Anyway, we should add that
AVOs have only been created recently as an experiment in Australian social
policy (2007). Bought to you by
“The Lovely Folks in This Weeks Controlling Faction of The Labor
Party”; in turn derived from a Labour idea from the UK (1998, by Tony
Blair, who was, well sort of, okay, he was from the Baghdad branch of the
Labour Party). Other countries such
as Shamrockville, the Land of Toby Keith’s boot, and Nu Zulun’ have more
narrowly scripted domestic violence regimes and in addition have strong
form constitutional constraints. We have no written constitutional due
process rules and our Muddly Straights run scared of integrity measures. It’s
simply no coincidence that it’s Engerland and Oz, the 2 Anglo American
countries where the legal systems are, essentially, constitutionally piss
weak that the AVO regimes really run amok. The Brits are suffering the
same issues as us and decided in January 2014 not to “go more Australian”
given AVOs are a Nutters Charter. What is it about vague control order
regimes than us D. A.F. Ozzies just accept, almost as if The Rum Corps
never existed ? We do nothing. For many it’s wholly unclear what benefit
the new Act provides over the pre 2007 legislation (other than massive
social disruption, more bitterness towards a wobbly system, and of course
lots of jolly good legal fees arguing about its ambit and what “blue line
precautionary rules” mean). Anyway,
rest assured that as a result of yelling that your divorce will last way
way longer than it should as the legal profession ensures that the concept
of no fault is buried deep down, right
alongside Lionel Murphy. AVOs are a god send worth hundreds of thousands
of dollars in fees for the old darlings in the legal profession, still
working through their anger with the repeal of the Matrimonial Causes Act
1959, and there aint no attempt to halt
the policy arbitrage, stop the ADD mob in the State Courts usurping the
role of the Family Court, and then carrying it out in the most inept
fashion imaginable. While Angry Vengeance Orders are now “day rigger, darl”
in divorce cases, rapacious middle class mummies keen on a 80-20 split on
the waterfront palazzo have ensured that real victims of domestic bashings
are sadly treated by many with the same belief as to their claims, as are
people who sue MacDonald’s for serving up tasteless hot coffee.
So if nuttiness of this sort is tempered elsewhere by Constitutional
constraints, what about in The Land of
OiOiOi ? Well, despite what you may have gleaned from the late Bud Tingwell in The
Castle, we really don’t have a Constitution, much, at all. No written procedural rules. And our Parliament has the constitutional power to ”
make laws for peace, order and good government”. Pretty much , that’s it, and
some small things stolen from the yanks, but of no great apparent consequence
in these matters. Pretty broad language, huh? But note however that Parliament can only make
“laws” (the most important 4 letter word).
So is the ever meandering
“reasonable intimidation inside 3 minutes, inside the mind of another”
regime as legislated in the 2007 Act a “law” or just an “invalid enactment”
i.e. a
proclamation of “intent “ that’s way too vague and hence void – cf. Kable v DPP
(1996) 189 CLR 51; ; R. v. Levkovic (2013) SCC 25 – “Impermissibly
vague laws mock the rule of law and scorn an ancient and well-established
principle of fundamental justice: No one may be convicted or punished for an act
or omission that is not clearly prohibited by …law.” So is “Intimidation, reasonably”, for 3
minutes, inside the mind of another
person, reasonably, reasonably quickly, a “ law” at all ? Can Parliament create an in
terrorem based around amorphous anti- social behaviour legislation and
“feelings”.
As The 2002 NSW LRC Apprehended Violence Orders discussion paper notes “
Anti-stalking legislation is inherently difficult to draft. The offence is by
nature imprecise, as behaviour which is otherwise considered quite ordinary
becomes threatening in context, the difficulty in defining stalking as a
concept lies in its paradoxical status as an act that is ambiguously located
somewhere between crime and conformity”. The “context” in the case of AVOs are
the 3 minute show trials (actually once the judges asks questions you have 90
seconds to establish “context”- good luck with that ) , btw, followed by
jail….you know jail, that’s a place not “, somewhat ambiguously located” at all).
Sure “obscenity” was a crime, required intent, related to a specific prior picture
and there were limits for good faith retractions, not jail time. The AVO
relates to past and present behaviours and its innately uncertain, differs from
laws such as “unconscionable conduct” under the ACL, as it results in jail time: it’s not a rule
about equitable allocation of loss. And heaven forbid that legislative
draughtsmen should have to burn the Midnight Oil (MP3 these days) ; or that judges should make some attempt to apply basic concepts of natural justice .
Given every opportunity since 2007 to rain in the AVO “in terrorem”, we continue
to endure a spectacular public policy failure. Its for that reason alone that the
High Court needs to strike down the 2007 Act and require PCO to draft
legislation that specifies defined activities. The other reasons is simply that
the Local Courts cant cope at all with a reasonableness standard: they don’t
have time. .
Note the argument isn’t about your own acts getting the order levied
against you. Its about what you can do, and whether, generally, there is any
precision in the concept of “intimidation”, as such. Is selling a house
“intimidation”; is refusing to pay a real estate agents fee “intimidation’
? It’s not a law at all, it’s a social
panic, let’s just face it, addressed by way of a meandering political slogan
that’s got way out of control.
See also
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jan/09/lords-reject-antisocial-asbo-ipna-bill?CMP=fb_gu
7.
Statutory Rape. Sure, but all anger is bad, isn’t
it ? I mean it’s just a house eviction,
surely it’s just that simple? Well we
don’t take that view with tenants or home owners, and this is possible violent
arguing, so like, so like, who cares if
it’s a first to file regime ? Cynicism pervades the bar so deeply that no one
really cares about individual cases. Many barristers will tell you "look,
you've been moved out of the house. That's what those Angry Vengeance Orders
are really used for- everyone knows that. Don't sweat the injustice, just
rollover”. This brazen misuse of the law startles non-lawyers. Because courts
give up on even attempting the search for truth, divorces become even more
bitter than needs be. Who can trust someone who lies for “the greater
good” at the very end of a marriage ?
Now some “w-adical academics” argue that the cost of an unseemly speedy process
is that significant errors are inevitable; and that imposing any constraints on
their uber dodgy lawyer mates in the AVO Industry may well result in less
protection for some genuine victims of hidden domestic bashing but that’s a
price worth paying - a point which is innumerate, because the AVO, is, in the
main, given for one side of a verbal stoush. The academic retort, which is more
of an observation, is that violence can include verbal abuse; and indeed it
can. But asserting that arguing, unless it’s “reasonable”, is no standard at
all, and that’s what we have sunk to.
Because of the ambulatory nature of an interim intimidation assertion, and in a
3 minute hearing, standards of “reasonable arguing” are in any event quite irrelevant.
AVOs are not seen as a protection- they are seen as a property extraction
mechanism, which has the effect of embittering domestic disputes because the
process is grossly distorted , unfair , and inane at the end of a 20 year
marriage. And they make lots of people think domestic violence is “a far king lawyers
scam” (because , well, often it is). Well sure you might say. Ok , sure, some kid’s lives get destroyed and families
embittered by allegations made in 3 minutes, and some people think so what, for
they had to be separated anyway, whatever the facts. Go to the Family Court in
that case. Or that he was “an offensive guy”- so he was asking for it, surely (whoops
that’s the defence that rapists use, so strike that one). What they mean is that kids’ lives as a
proportion of legal fees generated for a dying business model of family
lawyering are…. is a tolerable….whoops wrong metric again. Anyway make some
excuse…and then it would be ideal if those same enthusiasts could come down to
the Inner West for a beer with us, and explain their views to one of our little
mates, a bloke forcibly sodomised by a policeman in his youth, whose wife knew
nothing was done back in the day, and
yet on their divorce got a “contrived argument AVO” served on him so as to
“control “ him, and show him “ who was
boss in the divorce”. You see “doing the
John Hopoate” just isn’t legally relevant to how real rape victims react (if
they ever have the guts to come forward, having suppressed shame for 30 years
as a coping mechanism). And “the Hopoate”
is provocation, which just isn’t relevant in Alice’s AVO Land. That is the true
cost of 3 minute mono justice on “far king verbals”- near suicide through the
grant of an interim AVO, where the wobbly drunk Scottish neighbour thought he
was “just a prickly guy” (odd that- after you have been forcibly sodomised that
you might well be that way for burying the rape for 30 years does that to you,
you inebriated dim wit, but hey why ask over the fence, or talk to someone who
may know intimate details). And oh gosh The Wallopers haven’t got time to ask
why someone like that may be angry- after all they have 71 more AVO parking
tickets to hand out that day and the
donut shop closes at 3 pm so why leave your desk? Legal puppeteers- take note:
it’s not “a game”. Any apologist for the current AVO regime has to be ecstatic,
or at least comfortable, that an AVO has already been used as an instrument
designed to make a person re live a rape, a confrontation, a nightmare. Male
rape is real, and it been re lived in your name, at your behest, because of the
interim Angry Vengeance “No Farking Bad language and yelling scam”, that you
are very, very, very comfortable with. Rape is not a “female only” issue: it’s
a control issue. Suicide is a huge issue, not a numbers game, in which numerous
and repeated bogus “errors” simply can continue to be tolerated because someone
feels offended// harassed in 3 minutes. The AVO Industrialists , and their
Ka-Ching AVO fraud factories, should not be allowed to treat male rape victims
as viciously and callously as they do. And “the price of all this” is not
“fine” just because someone else pays it (how many of these F*** knuckles
really give a toss about the victims of male rape; it’s all a language play, and
male rape is something not to mention at the Women In Law cocktail party. For you
are little better than the original police rapist, your “honour” - you didn’t care at all, you jurisprudential
bollard, so no crocodile tears and faux apologies please). This is why many see
AVOs as a scam- they are a very brutal weapon, way often used as an instrument
of abuse: a sword, not a shield. In any event justice is inherently individual.
So condemning all anger in 3 minutes is simply intolerant, silly, and abusive
and …..… well, so, not, not, “unreasonable” that it’s deserving of an AVO
itself of course. A number of naive and vacuous people nonetheless still assert
that the current AVO shake downs should continue- but that’s no longer a
credible position to hold given the tsunami of bogus allegations. And very
scary naivety, given that “Litigation Funding” has already hit the Family Law
Sector, moving the incentive structure right past the tsunami fault line. What
our community needs is an AVO against the issue of more inane property scam
related AVOs.
Some 45%
of AVOs go no where ie are dropped at the next stage. As Jpnathan Swift said
300 years ago "Falsehood
fliesand truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived,
it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect." . Political
Lying
Still you can always find some aspiring politician of the
hour , say , a man who has “ no tolerance for violence at all, in any form “
(well, except if it’s against redheads called Ju-Liar.) When they see the
chance for yet another meaningless photo op in the Land of Gesture Politics can
they resist:
After school teachers, failed lawyers are the 2nd
biggest contributors to Labor ranks.
Still, there’s hope for Mark Latham’s cabbie , right ? Yeah, sure there
is :
8.
What to do when the coffee gets” just too hot” @ your local McDonalds- So the
reality is that fault based divorce for contrived allegations of unreasonable
behaviour does still exist in Australia, sotto voce at the State level, in the
form of the meandering AVO “game”. The
somnambulant jurists in state courts are pliant in giving effect to the
maelstrom of vengeance contrived by your former spouse and panic when any
allegation is made, sane or otherwise. That
means daddy must move out of the house- yes its unfair but that’s the price you
must personally pay . If you stay expect an AVO fraud to occur and the
court to rubber stamp it. Courts are so overwhelmed with AVO applications: they
just can’t cope, and find it easy to favour anyone who files first with them. Lawyers playing cat with a ball of wool. So
the lesson is that you must act like a litigator- once you think divorce is
possible you should communicate with
your spouse only by email that is date stamped and bcc ‘d via Gmail- backed up
offsite; keep lots of notes; collate statutory declarations from any former
nannies and all your joint family friends, yearly; only use language suited for debate in the
Mosman Bridge Club (and do not sound like Chris Pyne, wow that guy is just way
too irritating If you vote Laba); never mention you have ever watched The
Commitments, with the kids, for f*** sake; keep iPhone pictures and records of absolutely
everything. Start removing documents and sweeping cash. Send the cops your 601
certificate. Your emails and reports to them must cover the period of at least
5 years pre divorce (this is what your wife’s “divorce support network” will
encourage her to do in the course of “recovering her memories”) but maybe
longer. If your wife asks for 90% of the property , don’t call her an “far king
mad women”, rather call a mate in IT around to the house and state “With
respect , I think neither Justice Gaudron nor Justice Callinan agreed with that
specific juridical synopsis- my delightful ex-spouse”. Put it on a mp3 file on
your mates smart phone; upload to a website. Follow up with an email to 5-oh. Have your lawyer email the local cops as a
matter of course, and notify them that
you are in a divorce, worried about nutty arbitrage claims, list all her
weird friends as bi polar, child bashers, etc.,
as there is a very good chance you will be hit with a bogus claim in 6 months’
time. It’s some prophylactic against a subsequent AVO arbitrage play by your
spouse. It’s not as if the Wallopers undertake due diligence at all. But do get your genuine memory flashbacks on
the record, even if the specific narrative is written, say, by an outsourcing
website, as long as you truly feel the pain. Data dump your recollections- just
like a litigator- to the cops email addresses. Not daily. But at least weekly.
Copies of emails, phone records, credit cards, holiday snaps together, everything
you can. Notify the court register and
ask if you can book a weekly slot at your Local Court so you can be well known
to the judge before she king hits you at short notice with an AVO property scam.
If the Magistrate looks like she process
claims at 200 miles an hour, and most do, then your only defence is offence-
file your own “extremely stressed “ AVO arbitrage scam concerns against your own
spouse are the only real option, sad as this is and join the tsunami, and
embitter your divorce. Try a few AVOs yourself- maybe against the magistrate herself,
as a possible instrument of harassment (there is no need to prove intent and
there is no doubt that somnambulant AVO processors harass the public at large).
Join Palmer United and claim all magistrates are descended from a lost tribe of
Chinese people , and that funding of domestic violence in Australia needs to be
cut 75% because it ‘always contrived , not just some of the time: so that if you do get an AVO you can allege
you are being persecuted for your political beliefs. Now your old friends know all your secrets,
but you must disclose them to everyone. In writing. Remember it’s the oddballs
who do this stuff and they can say they genuinely didn’t know, for example,
that you had been raped. Sure it’s hard to live with but the AVO law is that
you have to tell the busybodies all of that. For “what looks like arguing in 3
minutes, not knowing anything at all about you ” is the AVO test. Record it on an mp4 file. Tell the whole
neighbourhood, by email, what the fight was all about. Also, keep extensive
file notes about conversations with your inebriated neighbour like the day her
daughter alleged she hit them when drunk- you just never know when you will
need that detail. Record that kids confession on your iPhone. Post it on Facebook.
Collect as much dirt as you can on a nutty spouse, and everyone they know who
is vaguely batty, or the local alcoholic, and make mp4 files recording them
taking to wombats. If served, you only have 3 minutes panic button time in
court so if you get allotted someone who looks like they aren’t in the top 10%
of NSW magistrates, carry on so they have to recuse themselves. When you file
against your spouse make the allegations as sordid as possible. As we say frankly
the rule in AVO land is file first. Sad as that maybe at increasing tensions
its the way the “no fault divorce “game” works in Australia. It’s a scam. Onya
magistrates. Onya. Then make your own
outrageous allegations about suburban cocaine rings and midnight telephone
calls in the street and wombats waking you up, and dress in black, rough up
your hair a bit, and then allege…………….…………Actually, no. Stop. Oh stop. Where is
this thing going ? Just stop. What would
the late Lionel Murphy, architect of the 1975 Federal Family Law Act, have
thought that he actually achieved if he
could see Middle Class AVO Wonderland in all its glory? Well, actually he
achieved nothing. It’s hard not to conclude that the AVO regime is a completely
failed experiment- way too often used as a scam. The amount of bitterness and social
dislocation caused by the failed AVO social experiment is extraordinary.
Instead, if the 2007 Act was to be reformed, then rather than repealing it
consideration should be given to specifying prohibited acts, removing private
enforcement rights, reinforcing the promises made by its creators, and holding the
nut jobs and ambulance chasers to
account. However dealing with the underlying causes of disputes is the biggest
issue - and for many that means breaking up the Family Court fixation on lengthening
their queues. Abolishing interim AVOs all together is another policy paradigm, but
that’s too radical. What our community needs is a system that:
·
protects
the meek;
·
works seamlessly so as to separate couples with
dignity at the end of 20 years together;
·
penalise verballing and extravagant claims by
making the risk of loss viable to nutty complainants and dobbers, carving
out a safe harbour for the indigent;
·
ensures domestic violence is not widely
perceived as “ complete b ulls*** , yet another far king divorce lawyers scam” by way too many people;
·
is of materially lower economic and social cost
than the present regime ;
·
is clear law
·
is not triggered for offensive behaviour
·
focuses on real domestic violence issues, ensuring that scarce public sector resource
allocation issues are properly deployed by police, not by fee obsessed family
lawyers; is coterminous with federal law policy on family mediation;
·
and gets adult lawyers, family court judges ,
into play so as to ensure that the political appointees from your Local Court can
focus back on the law of complex parking tickets (or whatever part of the legal
system it is they are vaguely competent handling).
·
A modest proposal to optimise those objectives
is set out later in this blog via an amalgam of changes to Federal and State
law.
Keith Lowe, The Savage Continent , 2012, St Martin’s Press, 0241962226
Anna Funder, Stasiland: , 2011 HarperCollins
ISBN 10: 0062077325
Sure it destroys communities but that’s the point of an
intimidation ambit claim AVO- vomit it all out and rely on the state to, um, to
, um, to, er, to do, um, to do what the
state does best. It’s always those people with the greatest faith in government
are inevitably those who have the lowest level of exposure to it. Keep AVOs only for domestic physical
violence. Fund others who need to move out.
