I’m not sure why my anger (or its management) concerns you because it doesn’t take away from my opinion regarding Cadzow’s piece: something which the two people to comment have (conveniently?) ignored.

Whether Melanie worked with Cynthia or not and how obvious that might be is of little relevance. What is of relevance is the idea that there was some sort of conspiracy. And because the conspiracy that was being bandied about regarded a cover up, what actually happened to Cynthia is circumstantial. The conspiracy outlined by Cadzow and intimated by the Lateline piece you did with Hermant was that Conway was protecting his arse.

Here is what the Coroner found with respect to these claims and I quote at length to include the Coroner’s judgements of the police as well:

92. The upshot of this evidence is that Sergeant Taylor may have conducted further investigations had he been aware that the incident was caused by a volatile liquid being spilled by one person onto another. The mere fact that somebody had been burnt, and evacuated to Alice Springs, did not prompt the same response. There is an argument that Sergeant Taylor should have investigated further, even on the information which he had to hand from Mr Conway. It is a matter on which minds might reasonably differ. On balance, however, I do not criticise Sergeant Taylor for his failure to do so. I accept the analogy that household burns suffered in the usual course do not attract or warrant any police investigation.

93. That leaves the nature of Mr Conway’s report. Mr Conway largely agreed with Sergeant Taylor’s account of the report. Although that report was not as complete as it could have been, I find that Mr Conway did not have any ulterior motive, and was not attempting to conceal any matter, when he was making the report. He made mention of the burns. He made mention of the evacuation. He made mention of the involvement of a lantern. He did not have any interest or motive in discouraging police investigation. I have read the suggestion that Mr Conway wished to protect the tourism industry, either on his property specifically or in Central Australia generally. I do not accept that suggestion for two reasons. First, Mr Conway impressed me during the giving of his evidence as an honest and decent man. Secondly, I cannot see that scrutiny or publicity in relation to an accident of this nature would, or would have been expected, to impact upon tourist numbers.

94. Any suggestion that Mr Conway was seeking to downplay or cover up the incident is also inconsistent with his subsequent conduct. He made three calls to the Police on the morning following the incident. One purpose of those calls was to seek assistance from the police in relation to counselling his employees who had witnessed the incident. On the day following the incident, Mr Conway called all the employees together and told them that they needed to talk through the issues and should not bottle up their feelings.

95. There was some suggestion in the initial statement to Police given by Ms Williams (a station employee at the relevant time), that she had the feeling nobody was talking about the matter and that it was somehow being suppressed. Ms Williams subsequently withdrew that contention without any prompting from any other person, and indeed made a further statement to Police in order to correct the record. From her evidence, I had the distinct impression that Ms Williams’s initial feeling that nobody was talking about the matter was prompted by the fact that on the night following the incident another employee who was not aware of events had queried her drawn appearance.

You can find the full report here: http://www.nt.gov.au/justice/ntmc/docs/judgements/2006/20060429ntmc039.html

Now, the story done by Hermant was powerful because it raised the question of a cover up, but stayed right away from making that claim. Even if Norman had strongly believed it was a conspiracy I’m guessing he would have run this story past ABC’s legal department who would have prevented him from saying this based on a lack of evidence. Cadzow, on the other hand, decided to do make this claim without any new evidence – at least, nothing new since Hermant’s piece. Whilst her story did not put her in contempt of court, because of it’s timing, it’s fair to have the opinion that it is reckless with evidence. What was great about Norman’s piece was that he raised the question, what was bad about Cadzow’s piece was that she thought she had the answer.

More importantly, it was reckless to have relied so much on your quote that it was a conspiracy.

I won’t lie: I thought that Conway might have been covering his own arse and I thought the police might have been found to be neglectful – but I was wrong. Can you admit the same thing?

In any case, my post was not about my opinion of what really happened, but about the ethics of journalism. Even though in my own mind I harboured suspicions of Conway and doubts about the efficacy of the Alice Springs police, the word around town (Alice Springs, not my comfy pad in Sydney) was to the contrary and I was willing to remain open to this.

So, now that I have your attention: do you still believe it to be a conspiracy? If so, why?

Saying that Jane Cadzow “got” me to say anything I didn’t want to is not only mind-numbingly ridiculous to anyone who knows me, it is downright
defamatory. I await your apology. By the way I notice you wrote this some years ago, I hope your anger management issues are all proceeding smoothly by now.

This is one of the few traces of sanity and see that “notorious” demigrapher for what he is…obsessed about non anglo celtics….. Birrel never cites Europeans nor British for using study to PR, although they do.

Gets worse, Bob Carr is now citing Bob Birrel see http://aiecquest.blogspot.com/2009/12/bob-carr-on-immigration.html

Maybe it is time for a new conservative party led by Bob Carr….. bring back white Australia policy?

moikka, paska ranskalainen, en jaksa, voi vittu kultahunipuppeli maksa, lahti, sana, välähdyksinä valaisevat, herttoniemi representaa kuumat paikat.

basically just random finnish words in a row:

hello, shitty frenchman, don’t bother, oh fuck, honeybuns pay up, lahti (a city in finland), sana (=word, a finnish hip hop webzine back in the day), välähdyksinä valaisevat (a finnish hip hop collective) Herttoniemi (Helsinki’s suburb) represent, hot stuff.

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