Editorial: Money, power and the law
A jury finds that Sir Leslie Thiess systematically bribed the Bjelke-Petersen government yet still awards him $55,000 damages against Channel 9, which exposed his crooked dealings; the federal government prepares legislation to sign away Australia's national resources to big business in terms that a future environmentally responsible government will find all but impossible to reverse; BHP threatens legal action against Greenpeace and then drops the action once its aim of stopping a protest has been achieved; Tim Anderson, already wrongfully imprisoned for seven years, is again behind bars on evidence almost certainly perjured.
If these matters weren't so serious, Australia's legal system would be a joke. It's no secret that those with a lot of money and the powerful connections attracted by large sums of the folding stuff can get anything they like out of the system, but if those without such wealth and connections fall foul of the system, their lives can be ruined.
As the WA Inc saga unfolds and more information emerges on the bankruptcy of the state of Victoria, Australians are being treated to a rare glimpse of the way big business buys the law-makers and ultimately the law. It's not a matter of a few crooked judges or lawyers or even politicians, though none of these are in short supply. The problem is a system in which money rules.
To BHP, the funds necessary for a long legal battle are petty cash; to Greenpeace the same amount might be the entire annual budget. What chance then that the rights and wrongs of mining the breeding ground of the southern right whale will be aired and a rational decision reached in a legal clash between such organisations? For those with any knowledge of the legal system, merely to ask the question is to answer it!
But even this rigged system, together with a police force that does its bidding, big media that routinely present their opinions as self-evident truth and an electoral system rigged in favour of big money are not enough for big business. In recent years it has sought steadily increasing restrictions on the only political avenue left to those without large amounts of money and power — grassroots activity and protest.
The Trade Practices Act and other anti-democratic laws have been used to impose huge fines and the threat of prison to bludgeon trade unionists into submission, and now the BHP vs Greenpeace case, even though it has been dropped, has raised the prospect of further restrictions on the right to protest. While BHP decided not to go ahead, similar court injunctions will almost certainly become a feature of future clashes between big corporations and ordinary citizens defending their rights.
On top of that, the Thiess case shows that you can end up in deep if you tell the truth. While Channel 9 might have no trouble digging up $55,000, anyone else who wants to expose the truth about dirty deals in high places had better watch their step.
None of these situations is getting any better. In fact, the corporate noose is steadily tightening on the whole range of civil liberties and the right to protest as big business plunges our society into ever more serious problems. Ultimately, we need a whole new system: new laws, new law-makers, new legal institutions — and we don't have unlimited time in which to get them.