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Abusive WIN employee resigns
A WIN sales employee has resigned following a Crikey tip into his now-deleted abusive social media accounts.
An X account that appeared to be linked to the employee abused sporting and media personalities dating back to October 2023.
Following questions from Crikey to WIN, the employee’s X account was deleted, and a related Instagram account, which referenced WIN in the handle, was scrubbed to remove the reference to WIN and renamed to the same handle as the dead X account.
A WIN spokesperson told Crikey: “WIN commenced the investigation promptly after becoming aware of the social posts by an employee. The individual involved has resigned and no longer works at WIN.”
The account also made a number of derogatory and negative remarks in relation to women’s sport, and, in an apparent reference to allegations of sexual assault reported in January against former WWE CEO Vince McMahon, asked whether “the woman was making it up to try and get a payout”.
Crikey contacted the employee for comment ahead of publishing the original tip. He did not respond, but blocked us on one social media site used to contact him.
Dyson Heydon’s book club
Disgraced former High Court judge Dyson Heydon has penned a new piece for conservative journal Quadrant. Legal eagles will remember Heydon’s infamous 2002 broadside against the dangers of judicial activism at a Quadrant dinner, published just under a year later by the conservative publication. Justinian published a less sanitised version of the speech in 2004, which included cracks at Alistair Nicholson, then chief justice of the Family Court, as well as Justices Fitzgerald, Einfeld and Kirby, the latter of whom Heydon would join on the High Court in 2003. Heydon also spoke at some length in that speech about the importance of probity (one wonders the probity in allegedly sexually harassing one’s associates).
So what’s he writing this time? It’s a book review of Beneath the Southern Cross: Looking for Australia in the 21st Century, a series of essays by the likes of former Liberal MP Kevin Andrews, perennial Liberal candidate Georgina Downer, No campaigner Gary Johns and human rights commissioner Lorraine Finlay.
Heydon summarises these essays as stemming “from the defeat of the 2023 referendum, a result which virtually all the contributors favour”. He goes on to say the essays “possess liveliness and vitality”.
“They correct an unduly pessimistic view of race relations here,” he writes.
‘With great respect, starting at shadows’
Moving to current judges, and the legal profession is currently gripped by a vicious war of words between two of the most high-profile judges in New South Wales. Federal Court Justice Ian Jackman (older brother of actor Hugh) is going back and forth with NSW Chief Justice Andrew Bell in a debate over whether the use of phrases like “words to the effect of” were appropriate in written affidavits.
It sounds dry, but as one Sydney solicitor tells Crikey: “This is not some niche legal thing — this is two judges fighting like hell.”
In a recent Federal Court judgment discussing the issue, Jackman said Bell was “asserting a supervisory power that his honour does not have”, and was “in the present context … with great respect, starting at shadows”.
“With great respect, [Bell] appears simultaneously to have created and criticised legal uncertainty”.
The debate began over remarks made by Jackman in a case last year, criticising the practice of using the phrase “words to the effect of”, a longstanding legal practice in New South Wales. But as The Australian has reported, “Chief Justice Bell has said there is ‘no meaningful difference’ between a witness offering their ‘best recollection’ of events while giving verbal evidence, and that recollection being written as direct speech in an affidavit.”
We’re sure this case will continue.