Memoir - Leaves 29-34, Mexican beaches, Vietanmese Kitchen, Tax Man, Premiers and Pakistan Calling

Leaf 29 Margaritas, white sands, trade winds and a star filled sky. Cancun Mexico February 2005.

Just a few feet away, the Caribbean lapped on white sands.  Round dining tables had been set up on the beach at the water’s edge.  Never ending margaritas were available by simply raising an empty glass. Around my table, was a rich mix of government officials and activists from several countries and continents. We had gathered in Cancun for the 3^rd Annual Information Commissioner’s Conference. The budget for the event was approximately two million dollars. Over 450 delegates gathered for the 3 day conference opened by the President of Mexico, Vincente Fox. I had flown halfway around the world to speak to a gathering of about twenty people in a parallel session. I learnt that at similar conferences, whilst the formal talk was important, it was the exchange of ideas, information and analysis in discussion forums and at informal events like the one at the beach that were critical. 

Meanwhile, back in Tasmania, other staff filled in for the first two lectures in Introduction to Law and Administrative Law. I have always fretted about the trade offs involved in palming off my direct teaching involvement for the opportunity to engage in these types of international events. In recent years, however, comments in the students’ reflective journals suggest that the impact of having an internationally recognised guest teacher enlivens their experience and engagement, so a worthwhile trade off for me, also benefits the Law School and students.

The next day in Mexico, after the late night of margaritas and sand, we had lunch by a pool overlooking the ocean. I was introduced to a young woman, Vanessa Diaz Rodriguez, sitting next to me. Vanessa was a researcher at UNAM , the National University of Mexico. At the end of our meal and conversation we promised to stay in touch. It came as a bit of a surprise later that year to receive an invitation, arranged by Vanessa, to attend an FOI Conference in Mexico City. Over the next few years we kept in touch.  Later she joined UTAS as one of my PhD students.

Leaf 30 “The blow in kid from along the road” Greens Beach, Northern Tasmania 1966 or 1967

I could have been in Grade 1 or 2. We were at Greens Beach in Northern Tasmania. Almost 46 years later, that name brings back memories of happy smells, sounds and a sense of fun. A school mate, name forgotten, who lived along Elphin Road had taken me on a family trip (can’t recall if a day, weekend or longer). I think his father was a doctor. I don’t know the arrangements made or any of the details. It seemed to me at the time and especially in the occasional faint recall in latter years, that this was a magical moment for me. I was happy, the pressure of scanning, being alert, judging my environment seemed to have switched off. It wouldn’t be until we settled into our new life in Queenstown a couple of years later that I would get another experience of that sort. At least that second time it would last.

Leaf 31 “Johnny’s in the basement I’m on the pavement thinking about the government” Dylan. Salamanca Hobart mid 1999

I was at the Vietnamese Kitchen in Salamanca.  This meeting attracted coverage in the Tasmanian Parliamentary Hansard both in 1999 and 2002. The Tasmanian Attorney General, Dr Peter Patmore, and his senior advisor sat opposite. I had presented my wish list of FOI reforms to a relatively cool reception. I was still slightly annoyed because when I had been in Ireland teaching for the first part of 1999, a friend emailed me to say that the State government was delaying its long overdue whistleblowing reforms until I returned from Ireland and could be consulted. It seemed that the government hadn’t discovered email. In reality, my absence was being used to justify the non-action of the Attorney General.

 Over the meal I turned the discussion to the idea of a Law Reform Institute based on the Alberta model linked to the University of Alberta Law School. The Attorney General seemed interested in the idea. Previously I had managed to get the Greens to insert the idea into their 1996 election platform.  I suggested he approach the hierarchy of the Law School with the idea. Subsequently, after much negotiation the Dean of Law and the Attorney General launched the Institute in 2001. It was and still is an innovative first for Tasmania. 

Leaf 32 “Tax Man” Hobart 1980s

The mid 1980s was a frustrating time for me. I spent most of it attempting to escape the Australian Tax Office.  I joined the ATO in late 1982 because they offered me a job. The job was offered because I had sat the Commonwealth public service exams and was placed near the top of the list,  I sat the exam only because my flatmates wanted a job and dragged me along one Saturday when I had nothing better to do. 

A few months after I started at Tax, my friends who had dragged me to the test were offered jobs in other departments. I met Esther, my future wife at the Tax Office – a rare highlight. She started work on Valentine’s Day, but from her account, she was less than impressed by the mouthy guy who sat behind her.

Put simply, the Tax Office and a free thinking legally trained, union orientated, punk rock and Dylan aficionado were not a match made in heaven. At that stage in the early 1980s, university graduates at the regional level were a novel experiment and while economics (Esther) and accounting graduates slotted in very well, only a particular subset of law grads fitted smoothly. Law graduates who liked to research, confirm the law, play devil’s advocate and who bridled against the ease with which the organisation cracked down on blue collar workers, welfare beneficiaries and mum and pop savings accounts and who queried how difficult the organisation found dealing with professionals and other elites, were simply in the wrong place.

I scored some firsts whilst doing my time in the ATO. I was one of the first male staff to take leave to look after a young baby, while his wife returned to the office and one of the first full-time male staff to be granted permanent part time status to study at university with permission to tutor (and run a stall at Salamanca Market) and then leave for 3 years to tutor at law school. I was probably the only staff member to wear, without approval, a lava lava, a traditional wrap around dress worn in the South Pacific and on another day King Gee overalls to assess tax returns. I am convinced that my immediate managers knew I would come to no good.

Leaf 33 “A visit to the watchtower” Premier’s Office Hobart 2008

I made my way through the Premier’s office in the Murray Street building. I sat in the Premier’s suite with a single advisor present, enjoying the view looking over the Derwent River. The Premier, David Bartlett, new to the office,  talked about reform, accountability, trust and making government more transparent. A few days later, the Premier released his 10 point plan on improving trust. At our meeting we didn’t discuss this specific plan but I like to think a little bit of my intellectual DNA found its way into a couple of points.

Legal academics involved in law reform often have trouble either accounting for their activity or receiving some recognition for their contributions. Invitations to sit on advisory committees or the citation of a law reform submission are the most common forms of this recognition. However, often it is the far more intangible contributions that are more important but unable to be flagged in resumes or promotion applications. A conversation over a meal, a quiet discussion at Salamanca Market or a discrete emissary sent to take a sounding are often just as, or more influential, than the more formal and public involvement. A quote in a newspaper or a perception that you might make an adverse media comment can also influence the reform process. In the late 1990s, two senior officials from the Tasmanian Justice Department visited me at the Law School to show me a confidential draft of two pieces of legislation to allow administrative decisions to be challenged in Tasmania. Both drafts had no provision for the provision of reasons for decisions. My simple response was that I could live with most of the contents of the drafts but would have to publically oppose the omission of reasons. When the legislation entered the parliament, the two bills contained provisions for reasons but no footnote.

Leaf 34 “Send lawyers, guns and money” Warren Zevon – changing places and times.

I am often invited to places where the University is reluctant to send me – probably more for insurance purposes rather than anything else. The invites are often pitched as ‘can you fly tomorrow or the next day to China, Afghanistan etc’. The problems with these invites are first, trying to get a visa; and second, navigating through the University’s slow approval process while my over eager hosts usually want a definite answer within hours.

My most unusual invitation was to fly to Afghanistan in 2008 to present a seminar to the President, “possibly.” The word possibly was used due to security reasons; his attendance could never be certain or confirmed in advance. Putting aside the advisability, feasibility or even suitability of Afghanistan worrying about a legislative FOI scheme, the whole process was problematic especially for someone, who when I had visited Pakistan earlier in 2008, was greeted by Pakistani shopkeepers, with wry senses of humour, as either a wandering jew or Osama bin Laden’s long lost Australian cousin.

Surprisingly, the University eventually approved the travel to Afghanistan as long as I promised to go straight from airport to conference and back to the airport. However, the trip would hinge on getting to Dubai and transferring in only a 120 minute window, with the next flight being several days later, and getting an approved visa application to and from Canberra in 48 hours which was just too uncertain to attempt.

On the 6^th June 2008, a Friday, I received an invitation to travel to Islamabad, Pakistan to present a 15 minute FOI seminar at a World Bank workshop on the 19^th of June. I discovered none of the senior university staff needed to approve this travel were available. A previous request in 2004 to travel to Pakistan was ruled out as too risky.  By the following Monday, I managed to gain approval.  The next hurdle was getting my passport to the Pakistan High Commission in Canberra for it to be fast tracked for a visa  and back in my hands before departure at 2pm Monday 16^th June from Hobart. A UTAS law graduate working in the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s office acted as my liaison and hand delivered my passport and collected the completed visa and had it posted as a Platinum Post Express Delivery (guaranteed next day delivery) by 2pm on Thursday 12^th June.  The online tracking monitor revealed that the visa had missed the 8pm, and last flight, from Canberra to Tasmania. A check of the location late Friday revealed my visa was sitting at a depot in Launceston. Monday morning just 5 hours before my flight there was no change on the tracking site. At 11am I received a call from the University Handling Bay that there was a package for me. I rushed to the top end of the campus grabbed the passport with its new visa, returned to the Law School, collected my luggage called a cab and started my journey – Hobart – Melbourne – Sydney. 

At Sydney, my Thai Airways flight to Bangkok was cancelled because the plane had failed to leave Bangkok. I then discovered the joys of working with the World Bank – all the travel was business class. ‘No problem sir come with us,’ I was smoothly and quickly transferred to a Qantas flight – arrived Bangkok – switched airlines to Eitihad and flew to Abu Dhabi – then on to Islamabad, a purpose designed capital like Brasilia or Canberra. On my arrival at Islamabad’s International Airport, I was greeted with sheer chaos. Unnumbered baggage carousels were spitting out luggage everywhere and hordes of Hindi pilgrims in white were streaming past security with no checks or controls.

On my arrival at the hotel, I thought the security arrangements were excessive, yet a similar hotel had been bombed in Kabul the previous year and a few months after my departure a similarly designed hotel and security arrangements were breached in Islamabad. On the afternoon of my midnight departure, hordes of military personnel could be seen everywhere on the hotel grounds. Outside the hotel’s perimeter, every parked vehicle, for several hundred metres, was towed away. My limousine driver explained that a general’s son was getting married that night and the reception would be at the hotel, clearly a tempting target for terrorists and subversive elements within Pakistan’s Byzantium political scene.

The World Bank Workshop in Islamabad only required me to speak for 15 minutes in return for business class travel from Australia, with a hotel room booked for a six hour stop over in Bangkok, 3 nights in a luxury hotel in Islamabad and all other expenses covered. I remembered being frustrated in the workshop because many of the attendees would preface their comments with long statements and convoluted analyses of current events to such an extent that my 15 minutes was finally reduced to 8 minutes. Whilst the benefits for me were numerous including recognition, international travel, frequent flyer points and a brief experience of Pakistani life, the return benefits for Pakistan and the World Bank seemed less clear cut.

During the workshop, my eyes were continually drawn to a woman on the other side of the room. Around her I could almost sense a crackling energy. She was unlike many of the Pakistani women I had encountered in the foyer and cafes of my international hotel and at the workshop. Urbane, sophisticated, stylish women who had clearly carved an exemption from many of the more blatant strictures of a heavily sexist and patricidal culture, think Benazir Bhutto, were very unusual in this part of the world. Yet the small, wiry and elderly woman across the table, Tahira Abdullah, was a very different type of woman. Her eyes flashed with passion and at times her laughter erased the sting from her razor sharp tongue. Yet no-one, honoured invited international guest or senior official, was exempt from her demands for truth. At the time, I saw only her thick glasses, creased skin and grey hair and a strange magnetism that seemed to whirl around her small frame. In a later exchange of emails, this rich mixture of humour, sharpness and uncompromising pursuit of her causes continued to break upon me like a raging river over an elemental force.

Many have labelled me an activist or a freedom fighter, yet in contrast to Tahira, my efforts were insipid, timid and conducted with little risk to my safety, well being or existence. In response to a recent email when I asked if she was as passionate, determined and feisty as ever, Tahira replied “yes, I am so even more - now that I have the dubious distinction of not one but TWO Fatwas on my head - one from the Taliban/TTP (April 2009) and one just recently from the rabid Pakistani Mullah brigade (on speaking out against the Blasphemy laws).....!!!”