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The Bible tells us that the sinner Saul was struck down on the road to Damascus. In a sudden flash of light from heaven, he experienced a divine, life-changing epiphany. For most of us the getting of wisdom follows an infinitely more gradual and circuitous path.
This weekend’s Castrol Gold Coast 600 is yet another reminder that some people just seem to be a whole lot happier when someone gets their gear off.
The circus is in town.  A crazy new phenomenon is sweeping across the US, Europe, and now even Australia. It trumps the Trump, it’s scarier than Ruddy’s run at the UN, and it’s so weird it even out-weirds planking, if that’s actually possible. Scary killer clowns have taken to lurking on our streets, hiding in the shadows and around corners, waiting to maniacally leap out and scare the living socks off us.
G men love stoolies. It’s a fact of life. Over the centuries, the one thing that has most frustrated the work of ‘government guys’ – the regulators of all shapes and sizes, the G men, the Jacks, the fuzz, the heat, the traps, the Johnny Hoppers, federalies, wallopers, flatfoots, boys in blue, whatever you want to call them – the one thing that has most frustrated their valiant efforts to rein in the miscreant criminal milieu has been the unshakeable conspiracy of silence that has long existed between partners in crime.
Today’s news that six NRL stars will be interrogated over alleged match fixing, and face jail if they refuse to co-operate with investigators, brings into sharp focus a recurring issue for professional sports people. Having endured the debacle that was the recent ASADA doping investigation into the AFL and NRL, and more recently still match fixing allegations in the sport of basketball and the greyhound industry live baiting scandal, it is very clear to me that few sports administrators, and virtually no sports men and women, have any real appreciation of the concept and purpose of the right to silence, and the interplay between contractual and legislative obligation as it affects statements against interest.
In Australia we have some of the strictest telemarketing laws in the world and we need to. I’m sure everyone who reads this blog has received a telemarketing call at some stage or another from someone in India, the Philippines or even South Africa.
When I was a kid my brothers and I used to watch those corny old black-and-white midday matinee movies on TV, and one of my favourites was an action adventure called “Boom Town”. It starred Clark Gable and Spencer Tracey as “Big John” Masters and “Square John” Sands, a couple of handsome wildcatters chancing their luck on the California oil fields. Together they carve out an empire in a rollicking western town where the saloons are overflowing with cowboys and dancing girls, and everyone is prospecting for something.
Today’s news out of the Broncos Rugby League headquarters about an alleged “drunken incident” involving star centre James Roberts has let more than a few old spectres out of the closet. Newspapers today reported that an allegation Roberts verbally abused a barmaid in a drunken rage at the Normanby Hotel has been referred to the NRL’s integrity unit, which reportedly imposed a 12 month alcohol ban on Roberts in 2014 following his sacking at Penrith.
At festivals like Splendour in the Grass and Greazefest, music lovers have become accustomed to seeing police routinely searching people suspected of having drugs in their possession. In certain circumstances police are entitled to do that, but it’s not just open season. Police are not entitled to just randomly stop and search people for no good reason. Unless a police officer has an actual search warrant, then they’re not entitled to detain and search a person except where they suspect on reasonable grounds that person has drugs in their possession.
I was just a kid when OJ was publicly apprehended by the LAPD. I knew little of the man known as ‘The Juice’, and had no understanding of his place in the psyche of 20th century USA. I had no idea he was so revered by the American public, or why, and had no inkling of the bloodshed that had defined LA’s racial divide in the decades preceding the case. I merely saw another celebrity on trial.
Our perhaps most flamboyant and controversial client, the Gold Coast’s own Candyman, tobacco franchising supremo Mr Travers Beynon, had a win this week in the Supreme Court when Justice James Douglas froze $250,000 in sponsorship funds paid by his company Freechoice Australia to the Lucas Dumbrell V8 racing team, ahead of this weekend’s Townsville 400. As well, Justice Douglas ordered the Dumbrell team to remove the Candyman’s decals from its cars and account for all of their assets ahead of a major damages action launched by Freechoice, to be heard later this year.
Over the weekend, a great hero passed away. Muhammad Ali was not just a giant of the sport of boxing, he was one of the most influential characters 20th century, one whose dynamic personality was an integral part of the winds of change that swept through the post-war period.

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