There is nothing but God's grace. We walk upon it; we breathe it; we live and die by it; it makes the nails and axles of the universe.
Qatar bans beer at the World Cup (NYT).
FASTER, PLEASE: A New, Better Way to Desalinate Water.
McEnroe is a good documentary (Amazon), a good talent study and also a good look at how the late 1970s and 1980s were so different from the current day.
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Ex-police union boss fails to reignite legal scrap Herald Sun Online August 23, 2022 Tuesday
Ex-police union boss Paul Mullett has failed in his attempt to take former police commissioner Christine Nixon back to court over a years-long dispute.
A panel of Court of Appeal judges rejected Mr Mullett's claim to reignite his battle against the force's former head over "fresh evidence" from the Lawyer X Royal Commission.
Three judges found it was "futile" to grant the former Police Association secretary an extension of time to lodge his appeal because it had no chance to succeed.
Mr Mullett argued he should have been handed documents "critical" to his case that related to secret police informant and barrister Nicola Gobbo, or Lawyer X, before his civil trial in 2016.
He lost that Supreme Court trial and was denied a multi-million dollar payout from Ms Nixon and other ex-officers after a judge rejected his argument that he was the victim of a malicious prosecution when he was suspended from Victoria Police in 2007.
Mr Mullett was suspended after he was accused of leaking information to the targets of a murder investigation into the death of Shane Chartres-Abbott in 2003.
The self-described vampire gigolo was killed after he threatened to expose police corruption.
Police officers Peter Lalor and David Waters had been suspected of aiding the gunmen that shot him, but they were never charged.
Victoria Police had used Gobbo to elicit information about Chartres-Abbott's murder and police corruption in a high-level taskforce called Operation Briars.
Mr Mullett's lawyers earlier argued that had 43 crucial Lawyer X documents been disclosed to him before his 2016 trial, it would have "significantly altered the course of the proceedings".
But a panel of Supreme Court judges, including justices Anne Ferguson, David Beach and Stephen McLeish, disagreed.
The trio was "not satisfied that there was any breach of discovery or disclosure obligations".
"Additionally, the court concluded that there was nothing in the new evidence that Mr Mullett sought to rely upon which might give rise to the possibility that, if the evidence had been produced at trial, Mr Mullett may have succeeded in any of his claims against the named defendants," the appeals panel found.
Mr Mullett's case against Ms Nixon, ex-Deputy Commissioner Kieran Walshe, Detective Superintendent Wayne Taylor, the State of Victoria and Chief Commissioner of Police Shane Patton failed.
He was ordered by the court to pay legal costs for all the parties.
The Australian Taxation Office's internal crime-fighting unit could face investigation by Australian Federal Police anti-corruption over allegations it abused its powers while pursuing threats against one of their own.
The Taxation Office has also been forced to apologise to a woman caught up in the same case whose personal internet use was trawled by ATO investigators trying to snare the person behind the hate mail.
The ATO's feared Fraud Prevention and Internal Investigations (FP&II) unit is also facing trouble on another front, with legal action looming from two former tax officials it wrongly accused of being involved in a grisly Melbourne underworld killing.
Federal Police in Adelaide have referred a complaint from ex-taxation staffer Gary Setter to their anti-corruption counterparts in Canberra for evaluation.
Mr Setter alleges the FP&II acted unlawfully throughout an investigation into their former colleague whom they suspected was behind a hate mail campaign against a senior figure in the unit.
The pursuit culminated in a raid in October 2011, when Canberra-based public servants armed with a search warrant burst in the HMAS Cerberus naval base on the Mornington Peninsula, where Mr Setter was working, and spent several hours scouring his accommodation for evidence.
The unit also pursued a family member of Mr Setter's and used its powers to gain access to weblogs linked to the woman's email address.
But the Australian Information Commissioner found the move was a breach of the woman's privacy and Assistant Commissioner Jonathan Todd has offered an "unreserved apology" for the conduct of FP&II.
"The criminal investigation was not undertaken in relation to you or your conduct," Mr Todd wrote.
ATO's crime fighters may face police investigation
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