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[This edited version of the article has been prepared by Dr Robert N Moles]

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Justinian 31 May 2006 – Evan Whitton – “Explicating the inwardness”

Little Johnnie Howard, immersed in failure, is sticking with the “Glutei Defence … Don’t forget, it was Barwick who made the tax system complicated and unfair … And please don’t ask about the ingredients of the Marsden Salad, with its unique dressing.  Three events on Wednesday May 17 gave the downtown blatts such an overload of data that that they could not possibly cope. Here is a stab at explicating the inwardness.

It goes without saying that the talents required to win elections are not necessarily those of a capable chief executive officer. Mr J. Winston Howard, 66, LLB Syd, is a supreme election-winner, but it would be quite wrong to suggest that his managerial talents might be better suited to running a chook raffle in a suburban pub, or a whelks stall at Blackpool. Nonetheless, questions about his adequacy must be increasing: he doesn’t read the cables; nobody tells him anything; he failed to stop the Saddam bribery; he unlawfully invaded Iraq, he got out of East Timor too soon; and he failed to fix the Solomons mess.

Mr K. R. Murdoch MA (Oxon), 75, who does know how to run a business, may be one who has decided that Mr Howard is a sucked orange. At all events, he borrowed from Cromwell and / or Leopold Amery (pic) to tell him: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!” Or words to that effect.

Mr Howard’s bridesmaid-in-perpetuity, Mr P. Howard Costello, immediately semaphored: I love Rupie.

The hugely self-admiring Mr Costello, 48, BA LLB (Hons) Monash, naturally believes he could not possibly manage the country worse, and in the Fin Monash business law lecturer Toan Le gave him a useful card to play against his boss.

Mr Le wrote that “in essence” AWB’s non-executive directors “are claiming ignorance” of bribes paid to Saddam, but “although [they] may not face criminal charges, there are unlikely to escape civil liability under the Corporations Act”.

Thus: “Section 180 … imposes an obligation on directors to perform their duties with reasonable due care and skill. A breach of section 180 opens the directors to personal liability of up to $200,000, disqualification from managing companies for a specific period; and / or an order to compensate the company for any loss it suffered.”

Mr Le did not trouble to state the obvious; that the Prime Minister is a fortiori obliged to perform his duties with care and skill, but Mr Howard claimed ignorance of the bribes, and could thus be seen as some sort of non-executive director.

So, if he persists with what Stephen Potter, Nolly Cromwell and Leo Amery saw as the Glutei Defence – sitting on the buttocks until the opponent gets bored and gives up – Mr Costello could go to the courts to procure a writ of mandamus to compel some appropriate official to do his duty and seek to disqualify him from managing Australia.

The relationship between Treasury and Treasurer is said to resemble that between ventriloquist and dummy. If so, the youthful mystery man, Dr Ken Henry (BEc Hons first class UNSW 1979, DPh Canterbury NZ 1982), has been throwing his tax voice at Treasurers since 1984, including the hugely self-admiring P.J. (Piggy) Keating, 62, Syd. Tech. Coll.

The result, a Tax Act of 10,000 pages, may be frankly depressing, but it does make money for those profoundly productive artisans, tax accountants and tax lawyers. And for rich clients like the late K. Morebull Packer.

The SMH reported Dr Henry, who has been Treasury Secretary since 2001, as stating: “One thing anybody who has spent any time with the tax system knows is that there is an unavoidable trade-off between simplicity and equity”. Is that so? I’d have thought the system is neither simple nor fair, and that the reason is that in 1957 the odious Barwick persuaded the High Court to destroy the simplicity and fairness of the 1936 Tax Act – see Justinian July 25, 2005. The reason provides the solution. Dr Henry could hint to some future Treasurer, perhaps Mr W. Maxwell Swan, 51, BA Hons Qld, that his place in tax history will be secure when these words issue from his wooden lips: “Unlike my distinguished predecessors, I do not intend to stand for any tax nonsense from the High Court. Tax ramps are barred without exception, and judges who claim to discern an exception will be instantly dismissed for perverting justice.”

As if all that were not enough, it emerged next day, Thursday, May 18, that a famous Sydney shyster, hypocrite, and self-proclaimed defender of civil liberties, J. Robert (Madge) Marsden, 64, LLM, had gone to Constantinople on the ground that it was as good a place as any to die. Some of the posthumous accolades noted Madge’s brilliant – because totally fabricated – use of the consent defence to get I.R. Marko Milat (b. Dec. 27, 1944) off rape charges in 1974.

Madge recalled: “I had to act according to the ethics of the profession… I had a job to do and I did it.” It was merely unfortunate that his ethical job, to pervert justice, did not notably enhance the civil liberties of seven backpackers Milat later murdered in circumstances similar to his 1974 rapes.

Surprisingly, the panegyrics did not mention Madge’s culinary triumph, the Marsden Salad, with its unique dressing. (Don’t ask.)

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