NZ professor says Nauru's handling of complaints 'outrageous'
A New Zealand academic says the Nauru Government's handling of complaints about its magistrate seems an outrageous departure from best practice.
Transcript
A New Zealand academic says the Nauru Government's handling of complaints about its magistrate seems an outrageous departure from best practice.
The Government says it dismissed Peter Law because it lost confidence in him, and that it received complaints against him including about misconduct.
But Mr Law says those allegations were never put to him and do not have any substance.
A law professor at Auckland University, Bill Hodge, told Amelia Langford that the Nauru government does not seem to have followed standard complaint procedures.
BILL HODGE: The point is they are only complaints and we have no idea whether there is any truth at all. Most jurisdictions have some sort of complaint mechanism which provides for an independent person to have a look and as far as we can tell the department of justice over there is saying 'we've got a complaint, end of story, he's gone'. That is not the way to handle a complaint whether you are running a radio station, a department of justice, a university or indeed any other place where people are contracted or employed.
AMELIA LANGFORD: Indeed, Peter Law says he didn't even know of these complaints - they were never put to him.
BH: I think that's, I mean we usually call that natural justice, people most of the time do get a chance to respond. I honestly don't know if there is any judicial fitness commission or official body to receive complaints. I suspect not. But keep in mind that magistrates have a preciously delicate tenure whereas justices of the high court and chief justices are embedded in the constitution. So people at this level, I guess, you'd have to say, are a bit more precarious or at the mercy of political whims. But you're quite right the standard procedure of a complaint is to offer it to the person, give the full complaint and evidence to the person so they can say 'oh this is explicable by such and such or it never happened' or whatever they might wish to say but it is not best practice, in fact it is very bad practice, to handle it the way they purport to have done.
AL: So, whatever the case it is a deviation from usual procedure?
BH: Well, I would not call an unusual deviation, I'd say it was an outrageous departure from best practice and we don't see these things. Indeed, I don't know of a similar case in Tonga, Samoa, even Fiji. Fiji has had problems with its judiciary but this is probably the worst example of abuse of what should be judicial independence, judicial impartiality and the separation of powers. It's a serious abuse and I don't know of, its like, I don't know of a counterpart case in the Pacific. I want to be fair to Nauru but there's certainly the appearance that they are trying to close down any inspection or review or scrutiny of the detention practices that are ongoing in Nauru. Presumably, I mean I hate to say this, but presumably there is a lot of money associated with Australian detainees being looked after by Nauru and that money is reasonably significant to those in the executive so that could be an explanation but I don't wish to leap to that conclusion without some evidence because that would not be natural justice but there is certainly the appearance that it is part of a cover-up.
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