Louise Vardanega
Australian Government Solicitor
(acting)
Locked Bag 35
Kingston
ACT 2604
17th May 2016
Dear Ms Vardanega
Yesterday
morning, 16th May, I copied you on a letter I sent to Screen
Australia’s Chief Executive, Graeme Mason. My note, note attached to the letter read:
Dear Graeme
My letter, attached, speaks
for itself of my thoughts about your decision to use the letter of FOI
legislation to keep secret the evidence Screen Australia claims to have in its
possession regarding my having intimidated and placed at risk members of Screen
Australia's staff.
I have made mention of a
letter I sent to you during the early weeks of your tenure in which I made yet
another attempt to find a way to resolve this dispute amicably. You did not
respond to it. A week earlier I had sent another letter to the board - in which
I made clear that it was unfair of it to palm this problem off on yourself. The
full text of the letter can be found at:
However, you have taken the
problem on board, made it your own and have little choice now but to do all you
can to keep the truth from coming out.
Cheers
Mr
Mason’s response was to write back to tell me that that Screen Australia had
decided to ban me for two more years.
Mr Mason’s further banning of a
filmmaker whose career he has played a significant role in destroying is an
exercise in futility. The expression “Flogging a dead horse” springs to mind.
One of
his many reasons for this third ban is that I post relevant correspondence on
my blog. I do so for a reason, which is perhaps obvious now. Bureaucrats are
skilled in the fine arts of obfuscation (and Graeme Mason is no slouch!) but
such skills have been rendered a little less effective in this new digital
world we live in. Obfuscating documents (and God knows there’s been plenty of
them in this dispute this past few years!) can be placed in the public domain
to be read and assessed by anyone interested. A new era of transparency is upon
us. It would be very difficult for anyone at Screen Australia to start a
sentence with “It is my understanding…” (a favourite amongst bureaucrats) when
their ‘understanding’ is demonstrably false, as anyone could determine by
looking at correspondence online. (‘Canvassed’ is another such weasel
bureaucratic expression. More of this on another occasion)
If need be I will sue Screen
Australia for defamation in the Supreme Court. I went through the motions of
doing back in 2012 and, of course, Screen Australia had to respond to my
Statement of Claim. The case was not heard, as it happens, because I filled out
the Statement of Claim forms incorrectly. The next time around the forms will
be filled out by a qualified lawyer. Screen Australia’s legal team (amounting
to four the last time around) will have to mount an argument in court as to why
it should not be obliged to provide documented evidence of my having
intimidated and placed at risk members of Screen Australia’s staff. No doubt a
clever (and very expensive) lawyer will try his or her hardest to convince the
judge that the evidence remain secret.
I care little for the outcome f the
case. My sole purposes in going down this path, if need be, is to force Screen
Australia to make public one paragraph, one sentence or even one word which it
considers to be intimidating and/or to place staff at risk. The evidence, in
short, upon which it (with the assistance of Mr Ian Govey) decided to end the
career of an Australian filmmaker.
I am now in a position, financially,
to run such a case. I don’t particularly want to but nor do I want my film
career as an Australian filmmaker to end with Screen Australia’s nonsensical
‘intimidating and placing at risk’ allegation besmirching my reputation.
As will be apparent from my
correspondence the ban on me is no longer of any consequence. However, the idea
that any senior government bureaucrat can get the Australian Government
Solicitor to do their dirty work offends my sense of natural justice. And it is
a very bad precedent that should not go unchallenged.
As of mid-May 2016 the list of people
who know that there is no evidence of my having intimidated or placed anyone at
risk is a long one. It includes yourself. All of you have a vested interest in
this matter continuing to be swept under the carpet. And I have a vested
interest in either being presented with evidence of my guilt (and paying the
appropriate price in terms of damage to my reputation) or seeing the lot of you
having to eat some humble pie when it is revealed, in public, that you have no
evidence.
Please do commission a review of your
decision, identical to Graeme Mason’s, to deny me access to the evidence your
office claims to have of my guilt. I will jump through all the hoops available
to me in hopes that common sense and natural justice prevail. If they do not,
its off to the Supreme Court we go.
best wishes
James Ricketson
cc Graeme Mason
Senator Mitch
Fifield
Commonwealth
Ombudsman
Australian
Director’s Guild
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