Graeme Mason jumps the gun banning me again one week after suggesting to me the appropriate course of action required to pursue my complaint!

Graeme Mason

Chief Executive

Screen Australia

Level 7, 45 Jones St

Ultimo 2007  

18^th May 2016            

Dear Graeme

I will not be in a position, for a week or so, to respond in detail to your letter of 16th May in which you announce that Screen Australia has banned me for a further two years.

I would like to point out here, however, that in your letter of 9^th May, you laid out the correct procedure for me to follow to take this dispute to its next stage in an orderly fashion. I was entitled, you informed me, to request “an internal review” of your decision. I made this request early in the morning of 16^th May. You informed me also, in the event Screen Australia’s internal review supported your decision to withhold documents, that I could have this decision reviewed by the Australian Information Commissioner (AIC). And that if I got no results  from the AIC in so doing that I could apply to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to overturn your decision.

What you suggested was a lengthy process but an orderly one. And, I gather, the correct one from an administrative point of view. I was quite prepared to follow it and had taken the first step in doing so on the morning of 16^th May.

Instead of allowing this process to proceed (in the manner you had suggested) you responded to my request for an internal review with your announcement, later in the day of the 16^th May, that I was banned for another two years. You decided to  bypass the very procedure you had suggested a week earlier! Why?

Whilst you ban is of no concern to me I do not accept it as having any validity until the process outlined by you has reached an end.

And I will repeat here the question I have been asking for four years now; making it as simple as I possibly can:

“Please provide me with three examples, from my correspondence prior to 9^th May 2012, in which I intimidated and placed at risk members of Screen Australia’s staff.”

If you can do so, the ban on me is appropriate and I will accept it. If not, the ban should not have been imposed in the first place.

best wishes

James Ricketson