…. NEARS ITS BITTER AND DEADLY CLIMAX!

Anyone with at least two brain cells to rub together all said the same thing: “Don’t do it!” Well, some actually said “Don’t fucking do it; you stupid cunt!” but I’ll not be mentioning that seeing The Bug is Australia’s No1 family netzine and there could be kiddies reading this.

It was unanimous advice from family, friends, legal eagle acquaintances and a couple of my old court-reporting mates. And what was it? Just pay the fine for speeding in a school zone and get on with what you laughingly describe as a life. Paraphrasing there a bit, perhaps.

But then two things happened. I took a closer look at the remote camera snap of me and my Subie puttering along Water Street in Spring Hill in August 2023 and realised it showed me doing nothing wrong.

I then asked a lawyer mate of mine who sometimes is as mad as a cut snake but I still trust his advice if a police prosecution needed to show that all the signs in a restricted speed zone needed to be clearly visible and adequate at the time of the alleged offence and the one brain cell I have heard him say yes.

And then as the late 2023 deadline for coughing up more than my only bank account showed or challenging the fine in the Magistrate’s Court, below is a crucial extract from a missive to me from the Queensland Revenue Office.

It’s about this time that I made several predictions of what would end up in the police brief if I challenged my fine. There would be no other photographs, as promised, when it came to court time, and that this camera operator’s certificate that two government departments banged on was so bloody crucial would not be in the police brief. Both came true and I’m rather proud that more than a half-century as a cynical yet logical journalist led me to those conclusions. But more of that some other time.

What has made me even prouder is that my decision to appeal the lower-court’s guilty verdict to the District Court meant I got to get this affidavit (at top and below) that was banged down on my table at appeal on 13 April.

I’m going to have to build a pool room for that one. And, yes, I’ve embellished it a bit but I’ve always been a fan of King Charles and the time and effort I’ve gone to see us finally acknowledged in print as rivals of sorts are now worth while. Who doesn’t admire someone who not only talks to plants but listens to what they have to say? And is there any red-blooded bloke out there in BUGland who wouldn’t gladly offer themselves as a tampon substitute?

Another reason for the pride I’m rather immodestly declaring right now?

The District Court appeal judge has now been ruminating about his decision for almost three weeks and I’m rather proud that my stubbornness and total fearlessness about being sent even broker than I am now by hefty District Court losing costs have given him a chance to adjudicate on what I reckon would have to be one of the most amazing case he’s ever been faced with. Or with which he’s been faced.

His task in brutal, short, summary: My two main appeal points were if the remote camera operator’s certificate had been handed up at the lower court in April last year, the SM would have had to consider the state of the traffic signs at the time of the offence – just after noon – rather than the certificate’s claim that all signs were visible before “the start of operations” that day. We were denied procedural fairness by its absence. A denial of natural justice, fair play and the Australian way of life, your honour!

So here’s what I’m assuming is the judge’s task right now. We had a spirited exchange at appeal as to the importance of that document if it had been included in the lower-court paper handup but maybe he doesn’t need to! In their summary of argument, counsel for the state’s top cop argued the certificate never existed; it was a figment of my imagination.

True! You couldn’t make this shit up, right? But that’s the level they stooped to in trying to make the certificate as irrelevant as possible. And there’s nothing more irrelevant than something that never existed.

I even asked the appeal judge whether I should be worried that the Office of Public Prosections might be charging me with the criminal offence of altering government documents for nefarious self-interest. Like the one mentioned above, and this one too.

The second theme of my appeal that I think deserves very serious consideration by a wise and logical and fair and balanced jurist such as the one who heard me out? That the SM clearly overstepped a fairness boundary in fixing the police prosecution case after Her Honour told them to fix a flawed case or else! And it couldn’t.

I’ve told the appeal court that the magistrate last year gave the police prosecutor a clear ultimatum: fix a major flaw in your case or you won’t like the decision I’m leaning towards. And this all goes back to that very important until it no longer existed certificate! I’ve mentioned in both jurisdictions that the certificate was not left out of the police brief by accident or incompetence; it was either never put in there or it was removed as a tactic to derail our defence. Instead it derailed theirs. And in my self-appointed bush lawyer’s opinion, that should have fatally flawed the police case.

But here’s the final kicker. That exchange between the SM and the prosecution is missing from the lower-court transcript and I’m determined to find out why. Gone just like that! A crucial segment of the proceedings so important to our appeal chances. Surely it hasn’t been done deliberately and with malice but you couldn’t make this shit up, right? There’s a movie in this but which of the Hemsworth brothers would play me?

My barrister who did a great job for me last year is unwell at the moment so I’m still awaiting his recollections of that day last May when we were tempted more than once to exchange imaginary fist pumps the way the case was rapidly shifting our way with the very clear warning the SM had issued to the police prosecutor.

My heart really goes out to the appeal judge. He has to weigh up the importance of a certificate that never existed and a magistrate’s ultimatum that was never issued.

Don Gordon-Brown

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: none more interesting than this missive from the Queensland Police Service remote camera