Mood:

Topic: independent media
What a coincidence. About 2 weeks ago we were contacted by an officer of the NSW Ombudsman's office. They wanted to action my complaint of early May 2007 regarding this:
Notice the CC to "Mr Richard Fisher, General Counsel" for the University. Looks like the heat of a potential adverse finding by the NSW Ombudsman's office may well be in the offing. And so it should be.
We are wondering how to respond to VC Gavin Brown's man above. Something about a confidential settlement based on this media and legal practitioner:
- having to waste several hours packaging up material and evidence applying our legal know how on correspondence in order to have our matter considered by the Ombudsman, in order to have our public licence reinstated to attend the campus as a law abiding member of the public with a valid interest.
- And then there is the matter of the inconvenience and embarrassment of having been blacklisted for a good 6 months including several public events and exhibitions we would have liked to participate in as a comunity media practitioner and or private citizen.
- Some might say a wrongful termination of licence to attend the campus was akin to defamation of good character; and of course
- The emotional injury of being surrounded and stood over by 4 intimidating security staff who didn't like their picture being taken as they harrassed students supporting a public education rally. That's akin to an assault and I did really think they were capable of the wrongful detention they did in fact threaten to carry out.
Still we are glad to have finally achieved some engagement from the hallowed sandstone towers of Sydney's pre-eminent university.
But will the public licence to attend the campus for lawful reasons be reinstated? Will there be compensation for our injuries? Well one wonders. Perhaps Mr Richard Fisher will have a constructive opinion about that?