Beware the Latest Wave of Feminism

Commentary

It was a riveting moment. Here was Tasha Smithies, a lawyer for Channel 10, appearing as a witness in Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation action.

This is the lawyer who advised television celebrity Lisa Wilkinson to go ahead with the disastrous Logie Speech praising Brittany Higgins for her “unwavering courage,” which ended up delaying the criminal trial for four months.

It was advice that clearly left Justice Michael Lee unimpressed.

“It is inconceivable to me that any legally qualified person could have given [such] advice,” he told the court, describing the advice as “inadvisable and inappropriate” and suggesting this was something that “someone who did a first-year criminal law course” should have known.

So, what was it that inspired this bizarre action from Ms. Smithies, the senior litigation counsel for one of Australia’s largest media organisations?

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She told the court that she greenlit the speech because she felt it was important for Ms. Wilkinson to show she was not “wavering” in her support for Ms. Higgins.

“It was my view that from the time after the broadcast of the story, Ms. Wilkinson was inextricably intertwined with Ms. Higgins,” she said.

Even when she was grilled about the damage caused by that advice, she was unapologetic.

“I am not professionally or personally embarrassed by the advice I gave Ms. Wilkinson,” she said.

It was astonishing watching this woman, eyes shining as she proudly proclaimed that it was more important to support the celebrity journalist in her believe-the-victim crusade than to give appropriate, lawyerly advice that would not prejudice the fair trial of an accused person.

Women who make no effort to disguise their feminist goals, from blatantly discriminating against men in the workplace, to flagrantly ignoring important principles in our criminal justice.

Thank goodness they are a small minority. But with women comprising the bulk of law graduates for the last 30 years, there’s been a huge wave of female lawyers flooding into every sector of the legal system.

Many are excellent, extremely competent, and appropriately focussed simply on doing their job in the best possible way. But examples keep popping up of feminist lawyers exploiting the legal system with all sorts of antics which show where their real commitment lies.

These are just the ones we hear about—heaven only knows what chaos such women are creating behind the scenes.

Remember Annette Kimmitt, CEO of Australia’s largest law firm Minter Ellison, who was fired after sending out an email to staff saying she felt “triggered” by the company’s decision to act for then Attorney-General Christian Porter after he was subject to a historic rape allegation?

Ms. Kimmitt emailed 2,500 staff expressing her displeasure that a senior partner was acting for Mr. Porter.

In her email, Ms. Kimmitt said the matter “has certainly triggered hurt for me. I know that for many of you it may be a tough day and I want to apologise for the pain you may be experiencing.”

She claimed the decision to act for Mr. Porter should have been considered “through the lens of our Purposes and Values.”

Ms. Kimmitt apparently had substantial support from young members of the firm, who obviously also support these “Values”; values which happily ditch the principles that everyone is entitled to a presumption of innocence and legal representation.

Then there was Emma Covacevich, Clayton Utz’s first female chief executive partner, who announced when first appointed that she had firm views about how to achieve gender parity.

“It’s about more women coming in and more men going out,” she explained.

What about the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Sally Dowling SC, who had a melt-down when District Court judge Robert Newlinds claimed her office was taking a “lazy and perhaps politically expedient” approach to rape cases by failing to interrogate complainants’ allegations and sometimes putting hopeless cases before the court.

(His comments occurred in relation to a case where a man had spent eight months on remand in jail—and the jury took one hour to throw the case out. Then it turned out the woman had made similar allegations against about eight other men.)

Three other judges had made similar comments last year about unmeritorious cases being pushed through into court.

Then, a few weeks ago, another District Court judge, Peter Whitford really went to town, pointing out that pushing through such cases risks “drawing the criminal justice system into disrepute.”

Canberra family lawyer Debra Parker was quoted in a local online paper praising the “overdue” and “transformative” overhaul of family law.  She proudly proclaims that the move takes the law back to 1976—when the “best interests of the child principle” was central.

Oh yes, those were the glory days of uniform maternal custody, before parliament was convinced into thinking dads actually matter.

The only time fathers rate a mention in Ms. Parker’s comments is through posing a risk of exposing children to family violence, as she justifies the new laws that toss out the assumption of shared parental responsibility, let alone equal shared time.

Perhaps ironically, given the historical underpinnings of feminism, what most of these women have in common is a disdain for the principle of equality before the law.

Their goals appear to be primarily about promoting and protecting women’s rights at the expense of men’s rights. Their priorities are to do everything they can to protect and cosset women, believing their every story.

Too often, the effect of their actions is to undermine long-standing and legitimate legal safeguards. Safeguards that are designed to ensure that innocent men are not convicted.

There are very good reasons for men to be nervous about the increasing power of feminist lawyers.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.