Kent Purvis
Investigation
Officer; Operations
Commonwealth
Ombudsman
14th
June 2016
Dear Kent
Why has Screen
Australia gone to so much trouble, for four years now, to keep secret the
evidence upon which the ban on me was placed?
Is this question of
any interest to the Office of the Ombudsman, in June 2016?
Ruth Harley’s
‘evidence’, sufficient for the Australian Government Solicitor (Mr Ian Govey)
to provide his seal of approval to changing Screen Australia’s Terms of Trade
to make the ban on me legal, is clearly the most important document of all in
this matter.
Have you read this
document, Kent? Has anyone in the Ombudsman’s office read this document during
the past four years?
If the Ombudsman is
aware of its contents, does s/he believe that it contains evidence sufficient
to warrant the banning of an Australian filmmaker?
If the Ombudsman was
aware of the contents of Ruth Harley’s submission to Mr Govey, did it ever
occur to him to present me with the evidence and give me an opportunity to
respond to it? Or did he find the ‘evidence’ of my guilt so overwhelming that
he felt there to be no need to give me an opportunity to present a case in my own
defence?
These are not
rhetorical questions. I would like answers and do not see how this matter can
be resolved in the absence of answers.
If the Office of the
Ombudsman is, in June 2016, unaware of the contents of Ruth Harley’s submission
to Mr Ian Govey, more questions arise:
Did your office, back
in 2012, ask to be provided with a copy of Ruth Harley’s submission?
If not, why not?
Will you, in June
2016, request of Screen Australia that your office be provided with a copy of
Ruth Harley’s submission?
If not, why not?
If no-one within the
office of the Ombudsman has read Ruth Harley’s submission to Mr Govey, how can
you know if it is factually correct or a compilation of baseless allegations?
Can you not see,
Kent, that common sense and natural justice demand that a person accused of a serious
offence is entitled to be provided with evidence of his or her guilt; that this
evidence must be tested either in court or by some independent party that has
no no vested interest in the outcome of its investigations?
In my case I have
neither been provided with evidence nor an opportunity to have this evidence
tested by an impartial independent body such as the Office of the Ombudsman.
This is wrong and your office, by refusing to take the most important evidence
into account, relying only on Ruth Harley’s untested allegations, has
effectively given Screen Australia, for four years now, its seal of approval;
made it possible, in April 2016, for Graeme Mason to place the following
statement on file.
“Your substantive complaints about Screen Australia’s decision not to
fund your production Chanti’s World have been exhaustively addressed, including
by external review and investigation by the Commonwealth Ombudsman.”
This is a lie. Graeme
Mason knows it to be a lie. He has placed it on file as though it were an
accepted fact. It joins a growing list of lies about myself that have been
placed on file at Screen Australia and which will become accepted wisdom, the
agreed upon ‘facts’, if I cease to advocate on my own behalf.
I will not cease
advocating my right to be appraised of the evidence against me.
I will ask again,
Kent: As a result of the Ombudsman’s 2012 ‘investigation’ did the investigating officer
come upon any evidence of my guilt? If so, why do you not simply outline it;
provide me with a few examples? Or will your office fall back on its standard
‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card:
“You have also been specifically informed that, given your insistent
correspondence on this matter, this office may choose to file but not respond
to further correspondence on this topic.”
This is the same
response as I received from Screen Australia when, in my ‘insistent correspondence’
I requested evidence of the initial lies that set this dispute in motion. It
could be paraphrased thus:
“As a result of your insistent correspondence on this matter, your
repeated demands for evidence of your guilt,
Screen Australia staff feel intimidated, harassed and that they have been
placed at risk. As a result we have decided to ban you again. If you will
simply stop asking for this evidence we might just stop banning you!”
By acting as though
the original reason for the ban is no longer of any relevance your office is
aiding and abetting Screen Australia in its determination to keep the evidence
against me secret.
It was Fiona
Cameron’s initial lie (that Graeme Mason is repeating here) that I objected to
and that I wished to have corrected. It was the efforts I went to, in my
correspondence, to have the record set straight that led to Ruth Harley’s lie
that I had intimidated, harassed and placed at risk members of Screen
Australia’s staff with my correspondence. And now Screen Australia has banned
me again for having spent the last two years advocating my right to be
appraised of evidence in support of the ban on me. In the Orwellian world of
Screen Australia advocacy is seen as harassment and thinly veiled threats are
made that I may be sued for defamation.
Really, Kent!
Graeme Mason’s recently
announced 2 year ban is his response to my agreeing to his own suggestion that
I follow a particular procedure to acquire a copy of Ruth Harley’s submission
to Mr Ian Govey! Mr Mason’s response could be paraphrased thus:
“Here is the correct procedure for you to follow and,
oh, by the way, we have decided to ban you for another 2 years anyway –
regardless of the outcome of pursuit of this correct procedure.”
Does the Ombudsman
accept this as a fair and appropriate response from Graeme Mason to my request
to be provided with a copy of Ruth Harley’s submission to Mr Govey? Will the
office of the Ombudsman provide its seal of approval to each and every breach,
on the part of Screen Australia, to my legal right to be appraised of the
evidence against me and given an opportunity to present a defence?
Graeme Mason knows
that there is no evidence to back up his April 2016 assertion that I complained
about Screen Australia’s decision not to fund ‘Chanti’s World’. I made no such
complaint. Mr Mason, as with Fiona Cameron before him, knows that he can place
this lie on file secure in the knowledge that the Ombudsman’s office will not ask
for any evidence of its veracity. He knows that you will say, “We have
investigated this and do not intend to investigate it again,” knowing full
well, that no evidence in support of the allegations made against me.
Given the lengths to
which Screen Australia is going to keep Ruth Harley’s submission to the Australian
Government Solicitor secret my guess is that its being made public would be
Graeme Mason and the SA board’s worst nightmare.
We are now at a
Groundhog Day moment; back precisely to where we were back in 2012.
Will you ask Mr Mason
for evidence, in 2016, that I have defamed members of Screen Australia’s staff
between 2014 and 2016? Will I be given an opportunity to respond to the
evidence Mr Mason provides to you? Or will you, like your predecessors, use
bureaucratic language to support Screen Australia’s right to ban me again and
make it seem that an ‘investigation’ has taken place. If I am not to be
appraised of the evidence against me in support of this latest ban, Kent, I
would rather you did not conduct one and give the person sitting in Mr Mason’s
seat in two years the opportunity to write:
“Your substantive complaints…have been exhaustively addressed, including
by external review and investigation by the Commonwealth Ombudsman.”
As I have made clear
on a number of occasion now, I am not seeking to have the Screen Australia ban
on me lifted. It is much too late for that now. It was the intention of Ruth
Harley, Fiona Cameron and the then Screen Australia board, in 2102, to make it
close to impossible for me to make films in Australia. In this they have succeeded.
Graeme Mason and the current board are now doing all they can to prevent me
from acquiring evidence of my innocence which, I believe, will be found in Ruth
Harley’s 2012 submission to Mr Ian Govey. Or, to put it another way, I believe
that Ruth Harley’s submission will contain within it allegations that are so
demonstrably false that it will be clear to all and sundry that the original
ban on me had nothing to do with the allegations made but to do with silencing
a critic and punishing, in the most extreme manner, a filmmaker who had the
temerity to challenge lies placed on file by senior members of Screen Australia
staff. Having my name cleared of the false allegations made against by Fiona
Cameron, Ruth Harley and now Graeme Mason is my primary objective.
I have no faith,
based on my last four years of experience, in the office of the Ombudsman’s
capacity (or even the will) to get to the truth of the matter by insisting that
allegations be both presented to the accused (me) and tested independently. As
I have made clear from the outset, on so many occasions, if Screen Australia
can supply me with one paragraph, one sentence or even one word in support of
the allegations I will accept my ban willingly. Screen Australia will not do so
because there is no evidence.
Past experience
suggests that you will merely go through the motions of investigating this latest
ban. I would love to be proven wrong; to find that it is not the intention of
the office of the Ombudsman to provide Screen Australia, as happened back in 2012, with its tacit approval of the ban on me
in the absence of evidence.
Once all the options open
to me to acquire evidence of my guilt have been exhausted (including the
investigation you may or may not conduct) have been exhausted I will commence
legal proceedings against Screen Australia to acquire a copy of Ruth Harley’s
submission to Mr Ian Govey – the first step in having my name cleared.
I am publishing all
of this correspondence on my blog for a few reasons.
I believe in total
transparency and accountability. If I have told any lies this past four years I
cannot hide the fact. The evidence that I am a liar will be there for anyone
who is interested to find and point out to me.
If Screen Australia
tries to re-write history, as Graeme Mason has done in his most recent
correspondence, it is more difficult for the organization to do so when all the
correspondence is available for anyone who wishes to to look at. Including
yourself.
The ban on me has not
only taken an enormous toll on me professionally. It has also taken a toll on
me personally.
Terrified as it is of
offending or alienating Screen Australia, the Australian Director’s Guild (of
which I was a founding member) will not even report in its newsletter that I
have been banned again. I have become persona non grata not just with the ADG
but with friends of 40 years standing as a result of this ban who believe that
where there is smoke there must be fire; that I did, indeed ‘place at risk’
members of Screen Australia’s staff.
I remain hopeful, as
this matter drags on inevitably to the Supreme Court, that my professional
colleagues and friends will look at the facts; that they will see that I have
asked on countless occasions to be provided with evidence of my guilt; that the
hand that feeds the ADG (Screen Australia) deserves, in this instance, to be
bitten; that there are times when it is important to fight against the kind of
bureaucratic bullying that has been on display for four years now in the ban on
me.
Evidence please,
Kent!
best wishes
James Ricketson
cc Graeme Mason Chief
Executive, Screen Australia
Senator Mitch
Fifield, Minister for the Arts
Ms Louise Vardanega,
Australian Government Solicitor (acting)
Australian Director’s
Guild.
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