No sooner has Acting Justice Brian Martin taken up duties as replacement head of the board of inquiry into the Eastman conviction than he has decided to take six weeks' leave.
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The judge - a former chief justice of the Northern Territory and recently an acting justice of the West Australian Supreme Court - was appointed to take over the Eastman inquiry after the original judge, Kevin Duggan of South Australia, discovered that he had a conflict of interest. During the 1980s, Mr Duggan had represented, three times, a person named in an Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence report as being involved with Italian organised crime figures suspected by the ABCI of involvement in the 1989 murder of Colin Winchester, assistant AFP Commissioner.
Mr Duggan was appointed in August last year, 15 months after processes for the inquiry had began in the ACT Supreme Court. He too took leave soon after his appointment, and, though he conducted a number of directions hearings, had not taken any evidence when he stood down. He had planned that hearings would start in early November this year. The team established by Duggan has already cost the taxpayer about $1.4 million, and the cost to taxpayers of other teams - involving the AFP, the Director of Public Prosecutions and Eastman himself, is thought to be at least that again.
Justice Martin is expected to tell parties at a directions hearing on Monday that his holidays will not affect the hearings timetable.
But others have expressed doubts about whether the hearing can or will begin in November, 30 months from when it all started.
Police have been slow in handing over documents subpoenaed by the inquiry, and have indicated that they wish to argue that some are covered by public interest privilege, others by legal privilege and that others should not be shown to counsel for Eastman. Most of the documents are between 18 and 24 years old.
Meanwhile the judge will have to absorb about 60,000 words of transcript of the inquest and the trial, as well as documents, including new reports and statements, gathered by counsel assisting the inquiry, Liesl Chapman, SC. Ms Chapman appears to have initiated extensive investigations into a range of questions not yet disclosed to the public, or to counsel for the parties. Questions to the previous judge and the inquiry about the nature of these investigations, and how they fit in with or are authorised by the 19 terms of reference, have not been been answered.
