My discussion with colleagues whose views I respect has not produced a satisfactory explanation of the conduct of Walter Sofronoff, KC, let alone a defence.

I wish to raise three issues.

1.  ‘Bias’ is defined in the Compact O E D as ‘an inclination or prejudice in favour of or against a particular person or thing.’  In bowls, it is the tendency of the ball to deviate from the straight because of the way the ball is weighted.  You can control the level of deviation by the weighting you apply to the ball.  Albrechtsen had fifty-one goes at it in her secret or ‘private’ correspondence with Sofronoff.  She could not have asked for more from him in his public findings.  I follow that you can regard the correspondence as incidents giving rise to an appearance of bias.  But is it not also evidence of the existence of actual bias?  I have no doubt there are loads of authority on the point, but I ask the question on behalf of the people on the 605 bus.  I suspect that any answer may savour of the metaphysical, which is not the way of our law.
2. Whether the bias is actual or apparent, why were not all findings against Sofronoff sufficient to warrant an order of the court vitiating all findings against the victim of the bias?  Mr Drummond is aggrieved by a serious failure of due process.  Has the law done enough to vindicate him?  The answer is No, if you look at the venom unleashed in the Australian today.  As to the conduct of Albrechtsen, in The Common Law, O W Holmes said that ‘when we call an act malicious in common speech, we mean that harm to another person was intended to come of it, and that such harm was desired for its own sake as an end in itself.  For the purposes of the criminal law, however, intent alone was found to be important…’
3. Who paid for the lunch?