A longtime journo friend in Sydney has more contacts than life support systems on a NASA moon rocket sitting on the launch pad ready for blast off .He often rings for a lively chat about the state of the nation. In doing so, he passes on interesting scuttlebutt about various shonks , politicians , high flying/ soon to crash businessmen , slick deals and other Emerald City matters.
Just this weekend he called and mentioned the activities of what he called “street rats” - the name for shyster lawyers who use any and every trick in the book while pretending they have respect for rule of law and the well being of society. Some of these individuals, he said, swaggered about like two- bit punks from Underbelly and spent an inordinate amount of time , to use an old legal expression, consorting with known criminals , during and after work hours. They were widely regarded as front men for people engaged in and making vast profits from illegal activities. He opined that the NSW Law Society should rid its temple of these rodents.
It pleased him to see the NSW Fair Trading Commission is now keeping a close watch on the real estate industry to stamp our dummy bidding at auctions , deliberate under / over valuing properties and rorting the system in other ways for their own gain . Little Darwin readers will recall that under the heading REAL ESTATE RORTERS we recently pointed out a scam used by some moonlighting realtors in southern sin cities to line their pockets.
After we posted the RORTERS item we were shocked to learn that something similar has allegedly taken place here in Darwin. Suggest the local media contact the Real Estate Institute of the NT and ask if it knows of any claims of dodgy southern practices having been carried out here in the Territory. REINT , we all know, would not tolerate any unethical activities . It could be fruitful for a cub reporter to ask a string of obvious questions like how many complaints have been made about REINT members and what was the outcome of these in the last few years. This is what is called basic follow up journalism, getting the local angle, being a wee bit worldly.
