[1988] Reform 193 aiisms available to international human • One of the world’s leading rights norms. If the World Bank moves to urged Dr Smith not to expose deep take human rights factors, as well as environ­ . The former Professor of mental ones, into account when assessing at Cambridge University, Sir projects for loans this will indeed add much Mar tin Roth, wrote on 6 January 1981, reeded arsenal to the fight against human saying ‘the inhumanity and cruelty to rights abuses. Those wishing to become in­ which patients appear to have been sub­ volved in the work of Amnesty International jected is quite unique in my experience can contact the organisation by writing to and the scientologists and other organi­ Amnesty International, PO Box A159, sations will have obtained ammunition Sydney South, NSW, 2000. for years or decades to come. There is therefore a pressing need for maintain­ * * * ing strict confidentiality at this stage, until one can set these barbarities in the context of contemporary practice in chelmsford royal commission psychiatry’. • The spokesman for the NSW branch of We could not help it: we were never told. the Royal Australian and New Zealand No doubt there were some rumours of a crime, College of Psychiatrists, Professor Brent We’d lost our glasses, so we could not see. Waters said that in the early 1980s the We walked away: it was not our concern college had deliberately left it to the The streets were dark and it was very cold. It did not seem important at the time. Government to take action against the doctors involved in deep sleep therapy. John Mander, As it Was After taking legal advice, the college be­ lieved it could have been ‘sued to its no informed consent. The Chelmsford skin’ had it disbarred Dr , Royal Commission, headed by Commission­ the doctor who introduced deep sleep er Justice Slattery, has commenced in New therapy to the hospital. T guess we were South Wales. It will investigate the mental hoping the Department of Health work­ health service and the use of deep-sleep ther­ ing through the NSW Medical Board apy at the former Chelmsford Private Hospi­ would take him to task for malpractice’ tal, said to be responsible for the deaths of up he said. ‘We have got absolutely no to 40 patients. The treatment, administered power. Its the Medical Board that’s got between 1963 and 1979, involved putting pa­ all the power. I think the Department of tients into a barbiturate-induced coma with­ Health should have used its power’. out their consent for up to 4 weeks. The • Complaints to the investigating com­ Sydney Morning Herald, in a series of ar­ mittee of the NSW Medical Board were ticles, uncovered a story of medical malprac­ not lodged against the Chelsmford doc­ tice, cover-ups and bureaucratic buck­ tors by the Department of Health until passing. The articles alleged: 1985, four years after they were re­ ceived. In Septemberl986, the com­ • A , Dr John Sydney Smith, plaints were stayed by the Court of Ap­ took up the cases of victims of deep peal because of the time that had sleep treatment at Chelmsford Hospital. elapsed since the alleged offences oc­ From more than ten separate ap­ curred. proaches to key positions in medicine, law and politics at home and overseas, standing denied. The Commission stirred Dr Smith supported by the barrister Mr controversy on the first day of the hearings Ted St John, QC, failed to achieve any when members of the Chelmsford Victims’ substantive inquiry into Chelmsford. Action Group were denied standing to ap­ [1988] Reform 194 pear. Others refused leave to appear included display of violence through the visual media’. the Citizens’ Committee on Human Rights This concern and others are the focus of a and former Chelmsford doctors named in the major inquiry by the Australian Broadcasting Herald articles. Justice Slattery commented Tribunal into the portrayal, depiction and re­ that if everyone was given leave to appear, porting of violence on television. Announc­ the inquiry would last centuries. The Sydney ing the inquiry on 22 August 1988, the then Morning Herald criticised this ruling, saying Minister for Transport and Communications, Justice Slattery has said that interested Senator Gareth Evans, said parties can reapply for leave to appear if My initiation of this inquiry reflects the something comes up which affects them. growing concern in the Australian com­ Why does that not satisfy the former pa­ munity about the possible effects of the tients? The reason is not hard to guess. portrayal of violence on television ... This Such an arrangement simply fails to take concern has been reflected in complaints account of the anxiety the patients natural­ from the public received by the Australian ly feel after so many years of official delay Broadcasting Tribunal, as well as in sub­ and indifference. It is a reasonable anxiety missions to its general licensing inquiries. to which Justice Slattery should have given more weight. Justice Slattery has also He also noted that, while the Tribunal’s in­ shown a surprising insensitivity by ques­ quiry would encompass only commercial tioning the sincerity of those former television, the two government broadcasters, Chelsmford patients who feel uneasy about giving evidence before him unless the ABC and SBS, had been invited to make their group is allowed legal representation. submissions so as to enable the Tribunal to His description of this as ‘almost black­ conduct a comprehensive inquiry on tele­ mail’ carries an unpleasant echo of the vision violence. Senator Evans also noted Court of Appeal’s blocking in 1986 of that the Attorney-General, Mr Lionel Bowen complaints against two former MP, had ‘already acted regarding current Chelsmford doctors on the grounds that to classification guidelines where overt violence allow them to be pursued after 13 years is portrayed in videos and films’. would amount to ‘persecution’. That deci­ sion aroused widespread cricitism because The inquiry’s terms of reference require it of the scant regard it appeared to pay to to investigate the real capacity of former psychiatric pa­ tients to move against their doctors in what • the depiction of violence in all types of a court might regard as good time. Justice television programs Slattery’s talk of ‘blackmail’ must arouse similar criticism. His inquiry will be fair. • ways of ensuring that television stations But it must also be more sensitive than it give proper consideration to the suit­ has been so far. ability and manner of portraying viol­ ence in programs * * * • the adequacy of powers under the Broadcasting Act 1942 to prevent unac­ violence in the media ceptable levels of violence on television.

Adams’ first law of television: the weight There are five members of the inquiry: Ms of the backside is greater than the force of Deirdre O’Connor, chairwoman of the ABT, the intellect. Mr George Negus, television journalist, Mr Phillip Adams, 1976. Michael Ramsden, former Channel Ten di­ rector of broadcast practices and standards, At the Special Premiers’ Conference on Dr Patricia Edgar, director of the Australian gun control on 22 December 1987, concern Children’s Film and Television Foundation was expressed about ‘the continuous, graphic and Professor Peter Sheehan, a psychologist.