Yesterday Craig Thomson’s appeal had a Court Mention in Melbourne Magistrates Court.
The mention basically set the procedures and ground rules for the appeal.
Although there is nothing new or exciting to report on the matter we now know that there will be no witnesses appearing during the appeal, and that Thomson’s appeal will be relying on evidence that has already been presented to the court.
The next court mention on the matter is the 18th November.
Perhaps one of reasons that Thomson’s confidence will have been lifted is the woman at the centre of the HSU saga and the person who made so many of the accusations against Thomson has seen her credibility completely demolished and is now trying to avoid facing her own legal fight against claims that utterly dwarf Thomson’s.
Where to from here I wonder….
I speak of course of Kathy Jackson, whose fight with the HSU in Federal Court over approximately $1.4 Million is due back on the 5th November. Next week’s Federal Court Hearing will be to look at Jackson’s mental health condition given that her doctor’s statement was something the Court found vague.
Since then Wixxyleaks has learnt where Jackson is an inpatient and this may have relevance to the matter before court considering the admissions process.
Kathy Jackson is currently a patient at South Coast Private, which as the name suggests is on the NSW South Coast.
South Coast Private is a psychiatric hospital that describes itself as 5 Star and has a maximum of 90 patients whom stay in resort style accommodation. You won’t hear of electroshock therapy, patients strapped to beds, padded cells or straight-jackets here. Some have described it as a hotel with doctors.
To give you an overview of the facility and to see how tough Jackson is doing it, below is South Coast Private’s promo video.
I contacted the South Coast Private to see what is required to be admitted.
The inpatients at South Coast private have not been sectioned under the Mental Health Act and sent there by authorities. They have all been admitted by themselves or loved ones by going to the facility or some via the online admission form which is on their website, many of their patients come via South Coast Private’s Facebook page.
To be admitted you need a referral from a GP, and be able to afford the $870 a night it costs to stay in one of the rooms, such as the room pictured below. Either that or you will need a private insurer that will cover some of the costs for you. Then you will meet with a psychiatrist from the facility who will decide if they wish to accept your $870 a night or not.
Not exactly the type of hospital room I’m accustomed with…
A letter from a GP to say that you are stressed or depressed is not hard to obtain, everyone feels stress at some point. I have no doubt that Kathy Jackson is under some considerable stress knowing that she now faces the prospect of having to return $1.4 Million dollars to the poor union members she is alleged to have taken it from for inappropriate purposes. I’m sure that the likelihood of criminal charges coming not long afterwards may also have an impact on her stress levels.
The view from hospital
I would like to also point out that I am not making a claim that Jackson is faking a mental health condition to escape facing the same legal procedures that she demanded everyone else involved in the HSU saga faced. Far from it, I am just pointing out the place where she is being treated and the admission procedure for the 5 Star facility.
I am also not disputing the diagnosis of any doctor or trained professional.
The reason this is relevant is because it is a Federal Court that has raised the questions about the diagnosis of Jackson’s condition and her ability to instruct her lawyer. Given the Court has asked the doctor for a signed affidavit instead of a vague statement I think there is public interest in just what sort of psychiatric treatment one receives for the money. Given that Jackson’s diagnosis was made on the 20th September and gives a date for her recovery of 15th January 2015, that is 118 nights at $870 a night means that she’ll get a bill for around $102,666 plus incidentals, although I’m confident that a private facility wouldn’t let that be of any influence .
I will let people make their own determinations on Jackson’s state of mind and her ability to instruct a lawyer just as I’m sure the Court will.
If anyone reading this is suffering from mental health issues, please follow these links to contact Lifeline or perhaps Beyond Blue for support. Alternatively if your flush with cash why not check out South Coast Private?
It does look rather nice.
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A canary in a gilt edged cage is still in a cage and soon enough must sing for it`s supper.
Kathy Jackson is going from Luxury home to luxury holiday resorts to luxury health facilities. But she can not escape the luxury of consciousness. and proper law. May South Coast Mental Health be a rewarding experience of 5 star luxury with nice accommodation, but it doesn’t give you security when doing wrong. Wonder if this is being paid for from money she has…….. oh well. I leave that to other peoples to ponder.
Peter, Please change the last paragraph. You are sailing too close to the wind here.
“If anyone reading this is suffering from mental health issues, please follow these links to contact Lifeline or perhaps Beyond Blue for support. Alternatively if your flush with cash why not check out South Coast Private?
It does look rather nice.”
The majority of people with serious mental health problems end up living at or below the poverty line. many would love to be cared for in such a facility, but that is beyond their dreams. Most just try to stay OUT of hospital.
Kind regards,
Kristin
Where is all this money coming from and I hope her solicitor bills her for every cent he has worked for! It’s so very obvious that she is faking all this! To understand Craig Thomson’s pain, she must now be subjected to the same humiliation and pain! she should have kept her fibbing mouth closed! I wonder if Michael Smith is a regular visitor and if she is still offering ‘charity shags”?
The whole business has probably made a lot of people quite sick, especially innocent people dumped on by less than innocent former ‘colleagues’.
You’ve disappointed me with this post. If you’re not disputing her diagnosis with a mental health condition, how can her place of treatment possibly be relevant to the Federal Court proceedings she is involved in? The simple fact that she is in an expensive private psychiatric facility has no bearing on proceedings whatsoever unless you have evidence that her admission is bogus or the bill is being paid with improperly obtained funds? Where’s your proof of that?
I have zero respect for the woman, but I’m disgusted you’re attempting to further stigmatise the sufferer of a mental illness simply because of their choice of treatment facility.
Hi Claire,
Sorry to disappoint, however the fact that it is a private facility not a public facility has a huge bearing on the case.
An expensive private facility is one you can basically check into for a length of time with a referral from a GP, to gain a place for that long in a public facility would require far more evidence of an issue.
I am not saying the bill is being paid with improperly obtained funds at all, although I hope she has enough put aside to pay back the members if she loses the matter before court. I also wonder how many of her members could have afforded such care.
I suspect she will add this to her workers compensation claim if she is successful in her application.
I am not stigmatising anything. As I point out the diagnosis is being queried by a Federal Court, not me. Given the not for publication order the Federal Court has put on the doctors statement and the courts demands for a signed affidavit from her doctor instead of what he has provided I would assume that the Judge may be in a better position to make the call than you or I.
According to the court the manner of her admission, her length of stay and certainly her diagnosis are not only relevant, but critical in the Courts findings.
The facility and it’s admission process is crucial to that.
I have to say that I wish my Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome had a time frame. WOW if I wad told ‘Nic you will be healed by the 20th September” then what a great relief that would have been to me and my family. Oh and think of all of those who thought there was no light at the end of the tunnel and took their lives. If only we all had the same GP as Jackson. What a fast and I don’t seek anything wrong with this post. Get a grip!
Thanks Nic 🙂
Is this the same person who cried “poor” before the Royal Commission? So poor that she could not afford legal representation? The same person who ended up sucking on the public teat in relation to her TURC legal representation costs?
Public taxes are being used to subsidise Kathy Jackson. The same Kathy Jackson who sold her upmarket house in Melbourne for $1.8 million in July and who now lives in a multi-million dollar beachside property south of Sydney. The same Kathy Jackson who now, apparently, can afford to stay at a very expensive private psychiatric facility. The same Kathy Jackson whose fiancée is earning $400,000 per annum with lifetime protected tenure as the Vice President of Fair Work Commission.
As a taxpayer who is subsidising Jackson’s lavish lifestyle by paying for her TURC legal costs, I have every right to be annoyed at these revelations of her psychiatric care. It seems to me that only the most naïve and blinkered of observers would fail to see the irony existing between Jackson’s choice of treatment facility on the one hand, and her consumption of public tax dollars on the other.
Sorry, but I omitted the year that Kathy Jackson sold her luxury Melbourne home for $1.8 million – it was July 2013.
Dam JB I had to pay up-front $160 per visit for counselling. I should have sold my mansion *winks* .
A great point indeed JB
Maybe she won Lotto?
I see that Peter Foster, Australia’s professional conman extraordinaire, was yesterday arrested on the NSW north coast having evaded justice (in his case, a three year gaol sentence) for the past eighteen months. In terms of personality, personableness, rat-cunning and even lifestyle, I see many similarities between Kathy Jackson and Peter Foster. Hopefully, justice will catch up with both of them.
No, Peter, I don’t think Kathy Jackson won Lotto. My hypothesis is that having perfected the art of using other people’s money to fund her lavish lifestyle, Kathy Jackson never had to learn how to use her own money for personal purposes. Spending her own money, even on herself, would be a totally alien concept to her, and completely out of character. I suspect Jackson’s keen sense of keeping her personal wealth intact explains much of her past behaviour. Her current Work Cover injury claim also fits in with this hypothesis. If the Work Cover claim is successful, Jackson can look forward to receiving compensation equal to a paltry 80 percent of her salary before she went on extended sick leave – an indexed benefit well in excess of $200,000 per annum. (Jackson’s official salary at the HSU was more than $270,000 per annum.)
The Greek shipping magnate, the late Aristotle Onassis, was once asked the secret of making money. His answer: “Use other people’s money”. I wonder whether Kathy Jackson (nee Koukouvas) was an apostle of Aristotle Onassis. Or perhaps even a distant relative?
In the absence of evidence, nobody here can or should seriously suggest that KJ does not have a mental illness which requires hospitalisation. But the fact is that she has demonstrated her dishonesty and lies so many times that a lot of people now have trouble believing anything she says. Wanting proof of her latest story in no way reflects negatively on or suggests lack of understanding of people who do suffer mental illness.
Good to see some of her (the) money go back into Health. It’s also good to see she still has enough money to spend so she can’t cry bankrupt.
In psychiatry they speak of the mad, bad and sad. Jackson, I would posit, seems to be bad, and now she’s been caught out, sad. Hopefully those very caring folk on the video will be teaching her some better coping mechanisms for the world than the one’s we have observed lately. In addition, a healthy diet and regular sobre lifestyle might be useful for helping her to get into a state of mind that means she can instruct her lawyers. We await the next episode on the 5th of November to see how successful this facility is in aiding their patients’ recovery.
Nobody needs to suggest anything, jacksons actions speak loud enough. I wonder if I will see her creeping about my city.
She’s probably being cared for by H.S.U. members.
Thankyou Peter, for your persistence and resilience.
You give me hope.
Thanks Peter for clarifying what I was about to say.
My comment is purely in relation to the misinformation provided in this article about mental health and what is and is not required in order to obtain admission to a private or public inpatient facility. Whether a person is admitted under the mental health act and requires voluntary or involuntary treatment is in NO way a reflection of the severity of their illness but simply a reflection of whether they are cooperating with their treatment or require treatment “against their will”
I am a bit fan of WL but please do not disseminate misinformation.
As a person who has attended the sister clinic in Sydney from depression and anxiety, I can tell you for sure that the treatment and therapy for those clinics is of a high standard and very beneficial… However, the treatment regime is 4 weeks, but can be extended if the psychiatrist can’t stabilise medication but from experience that usually only takes another 2 weeks. There is no way the clinic will say that it will take that long to stabilise Jackson.
From the point of view of someon who has worked in mental health for more than a decade:
I think one does have to be cautious about making assertions in relation to anyone’s mental health, however it is germane in that Jackson’s solicitors have asserted she is ‘unfit to give instruction’ which certainly implies a level of illness greatly beyond what the average depression sufferer might experience.
We would say she must be severely depressed, rather than mildly or moderately, if for example depression is the issue. We can then compare this with very recently public appearances and statements by Jackson, and surmise that the severe illness, if that be what it is, was of very sudden onset.
From this point of view it is very hard not to feel a certain amount of disquiet at the number of high profile people who over the years have come to the courts’ attention, only to be diagnosed, sometimes retrospectively, with a mental illness which explains or excuses some of the behaviour at hand, or allows them to avoid legal sanction.
The point I make is that I can go and get a referral from my GP today and be checked into the facility this afternoon. I would have a harder time getting in through the public system.
There is an impression that a psychiatric facility is quite a horrid place right or wrong, I think it is important that people know that the place she is staying at for such a precise and convenient length of time is not “doing it tough”. I’m sure she will find prison much tougher when she eventually gets there.
Writing about someone who claims to have a mental health condition is always tough and there will always be people who claim that I have said something wrong.
I apologise if I offend anyone who is or knows someone suffering a mental illness.
However Jackson has a history of using every means of escaping facing court, she has failed to follow court orders 18 times in this case alone to delay the matter, now there is this. This is a woman that has used every legal means possible to escape justice, she refused to co-operate with a Royal Commission and used enough delay tactics to ensure she was never properly cross-examined, and then ensured most of what she was to be cross-examined on had a gag order on it.
I have no doubt she is suffering stress, but bear in mind she is claiming to mentally unfit to give her lawyer legal direction for the case but has found herself mentally fit enough to apply for workers compensation for stress related illness, something she would need a doctors statement for.
Also bear in mind as I pointed out in an earlier article, in the Jackson faction which is now quite a small faction, there are 4 prominent members of that faction using a mental health condition as either an excuse or a means to maintain an income via compensation.
If I have said something about procedure that may be incorrect or have worded it badly I am sorry, it was not my intent, I am not an expert on psychiatric care facilities.
However I do not think Jackson should avoid scrutiny on this matter.
Thanks Clark, that is exactly what I thought.
However that is what has been presented before the court, and I think it is one of the many reasons why the court is seeking to ensure the doctor is made to stand by his diagnosis and not give such a vague statement.
Thanks Scott, you have put that well.
It is a hard thing to write about and it is a part of the system that is, as you say, so often abused, which does the mental health industry a huge disservice.
I agree it is very difficult to write about mental health issues in relation to squirmishes with the law, and we cannot know what is going on with Jackson in particular, however it is well known that offenders will use techniques such as malingering to avoid sanction by the courts, and there is nothing wrong with raising this issue, no matter how difficult it is to discuss it. I would point out that Kathy Jackson has now been an inpatient for over a month, and there is no evidence that she was sectioned under the mental health act for a psychosis, or I am sure this documentation would have been provided to the court. And I agree that there is no way she would have been cooling her heels in a public facility, such as a locked up ward, which would soon have assessed her mental state and moved her on with the pressure on them to treat truly mentally ill individuals. I would say her undoubted anxiety and depression at her likely coming criminal sanction will not be considered a reason by the court for her to avoid facing it. The court will be expecting a detailed mental health assessment, and I imagine the other side will be ready to cross examine her health care provider under oath. The court may even order an independent assessment. The upshot is, the case will continue IMO.
As someone who has lived for over twenty years with a partner who suffers from Mental Illness, I can assure you there is no cut off date that guarantees you will be well again on such and such a date. It just does not happen.
If i robbed a bank for a million bucks, got caught and used my mental illness as an excuse I’d be laughed out of the court room. I’ve suffered from this hell for years, there’s no oh you’re CURED date, it’s a on going battle. I have no sympathy from this horrid person you know right from wrong, no matter what state of mind you’re in, she should be strung up, any other average person would have, she thinks her wealth will save her? Not bloody likely.
In addition to Jackson’s convenient claim of mental illness, I think the spotlight should be shined much more upon Bolano as well.
This parasite is still actively milking the compensation cash cow.
Wonder if his activities, as detailed here, may be used to trigger a re-assessment of his claimed condition and compensation arrangement.