A Variety Of Excuses For Non Attendance

At the conclusion of the Anti-Discrimination hearings in January the Tribunal Member,Ms C.McKenzie suggested the week of May 28^th for conclusion.

Tony Jacobs agreed.Soheil Khani claimed that he’d be overseas in Iran. In fact Khani never left Australia and was in Hobart on May 28^th and later that week.He never advised that fact.

In April, the week commencing August 15^th was set. A week before Khani sent an e-mail saying “I am not able to attend”. He went on to claim that he needed to sell a property to pay for a lawyer. No details of which property or of any plans were revealed.

Told by the Tribunal that it would not be adjourned he sent a message on the 15^th that he was ill. On the 16^th he sent a one line Doctors note. That Doctor in a telephone hook up said that neither she, nor her practice had seen him before and that she was relying on his complaints of lower back pain for which she’d prescribed a panadene type tablet.

Told by the Tribunal on the 16^th that he had to be there on the 17^th, he sent an e-mail claiming injury in a motor vehicle accident on the 14^th.  

As the Tribunal member pointed out-if there’d been such injury in a car accident he’d surely have told the Doctor on the 15^th.

Khani has sought at least half a dozen adjournments in other recent cases for a variety of reasons including illness, absence from the State, too busy to get a lawyer,lawyers won’t take him on, etc.

On one occasion his Solicitor explained his absence to a Magistrate as due to injury.A quarter hour later he was seen at the Council conducting business with a band aid on a thumb, after which he drove off at his usual high speed.

None of this is new.

In the 2006 decision in the case of Youssef v Khani it was pointed out that delay had been caused by his not being in attendance on some occasions.

In his 2009 Planning Appeal case against the Hobart City Council over 33 Marlborough St  Number 37/09P the Tribunal noted “Eventually,after a protracted and somewhat tortuous process, this appeal came on….No evidence, at all, or any material was filed by Mr Khani”.