A Sydney barrister who failed to submit a single tax return in close to a decade has been fined $25,000 for contempt of court, a penalty that was exacerbated when he sensationally accused a judge of denying him procedural fairness and demanded that the court scrub an adverse written judgment from its website.
Philip Bates, a member of the Sydney Bar since 1979, had brought justice “into disrepute”, the irate judge declared last week, and his last-minute apology for ignoring court orders was “mealy-mouthed”.
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