story revealed that the Commission had found in favour of a pregnant woman who was fired from his medical clinic by Warwick West MP Dr. Ewart Brown. The Human Rights Commission was very concerned about the leak of the story to The Royal Gazette and the Chairman, Canon James Francis, went so far as to ask a Royal Gazette reporter to reveal the source of the story, a source which the reporter did not know. That is certainly a very odd contradiction for a Commission which claimed to be concerned over its own confidentiality. It might also be interesting to ask Canon Francis the following question, "What did that man confess to you Canon?'' What is of great concern to us is that a Human Rights Commission can act as a court in secret and decide highly contentious matters in secret, arrive at punishments as it did in Dr. Brown's case, and never reveal the results. That is not fair to either the complainant or the people complained about and amounts to the most questionable kind of behaviour. No-one receives justice from any commission which conducts its affairs in secrecy.

Canon Francis is reported as telling a hurriedly assembled Press conference on Tuesday that there are penalties facing any Commission member who leaks information. Any member who supplied the information to The Royal Gazette could be faced with a fine of up to $500 or a maximum six months jail term, or both. Canon Francis seems to have questioned his Commission members over the leak.

It is extraordinary to find that important public business which originates from a public complaint and often from an event which is of public concern, is conducted in such stringent secrecy. It is even more extraordinary to find this secrecy accepted and, apparently, supported by the Chairman and the members of the Commission.

What secrecy in a case like this means in reality is that the offender is told, "You're a bad boy and you have to pay cash for that but we won't tell anyone.'' The complainant is told, "We agree with your complaint and we're going to get you a good deal of money but we do not think other people should know that you are correct, nor do we want to embarrass the person who did this to you.'' Is that justice? It certainly would not seem to be. The Commission says the complaint was justified but it had no intention of demonstrating that to the public. We will never know. Since the Commission meets in secret maybe the Commission was wrong. It was certainly not a just situation for the complainant, who had fought to get her complaint heard and who had already gone public, for the result to be kept secret and the public not to know that her complaint was upheld.

Is it honest? It can never be considered honest unless it is seen to be honest.

Is it fair? It is not fair to the public not to know that these awards are being made. People have a right to know so that they can guard against those people who offend against the human rights of other people. In this particular case at issue, the public certainly had a right to know that an elected Member of Parliament had offended against an employee. That is especially true when the offender is the Shadow Minister responsible for youth.