Yesterday The Australian’s Hedley Thomas revealed that Russell Biddle, a former National Party candidate, had lodged a complaint with the Queensland Legal Services Commission about the actions of Stephen Keim QC, the barrister for Gold Coast doctor Mohammed Haneef, in leaking to The Australian the first record of interview his client did with the Australian Federal Police.

Biddle is a lawyer in Brisbane. But he has had no involvement in the Haneef case. So what’s his motivation in dobbing in Mr Keim? Can it be anything other than cheap political point scoring given that Mr Keim and Hedley Thomas managed to reveal the incompetence and political trickery of the Howard government in the Haneef case.

Unfortunately Mr Biddle is not alone in the legal profession when it comes to dobbing in a fellow lawyer. I am personally aware of a number of cases where lawyers get upset with a colleague and run off to the authorities to whinge about their naughty colleague. For example, every year around Australia some lawyer will complain to the authorities that a colleague has used abusive language towards them in a case. The relevant legal regulator will then waste time and money investigating this trivia instead of saying, get over it to the precious complainant.

And as we know, legal trade unions like Bar Associations and Law Societies have been known to go after high profile practitioners, particularly women, while turning a blind eye to questionable activities of members of the legal establishment.

The rules in this area need to be reformed. People like Mr Biddle ought not be allowed to lodge a complaint unless they have a direct interest in the matter. It’s one thing for the AFP to lodge a complaint against Mr Keim (who by the way has done nothing wrong on any view of the rules about dealing with the media), because it has a direct interest in the Haneef matter, but quite another for a lawyer from the Brisbane suburbs with National Party connections to be allowed to lodge a complaint.