It has been 4 years since Justice Kelly Rees issued an arrest warrant for journalist Shane Dowling (me) to serve 10 months jail for contempt of court on the instructions of Kerry Strokes’ Channel Seven and its parent company Seven West Media. The arrest warrant was issued at the Supreme Court of NSW on the 3rd of September 2021.

I have published 3 previous annual articles on the matter and last years article has a lot more background information for people who are new to the story. (Click here to read the 2024 “3 years on the run” article)

This year I decided to review an article written by The Sydney Morning Herald journalist Kate McClymont published on the 6th of September 2021 on the matter, as per below, and it hasn’t aged well for either Justice Kelly Rees or Kate McClymont.

Video of the article review is below and below that is the written review.

“Arrest warrant for Shane Dowling, Fugitive Australian Journalist. Article by Kate McClymont reviewed” (Click here to watch the video on the Kangaroo Court of Australia YouTube channel) 

Kate McClymont’s September 6, 2021 article:

Warrant issued for the arrest of blogger Shane Dowling

Blogger Shane Dowling has declared himself a “fugitive” following an order by the NSW Supreme Court on Friday that he be arrested and jailed for 10 months for criminal contempt.

This will be his third stint in jail for the “intentional, willful and deliberate” flouting of court orders, most of them relating to his “continuing obsession” with media mogul Kerry Stokes and the Seven Network.

In sentencing Dowling on Friday, Justice Kelly Rees said his latest contempt involved deliberately flouting court orders by setting up anonymous websites to publish material about Mr Stokes and his business despite previously having been ordered to remove the material.

In 2017, the blogger was sentenced to four months in jail for continuing to make allegations on his website naming two Channel Seven personalities who had taken action against him for defamation.

The following year he was again jailed. Justice Helen Wilson, who described Dowling as “zealot, and one who is legally uninformed and factually deluded”, jailed him for 13 months for three acts of contempt, one of which was stating in a “loud and aggressive” manner in a packed courtroom that the presiding registrar was a “known bribe taker and paedophile … that means you rape children”.

His contempt was compounded by secretly recording his outburst and publishing it on his website. On appeal, his term was later reduced to four months.

Justice Rees also noted that earlier this year Dowling tendered as evidence an article from his website that alleged that Justice Rees had been ordered by the Chief Justice, who has also been accused of various wrongdoings by Dowling, to jail him on behalf of Mr Stokes and his lawyers.

“Further, I was said to be corrupt and ‘one of the biggest grubs sitting on the bench at the NSW Supreme Court, although it is very competitive for the title’,” she said in her judgment.

In written submissions, Dowling argued the finding of contempt against him was “frivolous and vexatious” and should be dealt with by a $20 fine. He also submitted that because he was unvaccinated for COVID-19, his life should not be endangered by imprisonment.

Dowling, who is in Queensland, complained on his website that Justice Rees’ judgment was “as dodgy as it gets”.

Showing his customary respect for the law, the blogger also said: “I have people lined up to run this website and social media accounts if I am jailed but hopefully I will at least get to publish a few more posts before that happens.” (Click here to see the article on the SMH website)

My article review

Kate McClymont failed to mention it was not the court that instituted contempt proceedings against me, but it was Kerry Strokes’ Channel Seven and its parent company Seven West Media.

The fact that Stokes’s 7 instituted the contempt matter against me makes a big difference especially given recent cases where Kerry Stokes and Seven were exposed paying over $100,000 for a years accommodation, sex workers and cocaine for Bruce Lehrmann and giving him airtime to attack Brittany Higgins. As well as Stokes spending an estimated $30 million to cover-up war crimes by Ben Roberts-Smith.

Anything Stokes and Seven say in court cases has very little, if any, credibility.

The fact that the judge said I had a ““continuing obsession” with media mogul Kerry Stokes and the Seven Network shows bias by her because all I was doing was reporting on Stokes’ 4 SLAPP lawsuits against me. The same type of lawsuit that Stokes funded for Ben Roberts-Smith so he could sue Nine.

I also made a number of applications to have the matter transferred from NSW to Queensland, where I live, but the judge refused even though the Seven Network and Seven West Media have large offices and a TV studio in Brisbane. Kate McClymont also failed to mention that which is also very important.

McClymont says, “In 2017 I spent 4 months jail” for naming 2 Channel Seven personalities who sued me for defamation. Seven paid for them to sue me to help cover-up the then 7 CEO Tim Worner using 7’s money to pay for his affairs with numerous 7 staff.

McClymont quotes Justice Helen Wilson, from the 2018 judgment, and says, “Justice Helen Wilson, who described Dowling as “zealot, and one who is legally uninformed and factually deluded”. 

In 2020 Justice Helen Wilson gave a paedophile who abused his 5-year-old grandson a suspended sentence because she was worried he would catch covid if sent to jail. I wrote about it in an article titled “Supreme Court judges Justice Wilson, Hulme and Hamill give paedophiles a get out of jail free card during the Coronavirus crisis”. (Click here to read the article)

I think a half decent journalist wouldn’t give a lot of weight to anything Justice Helen Wilson says.

Justice Helen Wilson sentenced me to 18 months jail with a non-parole period of 13 months and on appeal, where I represented myself and showed no remorse, it was reduced to 4 months fixed.

So, why did Justice Wilson give me such a grossly manifestly excessive sentence which was more than 4 times what it should have been? She stitched me up, that’s why. The reality is the whole matter should have been quashed but that another longer story.

McClymont says I was charged with “three acts of contempt”. That is true, 2 of those acts were me breaching suppression and non-publication orders by publishing an article telling people I was being charged with contempt. 

The suppression and non-publication orders were scandalous, had no legal basis and I eventually had them lifted but I was still hit with the 2 contempt charges as well as the original contempt charge. McClymont never wrote that because she never bothered to call me for my side of the story before she published.

McClymont says the 3rd contempt (which was the original contempt charge) was “stating in a “loud and aggressive” manner in a packed courtroom that the presiding registrar was a “known bribe taker and paedophile … that means you rape children”.

The registrar was Christopher Bradford and I actually said he was a “known bribe taker and suspected paedophile”. I published the allegations on my website and in a book and he has never denied the allegations, complained to me, or asked me to take the allegations down from my website. 

McClymont goes on the say “His contempt was compounded by secretly recording his outburst and publishing it on his website.”

The video recordings of myself and Christopher Bradford are still on my website in an article titled “Chief Justice Bathurst has journalist charged with contempt for accusing him of corruption” and the court has never ordered me to take the videos or article down. (Click here to read the article and watch the videos)

I dissect the article in more detail in the above video.

The bottom line is if Kate McClymont had contacted me to get my side of the story it would have shed light on the dodgy conduct by the court and judges, but McClymont didn’t care.

Admin: As per the above video, I am in the process of setting up a new t-shirt shop and brand “Fugitive Clothing” to help fund my journalism work and also help fund any legal costs, to fight extradition to NSW, if and when I am arrested. I’ll have more to say on that soon.

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