It is getting worse, not better – and there is no end in sight.

I am referring to Justice Stephen Kaye’s damning decision on the subject of Walter Sofronoff’s conduct and report of an “inquiry into the criminal justice system”. The background was the rape prosecution of Bruce Lehrmann – a charge Lehrmann steadfastly denies and upon which he was not convicted. The damage caused by that night in Canberra continues to spread. Justice Kaye has found that it was reasonable to apprehend that Sofronoff was biased against Lehrmann’s prosecutor, Shane Drumgold SC, when Sofronoff made his harsh findings adverse to Drumgold.

Sofronoff’s inquiry was set up to get to the bottom of problems in the criminal justice system, but the inquiry itself was compromised by bias. Confidence in the legal system is founded upon an assumption of independent, bias-free decision-making. The judgment of Justice Kaye tells us that assumption is false – the conduct and result of Sofronoff’s inquiry shatters whatever confidence there was in the system.

The law was not the only important institution shown to be flawed – so was the fourth estate, our free press. Not only did the commission bellyflop, it went down together with our “national broadsheet”, the Australian.

So what went wrong? Justice Kaye carefully........

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