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One of the pillars of Australia's democracy is the principle of the rule of law. An important element of this law is termed "judge made" law where Common law is developed in areas not covered by Parliamentary legislation. Judges are guided by a framework of previous decisions in similar cases otherwise known as precedents. This reliance on previous decisions helps to provide consistent decisions and provides citizens with clear guidelines to what is acceptable in our society.
Today at Perth's Barbagallo raceway the V8 Supercar officialdom made a mockery of the principles of Australian justice by penalising Marcos Ambrose after a first turn incident with Mark Skaife at thestart of race one.
Looking at previous incidents decide by the officials some principles have been established that were completely ignored today. So let us look at some high profile previous incidents that we can use as framework to analyse today's incident. Firstly there is the Murphy and Bargwanna incident off the start at Phillip Island in 2002 when Bargwanna moved towards the outside of the track to block an overtaking manoeuvre from the fast starting Murphy and Bargwanna after getting hit in ther rear part of the car he went for wild ride that seemed to destroy his Valvoline Commodore. Greg Murphy was judged to be in the wrong and excluded from the race results, A far more recent event is the Dumbrell and Besnard incident a the previous race meeting at Pukekohe. Here Dumbrell attempted an overtaking move the right and Besnard moved over forcing Dumbrell onto the grass, reulting in him losing control and bringing both cars to grief. The Confederation of Australian Motorsport considered Dumbrell's action for attempting to overtake that close to the edge of the track to be reckless driving and fined him $15,000 and deducted 75 Championship points. At this same meeting heading towards the same corner in race one Jason Bright moved to cover an overtaking move on the right by Glenn Seton. The front of Seton's car touched the back corner of Bright's Falcon forcing Bright into a spin. The stewards deemed that a racing incident while Bright's take on the event with Seton is " Seton turned me around for pretty much no reason and that really destroyed our race". The common factor in all these cases is that the car in front and closest to the racing line has not been judged to be at fault when the car behind attempts an overtaking manoeuvre down the right edge of the track towards a right hand corner. Go To Page: 1 2
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