One of Australia's leading anti-corruption authors, Raymond Hoser, has been convicted in the Victorian Supreme Court of the change of 'scandalising the courts'. Hoser, the author of Victoria Police Corruption 1 and 2, was fined 5000 dollars and faces court costs estimated to be around 30,000 dollars. It's interesting to note that although Hoser has scandalised the courts, he will still be able to distribute Victoria Police Corruption 2 if he removes the five attending passages in the book that scandalised the courts.

The judge stated that he believed that Hoser was more interested in self-interest than public interest and that he was carrying out a vendetta against the courts that was linked to a 1995 conviction for perjury. Although jail was sought by the Crown, the judge decided to fine Raymond Hoser and his publishing company. Hoser is looking at avenues for an appeal and will soon make a decision on whether he wlll appeal the Court's decision. Hoser will be able to continue to sell Victoria Police Corruption 1 and other ant-corruption tiles he has published.

Since Victoria Police Corruption appeared in 1999, a number of court challenges to ban the books have failed. The Labor government's attempts to bury Victoria Police Corruption 1 and 2 have come to nothing because the great bulk of the material has stood the test of time. Even the loss in this case was limited to five paragraphs in Victoria Police Corruption 2, a massive tome, that lists names and deeds. Hoser has shown that a determined author can publish material that the so called mainstream media will not touch.

The interesting aspect the snippets of information that appeared in the corporate press and the State run media about the case, is how they concentrated on the judgement, but didn't mention the archaic laws that the Victorian Attorney General's Department - "Scandalising the courts" had to use to try to stop Hoser from distributing Victoria Police Corruption 1 and 2.