Desperately seeking a smoking gun

Despite the deficiencies that Bret Walker SC identified during the Ruby Princess inquiry, and a number of key findings, he made only a small handful of recommendations. It is here that the rubber hits the road in terms of what the two levels of governments must do to clean up their acts, writes Verona Burgess.

Hands up those who knew what ‘pratique’ meant before the report of the special commission of inquiry into the Ruby Princess debacle lobbed last Friday (Aug14) – other than perhaps as an obscure Scrabble word.

Now everyone’s tossing it about quite casually as if they knew what it meant all along, and none with more conviction than Labor senator Kristina Kenneally.