From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Christa naming it. It's Thursday May sixteenth. Four years. That's how long taxpayers have got to enjoy the benefits of the government's Stage three tax cuts. After that, higher tax rates will kick back in. That's despite Treasurer Jim Chalmers big cost of living pitch on Tuesday night.
We are easing pressure on Australians while investing in our people, our economy and our future.
The Treasurer said on Wednesday. The government won't means test the three hundred dollars energy rebates announced in the budget because it'll take too long and cost too much. That's despite his concession that wealthy your Australians with more than one home could claim multiple subsidies. You can read our experts ongoing analysis of Labour's third federal budget right now at the Australian dot com dot au. The fight over a contentious piece of evidence in the appeal of Christopher
Michael Dawson has gone down to the wire. The former rugby league star has asked the New South Wales Court of Appeal to overturn his conviction for the nineteen eighty two murder of his first wife. In today's episode, the Last Moments of Chris Dawson's latest attempt at freedom. In twenty thirteen, Marilyn Dawson posted a picture to Facebook. A friend, Ray Butler, had his arms slung around his old footy mates, her husband Paul on the left and his twin brother
Chris on the right. They're beaming at the camera. They'd enjoyed similar reunions in the decades since they shared the paddock at Gosford Rugby League Club, where Butler was a manager. The twins played for the club after they left the Newtown Jets. The Dawsons went on to be teachers when their footy careers wound down, but they stayed in touch, catching up at club events and family gatherings. Their spouses, Marilyn, who was married to Paul, Chris's wife Lynn, and Ray's
wife Sue got to know each other too. When that picture was posted to Facebook in twenty thirteen. Sue and Lynn had long since died, but their stories are forever intertwined. Five years after that picture was taken, Chris Dawson was charged with Lynn's murder. We now referred to her as Lynn Simms. At the request of her family, She disappeared from Sydney's Northern Beaches in nineteen eighty two, leaving her
beloved four and two year old daughters behind. Inquiries conducted by police and members of Lynn's family failed to get answers about what happened to the young mum, but the cold case was given new life by The Australian's investigative podcast The Teacher's Pet, created by our colleague Hedley Thomas. In twenty twenty two, Dawson was brought.
To trial.
Decades in the making.
Chris Dawson found guilty of murdering wife Lynette at Bayview forty years ago.
Justice Ian Harrison sentence Dawson to twenty four years in prison for the crime, and now the former rugby league star is hoping to have the conviction quashed in the
state's highest court. In hearing the case in twenty twenty two, Justice Ian Harrison didn't dwell on the evidence of Ray Butlin, the former rugby league player, told the court his wife Sue, had seen a woman she believed to be Lynn Simms at a fruit market where she worked in the weeks after Lynne disappeared from Bayview, Butlin said Sue called Lynn's name and walked towards her, but that the woman didn't respond. He said she got into a car and drove off.
Here's what Justice Ian Harrison said about Ray Butlin's evidence.
It is a ma of no controversy in these proceedings that Lynette Dawson did not drive. Miss Butlin's alleged sighting fleeting at best would place Lynette Dawson at the Culnara Fruit Barn getting into a car and driving off. Mister Dawson has submitted that that expression is capable of accommodating the concept that she got into a car and was
driven off. It follows that the woman seen by Miss Butlin, having regarded the evidences, highly unlikely to have been Lynette Dawson if she drove away by herself.
But in court on Monday, Belinda Rigg, the public defender representing Chris Dawson in his appeal, said Sue Butlin's story was quite extraordinary. One of the grounds of Dawson's appeal is that he was at a significant forensic disadvantage in proving his innocence because of the long delay in bringing charges almost four decades. We've used voice actors to bring you the words spoken in court.
That's a very clear egis sample of a deceased person whose evidence was crucial. That very type of detail has been lost because of the delay. All we have is an impoverished hearsay account from her former husband.
The Teacher's Pet creator Hedley Thomas wrote on Monday that placing such weight on Sue Butler's account was a fool's errand if for no other reason than Ray Butlin openly admitted his wife was known to tell tall stories for attention. He said as much at an inquest into Lynn's death in two thousand and three, and her account of seeing Lynn Sims at the fruit Barn on the New South Wales central coast was just that hearsay or gossip or fantasy.
There's no documentary evidence of Sue Butlin's sighting because she never gave police an official statement. It's not even clear if police ever spoke to her. Detective Sergeant Paul Magar from the New South Wales Homicide Squad said he couldn't recall if it was followed up during the investigation he pursued in the early nineties, but yet it was Sue
Butlin's story that saw the investigation eventually abandoned. In making his submissions to the court on Wednesday, Crown Prosecutor Brett Hatfield said Justice Ian Harrison was right to dismiss Sue Butlin's story. The reason Dawson cares so much about the supposed sighting is because it would prove Lynn was alive after January eighth, nineteen eighty two, when Harrison found she
was killed by Dawson. But Hatfield argued any accounts of sightings, bank statements or phone calls from Lynn Dawson have come either directly or indirectly from Chris Dawson. Don't forget. You can access this kind of detailed news analysis and commentary around the clock with a subscription to The Australian. Check us out at the Australian dot com dot a U
We'll be back after this break. One of the mo important voices in this story is that of a teenage babysitter known only as j. C. Jace was a student at school on Sydney's Northern Beaches where Chris Dawson taught in the late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties. She came from a troubled home and lived at the house at Bayview for a while at the end of nineteen eighty one before Lynn Simms disappeared. She later married Chris
Dawson and they had a child together. Justice Ian Harrison found the evidence given by j C a trial was credible, and Chris Dawson's new barrister, Belinda Rigg, agreed he was right to accept it. With one exception. Rigg argued on Monday, Jac's account of Lynn's disappearance shouldn't be believed because her story changed between the time she first gave a statement
to Belice and the trial in twenty twenty two. When she spoke with Detective Damian Lune in nineteen ninety, j C said words to the effect of Lin's gone, come back and stay with me. Some years later, she allegedly told her friend, the author Rebecca Hazel, that Lynn had taken some time away, and at trial, jac said Dawson had collected her from a postgraduation trip to Southwest rox with the intention of installing her at the family home to function essentially as a wife to him and a
mother to his children. Rigg argued on Monday, Jace's original account, where she said Lynn's gone was the most accurate because she'd repeatedly asked Dawson when Lynn would be returning. But Justice Christine Adamson said those kinds of questions were understandable for a teenager who wasn't at that time operating under the assumption that Lynn was dead. We used voice actors to bring you the words spoken in court.
Her evidence is that she asked the question when she was absolutely at the end of her tether, because she was eighteen years old and she's looking after a four year old and a two year old twenty four and living with the applicant. So the only reprieve from her point of view is if the mother of these two children comes back. It wasn't until later when j C was in Queensland. I think that it occurred to her as a possibility.
Justice Adamson is one of three Supreme Court justices hearing Chris Dawson's appeal, along with Court of Appeal President Justice Julie Ward and Justice Anthony Payne. Belinda Rigg said on Wednesday there were significant issues with Jc's credibility. The public defender said Jace may have been motivated to retaliate against Dawson following their divorce, and said her claim that Dawson had attempted to hire a hitman to kill Lynn was extreme.
If one looks at the fundamentals of her evidence, they were all supported. She was very, very significantly corroborated on pretty much everything that mattered except the hit man, which was rejected, and the Crown accepts we shouldn't take into account.
Justice Adamson added, judges have to be really, really sure when they're considering this kind of evidence, which.
May explain why his honor cautiously and appropriately didn't accept that evidence but accepted everything else.
When he read his judgment over six hours in twenty twenty two, Justice Ian Harrison said repeatedly that it should be taken in full.
However, my ultimate findings take account of all of the evidence considered as a whole.
But in wrapping up his submissions on Thursday, Crown Prosecutor Brett Hatfield said, in appealing his conviction on grounds relating to very specific findings within the seven hundred plus paragraph judgment, Chris Dawson's representatives were doing the opposite. The argument is doing precisely what his Honor said shouldn't be done. Compartmentalizing different sections of finding. The three justices have retired to consider their decision on the appeal. While they're weighing up
if Dawson's conviction should be quashed. He'll remain incarcerated at the Clarence Correctional Center near Gosford. Peter Dutton will deliver his Budget reply speech in Parliament tonight. The Opposition leader will focus on key issues like migration, housing, community safety and the cost of living crisis. Come back to the front tomorrow for our analysis and follow all the action at the Australian dot com dot au