MICHELLE LESLIE
Daily Telegraph - February 2006

HERE'S a novel proposition: let's cut Michelle Leslie some slack. Not that I feel we've been overly mean to her, mind, just a little bit too pleased, in that especially Australian way, with the poor girl's downfall.

In the latest chapter, Leslie is apparently applying for an iffy work visa to the US because she is unable to find work here.

Don't think I've gone soft. I used to live in Bondi so I regard models as little more useful than mosquitoes. Yet I feel for Michelle Leslie in a way I don't for Schapelle Corby precisely because few seem to regard her as deserving of sympathy.

Regardless of the irrelevance or otherwise of the parallels between the two cases, Leslie and Corby were doomed to be compared from the start. Corby, with her slapper-next-door looks, dying father and beauty school degree was always feted to be cast as that perennial Aussie favourite -- the Battler. Leslie, on the other hand, with her genuine beauty, glamorous job and apparent connections to Indonesia's elite is more like the stuck-up bitch at the bar who won't let you buy her a drink.

Every step of the Leslie saga has been reported with barely repressed glee. Most famous was the “burqa incident”. I wasn't the only one who viewed her sudden conversion from a sorta-maybe-Muslim to a fundamentalist with cynicism. But the notion that she was evil incarnate for pretending to be something she wasn't so she could get out of a Balinese prison is one of the most churlish criticisms.
Do you know what I would do to get out of a Balinese prison? Anything. I wouldn't just change my religion: I'd change my name, sex, and long distance call provider if it meant getting out of that hell hole. I'd rat Schapelle out in a heartbeat; I'd appear in court wearing nothing but a suspender belt and sit on the judge's knee.

When I say anything I mean ANYTHING.

Then, after her release, Michelle had the hide to go to the mall in Singapore. I don't know if you've travelled in Asia but sometimes, after the beggars and the heat and the chaos, you want nothing more than to go to the mall. I should think after a month in a Balinese prison it was an act of utmost restraint.
Unlike the Corby family the Leslies have kept relatively tight-lipped. There have been no public proclamations, no appeals to the power of talkback radio. Eccentrically, Leslie doesn't seem to care whether Beryl from Peakhurst thinks she's innocent. In a world where we think everything is our business, I suppose that hurt.

So far Michelle Leslie's greatest crime is to have played her cards well. She didn't involve the media (we'll make her pay for that), a rotating cast of eccentric family members or, most dangerously of all, the Australian Government. She clearly knew what Schapelle didn't, and a great number of the Australian public still don't: There's no such thing as ``fair play'' in Asian justice.

© Brendan Shanahan 2008