Page 330 - Week 01 - Thursday, 14 February 1991
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MR MOORE, by leave: Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you, my parliamentary colleagues. I appreciate the effort and the time that you have taken to come to this conclusion. It clearly is a difficult matter and a difficult conclusion to come to. The press has revealed - I wonder how - that the advice given to the President of the Senate by his Clerk was in fact contrary to the decision that he made. This indicates the fine line there is in dealing with matters of sub judice.
My concern, Mr Speaker, is that I see around this set of documents a very clear and important public interest. We must look very carefully at the distinctions between legality and justice. In your statement of a few moments ago you indicated that it is important to ensure that the litigants have a fair and reasonable approach before the courts. One of the factors that you have taken into consideration is the concern that one of the litigants may, in some way, be advantaged over the other.
The documents themselves, Mr Speaker, reveal quite clearly that the powerful Westpac Bank intends to use their size, their money and their power in order to ensure that litigation can go on for such a time as to disadvantage the other litigants. Whilst that might be legally above board, ethically, in terms of justice, there is no justice. It is time for this Assembly to bravely take a step for justice and for us to ensure that these documents are made publicly available so that in the interests of the people of Australia the matters that have been raised in this way can be dealt with. In the long term I would hope that they will be dealt with by a royal commission.
Following the statement I made in the adjournment debate last night, Mr Speaker and members of the Assembly, there has been a flood of phone calls to my office indicating that it is not just the Westpac Bank and PPL, their wholly owned subsidiary, that have been involved in the sorts of issues that I spoke of last night. It extends beyond them to other banks as well. I have seen no evidence of that and, therefore, I do not wish to name the other banks, and I do not intend to. Some of the callers have indicated that they will provide me with the evidence and when they do I certainly will use every method within my power to make it public. I suggest that the indications are that this is the tip of the iceberg and that, in the public interest, we ought to ensure that these documents are made public. With that in mind I would like to move this motion, which I am quite happy to have distributed. The motion reads:
That this Assembly, in the interests of the community, override the decision of the Speaker and that the Assembly:
(1) order the tabling; and
(2) authorise the publication
of the two letters of Allen, Allen and Hemsley, dated 25 November 1987 and 11 December 1987, to the Chief General Manager of Westpac.
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