Cusack v Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited

This matter came before the High Court of Australia on an application for leave to appeal by Mr P.L. Cusack against Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited. Mr Cusack appeared on his own behalf, while counsel appeared for the ANZ Bank. The dispute concerned a petition filed in the Supreme Court of Queensland, which sought to overturn all judgments and orders made in favour of the ANZ Bank, which had resulted in Mr Cusack's dispossession of his matrimonial home. Mr Cusack contended that the mortgage document was fraudulent, an argument he claimed had been improperly dismissed from the outset of the proceedings.

The central legal issue before the High Court was whether Mr Cusack's petition, which sought to address the alleged fraudulent nature of banking mortgage processes on a constitutional basis, should be removed from the Supreme Court of Queensland to the High Court for determination. Mr Cusack argued that the Supreme Court had refused to admit and accept his proposition of banking fraud, and that this refusal, along with the ongoing refusal to address the issue, warranted the High Court's intervention. He sought to have this crucial question of banking fraud removed for hearing and determination by the High Court.

The Court was required to consider the constitutional basis of Mr Cusack's claim regarding banking fraud and whether this raised a question of sufficient importance to warrant removal to the High Court, rather than being determined by the Full Court of the Supreme Court of Queensland where an appeal was already pending. Mr Cusack asserted that the plain meaning of section 115 of the Constitution, concerning legal tender, had not been sufficiently addressed in the prior proceedings and that its application to banking fraud was the crucial question requiring High Court consideration.