Ferdinands v Australian Federal Police & Anor

[2017] HCATrans 59

[2017] HCATrans 059

IN THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA

Office of the Registry
  Adelaide  No A41 of 2016

B e t w e e n -

TREVOR KINGSLEY FERDINANDS

Plaintiff

and

AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL POLICE

First Defendant

COMMISSIONER OF THE AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL POLICE

Second Defendant

GORDON J

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

FROM MELBOURNE BY VIDEO LINK TO ADELAIDE

ON WEDNESDAY, 15 MARCH 2017, AT 9.30 AM

Copyright in the High Court of Australia

MR T.K. FERDINANDS appeared in person.

MR P.H. D’ASSUMPCAO:   May it please the Court, I appear as solicitor advocate for the second defendant.  (instructed by Australian Government Solicitor)

HER HONOUR:   Mr Ferdinands, this is an application brought by the defendants, so what I propose to do is this, is to hear from Mr d’Assumpcao.  Do have a piece of paper and a pen so you can write some notes?

MR FERDINANDS:   Yes, your Honour.

HER HONOUR:   Then once Mr d’Assumpcao is finished I will hear from you and you can make submissions in response to their application.  Is that all right with you?

MR FERDINANDS:   Yes, your Honour.

HER HONOUR:   Have a seat.  Mr d’Assumpcao.

MR D’ASSUMPCAO:   If the Court pleases.

HER HONOUR:   Just before you continue, if you cannot hear at any time, Mr Ferdinands, will you let me know?

MR FERDINANDS:   Yes, your Honour.

HER HONOUR:   Thank you.

MR D’ASSUMPCAO:   Your Honour, there is no appearance on the part of the first defendant.

HER HONOUR:   That is right.  I understand from your application you want to have the first defendant removed as a party to the proceeding.

MR D’ASSUMPCAO:   That is so, your Honour.

HER HONOUR:   Yes.

MR D’ASSUMPCAO: For the reasons set out I think in paragraph 4 of the written submissions, which is to the effect that the Australian Federal Police is not in and of itself a – it does not have a separate legal personality as capable of being sued for the purpose of section 75(v).

HER HONOUR:   Yes.  All right, well, we will deal with that with Mr Ferdinands as part of the response at the end, if that is all right.

MR D’ASSUMPCAO:   If the Court pleases.

HER HONOUR:   Thank you.

MR D’ASSUMPCAO:   Your Honour, the second defendant applies for summary dismissal of the proceeding under rule 27.09.4 on two bases, the first being the proceeding does not disclose a cause of action.  Secondly, the proceeding is scandalous or vexatious.  I acknowledge, your Honour, that that is a power the Court wishes to be exercised sparingly except only in the clearest of cases of which, I submit, this is one.

HER HONOUR:   Right.

MR D’ASSUMPCAO:   The affidavit material relied on in support are two affidavits of Mr Rodger James Prince.  The first was affirmed on 7 February 2017, and I will just pause, your Honour, to observe that there is a reference in paragraph 2, an incorrect reference - there is a reference in paragraph 2 of Mr Prince’s affidavit of February which refers to the plaintiff having filed the proceeding on 26 October.  That should read 18 October.  The documents, of course, speak for themselves but I just point that out and I apologise for that error.

HER HONOUR:   That is all right.

MR D’ASSUMPCAO:   Your Honour, the second affidavit is a short supplementary affidavit of Mr Prince which completes the material which the second defendant relies on in support of the application, namely the plaintiff’s freedom of information request made to the Australian Federal Police, and it annexes a letter from the plaintiff and another document which, for present purposes, is not relevant.

Your Honour, in terms of jurisdiction, the plaintiff’s written submissions, which were filed on 6 March, make it clear that he seeks to invoke section 75(v) of the Constitution and I made the point in the second defendant’s written submissions that to qualify for mandamus and the ancillary writ of certiorari the plaintiff must relevantly establish jurisdictional error which he has not pointed to with any degree of specificity. There is a further problem with the plea for mandamus in that the plaintiff seeks to fetter any discretion of the decision which he seeks to have fulfilled, which is an impermissible course, in my respectful submission.

The primary authority I rely on, your Honour, and I provided the Court Registrar with an index of authorities yesterday, is the decision of this Court in Batistatos 226 CLR 256. A copy of that index was served on the plaintiff yesterday, together with the cases. Does your Honour have a copy?

HER HONOUR:   I do, thank you.

MR D’ASSUMPCAO:   I propose only to briefly return to that decision, your Honour, and draw upon the principles.

HER HONOUR:   I think it would be useful both for Mr Ferdinands, as well as for the Court, of course, but especially so Mr Ferdinands understands, if you identify with precision what is the proposition that you take from those authorities rather than – and then identify which paragraph you say supports that proposition.

MR D’ASSUMPCAO:   Quite.

HER HONOUR:   Then Mr Ferdinands can (a) hear what the proposition is and then check to make sure that the proposition finds reflection in the paragraphs you rely on.

MR D’ASSUMPCAO:   Indeed, your Honour.  If I may propose, what I intend to do is set out some background facts, what I consider to be, I respectfully submit, are uncontroversial background facts, and return to the proposition which I say emerged from that decision in a moment, your Honour.

HER HONOUR:   Certainly.

MR D’ASSUMPCAO:   The starting point so far as background facts are concerned, your Honour, is the plaintiff’s application for access to documents held by the Australian Federal Police.  Now, in the written submissions I indicated that some of those matters are in fact contained in the plaintiff’s affidavit, and a more fulsome set of material is contained in Mr Prince’s further affidavit.

There is no contest, your Honour, that the plaintiff did make an application to the second defendant on 29 February 2016. The application no doubt relied on or invoked section 15(1) of the Freedom of Information Act which in a truncated form gives a party or a person a right to request an agency to provide documents – I am paraphrasing the effect of the subsection there, your Honour, but that is the right which is conferred by section 15(1), that is that you have a right to apply, it is not a right to access.

Section 15(5) then provides that the agency must take all steps to notify the person of the decision within 30 days after the day on which the request was made and, in this case, your Honour, that period expired on 30 March 2016.  Now, by reason of section 15AC(3), the request was deemed to have been refused.  If no decision had been made at the expiry of the 30‑day period the application made on 29 February was deemed to have been refused 30 days thereafter.

So whilst the plaintiff’s request was acknowledged, I made the point in the written submissions that the plaintiff effectively declined to provide photographic identification which was requested of him by the Australian Federal Police to process the freedom of information request, and the link in that regard, your Honour, for photographic identification is found in section 15(5A), which requires, in shorthand, your Honour, that the Australian Federal Police is to have regard to the “guidelines issued by the Information Commissioner for the purposes of section 93A”.  Section 93A permits the Information Commissioner to “issue guidelines for the purposes of this Act”.

HER HONOUR:   Yes.

MR D’ASSUMPCAO:   Now, the relevant extract of the guidelines is set out at paragraph 23 of the written submissions, your Honour.  I will just pause to note that apart from the plaintiff complaining about the validity of those guidelines, there is no issue taken that the guidelines were in fact issued.

HER HONOUR:   Yes.

MR D’ASSUMPCAO:   Now, with that condensed background, your Honour, in my submission, it can be seen that each of the plaintiff’s complaints is premised on a step in the process which is capable of altering a right to apply for access.  I am using those words deliberately, your Honour, because they pick up the words of the plurality in Ainsworth.  It is a step in the process leading to the ultimate decision. 

The plaintiff does not attack the ultimate decision, which is the deemed decision on 30 March 2016.  My submission is that the plaintiff’s attack in that regard is misplaced and without merit, in any event, because the ultimate complaint must fasten upon the deemed refusal on 30 March.

I also pause to note, your Honour, that the Freedom of Information Act in Parts VI and VII provide for a statutory review which either by way of an internal review process of a decision to refuse access or an application to the Information Commissioner under Part VII, which the plaintiff has not taken up - and that is relevant in the sense, your Honour, that the plaintiff has essentially circumvented the statutory mechanisms available to him and commenced a proceeding in this Court which goes - of course, under section 75(v) that is available, but in the exercise of the Court’s discretion to issue writs that is a relevant factor, in my respectful submission, militating against the grant or that the writs should lie or issue.

Now, the other point, of course, and I say this more for the plaintiff’s benefit than your Honour’s, but the writs do not lie as a right; that is well established in a decision such as Carmody and so forth, and, of course, the plaintiff bears the onus of establishing jurisdictional error.  In the migration context, your Honour, Justice Gummow in SZGUR – that is a decision of this Court, of course, in 241 CLR 594, but Justice Gummow made the uncontroversial proposition that the party claiming a jurisdictional error bears the onus.

Your Honour, it is central to the second defendant’s application then to have regard to the plaintiff’s explanation for seeking these documents.  It is as against that lengthy litigation history which the summary dismissal application is brought and the history is conveniently summarised in the decision of Ferdinands v Chief of Army. 

It is a decision of the Full Court of the Federal Court.  I extract the relevant part, or passages, at paragraph 10 of the written submissions.  Chief Justice Allsop delivered the substantive judgment, with whom Justices North, Bennett, Siopis and Logan agreed.  I do not propose to repeat that history.  It is, in my respectful ‑ ‑ ‑

HER HONOUR:   I have read that history.  Thank you, Mr d’Assumpcao.

MR D’ASSUMPCAO:   Yes, if the Court pleases.  Nor do I understand that history to be disputed by the plaintiff.  But I would emphasise the orders which were made by the Full Court of the Federal Court which are set out at paragraph 11 of the submissions.  Now, the plaintiff’s explanation for the freedom of information request appears in this letter accompanying the application itself, which is to be found at page 5 of Mr Prince’s affidavit of the 9th, however, for convenience, I have included that, your Honour.

HER HONOUR:   This is all evidence and materials for the Court to review.  Are they the two passages you want me to look at?

MR D’ASSUMPCAO:   Yes, your Honour.

HER HONOUR:   Yes, I have read those.

MR D’ASSUMPCAO:   If the Court pleases.

HER HONOUR:   Thank you.

MR D’ASSUMPCAO:   In my submission, your Honour, the request reduces to broad and unfounded sweeping allegations against a Defence Force magistrate’s decision in 1999.  Now, the summary given by his Honour Chief Justice Allsop records, with the obvious exception of this litigation, the plaintiff’s unsuccessful plight to challenge or otherwise call into question the trial which ultimately led to his conviction in 1999 by the Defence Force magistrate.

This Court and the Federal Court have repeatedly said, your Honour, that the plaintiff’s claims are groundless and an abuse of process or other formulations of that.  That was – if I can use this term – congealed, your Honour, in the orders of the Full Court which prevented Mr Ferdinands from making any further application which in any way sought to challenge that decision in March 1999.

In my submission, your Honour, the present litigation, whether it is sliced this way or diced that way, is yet another instance of a collateral attack on the 1999 decision of the Defence Force magistrate.  It is under the guise on this occasion of a freedom of information request which, in itself, sought documents relating to the plaintiff’s complaint to the Australian Federal Police into allegations of corruption about the 1999 decision.

That is so, in my respectful submission, your Honour, that by reason of the plaintiff’s written submissions which he has filed, I think on 6 March, your Honour, and by his affidavit of 18 October, both of which, in my respectful submission, are barely intelligible and prolix in form.  So, it is submitted, your Honour, that the application for an order to show cause does not disclose a cause of action and each of the claims are scandalous or vexatious and, accordingly, an abuse of process.

Now, that is the first proposition which I seek to rely upon, Batistatos, at page 270, your Honour, where the Court essentially acknowledged that proceedings or even a step in a proceeding which is scandalous or vexatious involves an abuse of the court’s processes, and that is because the concept of an abuse of process is protean in concept. 

The affidavit of Mr Prince in support of the second defendant’s motion I acknowledge limits the grounds for the purpose of rule 27.09.4 to failing to disclose a reasonable cause of action and a proceeding which is vexatious or scandalous.  The third limb of 27.09.4 is, of course, that the:

proceeding generally or any claim in a proceeding:

. . . 

(c)      is an abuse of the process of the Court –

As I have submitted, your Honour, both proceedings which are vexatious or scandalous or did not disclose a cause of action are in and of itself an abuse of the Court’s processes.  I would also add, your Honour, that the second defendant’s summons which was filed on 8 February seeks an order that the application filed on 18 October be dismissed under rule 27.09.4 so, in my respectful submission, it is not limited to the question of whether abuse of process is not mentioned in Mr Prince’s affidavit, although it ought to have been.

The second proposition, your Honour, arising from Batistatos is that the proceeding is productive of serious and unjustified trouble and harassment because of the matters I have submitted to your Honour in relation to the underpinning purpose for bringing this action and the related application for documents from the Australian Federal Police.  That is the proposition which emerges from page 267 of Batistatos and the authorities referred to. 

The origin of that phrase comes from Oceanic Sun Line Special Shipping Co Inc v Fay (1988) 165 CLR 197, again a decision of this Court. Justice Deane at page 247 discussed the distinction between the words “oppressive” and “vexatious” and on those topics his Honour said:

On that approach, “oppressive” should, in this context, be understood as meaning seriously and unfairly burdensome, prejudicial or damaging while “vexatious” should be understood as meaning productive of serious and unjustified trouble and harassment.

I do not propose to enlarge on what is meant by “scandalous”.  The allegations made by the plaintiff in relation to various officers’ conduct are unsubstantiated by any evidence.  They are serious allegations he made and they require, in my respectful submission, a firm foundation for which the plaintiff has none and, in that context, those allegations are scandalous.  This is also, having regard to that backdrop, your Honour, one of those clear cases envisaged by Batistatos at 275 which permits the Court to determine the matter in a summary way. 

Finally, your Honour, recalling what is, in my submission, the primary basis for bringing the action, that is a collateral and impermissible attack on the 1999 decision.  This is not a case where the plaintiff could amend to improve his position and the proposition – I withdraw that – the authority of that proposition is Chief Justice Barwick’s decision in General Steel Industries v Commissioner for Railways 112 CLR 125 which is the second authority mentioned on the list and I just refer to page 137 of that

report.  Your Honour, those are the submissions the second defendant makes in support of the application for summary dismissal.

HER HONOUR:   Thank you very much.

MR D’ASSUMPCAO:   May it please the Court.

HER HONOUR:   Mr Ferdinands.

MR FERDINANDS:   Thank you, your Honour.  Yes, your Honour. 

HER HONOUR:   Now, in which order shall we deal with matters?  The first question concerns the removal of the first defendant as a party to the proceeding.  Do you wish to say anything about that?

MR FERDINANDS:   Yes, your Honour.  In relation to that, the Crown position is the Australian Federal Police as the first defendant is not a legal entity, and it must be said that it is plainly my error on that behalf and that the second defendant, the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, being a legal entity, should stand.  So, I seek an order just to remove the first defendant as I stand and we shall proceed with the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police as is, I think; that will be the best.  So, I do agree with the Crown’s submission on that.

HER HONOUR:   All right.  Well, I will make an order that removes the first defendant, the Australian Federal Police, as a party to the proceeding, and direct that the title of the proceeding be amended so that the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police is referred to as “the defendant”.

MR D’ASSUMPCAO:   May it please the Court.

HER HONOUR:   Thank you, Mr Ferdinands.

MR FERDINANDS:   Thank you, your Honour.  In relation to the Crown’s submissions, can I just say that her Honour is to disregard the entire structure, format and general feeling of the Crown submissions because quite simply the Crown have gone down a road far too far when the very first step they have to take is Ferdinands v Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police.  There is no collateral attack on the 1999 DFM.  There is nothing of the sort.  All there is are two matters; firstly, are the questions of law to be dealt with ‑ ‑ ‑

HER HONOUR:   Are they the ones that you have set out in your application, being paragraphs 44 and 46?

MR FERDINANDS:   That is correct, your Honour.  That is what we call a foundation stone.  Once we start with that, then it goes back to the constitutional writs as to whether in fact I was treated lawfully and properly as a citizen of Australia when I asked for an investigation and did he carry out an investigation?  That is all these proceedings are about, your Honour.  Everything the Crown has said this morning and leading cases and merits of jurisdiction, summary dismissal, that has got nothing to do with the case, your Honour.  It beggars belief.

HER HONOUR:   My problem, Mr Ferdinands, is this.  I have an application brought by the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police which seeks to have your proceedings cut off now on a number of bases.  Basically, their contention is – that is the reason why Mr d’Assumpcao took you through the authorities – that the matters that you rely upon do not provide a legal foundation for the relief you seek. 

So you will need not so much to address the merits in the sense of argue the case, you need to identify with for me – and as Mr d’Assumpcao points out very properly, it is a high bar that he has to get over, so it is not an easy application for him.  So you need to think about how it is you can match the relief you seek to the underlying complaints.

MR FERDINANDS:   It would be my submission that the complaint made by the Australian Federal Police Commissioner that the matters are scandalous and vexatious is wholly irrelevant.  The complaint made is to the nature of his duty and his responsibility when he received the complaint.  He received that complaint more than 12 months ago, inter alia.  It must be assumed he worked on the complaint for 12 months.  He did not receive the complaint yesterday and then all of a sudden today we have turned up in Court.  He must have a file now.

What section 75 of the Constitution says is this: is he a Commonwealth officer and the answer is yes. Has he made a decision, the answer is yes. Has he passed on that decision to me or anyone else, nobody actually knows, because this morning her Honour is being asked ‑ in the freedom of information the first thing is to analyse whether in fact this concept of providing a photo as a stepping stone to a major and complex investigation is in fact law. The actual law is written within the request for access.

Now, if it was important enough to have a photo, the very first thing the actual section would say is please provide your name, address and a photo.  The very fact that it does not say that must mean that it is not crucial to the handing over of information.  The Crown Solicitor made a submission saying that it is not a right, the freedom of information.  It is just an application for request. 

If it was not a right, then plainly it falls within section 75 because if someone were to submit an application for freedom of information and they were not given documents and something else arose which was not part of an appeal to those documents, the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police would fall within section 75 of the Constitution for writs to be issued.

It would not be an appeal, nor would it be vexatious or scandalous to talk about something miles down the track about a collateral attack.  We do not even know what the investigators did.  We do not know how they did it and why they did it.  The notice of the complaint was basically outlined in the submissions. 

Seventeen witnesses not called, four sets of documents, can you go down?  We have asked for 17 years, can you go down to the Department of Defence, access the file, examine the file and bring the file into this Court and then tell her Honour something very serious has happened, that a sham prosecution resulting in a wrongful conviction and it is my recommendation as Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police that you set aside the judgment and you quash the conviction, but that is maybe 12, 15, 18 months down the road.

What we need to see is how did he do this investigation.  He is a police officer.  He has to investigate a complaint.  He cannot put the complaint at the bottom of the desk or the in tray and ignore it.  Now, this morning’s submissions by the Crown Solicitor infer that is exactly what he has done.  He has not bothered to talk to Chief of Army, not bothered to talk to Chief of Defence Forces, has not met with the Director of Military Prosecutions, has not been able to do anything because when he got the complaint he was immature, he lacked the necessary maturity to go in and hunt down a conspiracy to defraud the Commonwealth, a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

He said, dismiss it, bury it, and that is what I have had for 17 years in front of the Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia.  He has done nothing.  He has not even bothered to ask the Crown Solicitor why 17 witnesses – which I originally thought constituted four and a half days of evidence – but as I have been sitting back listening and watching these trials all around Australia, murder trials, rape trials, these 17 witnesses actually constitute more than about three and a half to four weeks’ evidence of a trial which is actually missing and then there are the sets of documents not tendered to the court.

So, for people to say that there is no merit in the application, the merit is in the duty and the responsibility.  Can the High Court of Australia satisfy itself that a complaint was made and that the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police did his duty and he acted within jurisdiction?  He had a complaint.  Did he do it?

Now, the second part of the story is this morning’s story, the freedom of information.  Can he hand over the documents or must he put hurdles in front of documents?  I have never had anyone in my entire life ‑ and I do FOIs all the time, your Honour – asking for a photograph.  I have never heard of anything more outrageous.  It borders on tomfoolery.  Your Honour, what are you going to do with all the photographs? 

I think I have done the best I can in the submissions in trying to address that very issue about having photographs of hundreds of people stacked on a database, all of a sudden something happens and they release the photograph and it is the wrong photograph, or considerably worse, the database is hacked and photos are captured by illegal people, illegal hackers and the like.  It just does not make sense.  If it was vital, if it was crucial, if it was the most important thing in the history of freedom of information it would have been led first:  I want your name, I want your address and I want your photograph.

HER HONOUR:   I think you have already made that point.

MR FERDINANDS:   Thank you, your Honour.  In relation to the questions of law, I simply say this.  He has a duty, he has a responsibility.  He is within jurisdiction.  The Crown submissions have gone far too far down the track.  I am sorry that the Crown even made those submissions, talking about vexatiousness and talking about unjustified harassment and underpinning the abuse of process and lack of merit.  That is just absolutely not the case.

The Crown have come into Court saying there is no cause of action.  The cause of action is in the freedom of information.  Can he hand over the complete file, if in fact he has done an investigation?  I think her Honour should make a discovery for full discovery and disclosure to the Crown this morning of the Australian Federal Police file.  Her Honour can go away and look at it and just say did they speak to everyone?  Have they ticked off on everything?  Have they accessed the four sets of documents?

HER HONOUR:   I do not have an application of that nature in front of me, Mr Ferdinands.  I must deal with what is in front of me, and what is in front of me is an application to deal with your substantive matter in the sense that it ‑ whether or not it should be dismissed.

MR FERDINANDS:   Yes.

HER HONOUR:   Now, I have listened to you on both bases.  Is there anything else you want to tell me?

MR FERDINANDS:   I think I have taken all the necessary steps within the Act to produce a freedom of information application, and I think I have done – I think I was referred to the Information Commissioner in terms of an appeal and ‑ ‑ ‑

HER HONOUR:   I think there are two aspects.  We have dealt with the issue about the non‑production of the photo and you have made submissions about that.  Then the other aspect which was raised against you is that Parts VI and VII of the Freedom of Information Act provide mechanisms for internal review and then review by the Commissioner and you have not taken, as I understand it, on the facts, either of those courses.

MR FERDINANDS: No, I think those courses are voluntary. They are not sort of “you must, you have to, you have to go to the Information Commissioner”. The other aspect is section 75 of the Constitution ‑ ‑ ‑

HER HONOUR:   Which you have made submissions about.

MR FERDINANDS:   Yes, yes.  The issue that I also outlined is the misconduct in the breach of section 22(1) by the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police.  I think those ‑ ‑ ‑

HER HONOUR:   I think you have dealt with that matter.

MR FERDINANDS:   Okay, okay. 

HER HONOUR:   I will go through what we have talked about.  We have talked about your complaint about, as you see it, the history of the matter.

MR FERDINANDS:   Yes.

HER HONOUR:   We have been through your issue with production of the photo evidence and the terms of the Act.  You have explained to me why it is you say that Parts VI and VII of the Act do not assist the Crown ‑ ‑ ‑

MR FERDINANDS:   Well, the internal review.

HER HONOUR:   I accept that.  I am talking about the internal review and then the review under Part VII by the Information Commissioner.

MR FERDINANDS:   Yes.

HER HONOUR:   You have put to me, as I understand it, that despite the submissions put by the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police you believe you are entitled to relief under 75(v).

MR FERDINANDS:   Yes, that is specifically what 75(v) ‑ ‑ ‑

HER HONOUR:   I know.  I am just making sure that I have understood what you have put to me ‑ ‑ ‑

MR FERDINANDS:   Yes.

HER HONOUR:   ‑ ‑ ‑ so that you realise that I have listened and I have understood the complaints.

MR FERDINANDS:   Yes, yes.

HER HONOUR:   Anything else I have missed?

MR FERDINANDS:   To my knowledge, no. I think that is the issue. Something I would like to say is if I went through applications of appeal or reviews of the Information Commissioner, the very speed and the essence of the case would be lost and I would not – the speed of section 75(v) is to get that Commonwealth officer into court and get him to explain his duty, his responsibilities within a set of actions. This set of actions was the complaint.

All he has to do is produce the file.  I do not know why he is hanging on to the file and I can assume, having heard the submission, is that he has done nothing.  Inter alia he has breached – he has engaged in this conduct and breached section 22(1).  So I did not write down for an order for the court file ‑ ‑ ‑

HER HONOUR:   You will not get one today.

MR FERDINANDS:   Yes, I want one.  No, but I think that is something that her Honour should really look at.

HER HONOUR:   Thank you very much, Mr Ferdinands.

MR FERDINANDS:   Thank you, your Honour.

HER HONOUR:   Mr d’Assumpcao, do you wish to say anything in response?

MR D’ASSUMPCAO:   Nothing further, your Honour.

HER HONOUR:   What I propose to do is this.  I propose to reserve my decision.  I expect that I will deliver judgment tomorrow.  You will not need to attend, Mr Ferdinands.  The copy of the judgment when it is finished will be sent to you.  So I will go into Court and I will announce the orders and then I will send, both to you and to the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police’s solicitor, a copy of my judgment.

MR FERDINANDS:   Thank you, your Honour.

MR D’ASSUMPCAO:   Your Honour, just to be clear, would your Honour require ‑ ‑ ‑

HER HONOUR:   I do not need you to attend either, thank you.  Adjourn the Court.

AT 10.11 AM THE MATTER WAS ADJOURNED