Paul McLean is Back to Expose Bank Fraud

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 So what has convinced me to get involved in this banking nonsense again? Your circumstances, Geoff –the diabolical, unjust situation in which you, Susan and your family find yourselves.

 I find it impossible to imagine how life is for you. I wonder if anybody at the Commonwealth Bank actually realizes that your wife has been lying in a coma in your family home for seventeen years, and that her condition is surely linked to her experience at their hands. If they do, for the life of me, I cannot comprehend their attitude.

That’s the principal reason why I’ve decided to come out of the forest.. But it is not the only reason. I have always been a sucker for the line…”All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.”

Recently both you and Dr. Ted Freeman have laid that one on me. Others have also.

Wham! It has hit home. So here I am!

It’s important you know that I am a different person from the firebrand you met seventeen years ago. I was then a fifty-three year old street-wise activist turned politician with a penchant for ‘causes’ and a need to win political points. Ted Freeman knew me even earlier—when I was just coming alive to social activism.

My motives are quite different now. In my seventieth year I am quieter an more measured. I don’t deny I’m deeply fascinated by what my Mum called ‘rat-cunning’, and yes, I’ll always be strongly drawn to issues of social justice.

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I’ve learned a lot in the last fifteen years. I’m much more detached, objective and analytical. I needed to be hardened by the heat of hurt, then softened by meditation, prayer and contemplation. But I was always going to have to come out of the forest to continue my light work. It was only a question of when. Thank you for prompting me.

Several global changes have moved in our favour—changes that cannot be negated by anyone.

Now, thanks to ‘This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..u">This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..u’, everyone can read and hear what we have to say. The rich and powerful can do nothing to change that. We have become more empowered! Just one or two well-designed web-sites would be like creating huge cyber bank accounts where the disillusioned could deposit their stunning truths. Think of this as our resource bank.

Amazingly it is now fifteen years since frustration and disillusionment caused me to prematurely resign from the Senate, abandon a highly successful political career, and adopt a simple lifestyle of study, prayer, meditation, contemplation and writing here in the beautiful forest of northern Tasmania. I am daily grateful for that decision. I am now truly blessed. I own nothing, I earn nothing, I owe nothing, I am nothing, I fear nothing. Yes, now I am free.  All by choice! .... Yes. I finally got the message …. We each create our own reality!

During the 1980s many stories about unpleasant consequences of financial deregulation slipped by unnoticed. Despite this general media euphoria, a few journalists did adopt a more critical approach. One of them was Sydney Morning Herald reporter Anne Lampe who persisted with the story of how major Australian banks had mismanaged the selling of foreign exchange loans.

That story was confined to the business pages until two devastatingly revealing letters to the Westpac bank from its own lawyers, Allen Allen & Hemsley, were leaked to Anne Lampe in early 1991. The letters discussed the bank's mismanagement of its foreign loans and provided advice on how it could best avoid repairing the damage it had done to its customers. When the SMH published details of the letters, the Westpac Bank spent thousands of dollars seeking injunctions against a number of publications in jurisdictions in and outside of Australia.

The train of events that followed became known as the Westpac Letters Affair. This story was to challenge the relationship between parliament and the judiciary and the right of the public to be informed not only about banking malpractice but of what occurred in their parliaments.

As you know, I spent four years in the Senate fighting bank and other corruption. This culminated in my controversial tabling of the infamous ‘Westpac Letters’ and my appearance before the corrupted ‘Martin Inquiry’ – a committee that had been set up by Keating as a soft option. It was his way of avoiding the Royal Commission I had sought via a Private Member’s Bill.

I traveled the world looking at corruption in banking and at the time of my resignation from the Senate I had more than six hundred case files relating to various malpractices, involving all major Australian banks. I had tabled only a small cross section of these in the Senate and before the Martin. I still have access to all of those documents and many others.

But more than bank greed, ineptitude and immorality were at work in all of this. Politicians, senior ministers, senior public servants, senior police, lawyers, accountants and members of the bench must equally be held accountable. The gross injustice experienced by trusting and innocent Australians, (you and your family were prominent among them), at the hands of greed-driven corrupt bankers and others, is a great Australian travesty. Yet even now very few acknowledge this.

The criminality apparent in the banks’ handling of the infamous foreign currency loan fiasco drew most attention, but equally important were asset stripping and breaches of fiduciary obligation, of Reserve Bank statutory requirements, of the Trade Practices Act, of Tax legislation and regulations. These were all crimes without statutory limitation – ‘ticking time bombs’.

Professor Stephen Martin, former MP who headed whitewash of banking corruptionThe sham was that the indisputable evidence that I had tabled in the Parliament, that which was presented to the Martin Inquiry, and that which came before the courts, was blatantly ignored. Those responsible for protecting the public interest failed us. The overwhelming majority of politicians, police, legal professionals and judges, showed neither moral conviction nor strength. Even worse – some took profit from it.

At the time we were mighty thankful for the brave few: journalists like Anne Lampe, Stewart Kennedy, Crispin Hull and Peter Murphy; whistle-blowing bankers like John McLennan and John Salmon; courageous and informed lawyers like James Renton and Frank Galbally. And there were others. The real heroes though, were the thousands of victims.

Bankers could not believe their luck when I resigned and the storm subsided. Martin’s ‘Committee” apparently had been effective in damage control on behalf of their masters. Or so it seemed.

But they and we knew that these issues would be revisited. They are aware, just as we are, that a mountain of new material will vortex into dedicated web-sites should we press a button. We all know that the ‘Bankwatch’ movement reached only a fraction of its potential. ‘Bankwatch 2’ will be wiser!

Australians are showing a watchful and keen interest in current class actions against Canadian banks. They can similarly be marshaled here. Bankers know this. Class actions, however, would have greater impact if part of a broad, renewed assault.

The new elite of banking will not be thrilled to inherit the shit of their predecessors.

As you know I recorded my experiences and those of many of my constituents in my book, Bankers and Bastards. Although the issue of bank malpractice attracted huge public interest in the late 80’s and early 90’s, it finally went ‘stale’, as journalists say. The same journalists agree, however, that after fifteen years this stuff can be ‘freshened’ again. There is real interest. It’s agreed that the climate is right. The Howard government has brought public trust of institutions to a new low.

Our courts have been a disgrace. It has been there that the arrogance, smugness, and dishonesty of the banks and their cohorts of lawyers have been most blatant. Much could be cited, but pivotal is the outrageous lie that banks knew nothing of the pending and progressive floating of the Australian dollar in 1984. Their very own Treasury and branch memos affirm this knowledge in black and white. Francis Galbally made the Martin Inquiry aware when he appeared before it with James Renton and me on 15 March 1991, and again, subsequently.

Professor Evan Jones’ papers provide clear evidence that there has been a number of cases where the bench was biased and legal representation either professionally incompetent or down-right corrupt. This reflects appallingly upon our judicial system.

As cases have come before courts over the past twenty years, lack of disclosure and constraints on discovery of key evidentiary documents, (frequently deliberate on the bank’s part), have thwarted justice. Yours was one of the worst cases.

How heartening it was recently to see the High Court find barriers to recovery of key evidentiary documents to be sufficient grounds to overturn prior judgments. Yet again Michael Kirby took the opportunity to educate an ignorant public about an important aspect of the law.

I was impressed to read Justice Martin’s (NT) strong public statement regarding Hicks’ incarceration and how our federal government’s tolerance of it reflects on our perspective justice.

These are powerful and critically important developments that must be rammed home and reinforced. Do I sense a moral renewal coming on?

Geoff, I was not familiar with the details of your case, although I was aware of your tragic family circumstances. Wow! Weren’t you done over and then ruthlessly dumped by your bankers, lawyers and the court? Fancy the fresh Quade precedent not being cited either by your lawyers or the bench. Truly amazing!

The courts failed you, and in doing so failed us all. We must now convince the Commonwealth Bank of Australia to reconsider its attitude and agree to a generous bona fide settlement for you and Susan. For this to occur they may need to be thoroughly and publicly embarrassed again. I have no doubt we can do this.

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In 1996, or thereabout, when briefly working for the late Senator Robert Bell, I devised a series of ‘Questions on Notice,” (about twenty or so).  They received ‘paper-over’ answers as we expected. It was naively assumed by some, that the matter was over -- McLean had gone back into the forest, Bell was dead, and a whole new parliament had been elected. Wrong! ……… Those questions, and the answers, are truly amazing. I have no doubt that their truth will eventually out.

Inevitably in time – perhaps in a surprisingly short time – there will be an outcry for national moral and ethical renewal that begins with our legal and judicial system, but then goes much further to embrace all our institutions […] The movement would begin with the exposure of the incompetence, indifference or corruption of executives and statutory authorities in the 80’s and 90’s and right up until the present. […] Ministers Tate, Duffy, Keating (as Treasurer) and others, were criminally negligent in my view. The Martin Committee’s whitewash was a national disgrace that was never fully exposed for what it was. Stephen Martin was rewarded with the speakership of the House. Amazing! Perhaps not – just cronyism in its least subtle form.

The report of that committee is notable only for its inadequacy. A Pocketful of Change is offensive in the blatant, arrogant cynicism with which it declares the cosy relationship that prevailed between the Hawke/Keating governments and the bankers.

The Reserve Bank’s negligence was stunning. I expressed this to Bernie Fraser, the Governor of the Reserve at the time. Indeed I called for Keating to sack him. But naturally Fraser needed do nothing more than laugh. He and all his subordinate bankers got away with whatever they wanted because of the extra-ordinary moral ineptitude of the responsible ministers and opposition leaders of the day. Hewson was a banker prior to becoming a politician, and is again now.

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We would cite Howard’s promotion of Foreign Currency Loans at their very inception, and place that alongside his petulant outcry to a delegation from the Foreign Currency Borrower’s Association (victims of the Foreign Currency Loan fiasco) that “this irresponsible bank bashing must stop.” Australia will squirm in disbelief and embarrassment.

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Nineteen years ago when, as a senator, I first encountered bank corruption I sought the advice of Bob bottom, Australia’s leading investigator of sleaze and corruption.  (I reported all this in Bankers and Bastards.) He explained to me a fundamental truth – “where there is corruption there are corrupt bankers, corrupt lawyers, and corrupt police. They work in teams.”

[In a letter to Kim Beazley MP]

[…]The message to go out to the public would be that the Hawke/Keating era was a very shadowy time. That the last Labor Government abused some of our most cherished values, denigrated our sacred institutions and processes, and ignored Australians who called out for and deserved help. (And all whilst licking the smarmy bankers of the time.) Why should we believe that the next Labor government would be better?