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OK! You win. I’m back in
the fray……And in a big way if necessary.
This is going to be a
long and unusual letter. After 16 years I’ve got a lot to say.
[…]
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.
[…]
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
‘everything@everywhere.me.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’.
 The
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.
[…]
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.
[…]
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.
[…]
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?
History of Banking Fraud:
The Coming Battle
By M. W. WALBERT
The
Coming Battle documents from Congressional records, newspaper reports
and writings by the founding fathers and others a chronology of events
long forgotten that shaped our fledgling nation from 1776 to 1899. Read
about the manipulation of our money and its supply, the intentional
creation of recessions, depressions and panics, manipulation of the stock
markets, and the demonetization of silver.
Secrets of the Federal Reserve
by Eustace Mullins
Eustace Mullins' carefully
researched and documented treatise picks up from Walbert's expose' and
brings it to the mid 1980's
The
World Order
by Eustace Mullins
How control of the world's money has inexorably led to an ever tighter
grip on control of the world's people.
Propaganda
by Edward Bernays
Walter
Lippmann's book, Public Opinion, published in 1922, detailed the
study in which he and Edward Bernays were involved while in London during
the First World War. It had to do with painting pictures inside people's
heads, which were cunningly and deliberately designed by expert craftsmen to
mislead not only individuals but entire societies.
Uranium Wars by Leuren Moret
How control of the world's people has inexorably led to wider use of
depopulation methods which include spreading radioactivity in food,
water, air, and the human genome.
Taking Back Your Power
by Allen Aslan Heart
WHAT CAN YOU DO? Stop playing THEIR game. Take back
your power. Stop paying taxes that are not legal or lawful. Stop paying
bills you don't really owe. Stop using THEIR money. There ARE ways if you
open your mind and look for the gaps in their fences that keep the sheeple
in their pasture. Are you chattel or a real person? You are the one who
makes that choice.
Our experienced
debt elimination
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Your Credit File Rights
For debt elimination
to be successful you must know your rights.
Zombie Debt:
Debt is Hard to Kill
There's a hot new growth industry: companies that buy
ancient bad debts for pennies and squeeze you to pay. Here's debt
elimination ideas how to
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Sleazy
New Debt Collector Tactics
It may not be your debt, but it
could be your problem. Collection agencies are bullying blameless
consumers into paying debts they never owed. Eliminate your debt and
be free.
Debt Collection Practices: When
Hardball Tactics Go Too Far
Dealing with a debt collector can
be one of life's most stressful experiences. Harassing calls, threats,
and use of obscene language can drive you to the edge. Debt
elimination is the solution.
An
Outcry Rises as Debt Collectors Play Rough
The rise in American consumer debt
has been accompanied by a sharp increase in complaints about
aggressive and sometimes unscrupulous tactics by debt collection
agencies, a phenomenon that has government regulators increasingly
concerned. Debt elimination removes any advantage they claim.
Debt Collection Puts on a
Suit
As consumer loans hit an all-time
high, the industry gets more sophisticated. That means that debt
elimination skills must are even more important.
© 2007,
Allen
Aslan Heart / White Eagle Soaring of the
Little Shell Pembina Band,
a
Treaty
Tribe of the Ojibwe Nation.
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