|
Dear Wolter,
I have taken a quick look at Ebner v The
Official Trustee in Bankruptcy - HCA 63 (7 December 2000) and the 4th
paragraph says: "The rule of necessity gives expression to the principle
that the rules of natural justice cannot be invoked to frustrate the intended
operation of a statute which sets up a tribunal and requires it to perform the
statutory functions entrusted to it. Or, to put the matter another way, the
statutory requirement that the tribunal perform the functions assigned to it
must prevail over and displace the application of the rules of natural justice.
Those rules may be excluded by statute. Twist v Randwick Municipal Council
(10); Salemi v MacKellar (No 2) (11); FAI Insurances Ltd v Winnecke
(12)".
Paragraph 54 says: "Having regard to the current state of
the common law in Australia on the subject of disqualification for apprehended
bias, we do not the submissions that there is a separate and free-standing rule
of automatice disqualification which applies where a judge has a direct
pecuniary interest, however small, in the outcome of the case over which the
judge is presiding, etc...."
Wolter, please have a good read.
It smells a bit, to me.
Yours sincereley,
John Wilson.
|
