Knight v Bell and Anor M46/2000 [2002] HCATrans 447 (13 September 2002)

IN THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA

Office of the Registry

Melbourne Nos M43 and M46 of 2000

B e t w e e n -

ALLAN ROBERT KNIGHT

Applicant

and

RANDALL JOHN BELL and PETER CLIFFORD FALCONER

Respondents

Applications for special leave to appeal

GAUDRON J

KIRBY J

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

AT MELBOURNE ON FRIDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER 2002, AT 11.49 AM

Copyright in the High Court of Australia

MR S.E. MARANTELLI: Your Honour, may it please the Court, I appear on behalf of the respondents in matter No 8, which is M43. (instructed by Lander & Rogers)

MR M.T. LAPIROW: If it please the Court, I appear for the respondents in the other matter, which is No 46. (instructed by Peter Falconer & Associates)

GAUDRON J: Could Mr Knight be called, please.

MR A.R. KNIGHT appeared in person. My apologies, your Honour. I thought the Fyffe case was on. I was just told that a moment ago.

GAUDRON J: Yes, thank you, Mr Knight. Well, we have taken the appearances of counsel in these matters. We should hear you separately, first in respect of M43 of 2000 and then hear Mr Marantelli. Is that right?

MR KNIGHT: Yes, that is correct, your Honour.

GAUDRON J: Then in M46 of 2000, and then hear Mr LaPirow, and give you a right of reply in each case. But because the issues overlap, we will not indicate what course we propose to take until we have heard argument on both matters. Thank you, Mr Knight.

MR KNIGHT: Your Honour, these actions involve a question of law that was put to the Supreme Court of Victoria. The question of law, your Honour, was looking on your principle of assumption that generates out of the law Benches of Victoria, this is a large legal question which.....validation prior to any further work on this matter. Working on the legal principle, no judge can hear his own matter - (1615), in Day v Savadge, (1614), 85 at 87[1792] EngR 643; , 80 ER 235 at 237. The matter is to be transferred to the High Court for its determination.

A central issue of the question is removing the principle of assumption and replacing that with an evident fact. The evident fact is clear: the Victorian Government is unable to produce its assumed Royal Assent document from Queen Victoria, and the question is now lodged in the absence of that relevant document, that this State of Victoria is in an invalid legal situation and the matter is to be transferred to the High Court for determination before the rest of this matter can proceed.

I make the following additional statements. I state, the contract that permitted my property to be taken over is invalid. I further state, the judges and courts have not handled my matter impartially, and I further state, the judgments are to be set aside until the High Court's decision concerning validity is given. I further state, I have a moral obligation to uphold my contract. New evidence, now formulating, which has come to my attention, is that money in this country is created with a system called fractional reserve banking, which is clearly structured to create capital to capture assets. All of it will be revealed as fraud at the pending trial by jury, which is my right as a citizen in this country, under the basic law of Magna Carta, which is unable to be repealed.

I further state at this point, I am legally unrepresented, though I have endeavoured unsuccessfully to obtain legal representation. Coming out of that, your Honours, out of this question of law, the 1854 Bill of the Constitution had eight clauses removed, in England. Those clauses dealt with Royal Assent authority. They were not reinstated in any other Victorian Bill or Act. The 1855 - sorry, the 1975 Act has been enacted unlawfully. The previous Act, 1855 Act, still is in legal position in England. The 1855 Act is, and remains in force, and it is the legal property of the Imperial Parliament, so this means Victoria has no authority or adjudication to repeal, and never has repealed, the Act. I have put that in the submissions before. Your Honour, what was this, M46?

GAUDRON J: M43.

MR KNIGHT: M43. Sorry, your Honour. The other part I would like to read out - and before I start, I wish to make it clear I would like to use the 20 minutes allocated - which is a little less, now - without any interference, which I appreciate you will not. If you want to ask any questions, you are welcome to write them down and ask at the end of the allotted time.

KIRBY J: That is not how we run the Court. That is not the way special leave is conducted.

MR KNIGHT: Okay, your Honour.

KIRBY J: You are here to help us.

MR KNIGHT: Okay, your Honour. So, as I have explained to you, concerning Masonic disclosure, I will work on the assumption, because this is what we have worked on in the Supreme Court of Victoria, that members of this or any other Bench could have made Masonic oaths. It must exist until any sitting member states otherwise. There is no disrespect to your Honour.

GAUDRON J: I do not think women are admitted as members of the Masonic Club, so you might care to paraphrase that, in any event.

MR KNIGHT: Okay. Well, your Honour - - -

KIRBY J: And I have never been a member of a Masonic club.

MR KNIGHT: Thank you, your Honour.

KIRBY J: But I have known some fine people who have been.

MR KNIGHT: Anyway, the application arises from a decision made summarily by the Supreme Court of Victoria, 22 October 1997, when Master Wheeler gave possession of my land, the farms, to the plaintiffs, Bell and Falconer. It was this decision that lead to the following actions and involvement with the judiciary, police and sheriff's office. On 17 November 1997, an appeal was heard before Justice Vincent. It was dismissed. On 1 December 1997, a warrant of possession was issued in favour of the plaintiffs, Bell and Falconer. 18 December, an application to extend the time for appeal was heard before Justice Beach. The summons was dismissed. I also asked for a stay of execution on the warrant of possession, which he also refused.

On 19 December 1997, I filed a summons in the Court of Appeal, seeking leave to appeal the decision of Justice Beach on 18 December 1997. On 22 January, Justice Beach heard this matter, which was hearing an appeal against his own order. Not only did Justice Beach dismiss this summons, but he made orders to restrain me from interfering in any way with the actions of the mortgagees in possession, Bell and Falconer, and that any further applications to the court had to be with the leave of a judge. Justice Beach became so agitated at the hearing, he had to be assisted from the courtroom. On 9 February 1998, I filed another summons in the Court of Appeal, seeking to appeal the orders of Justice Beach, 22 January 1998. On 19 December 1997, an application was made to appeal that decision of Justice Beach.

The three applications were heard on 20 February, before Tadgell and Ormiston, and all three dismissed. On 14 February, the sheriff came to remove me off the property and he came back again on 19 February and evicted me again, a second time. During the following weeks, the mortgagee in possession, Bell and Falconer, refused to allow me to remove the remaining goods from the farm, unless I paid an exorbitant amount of money to them. The mortgagees in possession held a public auction on the property and sold the farms. The mortgagees in possession had a police officer, Shane Lorimer, at the gate to prevent me from entering the farm. He warned me not to turn up at the clearing sale, or it would become a criminal matter.

The mortgagees in possession conducted a clearing sale on the farm on 23 May 1998 to sell the remainder of my goods, the proceeds of which were applied to the reduction of the moneys. Once again, the police were in attendance, to prevent me from entering. All my appearances have emanated from summary decisions, so I have never had the opportunity for due process of law and to present the facts to a jury of my peers, according to my legal rights in accordance with the Imperial Application Acts of 1922 and 1980, justice, liberty and the Magna Carta. I think it is your Honour here, Justice Kirby, in Newcrest Mining (WA) Ltd v Commonwealth, referred to Article 52 of the Magna Carta 1215 as the basis for prohibition against arbitrary deprivation of property.

The heads of argument I propose to present have three major branches: constitutional authority, Masonic conspiracy, City of London involvement and Corporation Law. Constitutional authority: my submission is that Victoria does not have plenary powers, because the abovementioned orders by the courts were made subsequent to 1975. They are void ab initio and of no effect at law. When the Victorian Legislative Council passed the 1854 Victorian Constitution Bill and sent it to the Imperial Parliament for the Royal Assent, eight of the clauses were removed - I have just referred to that - from the Bill, including the clause dealing with the Royal Assent authority passing to the State of Victoria. This authority was not granted and the clauses were removed.

The resulting Constitution was the 1855 Constitution Act, which passed through the Imperial Parliament, but no original of the Royal Assent document has ever been produced in the State of Victoria. The Constitution Act of 1855, an Imperial Parliament Act, is still in full force today - and there is evidence in my submissions - with no mention of even a partial repeal or amendment. In 1975, the Victorian Parliament passed an Act, 8750/1975, known as the Constitution Act 1975 . This Act purportedly repealed the 1855 Constitution Act 1986 and amended the Supreme Court Act and the Solicitor General Act.

Sir Henry Winneke, the then Governor of Victoria, unlawfully gave the Royal Assent to this Act by using powers that had been removed from the 1854 Bill. My submission is, the 1975 Victorian Constitution Act is therefore illegal. A Parliament operating with an unlawful Constitution cannot pass valid legislation, therefore all the judicial decisions that have been made against me in the Victorian courts in relation to the property are illegal, including all warrants. Justice Byrne, during an application from Carmen Walter, in the matter No 5877 of 2001, between Handberg and Roland Walter, said:

"to the suggestion that the Act of the British Parliament of 1854 under which the Colony of Victoria obtained self-government was or might be invalid. As to this, I express no views at all. But, even if it were demonstrated that the statute was in some way defective, it was never explained to my satisfaction how this affects this case. The statute under which the Court is presently asked to act is one of the Parliament of the State of Victoria, the State of Victoria being established under the Constitution of the Commonwealth."

On 4 September 2002, during an appeal from the Magistrates' Court in Geelong, County Court Judge Justice Walsh told me Victoria had no Constitution and he only worked from the authority of the Australian Constitution. The Australia Act - - -

KIRBY J: I doubt if that is what his Honour said. His Honour would have, no doubt, said to you that the Federal Constitution, which, in a sense, is a new start, contains references to the Parliaments of the State - - -

MR KNIGHT: Sorry, your Honour?

KIRBY J: - - - and the Parliament of the State includes the Parliament of Victoria.

MR KNIGHT: Well, he just arbitrarily said, "Look, Victoria does not have a Constitution", and I said, "I have been waiting to hear that from a judge in Victoria for a long time". And he just admitted it. We have contended that for a long time, that there is not a valid one.

KIRBY J: In any case, statements by a judge, even assuming that to be correct, would not make it correct law.

MR KNIGHT: No, they do not, your Honour, but when I wanted the transcript, as you have seen in the submissions there, that was not available either, so, I mean, it just goes on and on. 1984 - this is the Australia Act 1986 - 1984, Bob Hawke signed letters patent. 1986, the Australia Act 1986 signed by Bob Hawke. 1986, no referendum - implied jurisdiction out of section 51. Bob Hawke, a citizen of Israel - section 44 of the federal Constitution. The result of the above facts is that the Australia Act contravenes section 128 of the federal Constitution - - -

KIRBY J: Mr Hawke did not sign it into law. Her Majesty the Queen signed it into law in Canberra, in her own person.

MR KNIGHT: Well, there was no referendum, your Honours, so that makes it null and void automatically, because it had to go to all the States and - - -

KIRBY J: What is the relevance of that for your case?

MR KNIGHT: Well, it is - - -

KIRBY J: What possible relevance does that issue have for your dispute? You have raised these arguments about the City of London and Freemasons. Cannot you see that they are absurd propositions that have nothing to do with your dispute?

MR KNIGHT: No, they have to be proved - - -

KIRBY J: You are just wasting the Court's time.

MR KNIGHT: No, it is okay, your Honour. I just want to put them across because we are not dealing, in Victoria, with a fair system. We are dealing with something that they are outside their constitutional power, and - - -

KIRBY J: The worrying thing for a judge is that you might, or might not, have some point in your case, and, instead of that, you get diverted into Freemasons and the City of London and Bob Hawke. It has nothing to do with your case.

MR KNIGHT: With all due respect, your Honour, all the points I brought up in the Victorian courts have never meant one thing - not a thing. So it does not matter whether I came up with law, or implied law, or anything at all - - -

KIRBY J: If you came up with serious legal propositions, we would give it the most earnest consideration. That is our duty. But you come up with submissions about Freemasons and the City of London. Rational people will not take that sort of submission seriously.

MR KNIGHT: Well, look, your Honour, I would like to put them on the record, and that is it. The point about it is, I am not a stranger to being done in by the legal system, right throughout Victoria, your Honour, so it is not a big loss.

KIRBY J: But it is not a matter of being done in. There is no way you would be done in by the High Court of Australia. We are here to listen, if you have any reasonable, rational arguments. But instead, you put up arguments that, if you think about it, you must see, are really irrational.

MR KNIGHT: Well, your Honour - - -

KIRBY J: Freemasons. The City of London. Queen Victoria's assent.

MR KNIGHT: Can I read them out, your Honour? I mean, I do not - - -

KIRBY J: We have to sit here and listen.

GAUDRON J: Yes, well, continue with your argument.

MR KNIGHT: Well, I will just read them out this time, your Honour, if that is okay, and then - - -

KIRBY J: You have a right.

MR KNIGHT: Thank you, your Honour. The result of the above facts is the Australia Act 1986 contravenes section 128 of the federal Constitution and it is unlawful because of the signatures of Bob Hawke. During a Senate Standing Committee inquiry into section 44 of the Australian Constitution in 1996, Professor Blackshield said, Mr Bob Hawke, former Prime Minister, had a case to answer because of his honorary citizenship of Israel. Before he vacated the office of Prime Minister, he was given full citizenship of Israel.

The legal heritage of the Australian people - and this is what we have tried to emphasise quite a lot in the courts, your Honour - comes from many centuries of entrenched English law based on Christian law. The law is concerned with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Freemasonry and its oaths are - - -

KIRBY J: There you go again. You are back to the Freemasons. Look, Justice Gaudron and I sat in Perth earlier this year and a prisoner was brought in. He had no lawyer, he had no representation, but he had a point. He argued the point and we gave him special leave. His appeal was heard, and he won the appeal. If people have a point, they are listened to, and they can succeed. But to come up here with points about Freemasons and the City of London is wasting your time and our time.

MR KNIGHT: Well, your Honour, are you sort of saying that I am going to win this?

KIRBY J: You are not going to win it on Freemasons and the City of London. It is an irrational argument.

MR KNIGHT: Well, I mean, there is involvement in - - -

KIRBY J: It is part of a big conspiracy theory - that everything is a big conspiracy.

MR KNIGHT: Well, your Honour - - -

KIRBY J: I could sit here and be silent, but you are a decent man and you are a fellow citizen. You are putting an argument to me and I think it is a waste of your time and my time.

MR KNIGHT: With all due - - -

KIRBY J: It is not honest of me to sit here and say nothing to you.

MR KNIGHT: Well, can I keep reading it, your Honour - - -

KIRBY J: Yes.

MR KNIGHT: - - - because, you know, I do not know whether I am an honest man. I mean, it is nice of you to say that, but I mean, I do not know.

KIRBY J: I did not say, you were an honest man. You are a fellow citizen, and you are entitled to be given respect. I could not be an honest person and remain silent, pretending that I am agreeing with you, because I am not.

MR KNIGHT: Your Honour, I do not think anyone in the courts has agreed with anything I have said in the last two years, even though it is the truth. So I would like to just refer to the - well, who owns the State of Victoria, your Honour? You see, this is what I have to know. Somebody owns this State, and - - -

KIRBY J: The State of Victoria is part of the Commonwealth of Australia, and that is all you have to know. That is in our federal Constitution.

MR KNIGHT: Well, I tell you what, I want to know a little bit more, because I have had my properties taken off me by people that have propped up money that does not even exist. They are making money that comes out of nothing, ripping people's property off them and we do not even get a right to trial by jury. I mean, this is about trial by jury, and it is about police. Two days ago, I had the police at my door, over a handful of serrated tussocks. Now, that is, for four years, harassment by the police. Just before any court case, they turn up.

So, I mean, I cannot - I do not know who runs this State, your Honour, and if it is the City of London and worldwide banking, and if this country is in debt - if there is a secret deal done to cover up the debts of Victoria, I would like to know who did that deal, your Honour, because we are not getting any of the rights that are ours entrenched by Magna Carta or the Bill of Rights. We are just shunted out the door like animals, and, your Honour, I do not think it is good enough. If the City of London has an involvement - if we still are an Imperial colony today - - -

KIRBY J: We are not. We are the Commonwealth of Australia, an independent country.

MR KNIGHT: But it has never been repealed, your Honour. This is Victoria, we are talking about. Victoria - it has never been repealed. We still live under the 1855 Constitution, and, of course, the 1854 one, by having those eight clauses removed - - -

GAUDRON J: Well, now, I am afraid, Mr Knight - - -

MR KNIGHT: - - - has taken away the Queen's assent.

GAUDRON J: - - - your time is up. Have you anything to say specifically about the orders of the Court of Appeal of Victoria which are the subject of application M43? If you have anything to say about those orders, I will allow you a further two minutes, but directed specifically to the orders which you seek to appeal.

MR KNIGHT: Well, the orders I would seek to appeal, your Honour are - they made orders - like, they upheld me, they upheld the decision Justice Balmford made that - - -

GAUDRON J: No, we are talking about M43.

MR MARANTELLI: Your Honour, Mr Knight is referring to the right case.

GAUDRON J: Sorry, he is?

MR MARANTELLI: He is.

GAUDRON J: Thank you. Very well, I am sorry. Yes.

MR KNIGHT: Sorry, your Honour. Your Honour, the orders - I have gone through the process there of where the judges heard their own matter three times, made no apology about it. Justice Ormiston heard the matter twice himself - - -

GAUDRON J: I am sorry, I think I have led you astray. M46 is, in fact, the appeal from Justice Balmford. Is that right? No.

MR MARANTELLI: No. 43, at one stage, was before her Honour Justice Balmford. No 43, which is matter No 8 here today - - -

GAUDRON J: Yes.

MR LAPIROW: Your Honours, the difficulty is that Mr Knight started off, when he was....to read his submissions on M43. He has misnumbered them. He has actually read his submissions that are applicable to my appeal - or the appeal in my case.

GAUDRON J: Well, we are, in fact, concerned at this stage with the appeal from Justice Balmford, so if you have anything to say about that, you have now two minutes.

MR KNIGHT: Well, your Honour, the judges saw an error in Justice Balmford and they overturned her orders completely, but then reapplied something that forbid me to come back to court on the main core issue, which was not about the chattels. The chattels matter - it is a matter, even they determined there that they have grabbed the goods and sold them without any authority, and it is really a criminal matter. I mean, that will be pursued, but the thing about it is, they went beyond - they should have just struck out the orders of Balmford, because all the way along, even before that, I applied on a writ that I had against a writ that Randall Bell had had to take my property. So he got my properties there. I had a writ here to get an injunction and stop that.

Now, there was a delay and there was, after I - there was a two-week delay between the Court of Appeal, because Mr LaPirow said he never had the documents within the three days, and I submit, he did, within three hours of three days. But, anyway, he sat at home, drinking coffee. The judge allowed it to go over into the next two weeks; by then, the property was gone. So they then had overturned the orders of Beach, and then sent it back to trial division, and it went to Walton - Pamela Walton. She was an associate of Master Kings. I thought it was going back to trial; I was waiting for discovery all the way. It was plodding along. Then it came before Ashley. I was not there, and Mr LaPirow was going to hear it ex parte, by the look of it - - -

GAUDRON J: Now, first, of all, your time in relation to M43 has expired.

MR KNIGHT: Okay, your Honour.

GAUDRON J: The question is - we will just consider whether we require to hear from - Mr Marantelli, have you anything you wish to say in answer to what has been put?

MR MARANTELLI: No, your Honour, save to say just one thing. This matter was before the court - - -

KIRBY J: Yes, we know that, and we have your answer - your reply to the notice of the constitutional matter, and we have read it.

MR MARANTELLI: I simply rely upon that then, your Honour. I have nothing further to say.

GAUDRON J: Yes, thank you. There is nothing in that for you to reply to, Mr Knight, so we can now hear you on M46, but could I say, you would be well advised to concentrate on the substance of the proceedings in that matter.

MR KNIGHT: Well, your Honour, I will read out - I will just stick to this. This is an application for special leave to appeal the decision in the Court of Appeal Victoria, 7 April 2000, before Ormiston, Phillips and Batt.

KIRBY J: Call them Justices, please.

MR KNIGHT: Sorry. Justices Ormiston, Phillips and Batt. They are Court of Appeal Justices, and I believe it was Justice Ormiston told the court, the banks had "settled Magna Carta years ago". Your Honour, as I have put in here, it is interesting to note, the transcripts cannot be produced. I have tried and tried and tried, and I have heaps of documents there that prove that that transcript is not coming. Whoever has it, whoever has sunk it, I do not know, your Honour. But it is a revelation to us that Magna Carta was sunk, years ago, by the bank. Anyway, it has been proven since, I would say, in the last couple of years, that that is pretty right.

The application arises from a decision made summarily by the Supreme Court of Victoria on 28 April, when Justice Beach dismissed the writ No 451 of 1998, Geelong, between Allan Robert Knight and Randall John Bell and Peter Clifford Falconer, defendants. The writ was issued to overcome the fact I was denied a trial in the matter No 457 of 1997, Randall John Bell and Peter Clifford Falconer and Mr Allan Knight, defendant, to automatically stay the proceedings. An appeal of this decision was set to be heard before Justices Charles and Kenny in time for an injunction to be granted to stop the sale of - I have gone over that before.

On that day, the respondents, through their counsel, Mr LaPirow, erroneously claimed that affidavit material from me was not served in time, so the matter was adjourned to 29 May, too late to stop the sale of the farms. On the day when I came in, after the two weeks, I only had notice the night before of a pile of documents a couple of inches thick, but I accepted that. On 29 May, the Court of Appeal, before Justices Charles and Kenny, overturned the orders of Justice Beach and referred it back to the trial division, never to be heard by Beach again. So the matter sprang back to life - No 451, but I was not awake up to see that it was going to be knocked out in the trial division. I just sort of thought, well, at last, I have a bit of a fair go here, and it will come back on.

The appearance was before Master Kings, and she adjourned it to a date. Evidently, it was going to be heard before Ashley. I never got anything in the mail, and I had to swear an affidavit that I had got something that was on that day, and I met Mr LaPirow in the court that day, and he said, "Well, it is ready to go now". So he gave me leave to appeal, and I inadvertently left out my claim to possession, in that three days that I had to prepare that. So the appearance before Justice Balmford, who summarily struck out the statement of claim, dismissing the case. All orders were struck out by the Court of Appeal, Justices Batt, Phillips and Ormiston, on 7 April 2000, but at the same time made the orders I am now appealing.

All my appearances have emanated from summary decisions. I have never had the opportunity for due process of law and to present the facts to a jury of my peers, according to my legal rights in accordance with the Imperial Application Acts of 1922 and 1980, justice, liberty and the Magna Carta. Justice Kirby, in Newcrest Mining, referred to Article 52 of the Magna Carta 1215 as the basis for a prohibition against arbitrary deprivation of property.

KIRBY J: That was in a completely different context. That was in a matter in which a question arose as to the interpretation of the Constitution, and I was simply pointing to the very long history of an interpretation that protected rights of property. I was not suggesting that Magna Carta still applied to give you a right to trial by jury. There is only one constitutional right in that respect, and that is section 80 of the federal Constitution, in respect of certain federal offences. A proposal was put to the electors of Australia in 1988 to have a right to trial by jury included in the Constitution in respect of the States, and it was rejected overwhelmingly by the people of Australia. The highest vote it got was 31 per cent. Therefore, it is not part of the constitutional law of this country.

MR KNIGHT: So, in other words, your Honour, like I have written there, criminals get trial by jury, so if we could go the step beyond - - -

KIRBY J: Do not address that to us. That should be addressed to the politicians and electors of Australia. They refused - - -

MR KNIGHT: With all due respect, with the Masonic connection between the judiciary and the - - -

KIRBY J: You are back to the Masons.

MR KNIGHT: - - - Parliament, your Honour, why would you waste your time going to a parliamentarian? I mean, I have only asked for a transcript. I have been to the Chief Justice, a whole lot of them, and nobody has taken any notice yet, your Honour. I cannot see how - I mean, in the Bill of Rights, parliamentarians have got privileges, like nothing to be held against them outside Parliament, and it is the same Bill that gives us the right to trial by jury. So that means, we can sue them for anything they say inside Parliament.

KIRBY J: The privileges belonging to the Parliament, in the federal Parliament, is set out in the Australian Constitution. Not in the Bill of Rights.

MR KNIGHT: But we are dealing here with Victoria, and it is in our Act. The Bill of Rights is in our Act here, too. To be quite honest, your Honour, I never got to trial. Never once got to trial.

KIRBY J: Why did Justice Balmford strike out your proceeding?

MR KNIGHT: She just upheld Beach's orders. That is all. There was not a trial. Mr LaPirow here went on for hours and hours, then she said, she never had time to even hear him, she never had time. The point about it is, your Honour, what is this country afraid of when they want to put farmers down the tube without a trial by jury? And yet, the first - even a person who steals something out of Coles that has $50, they can - - -

KIRBY J: I understand that argument. It just does not happen to be the law. It does not happen to be the law. Trial by jury is quite expensive for civil cases, and that is why Parliaments have gradually whittled it away. You cannot blame the judges for that. That is something Parliament has done.

MR KNIGHT: I do not care what Parliament has done - - -

KIRBY J: Well, unfortunately, we have to.

MR KNIGHT: - - - because these things come out of our entrenched rights, from a long time ago. I do not want to - if you - - -

KIRBY J: I think you think you are in America, where you do have an entrenched right to jury trials, but you are not - - -

MR KNIGHT: No. We have a Bill of Rights, your Honour - - -

KIRBY J: You are in Australia.

MR KNIGHT: In Victoria, we have a Bill of Rights, and I am claiming under that Bill of Rights that I have a right to trial by jury. There is just no way out of it. The Magna Carta is entrenched in there; there is evidence before the Court, it is there. The Magna Carta is entrenched in the Imperial Application Act, and considering that, today, we live under an 1855 Constitution of England, I would have thought, we were afforded some of the rights as colonists of England. We have mentioned this here - where, even in England, they have put themselves under the law of Europe.

So, in other words, we live under England today, we live under an Imperial Act of Victoria and you are saying we have not any rights. Your Honour, we have got rights to trial by jury. I have asked for no more, no less; even a trial, a trial by a judge, and then we can put the facts in front of him. He is sitting on the Bench in Victoria - I will not say the Commonwealth. He is sitting in Victoria on a Bench that has no power because you have not got the Constitution right. The point is, all these powers that the judiciary, the Supreme Court of Victoria, have, come out of the Constitution Act of 1975 of Victoria. Now if that is a dud, every judge is out on the street, like I was, chucked out on the road.

Your Honour, it is no good saying that Parliament and the judges of this State have any power when we have no power. If I have not got the power to have trial by jury, this is verging on the border of, well, you hardly could say, you know, I do not know what form of government it is, because we have not been able to find out. If this State is in debt, somebody is running this place, there is a cartel somewhere running this place, and if there is not a conspiracy, let us have a look at the Royal Assent documents and everything, that have given all these Parliaments all the authority.

But, your Honour, I would still submit that there are corporations alien to this country running us and as far as the Queen of Australia goes, and the Queen of England, I do not know what Queen we are under anymore.

KIRBY J: Queen of Australia.

MR KNIGHT: Well, your Honour, I mean - - -

KIRBY J: There is no question about it.

MR KNIGHT: Queen of Australia. Well, your Honour, I have not seen all the items there that gave her that title, Queen of Australia, that is all.

GAUDRON J: Mr Knight, I think you ought to concentrate on the issues that arose in the proceedings and not on the Royal Style and Titles Act.

MR KNIGHT: Okay, your Honour. Well, your Honour, the main thrust of it all is the judges of Victoria have no power; they have got power but it is an unlawful power, because they have taken it out of a Constitution that is an Imperial one and there is no doubt about it. When Henry Winneke reserved it for the signification of her Majesty's pleasure, it never got to her. Now, it had to go back to England to be repealed. It had to go back because it is an Imperial Bill, and no stream can rise above its source. So if we were saying - and right at the start in 1855, Lord Russell and a few of them tried a few stunts and the stunt was pulling these clauses out of the Bill in the Home Office and sending it to Parliament. So it was not even amended by the Imperial Parliament.

So all I can say is we are dealing with an absolutely unlawful Victoria and the powers that come out of the Constitution Act are unlawful and I would be asking that I be reinstated back on my properties and damages - I am not thinking about damages at the moment, but I just say if an unlawful Act has deprived me of my property, I want my property back; that is what it says in the Magna Carta, and we cannot have one provision of the Magna Carta without the other and, you know, it says, justice and liberty are the main thrusts of the Magna Carta, and the Bill of Rights are in our Imperial Act. If the Victorian Government are going to argue the Imperial Application Act does not exist and we have got no rights under it, because the 1855 Constitution is invalid, well, that is another road to go down again.

I say that those eight clauses that came out of the 1854 one have nullified the 1855 one and we are in a terribly awkward situation and I would have liked the judges two years ago to pull the matter up and have it determined then. Since then there are a lot more facts come out and, I suppose, we are all in a better position now where we can have a look at it.

Your Honour, I will just go back to what I want: a proper trial, a State trial, and it looks like until it is proven that the Victoria Court of Appeal or the whole court of Victoria is legal, it would have to be a different type of a trial. It would still be by jury, but it would have to be without the judiciary or we would have hoped it could be by the judiciary, but if we are unlawful, we are in that position where they cannot hear it. That is about as far as I can go, your Honour.

GAUDRON J: Yes, thank you.

MR KNIGHT: Just see here, just in this other part of it, you may not have wanted to hear it, but we just say about our law in England; we have relied on it. If we are a part of England and all the precedent law in this country comes from England, now it is going to go to European law. Now, I was deprived of my right as an Australian to even go to England or be part of it; I was arbitrarily deprived of that, and yet I still have another ruler over me. There is a Queen of England, there is a Queen of Australia; I mean, I do not know who - - -

GAUDRON J: Now, Mr Knight, do you have anything to say with respect to the actual proceedings. There is no point going into these issues.

MR KNIGHT: Well, there is no point - with due respect, your Honour, I think there is a point, but, anyway, I will take your point, your Honour. The question is to ask, is the Victorian Constitution legal, because I contend it is not? Neither the 1855 one nor the 1975 one, because the only Bill, the Bill of 1854 was the one that the Queen allowed them to make up and send to her for her assent. Now with those clauses removed, and it is proven in the papers I have got there, that they just believed that Victoria was going far beyond their jurisdiction, far beyond the powers they had, and basically, what they said was, in a sort of a nutshell, "We will be dead in 150 years and you work it out for yourselves." And this is the day today that we have to start working it out, because I have had my properties taken off me by people with - I do not say they got no powers, because they have the police to do it - they had the police at the gate and they even rolled up again the other day, just to prove this is the State you live in; this is the kind of country you are living in, if you do not like it, well lump it, and I do not think that is good enough.

I mean, I lost half a million dollars worth of property by judges that had no legal authority to even sit on the Bench. Now, they should not have ignored that question of law. It was put properly, like, it may not have been put in the right way, but it was put in front of them and right at the end of the hand-transcribed stuff - I finally went down and transcribed it by hand - I asked at the end of the day, "Well, hang on a minute, what about that question of law?", and they said, "Well, you have sat here all day listening in the court, why did you not bring it up at the start?". Well, I mean, I did not know Ormiston was going to hear his own matter twice, but I already knew Beach had heard his three times. So the other point is, how many times can a judge hear their own matter? It says in the Supreme Court Act, you cannot. I mean, if you are going to live by a law - look, even if it is a dictatorship, and they tell you, "Here's a law, here's a rule book", if you do not like it, well, go somewhere else. But here, you have got a rule book and every time you go to enforce one part of the rules, they say, "Well, they don't apply.

Your Honours, I just think trial by jury is the only way to sort the whole matter out; I cannot see any other way.

GAUDRON J: Yes, well you have made that point several times.

MR KNIGHT: Yes. I mean, the other things about it, your Honour: when you have lost a power of the judiciary in Victoria, where does it put everything; where does it put the police and the whole lot of it? See, in the document of 1975 in Hansard, they said, we have no Constitution in Victoria and we must remedy it. They said that. Now, after all that, they just did a little deal, "Let us not worry about a Bill of Rights - - -"

GAUDRON J: Yes, well your time is now up, Mr Knight, thank you.

MR KNIGHT: Okay, your Honour.

GAUDRON J: Do you have anything to say in reply, Mr LaPirow?

MR LAPIROW: Your Honours, Mr Knight's factual assertions made in M46 really relate to the facts in M43 and those that he made at M43 are those that relate to M46. My client relies upon the summary of argument that was filed.

GAUDRON J: We have read those.

MR LAPIROW: My client was not served with a notice of constitutional matter until either yesterday or the day before and I am instructed that my client adopts the submissions that were prepared by my learned friend, Mr Marantelli.

GAUDRON J: Thank you very much. Well, there is nothing in that for you to reply to, Mr Knight. Thank you.

MR KNIGHT: Thank you, your Honours.

GAUDRON J: So far as concerns the questions that arise in these applications in relation to the mortgage transaction and the subsequent sale by the mortgagee in possession, the proposed appeals do not enjoy sufficient prospects of success to justify the grant of special leave. So far as concerns the constitutional question that Mr Knight seeks to agitate and his claimed right to trial by jury, there is no merit in his contentions.

Accordingly, in each matter, special leave is refused with costs.

AT 12.40 PM THE MATTERS WERE CONCLUDED