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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-05-01 Daily Xml
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Keogh Case

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (14:21): Supplementary arising from the answer: as Treasurer and the person who has, I think, told this chamber before they were responsible for the recommendation to pay Mr Keogh the funding, what did the Treasurer do to seek an understanding of what the opinion of the then solicitor-general was without getting the full report? Did the Treasurer avail himself at all as to what the conclusions of the report might have been or did he prefer to be blissfully ignorant as to this report?

The PRESIDENT: I will take the first part within the standing orders.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (14:21): A bit of poetic licence. As I have indicated to this chamber before, it was ultimately my decision, as the minister responsible for SAicorp, to approve the settlement of this particular claim. As I have indicated before, and I only repeat myself, I did so on the basis of legal advice provided to me from legal experts, that is, the Attorney-General, based on advice that she had available to her and she provided as the senior law officer and, secondly, on the basis of the insurance advice from the government insurer, which is SAicorp. Having considered that, I gave my approval in the end.

What I will say is that, as interesting as it might be to the Leader of the Opposition and indeed others, the views of Mr Kourakis back almost 10 years prior to a Full Court of the Supreme Court making a decision is interesting but of no great relevance in relation to where we found ourselves; that is, almost 10 years after this particular legal opinion was provided to the former government, a Full Court of the Supreme Court, I am told, sitting as the Court of Criminal Appeal, quashed the conviction, so they clearly had their own view which would appear, on the surface of it, to be quite different to the view that parts of the Kourakis opinion have inferred.

I would have thought the Leader of the Opposition, with some legal background, would understand that, whilst it is of interest what Mr Kourakis back in whatever it was, 2005, 2006, thought about the situation, the advice he provided to the former government—and clearly that was important to the former government—ultimately, almost a decade later, three learned judges came to a different decision and decided to quash the conviction and to allow the release from gaol of Mr Keogh.

That is the set of circumstances; they are the facts of the situation. Whether or not Mr Kourakis, or indeed any other learned counsel, some 10 years earlier had a view either consistent with that or different to it is interesting, but ultimately it is the Court of Criminal Appeal that made a decision and that is what was actually actioned.

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