If They're Grieving, It's Not Showing
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday August 7, 2001
Bernie Wotherspoon felt no pangs of sympathy when he heard Christopher Skase was dead.
``To be honest, I wouldn't walk across the road to pee on him if he was on fire," said Mr Wotherspoon, a Brisbane boat builder.
Mr Wotherspoon lost $9,000 in pay and entitlements when his employer, Lloyds Ships, shut down with the collapse of its parent company, Qintex, in 1989. ``It was hard on a lot of people: the battlers who had to sell their cars and things to carry on," Mr Wotherspoon said.
``I was trying to raise my three daughters, and it was tough. Skase would never have known how tough it was for people like us."
The judge who allowed Skase to keep his passport, the former Federal Court judge Mr Bill Pincus, defended his actions last night, saying the arguments put to him to take Skase's passport could not stand up legally.
``I was bound by the law to restrain him from leaving only if there were some good legal grounds. There weren't any."
Skase was not bankrupt at the time.
He also pointed out that Skase had returned home after Mr Pincus had let him keep his passport, and it was later, when he was declared bankrupt, that then trustee Mr Neville Pocock had taken Skase's passport and then given it back to him that Skase had fled the country.
The Labor attorney-general who failed in his 1994 attempts to extradite Skase, Mr Michael Lavarch, said yesterday he did not blame Mr Pincus.
``He called it as he saw it at the time. It's fair to say [that] at that stage Skase had been in contact with the [Director of Public Prosecutions]. He'd always been present at that particular proceedings."
Mr Lavarch said many millions of dollars had been spent on that extradition attempt and on investigations into Skase, but said the current Government had done the right thing to persist. Skase did have lung problems when that extradition attempt was under way, but the Government had advice that he was well enough to travel, he said.
Another former justice minister involved in the case, Senator Vanstone, yesterday staunchly defended the decision by the Coalition Government to carry on chasing Mr Skase for deportation from Spain up to the time of his death.
``It's vitally important that young Australians grow up recognising that being wealthy doesn't put you above the law," Senator Vanstone said.
``... Any stress caused to Mr Skase by our pursuit of him could have been brought to an end at any time by him voluntarily returning to Australia."
The Mayor of Douglas Shire in north Queensland, Mr Mike Berwick, has mixed feelings about the contribution made to the area by Skase's Mirage resort, which transformed Port Douglas from a sleepy village to a five-star tourist destination in the late 1980s.
``It's a well-managed, quality business, and it might have stopped Port Douglas from becoming rows of six-pack holiday units. But Skase tried to do things like cutting down mangroves, which outraged the community. He had scant regard for the views of others.
``People in Port Douglas recognise that Skase stole someone else's money and that some of the assets he managed to get from that were left behind."
Mr Henry Bosch, who from 1985 to 1990 headed what was the forerunner to today's Australian Securities and Investments Commission, said yesterday that he was not disappointed Skase had never returned to Australia to face authorities because the chase for him had constantly reminded people of the excesses of the '80s.
``I was always rather glad about those actually the fact that he avoided being brought back. I was glad the Government was pursuing him [but] I was glad they were unsuccessful because every time ... Skase took them to another Spanish court and so on ... that publicity always reminded the Australian public about not only the Skase affair but also what we'd had the excesses of the '80s and I saw that as being a valuable thing to warn investors."
Only a fortnight before Skase's Qintex empire collapsed in 1989 he had an ``energetic" interview with the then chairman of the National Companies and Securities Commission about the resignation of two of the company's directors over his attempts to pay himself a salary of $32 million a year.
Mr Bosch said the interview was about ``whether he behaved correctly, and whether he breached the law, and whether we ought to do anything about it".
``He didn't think so."
The then chairman had thought Skase ``very persuasive, eloquent, charming" and also ``somewhat implausible". Implausible because ``I think if things are too good to be true they often are".
© 2001 Sydney Morning Herald
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