Prime Minister
Rt. Hon. Perry G. Christie

TALKING POINTS - re:
Resolution to grant a further 3 months’ extension to the Member for Holy Cross

1. It needs to be stressed that the only purpose of the extension is to facilitate an appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council from the local Court of Appeal's ruling that it has no jurisdiction to entertain an appeal from a bankruptcy adjudication order.  That is the long and the short of the resolution that is now before the House. We are not here to judge or pre-judge the merits of the case for or against the honourable Member for Holy Cross.  That is a matter for the Privy Council if it decides to take the case.  All we are concerned with here today is to ensure that adequate time is afforded for the hearing of the appeal by the Privy Council.

2. In considering the resolution, however, we would all do well to remember that this is a matter that transcends the personal predicament of the Member for Holy Cross.  Far more than being a ‘Sydney Stubbs’ problem, an important issue needs to be definitively resolved, namely, whether an appeal does, in point of law, lie from an order of the Supreme Court adjudicating a person bankrupt, particularly having regard to the fact that Article 49 of the Constitution appears to contemplate the existence of such a right of appeal and also having regard to the fact that it would be monumentally unjust to deny a right of appeal in a matter as grave and far-reaching as a bankruptcy adjudication.

3. Indeed, does it not strike us as completely perverse that there should be a right of appeal all the way to the Privy Council in a case where, say, a judgment for only $1,000 has been made against someone but that there should be no right of appeal at all to any court in the infinitely more consequential and devastating case of bankruptcy?

4. When all the cute legalisms and technicalities are stripped away, it simply seems appalling that there should be no right of appeal in such a case.  It offends our most elementary notions of what is fair and what is just.

5. We have murderers and rapists and armed robbers and all manner of other criminals routinely appealing all the way to the Privy Council and yet some of us here seem to have a serious problem in facilitating similar recourse to the courts by the democratically elected representatives of the people.  Why deny the honourable Member his final day in court?  Why deny the people of Holy Cross their day in court so that the courts can finally determine whether the man whom they, the people, elected to represent them must indeed vacate his seat or whether he can continue to represent them?

6. I am reminded, however, that that is not for us to decide the rightness or wrongness of the position for which the honorable member contends.  That is what the final court of appeal under our constitutional system is now being asked to decide.  All we have to decide here today is whether we are going to allow sufficient time for the appeal to the Privy Council to be entertained.  That is all.

7. If; at the end of the day, the Privy Council refuses to grant special leave to appeal or if, having granted such leave, the Privy Council ultimately rules against the honourable member for Holy Cross, then all of us will at least have the comfort of knowing that the judicial process was properly and fully exercised in this matter rather than being short-circuited simply because we were getting a little impatient.

8. If matters do not go in the honorable member’s favour before the Privy Council, our political course will then be clear: to proceed to a bye-election to fill the vacancy.

9. Let me say for the record that the prospect of a bye-election does not in any way disturb me.  On the contrary if that is what this matter eventually comes down to, my party and I shall be ready, able and willing to take our message back to the people of Holy Cross.  That we would once again emerge triumphant should not be in doubt.  I am supremely confident that we would be.

10. But none of that should be in our calculations today. There are important constitutional issues that need to be addressed by the Privy Council and to facilitate an appeal for that purpose is really all that this resolution is about.

11. In these circumstances, I would invite all members to rise above petty, partisan politics and to see the wisdom, the good sense, the decency and the honour in supporting this resolution