The Attorney-General keeps repeating that the powers he’s being asked to use to drop the prosecutions of David McBride and Richard Boyle can only be used in “exceptional circumstances,” committing a deceit on both the Parliament and the public.

Freeman’s script could easy be adapted to the phrase “exceptional circumstance” being touted by Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus in his attempts to justify his refusal to use powers granted to him under the Judiciary Act to drop a prosecution.

Australia’s Judiciary Act 1903 is among the oldest pieces of federal legislation still in force; one of only six laws passed during the first Commonwealth Parliament that are current still in the statute books.

In the last sitting of Parliament, independent MPs Andrew Wilkie and Kylea Tink pressed the Attorney-General to explain why he wasn’t exercising his powers under the Judiciary Act in the poorly thought through prosecutions of David McBride and Richard Boyle.

In effect, he was suggesting the Parliament ought not to be talking about the exercise of this power as Attorney-General to save McBride and Boyle because the Courts should be left to do their job without political influence.

After attempting to blow the whistle internally on the egregious use of garnishee notices by the Australian Tax Office, and after they botched the investigation into his claim, Richard Boyle exposed the ATO’s misbehaviour externally.

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