Western Australia

Comments made about Clive Palmer by Western Australia premier Mark McGowan in press conferences were “heavy with historical and sinister significance”, a court has heard on the first day of trial in the mining billionaire’s defamation case. 

Australia’s most decorated Afghanistan war veteran Ben Roberts-Smith told a former SAS soldier that when he “blew the brains out” of a young Afghan man it was “the most beautiful thing [he’d] ever seen”, a court has heard.

A SAS sergeant testifying for Fairfax Media in the Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation trial has admitted he told an investigative reporter the decorated veteran machine-gunned a disabled man during the war in Afghanistan, but insisted everything he said was true.

Fairfax has accused senior counsel representing Ben Roberts-Smith of using cross-examination to try to identify the source of allegedly defamatory articles that accused the former SAS soldier of war crimes.

A judge who has been an enthusiastic lab rat in the virtual hearing experiment forced on the country’s courts by the COVID-19 pandemic has expressed doubts that he is accurately reading witnessses giving remote evidence.

An appeals court has unanimously rejected the Commissioner of Taxation’s latest bid to block Shell’s $2.3 billion tax deduction for the cost of exploration activities conducted as part of the Browse LNG project off the coast of Western Australia.

Western Australia premier Mark McGowan has been ordered to appear in person in a Sydney court to give evidence at trial in a defamation case by mining billionaire Clive Palmer, but a judge has pushed back the hearing so McGowan can attend state parliament.

Clive Palmer has won his bid to view text messages between Western Australian premier Mark McGowan and the state attorney-general discussing a bill to ban the billionaire mining magnate from suing the state for $30 billion.

A class action against Western Australia is seeking damages for alleged discrimination of Indigenous Australians detained for unpaid fines.

A Western Australian lawyer will face penalties and disciplinary action in the State Administrative Tribunal after nine professional misconduct findings were made against him, including a finding that he knowingly sought to mislead the Supreme Court.