"You're struggling, aren't you?"

- Gary Bigmore, QC to Darren Ray in the liquidation hearings at the Supreme Court of Victoria, this afternoon.

The witty remark followed a series of questions from Mr Bigmore, to which the witness could not provide any recollection or anything much in specific. In fact, to a casual observer in court, one could have been forgiven for thinking that we were listening to the testimony of Carmen Lawrence circa 1995, such was the paucity of information recollected this afternoon.




The court heard that in January 2002, a document was attached to an email sent from Darren Ray (then MUSU President) to the union's lawyers regarding a meeting between the union and the Returning Officer provider, GTS. The significance of the document was that it appeared that the meeting, allegedly held at ANU House, Collins Street, was between Ray and GTS representative Duncan Fisher. Regular readers would know that Fisher was a pseudonymn - he never existed, and that Ben Cass (MUSU President in 2000 and a friend of Darren) utilised the name Duncan Fisher (possibly with others) in dealings with the Union. Mr Cass was in effective control of GTS at the time.

Darren had no recollection of the meeting, nor writing the notes from the meeting, nor sending the email to the union's solicitors. On prompting from the Master, Darren indicated that he didn't know where ANU House was. This prompted Mr Bigmore to suggest that there was no meeting and that he had simply made up the notes; Mr Ray retorted that that assumed that he had written the documentation, and as he had no recollection of the documents, he couldn't be sure that someone else had not written them. However, the court heard that according to unconfirmed Executive minutes of the period, Darren had indicated that he had had a meeting with Duncan Fisher to discuss the dispute. Mr Ray suggested that he had trouble with the minutes from 2002.


ANU House, 52 Collins Street

As to the actual dispute itself, it appears that there were two complaints - the termination of the contract between GTS and MUSUi following the decision of the Returning Officer; and a complaint of defamation against 2001 MUSU President Eve Bodsworth. The union's lawyers suggested that "the defamation case is lacking in merit". As to a settlement with GTS, documents indicated that Darren instructed that $40,000 be paid to GTS - the lawyers handling the negotiations on behalf of the Union indicated that such an instruction was contrary to their legal advice - they had suggested less than $20,000 be offered. As was my recollection, such a settlement was also tied to GTS gaining the right to be the Returning Officer for the next three years.

Just before the hearings concluded for the day, the court heard of emails titled GTS settlement sent from "Duncan Fisher" to Darren Ray in early March 2002. Duncan (cough) allegedly wrote that the union's lawyers frequently ignore requests made by GTS, and that the negotiations "do not reflect our conversations." Once again, Darren did not recollect the emails.

Needless to say, it was an enjoyable afternoon.