Entertainer Paul Hogan and his financial advisor Tony Stewart were back in the Federal Court on Monday arguing that three investigators involved in the over budget Wickenby probe should be replaced.

At the core of the dispute are 35 documents illegally seized by the Australian Crime Commission (ACC) in late 2005 and seen by its investigators. The Court has previously ruled the documents are protected by legal professional privilege (LPP) and are to be returned to Hogan’s accountants. In a nutshell the ACC claim that Hogan is trying to derail the investigation while Hogan wants the investigators removed because their views may be tainted after viewing the privileged documents.

Plod Ian Andrew of the ACC, who gave evidence on Monday before Justice Arthur Emmett, said it would take new investigators up to a year to get on top of all the information and that might be too costly for the ACC.

I would dispute that claim because when I joined the ATO’s Large Case and International program investigating Australia’s top 100 companies, I was thrown a number of issues, including capital gains and transfer pricing, and I was on top of the brief in around one month maximum. The case had been going two years before I arrived. I’m talking about a big corporate here not a couple of individuals and their associated entities.

At stake is the fundamental substantive common law right of LPP and why courts should protect that right for all Australians. Surely there must be consequences for an investigative body that has trampled upon those very rights by going on a fishing expedition and seizing and viewing documents they were not entitled to see?

We expect our investigative bodies to be accountable for their actions but are they? Wickenby Chief Michael D’Ascenzo is always trumpeting the Taxpayers’ Charter and how it protects taxpayers. But in this current court action he is hardly being a model litigant because he has failed his own Taxpayers’ Charter by not “being accountable for what we do”.

I told Crikey readers recently how the ATO is very quick to replace investigators on big audits if a complaint is received by parties under audit. The precedent has been set by the tax office.

The Federal Court has already ruled the ACC must pay Hogan’s million-dollar legal bills over the LPP issue which taxpayers will have to fund. Instead of bumbling around like Inspector Clouseau, D’Ascenzo should have shown some strong leadership by ending this fruitless and costly litigation and accepting there is a price to pay if you break the rules.

Crikey understands that Paul Hogan and John Cornell have discussed making a movie about their financial nightmare, the Wickenby tax investigation. It has only been discussed among a couple of people and is at a very embryonic stage and any proposed production could be years away with lingering court cases with authorities a perennial obstacle.

It would provide a massive boost to the Australian movie industry with local actors to be used with perhaps one big American star to boost its popularity world wide. Hoges and Cornell will also play a part. The entertainment pair has been hamstrung in their efforts to battle the constant bureaucratic leaks of their very private taxation affairs due to draconian secrecy laws. This will be their way of telling their story. It has been mooted that the production would be a drama/comedy adaption of the Keystone Cops-like saga of the failed multi-government witch hunt into high profile tax cheats. I estimate that Wickenby is currently $95 million dollars in the red. It has spent four sevenths of its $305M budget but collected only $79M.

It has been suggested that Al Pacino will be targeted to play the role of Tax Commissioner Michael D’Ascenzo. Peter Sellers is obviously unavailable.