Rod Culleton

The inquiry into whether Western Australian One Nation Senator Rod Culleton sought to pervert the course of justice with a letter to a Queensland magistrate relates to an eccentric bankrupt who has sought writs to be served on the Queen, believes all Australian currency is worthless and claims the High Court is a US corporation.

Culleton wrote to a Cairns magistrate last week demanding that a case against a Herberton man be adjourned until Culleton’s conspiracy theory that the High Court lacked authority was settled. After a complaint from the Queensland Chief Magistrate, the Queensland government referred the letter to police.

[Will One Nation’s second-wackiest senator try to prove the High Court is null and void?]

It is understood that the man at the centre of Culleton’s request is David Walter, a former Northern Territory police prosecutor who is a serial litigant against the Queensland government’s land-clearing laws. He is the subject of proceedings to evict him from a property he owned with his late wife for unpaid court costs and rates of more than $100,000. Walter’s ongoing legal woes have been an object of fascination for a One Nation-aligned conspiracy theory site, which in March called for 1000 “patriots” to be bussed in to help Walter resist eviction (“buses will be organised to depart from Cairns on a daily basis”).

Walter’s storied history of litigation involves some unusual claims. Earlier this year he told the Sydney registry of the High Court:

“You Mr. Griffin are not a public servant as a representative, of we the people, and the Queen, of the Commonwealth and paid in the currency of the Commonwealth pounds, shillings and pence, but an employee of a — Foreign Government and Political Subdivision — Corporation Act 2001, and registered in Washington D.C. …”

In May, he demanded the High Court “immediately issue a Writ of Certiorari, served upon Her Majesty The Queen, Mrs. Elizabeth Mountbatten of the House of Windsor, Buckingham Palace, London England, the Current holder of the Crown of the Commonwealth of Australia” (to be served by registered post) to compel her to “reinstate” the Australian and Queensland constitutions.

[One Nation senator worries of ‘sleeping with the enemy’ in High Court case]

Walter has reportedly been barred from entering Queensland courtrooms but has acted as an adviser to several farmers seeking to overturn Queensland’s minimal land-clearing laws. According to the site:

“He prepared a case against the Mackay City Council for one hapless landowner, which, like all the others was thrown out of court. This time around the Judge awarded costs of more than $20,000 against Walter, even though he was not present in the court. He told the Council and its dodgy solicitors to “go to hell,” because Australian currency is worthless.”

Walter appears to believe Australian courts are no longer constitutional but are instead “corporations” that have no authority, which is similar to the arguments of Culleton adviser and proud vexatious litigant Peter Gargan, who claims courts and laws no longer have authority because of laws and proceedings that fail to mention the Queen. And like Gargan, Walter appears to believe that decimalisation of the Australian currency in 1966 has somehow rendered all authority void — thus the reference to worthless currency and “the currency of the Commonwealth pounds, shillings and pence”. However, Walter’s theories appear to go even further than Gargan’s, according to the website covering him: “Since Whitlam amended the Royal Styles and Titles Act removing the ‘Crown’ in 1973, without the Queen’s consent, he says all private land is now owned by ‘political party corporations.’”

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has again distanced herself from Culleton and issued a video reprimand to him.