Mao, In the matter of an application for leave to issue or file

[2023] HCATrans 8

[2023] HCATrans 008

IN THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA

Office of the Registry
  Sydney  No S158 of 2022

In the matter of -

an application by YOUHUA MAO for leave to issue or file

GAGELER J

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

AT CANBERRA ON WEDNESDAY, 15 FEBRUARY 2023, AT 9.31 AM

Copyright in the High Court of Australia

HIS HONOUR:   Pursuant to rules 6.07.3 and 13.03.1, I refuse the application for leave to issue or file the proposed application for a constitutional writ.  I publish my reasons and I direct that those reasons be incorporated into the transcript.

The order of the Court is:

1.The ex parte application for leave to issue or file the application for a constitutional writ is refused.

I publish that order.

On 6 December 2022, Ms Mao attempted to file in the Registry of this Court a document styled as an application for a constitutional writ. The defendant named in the document is the Commonwealth of Australia. On 12 December 2022, Jagot J directed, pursuant to r 6.07.2 of the High Court Rules 2004 (Cth), that the Registrar refuse to issue or file the document without the leave of a Justice of this Court first had and obtained. Ms Mao now seeks that leave by way of an ex parte application pursuant to r 6.07.3 and accompanying affidavit, each filed on 14 December 2022. These are my reasons for refusing it.

The document, if filed, would seek to challenge the constitutional validity of the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992 (Cth) as well as provisions of the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act 1993 (Cth).

However, the document does not articulate, in comprehensible terms, the basis or bases on which the impugned legislation is sought to be challenged on constitutional grounds.  Rather, it asserts that the legislation “cut off [the applicant] and millions of Australian workers from the fruits of their intellectual creativity labored work [sic] and reduced them to slavery to be exploited by financial institutions” and “denied, deprived, [and] violated [the applicant’s] and millions of Australian workers’ rights to do with their monies and benefits as they chose and to live on their monies and benefits”.

The application also contains scandalous material, including unsupported allegations that superannuation funds regulated by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (“APRA”) “continued to take life insurance premiums from . . . dead Australian[s’] . . . superannuation account[s] where there was no longer a life to insure”; that the applicant was subjected to an “18-month prolonged torturing inquisition” in respect of her claim for superannuation life insurance; and that superannuation funds regulated by APRA “created a ‘black box’ superannuation industry” that “allowed and/or enabled financial institutions” to perpetrate fraud, “allowed and/or enabled” a named financial institution “to inflate its share price”, and “allowed and/or enabled” two named superannuation funds “to carry out a Ponzi scheme”.  The relevance of these allegations to the relief sought by the proposed application is not articulated in, or otherwise apparent from, the document or supporting affidavit.

For the foregoing reasons, the document for which the applicant seeks leave to issue or file is frivolous and vexatious and an abuse of the Court’s process.

Accordingly, I will order that the application of 14 December 2022 for leave to issue or file be refused.

The order of the Court will be:

The ex parte application for leave to issue or file the application for a constitutional writ is refused.

AT 9.31 AM THE MATTER WAS CONCLUDED