Culleton willing to quit Senate on principle

A trial is set for the Magistrates Court in Perth next week over charges laid by police against Mr Culleton, after an incident involving a fiery farm foreclosure at Cuballing, in WA’s south-eastern Wheatbelt.

On Friday March 13 last year, the vehicle at the centre of the Senator’s theft charge was used by two receivers from RSM Bird Cameron, appointed by the ANZ Bank, to travel to the farming property.

While the receivers were inside the farm-house talking to the owner Bruce Dixon on Black Friday, their rental vehicle was surrounded by straw bales to impede its passage.

Narrogin police were called out to the scene after Mr Culleton led a fightback involving other farmers where the receivers were ordered off the property after their claim to be in legal possession of the farm was disputed.

Mr Culleton has said he’s only been charged due to being the ring-leader on the day during the civil disobedience incident that featured in a 60 Minutes program that interrogated emotive issues with farm foreclosures and bank lending practices.

That episode broadcast in April last year also looked at receivership issues with Mr Culleton’s farm at Williams that went into receivership in 2013 and links to the takeover of the Landmark rural loans book by ANZ which has been cited as his prime motivation for entering parliament.

Next week’s trial comes after Mr Culleton also had a larceny charged annulled in a NSW court last week relating to a $7.50 key and an altercation with a tow truck driver during the attempted repossession of a vehicle linked to the Senator’s Guyra based stock feed business.

Mr Culleton said prosecutors spoke to his lawyers last week and offered him a deal to take the “criminality” out of the vehicle theft charge, in next week’s trial.

He said the “true position” was that Mr Dixon had called for his help on the day and his farms were subsequently saved from foreclosure, which meant he was successful as the leader, or head spokesperson, in removing the “unlawful receivers”.

Mr Culleton said that action allowed Mr Dixon to keep his two farm properties – following a settlement reached with ANZ Bank earlier this year – but it also meant he was a “party” to Mr Dixon becoming the car’s unlawful owner.

The One Nation Senator said he’d declined the prosecutor’s deal offer which meant the case would now go to a five day trial next week.

“I’m not going to admit guilty to unlawful possession when I am not guilty of any crime,” he said.

“And you know what - I’d rather stand down from parliament because if I can’t be true to my own principles then I can’t be true to Australian people.

“So I’d stand down from parliament.”

Mr Culleton said he would take his chances at trial and would appeal any guilty decision but that would prevent him from standing in parliament.

“The law’s such an ass and that’ll probably cost six figures too,” he said.

“I have to be able to fund it out and get the barristers and run it properly and at the moment that’s becoming difficult.

“I’ve just come out of an action that was quoted at over $100,000 over the key but where does one stop?

“But the benefit of it is people like Bruce Dixon and a lot of other people as well.”

Mr Culleton said the charge over the $7.50 single key had been annulled which meant, “it didn’t happen so there is no conviction; it’s vanished”.

But he said a mention hearing had been set-down for September 12 and any decision to proceed would depend on whether the State of NSW wanted to spend about $100,000 in taxpayer’s money, to commence legal action over a $7.50 key.

“The magistrate said at the hearing (basically) that he didn’t want it back before him,” he said.

“The police have to work out whether they want to spend $100,000 and my barristers and lawyers said we’ll win it hands down because there is too much conflicting evidence in the witness statement.

“I have a right to protect my property, especially when they turn up without any court orders.

“I’m certainly not a law breaker.”