In Woodhead v Commissioner of Police [2023] QDC 143 Cash DCJ states
[6] ... Orally, the appellant addressed brief submissions about whether Mr Weller’s evidence of tailgating should be accepted. The rest of his submissions raised the all-too-common nonsense claims that the defendant was possessed of dual legal identities and that he had not consented to the application of the law. ...
[8] Material filed by the appellant in the appeal, though substantial in nature, sheds no further light on how he says the trial miscarried. What I have assumed to be his written submissions concerning the appeal contain some breathtakingly wrongheaded assertions. Outside of the usual pseudo-law nonsense, the appellant cherry-picks from irrelevant and inapplicable material. For example, a report from the Australian Law Reform Commission. Another is the extraordinary assertion that:
On the 1st of July 2023, the National Anti-Corruption Act 2022 comes into force. Every Australian is now entitled to ask for and get a jury trial in every matter, civil or criminal, and it is corruption to refuse in either a state or federal Court. This is because in 1995 the “Kable principle” was argued in the High Court and became common law in 1996. The Kable principle is that no state can make a law contradicting section 79 Constitution and no state can make a law discriminating against a subject of the King, and in any criminal matter, the common law standard must apply.
[9] It is a curious submission to make, not least of which because section 79 of the Constitution is a provision concerned with the number of judges of a Court exercising federal jurisdiction. Perhaps it was intended the reference be to section 73 or 71 of the Constitution or section 79 of the Judiciary Act. In any event, any citizen capable of reading who looks either at the Constitution or the decision of the High Court in Kable would immediately understand they provide no support for these outlandish claims.
[10] Further claims made by the appellant in his speech in Court sought to maintain the discredited fiction that he is somehow not the appellant or not the person who committed the traffic offences because he has dual legal personalities. This was an idea I rejected and still reject (see R v Sweet [2021] QDC 216). There were the further usual references to equity and trusts. It was impossible to comprehend much of the speech. The suggestion that statute law is without a source of authority is, of course, entirely misconceived. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, some of the people of Australia came together to form the Commonwealth. Notably, Aboriginal Australians were excluded from that process. By common consent, the participants in the process created a source of authority: the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia. By section 4, State Parliaments are authorised to make law and it is pursuant to this authority that Queensland has the power to make laws for the “peace, welfare and good government” of the state. The laws contravened by the appellant are part of the valid laws of this state (see, generally, Hubner v Erbacher [2004] QDC 345).
[11] Not for the first time, I am moved to observe that it is sad to see a person such as the appellant, who is seemingly capable of industry and thought, diverting his time and effort in the fruitless pursuit of ideas promoted by charlatans, fraudsters, crackpots and racists. There exists in Queensland a recognised body of statute and common law. As a society, we have developed techniques and processes for interrogating and developing that law. Those who wish to stand outside that law and ignore long recognised processes must realise they bear the onus of rationally explaining why these almost universally accepted understandings are wrong. Until such time, the claims of such people will continue to be summarily dismissed.
