These schemes were popular in the 1970s and early 1980s in
Australia, and nowhere more so than in Western Australia and Victoria. Such schemes enabled
scoundrels to accumulate vast wealth legally by exploiting a loophole in the
taxation law.
What made the schemes doubly reprehensible was that the persons taking most from the taxpayers were the men in government, and those close to them, their families and friends.
The men who spoke eloquently on how the poor needed more spent on welfare, education and housing were the same men loading their bank accounts by manipulating corporations. The technicalities can be read about as they were thoroughly documented at the time and during the years since.
The Age 7th September 1982
A bad time in Australian history? Or just business as
usual?
What happens to those bad guys? The guys who outsmart
society by finding some little loophole, a technicality that allows them to
commit white collar crime; do the honest decent working people see penalties
paid?
No.
In fact they see that being a predator and stamping on
the lower orders is the way to the top in Western Australia. Denis Horgan did
it, and he used his money to found the Leeuwin Estate.
So now he is a great
Australian?
His wife calls him a "visionary", which presumably translates into "He keeps one step ahead." Nobody is saying that those who do wrong are never forgiven, but maybe asking us to look up to the scammer as though he is a prince among men is just a little hard to stomach.
Is the Horgan family really a good role model for young
people today?
Why does our shire expect residents to be grateful to this family, is Gary Evershed and the entire Council intent on re-writing history?
