The concept of natural justice does not rest upon carefully defined
rules or standards that must always be applied in the same fixed way.
Nor is it possible to find answers to issues which really depend on
fairness and commonsense by legalistic or theoretical approaches. What
is needed is a broad and balanced assessment of what has happened and
been done in the general environment of the case under consideration.
In the present case the expressed complaints turn upon the absence of
warning that the affected officers were at risk and that the critical
decisions taken against them were unsupported by any evidence of
probative value. But in estimating the significance of these complaints
it would be unreal to ignore the fact that the findings are not only
very serious in themselves: they are made more potent by the way they
have been so closely associated with one another. Furthermore, each of
them is advanced in this Report as an overt manifestation of one general
conspiracy. That last matter has special importance because for the
reasons just explained we have held the conspiracy findings to be
unjustified. They should never have been made. In saying that we do not
overlook the fact that this Court is making an assessment in isolation
from the viva voce evidence given at open hearings of the Inquiry. But
the present issue is simply whether the affected officers were or were
not deprived of the advantage of answering unformulated charges. In such
a situation the advantage of actually hearing and seeing a witness is
hardly a relevant consideration.
In the course of the survey that has been made up to this point we have
commented upon the nature and significance of the various challenged
paragraphs in the Report. It is unnecessary to traverse the same subject
matter once again and we simply remark that the applicants have
justified their complaints concerning the way in which the findings have
been reached.