Barrister fined $25k for missing tax records

In his Thursday, 5 November decision, Chief Judge in Equity David Hammerschlag said Bates was not a lay party who failed to comply due to “misadventure, negligence or inadvertence”.

“He is a senior practitioner and officer of this court who was aware of the consequences to himself of what he did, and was undoubtedly aware of the requirement for punctilious compliance with orders of the court, and the consequences of non-compliance,” Justice Hammerschlag said.

He added when a member of the public observes an officer of the court acting in this way, “the administration of justice is brought into disrepute, and confidence in it undermined”.

“A disinterested observer may be prompted to ask, rhetorically, ‘if a lawyer, particularly one of those ones who wears a wig and gown, thinks they can get away with this and does, why shouldn’t I?’,” Justice Hammerschlag said in his reasons.

Immediately after Justice Hammerschlag determined Bates’ committed civil contempt, he dealt with an application for a freezing order brought by the plaintiff. An ex tempore judgment was made to restrict Bates from dealing with his assets.

Shortly afterwards, Bates emailed Justice Hammerschlag’s associate with a claim that the plaintiff had “insufficient assets” and requested it be required to pay the $320,577.84 of the cross-claim, in addition to a $100,000 payment for the estimated costs of his solicitors to date and an independent counsel.

He then wrote he was “concerned” with Justice Hammerschlag’s oral judgment because it “denied me procedural fairness”. He requested the court not publish the written judgment “until I have had an opportunity to provide evidence and submissions” about these concerns.

The court refused to order the plaintiff to pay security and advised Bates that the written judgment would not be published until Wednesday, 21 October “at the earliest”. Bates was advised to bring an application by “formal Notice of Motion”.

On 20 October, the day after the civil contempt findings were published, Bates emailed the associate to say he was “shocked and most concerned” to discover the judgment was available.

He “urgently requested” the judgment be taken down.

The associate clarified the 21 October deadline was in respect of the freezing orders, and not the civil contempt judgment.

Rather than making an application, Bates provided the court with an affidavit that expressed his deep regret and shame for his failure to lodge his taxation records “in a timely way”.

He added he regretted that his reputation “is now publicly strained by the permanent record of the findings judgment, having attracted much adverse publicity in various articles published by journalists, which itself adds to his shame and punishment”.

Bates asked the court not to “punish him further”, other than the costs order for the motion on an ordinary basis.

“The barrister’s failure to comply with his tax return obligations is serious and may be expected to have consequences elsewhere, but it is not the subject matter of his contempt,” Justice Hammerschlag said.

“The barrister twice consented to the orders to produce specified tax returns, which orders he contemptuously had no intention of meeting, and then argued that he was not in contempt because returns he was to produce were not in existence, he having not filed them.

“Even this unmeritorious excuse has no bearing on the documents he actually had, but still failed to produce.”

Justice Hammerschlag said Bates’ apology “came late in the day”, and only after he made contentious claims to the court’s associate, asked for the judgment to be unpublished, and foreshadowed an application that was never made.  

“I consider his apology to be mealy-mouthed,” he said.

Citation: Australian Continuing Legal Education Centre Pty Limited v Philip Bates (Penalty) [2026] NSWSC 1385.