the report, a paragraph building up to a quotable phrase that has become
well known in New Zealand and abroad:

377. No judicial officer ever wishes to be compelled to say that he
has listened to evidence which is false. He always prefers to say,
as I hope the hundreds of judgments which I have written will
illustrate, that he cannot accept the relevant explanation, or that
he prefers a contrary version set out in the evidence.

But in this case, the palpably false sections of evidence which I
heard could not have been the result of mistake, or faulty
recollection. They originated, I am compelled to say, in a
pre-determined plan of deception. They were very clearly part of an
attempt to conceal a series of disastrous administrative blunders
and so, in regard to the particular items of evidence to which I
have referred, I am forced reluctantly to say that I had to listen
to an orchestrated litany of lies.

The applicants claim that these findings were not based on evidence of
probative value and that the affected employees were not given a fair
opportunity of answering such charges. The general allegation in the
statement of claim that the findings attacked were made in excess of
jurisdiction has in our view a special bearing on this paragraph. The
applicants say that the paragraph affects a considerable number of
employees--namely Mr Amies, Mr R. Brown, Mr Davis, Captain Eden, Captain
Gemmell, Captain Grundy, Captain Hawkins, Mr Hewitt, Captain Johnson and
Mr Lawton. These include all the employees affected by the other
paragraphs under challenge.

We accept that reasonable readers of the report would take from it that