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With regard to the E-meter, Dr. Dax testified that it had been used in the United States as a lie-detector and was an instrument not employed in normal psychiatric practice. Grave doubts about it had been raised in America. He added that the fact that the person being "audited" knew he had disclosed some of his innermost secrets to an organization might have a dangerous effect on him. A person who had confessed would often wish he could get the information back, but he could not recover the material. "I am convinced this is enough to induce ill-health, chronic anxiety and psychosomatic symptoms in people who had expressed their shortcomings."

Reaching somewhat far afield for symptoms, Dr. Dax suggested that a guilt feeling had prompted L. Ron Hubbard to call the 1962 Scientology meeting in Australia the "Clean Hands congress". Washing the hands, he explained, was commonly associated with feelings of guilt.After admitting that he had never met L. Ron Hubbard, nor, indeed, ever set eyes on him, Dax proceeded to practise the kind of remote diagnosis common to his profession, and pronounced the founder of Scientology to be a person of unsound mind, suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.Various Scientology writings supported this view, he assured the Board of Inquiry. "They display all sorts of exhibitions of histrionics and are hysterical."The second and even more prolific witness against Scientology who deserves special attention was Phillip Wearne, executive officer of the Committee for Mental Health and National Security. His testimony, comments and questions fill a massive 348 pages of transcript - enough to make an average-size book.

Wearne first appeared before the Inquiry as a witness vehemently opposed to Scientology and whose references to it were couched in the most intemperate language used during the entire course of the hearings. His remarks were studded with terms such as corpse, creature, un-person, nasty child, beast, imbecile, monkey, zombie, and so on. Typical references to Scientologists:

"You get the impression that the exterior entity cleverly keeps the pupils of the eyes fixed in a suitable direction while the mouth talks."

"Its eyes move like the eyes of a living person."

"This creature is, by all human standards, inside out."

"The remains of the former personality at some moments speak through the lips of the un-person."

It was after a lengthy address of this kind that the Board -Mr. Anderson - said:

"Thank you, Mr. Wearne; I am greatly obliged to you for your thorough, very complete and very painstakingly prepared and delivered address. It speaks volumes for the amount of labour and tremendous industry you have applied to the preparation of your case."

When the Counsel who represented the Committee for Mental Health and National Security withdrew during the protracted Inquiry, Wearne asked the Board for permission to represent the committee himself. Anderson granted this request and invited Wearne to sit at the Bar table, where he asked questions, led evidence and cross-examined witnesses.In a lengthy statement, in the form of an affidavit sworn to before a notary some time after the Anderson board closed its Inquiry, Wearne related in detail the circumstances surrounding his participation in the Inquiry proceedings.He said that one day prior to the Inquiry he was discussing Scientology with his bank manager, who suggested that he get in touch with Dr. E. Cunningham Dax, chairman of Victoria's Mental Hygiene Authority."I met Dr. Dax and explained to him my hostility to Scientology. It was obvious to me he didn't know anything about Scientology, and he could not relate it to any of the psychological or psychiatric disciplines because he did not have any of the necessary lexicon of terms. He did not have the Rosetta stone, so to speak, to translate Scientology into psychological terms and show it up to be a perverted form of psychology.

"It was equally clear to me that he was extremely antagonistic to Scientology and wished its destruction and saw me as a means of accomplishing it. This became even more evident throughout the Inquiry when Dax gave his evidence on the basis of the research and material which I had provided, which material I had extracted in part from his psychiatric library and which he had been so willing to study in the publications which I distributed, such as Probe."

Wearne gathered together a handful of former Scientologists whom he carefully briefed to give evidence before the Board of Inquiry. On the whole their testimony appears to me to be unconvincing and ambiguous. One of the witnesses, a man named Douglas Moon, went on about it for 511 pages, but at times no one, including Moon himself, apparently knew what he was talking about.

Throughout the Melbourne hearings, a mysterious observer haunted the proceedings, a man Wearne tentatively identified as an agent for CIA.

"Now this chappie," said Wearne, "appeared about the second day of the Board of Inquiry and was a constant shadow-you know-if you looked around at any time of the day, you would find him there; and he was always approaching me and talking to me about the Inquiry and how it was going and what the witnesses were doing and how they should be handled and so on. He didn't know what he was talking about, really - but as he insisted on inviting me for lunch practically daily, I felt obliged to listen to him anyway.

"He made it his business to keep in close contact with me. I became embarrassed by the number of times that he wined and dined me, brought liquor to my flat and irritated me by constant and inept suggestions concerning Scientology witnesses. On one occasion, Doug Moon, who considered him an intolerable ratbag, when probed by him as to what evidence he would give, abused him in tones of high anger and left the flat, slamming the door behind him.

"I was tolerant because, while I realised he did not have a clue about how our programme against Scientology should be conducted, he was trying to do his best and I assume was being paid for it. If I remember rightly, I made him a member of the Committee for Mental Health and National Security and gave him a card which no doubt is held in a repository of honour in his archives either at the CIA office or whoever else was paying him.

"I rather prefer the idea that the security service that employed him was the CIA because both he and his brother-in-law were employed in a finance company which had a set of offices to the rear of the United States Consulate, an organization which I approached at one time to interview the CIA man in charge."

Hubbard himself did not appear to give testimony before the Board, a fact which is dwelt upon at some length by the Anderson Report. The report does not mention, however, that solicitors for the Scientology organization in Melbourne on September 28, 1964, formally requested that the state of Victoria pay Hubbard's travelling and incidental expenses to fly to Australia from England to give evidence.The request was refused, as was a proposal that the Board appoint some representative in England to hear evidence from Hubbard there.Regarding the latter suggestion, Anderson said that such evidence taken on Commission was a very poor substitute for actual oral evidence before a tribunal. "One has to see the witnesses, observe their demeanour. In fact, one has to see whether they are 'Dear Alice-ing' you to determine whether what they are saying are things you, as a tribunal, should accept. I feel that I could get no assistance from Mr. Hubbard's evidence if all I had before me was his evidence taken on Commission. It would only be the bald written word without any means available of appraising the demeanour of the witness and those other multitude of things which one's professional training and years of life, for that matter, enable one to form some fair appraisal of the weight which would be given to the evidence."

While thus refusing to consider evidence in the form of interrogatories put to Hubbard by an experienced lawyer in England, Anderson based his eventual findings upon what he called "the great body of scientific evidence ... experts in a variety of fields, scientific and otherwise". That is, he relied upon psychiatrists, doctors, lawyers, university professors and others, most of whom had never come closer to Scientology than the "bald written word", here declared to be so unsatisfactory. Critics of Scientology and its founder have said that Hubbard had had no intention of coming to Melbourne; that the request for expense money had been made, knowing that it would be rejected.If true, it merely shows that Hubbard was using good sense. Only four months prior to the request, Dr. E. Cunningham Dax, chairman of the Mental Health Authority in Victoria, had publicly declared Hubbard to be of unsound mind. There was open discussion among the legal profession that he could now be charged with fraud.Gordon Just, Counsel assisting the Board had reportedly said that "the people" of Victoria were so irate against Hubbard that they might do him physical injury if he were available. When the Scientologists' lawyer asked that the authorities guarantee Hubbard's personal safety, Just replied that this could not be done because it would interfere with the ordinary workings of the law.The newspapers were treating the Inquiry with the kind of biased sensationalism usually reserved for an especially gruesome murder trial. There is no need here to quote from the fulsome stories that dominated the Melbourne dailies during the hearings. A few randomly selected headlines and banners will suffice to indicate the tone and slant of the coverage:

"SCIENTOLOGY IS PERVETED" 
"[SECURITY] CHECK A FORM OF BLACKMAIL" 
"SCIENTOLOGY CAUSED 'DELUSIONS'" 
"SCIENTOLOGY 'EXPLOITED ANXIETY" 
"SCIENTOLOGY IS A MENACE"
"PRODUCT OF AN UNSOUND MIND" 

There can be little doubt that, given the climate of opinion which then prevailed in Victoria, Hubbard would have been certified as insane or jailed for fraud if he had set foot within the jurisdiction of his enemies.

The Board of Inquiry concluded its hearing on April 21, 1965 and Anderson tabled his report in Parliament the first week in October of the same year. In his report, Anderson attacked Scientology in what one news account called "the strongest terms ever used in an official investigation in Australia". In the summary of his findings, Anderson denounced Scientology in toto. "The Board has been unable to find any worthwhile redeeming feature in Scientology." The whole body of its doctrine was a "fabric of falsehood, fraud and fantasy".

"Scientology is evil; its techniques evil, its practice a serious threat to the community, medically, morally and socially; and its adherents sadly deluded and often mentally ill."

As for the founder of Scientology: "However Hubbard may appear to his devoted followers, the Board can form no other view than that Hubbard is a fraud and Scientology fraudulent."And in another place: "His sanity is to be gravely doubted."In prompt reaction to the Report, Victorian Premier Sir Henry Bolte called a press conference to announce that the Government was duty bound to act on the Board's recommendations.