The Commonwealth, he said, had missed out on around $125,000 a week in unpaid PAYG tax, adding up to $1 million every couple of months.
Alex was missing from the dock when his verdict was read out, having been recently admitted to Northern Beaches Hospital to manage his withdrawal from opioids.
Alex had become addicted to oxycodin and was seeking to transition to the replacement medication buprenorphine. But his own lawyers only became aware of the admission on Monday morning.
Jeremy Cumston, a doctor managing Alex’s withdrawal, had written letters to the hospital advocating for his patient to be treated.
“I’m not very impressed with Dr Cumpston and Mr George Alex effectively seeking to pre-empt the court,” Fagan said. But he agreed on Monday to vary Alex’s bail conditions to allow him to remain in hospital until another detention hearing on Friday.
The verdict followed a number of questions from the jury on Monday, including how they should assess guilt and innocence in cases where a person was acting on instructions or had misgivings.
Alex’s barrister John Agius SC applied to have the jury discharged and the judge recused, submitting that Fagan’s answers to the jury’s questions lacked balance, repeating the Crown case without summarising defence arguments.
Agius argued that further instructions by Fagan to the jury on Tuesday had failed to adequately correct the alleged imbalance.
Fagan refused the applications, saying: “I’m not advocating for any assessment of the facts.”
A sentencing hearing has been scheduled for November.
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