While we were preparing this story Senator Lightfoot contacted the Review to advise us that he could still not remember the details of the affair "I don't recall the exact details of it, my memory revolves around generics - apart from my family whose names I can remember precisely but whose birthdays I have trouble with sometimes."

But he did suddenly recall that the Bank had taken control of the company in 1990 after he had been forced to transfer his shares to it and the liquidation of A-CAP had occurred several weeks later. The Senator argued that he therefore was not responsible for what had transpired with A-CAP and was no longer a director and that he had met all obligations to the bank.

"I transferred the assets I had in A- CAP to the bank... They made a unilateral decision to liquidate the company. Look, it may have been an ultimatum, that I can't recall... we reached an understanding [with BankWest] and they took control of A-CAP... Everything with the Bank was satisfied. I guaranteed A-CAP's debt's with the bank."

When it was pointed out that there remained significant outstanding company debts to creditors the Senator recalled: "I'm starting to think that maybe I didn't guarantee all of A-CAP's debts... I had other things on my mind at the time including a divorce from a rather aggressive former wife, and that was my main preoccupation at the time, to try to salvage my soul which at one stage looked as though it was going up for auction."

He did, however, confirm that he was the last remaining Chairman and a Director before liquidation. On May 29 1997 Senator Lightfoot became a member of the Senate Finance and Public Administration References Committee. The Committee is responsible for inquiring into and advising the Government on financial expenditure and management of the public service, sale of government assets, and the management of government funds.

A man of Ross Lightfoot's views is rarely without friends and fellow travellers. They seek him out, he looks for them, carving out that niche of like-minded far right warriors.

The 1991 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's National Inquiry into Racist Violence in Australia found that "The Australian League of Rights is undoubtedly the most influential and effective, as well as the best organised and most substantially financed, racist organisation in Australia.

Its resources, influence, stability and professionalism far exceed those of any other racist organisation in Australia, past or present." Ross Lightfoot not only defended this tiny racist and anti-Semitic cult, he claimed it represented mainstream Australia.

Speaking against opposition charges of League infiltration into the WA Liberal Party in September 1994, Lightfoot said: "I do not know why there is this sudden fuss about the League of Rights. Let me refer members to the policies of the League of Rights, which include adopting an immigration policy that prevents social fragmentation and friction, imposing a limit on European immigrants to a rate at which they can be assimilated, and holding a referendum on immigration policy.

Many Australians from all sides would agree with that policy." But most Australians do not agree with those views, nor with the many other views that the League espouses, especially its belief in an international Jewish conspiracy to rule the world.

The League also claims the Holocaust is a Zionist hoax, depicts Asians and Africans as racially inferior, condemns its opponents - from ministers of religion to conservative politicians - as communist stooges, and dismisses the democratic system as a sham.

It argues that communists are responsible for fluoridation in the water supply, that Sir Robert Menzies was a socialist, and that multiracial immigration is a plot to wipe out the white race through interbreeding.

Its leader Eric Butler claimed in his 1946 book The International Jew that 'International Jewry' planned to destroy civilisation "as we now understand it" ; that "Hitler's policy was a Jewish policy" that "helped further the declared aims of international Jewry"; and that "Bolshevism was a Jewish tool, as was Hitler himself.

So does the Senator still defend the League of Rights? "I didn't say I agree with it [their immigration policy]."

But do you support the League? "Look, I don't know enough about the League of Rights to either condemn or embrace them. Until I know more about the League of Rights or have a meeting with someone from the League I don't propose that I should be an authority on it."

"Why should he, I or you, Mr Deputy President, not address the League of Rights?" Lightfoot demanded as he defended the League in 1994. But not today, though. "I saw no reason why Graeme Campbell should not address the League of Rights." Would you address it also? " I don't think I would. I don't think that in the present climate it would do any politician, particularly a senior politician like myself to be seen to be in any way juxtaposed to the League of Rights."

Which left us a little confused. In 1994 Mr Lightfoot was clearly defending the League, arguing that many Australians from all sides would agree with its policies, policies he knew enough about to quote in Parliament.

In 1997, he knows so little about the League he can neither condemn nor embrace it, although he obviously knows enough about the League to claim that a "senior politician like myself" should not be seen associating with it.

And the Senator went to lengths to emphasise that he did not share the anti-Semitic agenda of the League. "I do not share any Jewish antipathy ... it's not part of my makeup in life. Indeed, the opposite is true, I do not even have a minuscule antipathy towards Jews."

So I asked him why he had signed a petition distributed by the extremist US LaRouche political cult. Senator Lightfoot's memory failed him again. "Who are the LaRouchites?" Followers of Lyndon LaRouche, a former US Trotskyist who turned extreme-right in the 1970s, were successfully indicted by the United States Justice Department for fraud, corruption, conspiracy, harassment, assault and hundreds of felony charges.

Under the guise of the Citizens' Electoral Councils the LaRouche movement spread its operation to Australia where, with an annual budget in excess of $1,000,000 it has widely promoted racist anti-Aboriginal and anti-Semitic campaigns. In Australia, the organisation held unsuspecting individuals against their will, psychologically abused them and subjected young children to bizarre brainwashing activities.

Disciples are convinced that their world is on the verge of imminent catastrophe and that Jews and members of the British royal family are primarily responsible.

The April 18, 1997 edition of the organisation's American magazine, Executive Intelligence Review, published a petition signed by supporters of the LaRouche movement internationally. The second name in the list of Australian signatories is "Hon. Ross Lightfoot, Member, Legislative Council, Western Australia; Senator-Elect, Federal Parliament, Australia."

The petition, titled 'Urgent Appeal to President to Convoke a New Bretton Woods' echoes the insanity of LaRouchean economics. It decries the end of the international economy and trumpets the belief that only Lyndon LaRouche, physical economist extraordinaire (and convicted felon) can save the day.

"I have no association with the Citizens Electoral Councils," said Lightfoot. Then why did you sign the LaRouche petition? "Um, I'm not familiar with the LaRouche movement, I'm familiar with the Citizens Electoral Councils, who met me with respect to the Silk Road highway and discussed that with me [here comes that memory flooding back] but that was the only point I think they discussed.... I don't know what their agenda or philosophy is [his memory has gone again] I do support the so called concern they have about the Silk Road, and they supported that by giving me reasonably substantial and conclusive documentation that left pretty well little doubt as to the veracity of what they had informed me about on that proposed massive highway."

Mr Lightfoot claimed he had declined a request from the CEC for another meeting. "I don't want to become locked into a single issue group. My views are more anti -sectarian. I signed their petition, but I didn't authorise them to publish it. Look I'm not familiar with the CEC or LaRouche; all I know is that they gave me a voluminous work that I think was worth $60 for nothing, and that seemed to be rather generous."

The thing that strikes you about Philip Ross Lightfoot is that he is absolutely right about everything.

What scares you about him is the thought of what on earth is going on in his mind. In 1986 Lightfoot wrote a letter to then US Secretary of State, George Shultz, urging the US Government to dump subsidised wheat in Australia's international wheat markets in Russia and China - a move that would have denied Australia vital wheat export markets, prevented economic recovery in Australia and accelerated an economic crisis.

For Lightfoot the objective was the advancement of the Liberal Party's aspirations to form a government in Western Australia and ultimately Canberra. The letter to Secretary Shultz read:

"May I urge you to stand fast on the proposed wheat sales to China and Russia. Your actions will have a detrimental effect on the two socialist governments of my nation and New Zealand that those respective administrations would have difficulty recovering from. Were you to capitulate now, the effect would be two-fold. "Firstly you will enhance the tarnished image of our Prime Minister Hawke and restore his previously held omnipotence, and that would not be in the interests of free peoples in this hemisphere. Hawke would be written up in the Australian media as the man who coerced you and your president into changing your mind. "That leads into the second effect. It would further entrench the socialist system and may deny the conservative parties the right to govern in 1988-89 because of the arresting of the decline in the Australian dollar and the erasing of our balance of payments."

Lightfoot retracted the letter after public criticism when its contents became known. But when asked on Perth radio whether he thought the letter was a silly thing to do he replied "Yes, it was. I broke the 11th commandment, which is 'Thou shalt not get caught.'" But only a year later, Ross Lightfoot would get caught up in something much bigger.

In the 1980s, while still married to his second wife Susan, Ross Lightfoot became acquainted with Penny Easton, a friendship that led to Lightfoot's role in one of the most ugly scandals of the past decade in Western Australia - the Easton affair, which turned tragic when Penny Easton later took her own life.

Penny, a West Australian solicitor was married to Brian Easton, the then Commissioner of the West Australian Public Service.

Brian Easton, although never meeting Sue and Ross Lightfoot, remembered his former wife's friendship with them. "My son was at school with Lightfoot's son, and Penny met the Lightfoots and spent quite a good deal of time with them when they were together and also after they separated, and frequently made me aware of that fact," he told the Review.

Sue Lightfoot also worked together with Penny in the West Australian Crown Law office and developed a friendship with her.

When Penny separated from Brian Easton in July 1986 she talked at length with her friend Ross Lightfoot about the separation and the dispute with Brian in the Family Law court. Then, almost out of nowhere on November 17, 1987 Ross Lightfoot, then Liberal member for the seat of Murchison-Eyre in the Legislative Assembly raised, under parliamentary privilege, Family Court proceedings between Penny and Brian Easton, still Commissioner of the Public Service.

Lightfoot later boasted during an ABC interview "As far as I am aware, this was the first time that the matter was raised in Parliament." It was to be one of the first substantive public reference to Penny Easton's Family Court matters in the W A Parliament and was cited in State and Federal parliaments as a major breach by Lightfoot of section 121 of the Family Law Act, requiring confidentiality of proceedings.

Recalled Lightfoot during a 1995 interview for Background Briefing, "Penny asked me one afternoon back in '87 I think it was, over a cup of tea at my home, whether I could put this because she believed at the time that he, that is Brian Mahon Easton, was 'hiding' a $200,000 ex gratia payment that the Government had made to him as a result of his services as Commissioner of the Public Service Board. And as a result of those questions she put to me in a generic sense, I refined them to an acceptable form under our standing orders in the Legislative Assembly where I served at the time and, indeed, put the questions in Parliament to the then Premier, Brian Burke."

Indeed, the matters had little bearing on any political issue of the day, relating as they did to the divorce difficulties of the Eastons. But because Brian Easton was the then Public Service Commissioner and perceived to be close to Premier Brian Burke, Lightfoot used the link as the grounds on which to raise questions about the divorce proceedings in Parliament.

Former WA Premier Carmen Lawrence recalled that "the matters raised by Lightfoot ultimately led Mrs Easton's estranged husband Brian Easton to seek to have a petition tabled in the West Australian Parliament responding to the claims."

Recalls Brian Easton, "I was deeply offended and shattered that anybody would grovel that low. It was untrue and known to be untrue... It was shattering that politics had got so low in Western Australia."

Four days after the petition was tabled, in November 1992, Penny Easton took her life, citing in her suicide note Brian Easton's petition as a factor in her decision.

Although Ross Lightfoot was not the only figure to raise the Eastons' separation in parliament - and only one of many protagonists in the affair - his decision to do so, in breach of the Family Law Act, left him open to bitter recriminations. One of the sources of tension that led to the Easton's marriage breakdown became apparent during testimony before the WA Royal Commission into the Easton Affair. Brian Easton claimed in evidence that Penny had disclosed to him "that she was having an affair with a Liberal Member of Parliament". Although the MP was never named, speculation centred on Liberal leader Richard Court, who strongly rejected the allegation.

Lightfoot similarly denies rumours of a relationship with Penny Easton. "I knew Ms Easton quite well. It was just a very healthy relationship between two people that didn't amount to anything of a romantic nature," he told the Review. Ross Lightfoot was not the only WA Liberal to use sensitive information about the Eastons' separation as ammunition in the State Parliament.

The then member for Mt Lawley, George Cash, Ross Lightfoot's friend and business partner also raised questions in Parliament relating to the family law case. Cash, who refused to talk to the Review is understood to have had a falling out with his former colleague. However, his 27 year old daughter Michela remains a close personal friend of Mr Lightfoot, 60, who is now divorced from his second wife Susan and is also separated from his former defacto partner and prominent Perth Clayton Utz solicitor Julie Bishop. Neither Ms Bishop nor Ms Cash were prepared to comment on their relationships with Mr Lightfoot.

However, the Senator did have some words of affection for Michela Cash. "She is altogether quite a delightful young lady, if headstrong at times, but quite delightful."

"Nothing succeeds like secession," Senator Lightfoot once observed. It is a hoary old lunar-right view. Secede from the Commonwealth. In Western Australia the view carries some populist currency with fringe conservatives. To Ross Lightfoot it is an article of faith. "We've got 8 percent of the population providing 25 percent of the export income and there is just no logical reason why we should remain Australia's milking cow". As the member for Murchison-Eyre in the West Australian parliament, Lightfoot during one of his characteristically long addresses to the Legislative Assembly, outlined the state's contribution to the nation before asking "Is it worth it? Scratch any parliamentarian on either side of this house, and if he is honest he will say, 'Let us go it alone.'

...What do we need the east for?", adding, "I feel that the only way we can arrest the decay, the dissent and the disease that is affecting us all, not because of anything we have done, is to secede." Seven years later in 1993 and Lightfoot's conviction to bring about the secession of Western Australia was as firm as ever. In the wake of the re-election of the Keating Government and calls for a republic he declared that secession was "still a passion with a lot of people" and that he would push for a state referendum on the issue.

The next year followed with the prediction that West Australians would vote overwhelmingly in a referendum to secede, adding that "We have the big dry moat of the Nullarbor, and were it filled with water it would not be my intention to build bridges over it." Perhaps only an isolated environment like WA can produce such extreme anti federalist views. In the face of bipartisan support for gun control Lightfoot stood relatively alone in his defence of gun owners, arguing that a country that gives away its civilian firepower or the ability of civilians to defend themselves is a country that emasculates itself.

The evangelical mission has not abated despite his entrance into the Commonwealth Parliament. "I believe that Western Australia does not get a fair go from the Commonwealth. The entry of WA into the Commonwealth was a mistake... I would like to see Western Australia better off in terms of distribution of Federal funds back to WA. That not being the case, then I don't think WA has much choice but to look at a different form of association with the Federation."

The Senator remains an avowed secessionist who once called for Western Australia to "revert to a colony and then seek independence from Britain;" and later for an independent defence policy and international treaty arrangements. Through a unique West Australian brand of cronyism and zealotry he has risen to the nation's capital - the centre of Federalism - the place that he once attacked "on behalf of all those people like me who would want to get rid of that sycophantic, malignant Canberra."

But no, he doesn't really believe in placing armed guards on the border between Western Australia and other neighbouring States. "No, I didn't say that," he protested. "I said I intend to send soldiers to the border. I would insist that they had on black riding britches with a white stripe down the side and on the inside kid leather so they didn't chafe their calves. I said that I would issue them with pith helmets and a tot of rum so that they would be pissed each night."

Lightfoot protested that the comment was made tongue-in cheek, and later taken out of context by a journalist in Western Australia. Which is a pity, because if they'd quoted him in entirety back in 1993 the electorate of Murchison-Eyre and the State of Western Australia may have learned what the entire country is just coming to realise - that Philip Ross Lightfoot is a nut, and now the nut's in power.