The Court held that s 134 of the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Act 1975 (Cth) means a resulting trust in favour of a foreign person who provided purchase monies for Australian residential land is not rendered void or unenforceable by the foreign person's failure to obtain FIRB approval, because Parliament intended criminal and civil penalties to be the sole consequences of FATA contraventions rather than invalidation of underlying transactions. The strike-out and summary judgment applications were dismissed on the basis that the plaintiff's resulting trust claim was reasonably arguable and triable issues existed as to who advanced the purchase funds and with what intention. The Court also held that the words 'offence' and 'civil penalty provision' in s 134 are disjunctive, rejecting the argument that s 134 applies only to civil penalty contraventions and not criminal offences.
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