This journal's barracking for Catherine Walter in the National Australia Bank board brawl, on the grounds that if one director's to be dumped for being asleep on the job ahead of the foreign exchange option losses, they all deserve the sack for the same reason. In addition, old fashioned and outrageous sexism seems to have a lot to do with the lads' discontent with Walter's dissent.Further, the grounds advanced by the bank's chair, Graham Kraehe, and other directors for dumping Walter are thin. She's a dissenter, which is a positive not a negative. She's also an alleged leaker, which makes here as much of a board trouble maker as Graham Kraehe.One hard to believe twist from Friday's events on the NAB board is that as leaked (presumably) by Graham Kraehe to The Australian John Stewart, NAB's chief executive, did not show up for the board meeting that decided once and for all to try and dump Cathy Walter. He should have been there to point out to the non executive directors what a rabble they are, and ideally to put a stop to the row.In any event, Walter's faxed around a detailed critique of recent shenanigans at National, which portrays the bank and its directors in an even worse light:• By 3 March seven weeks after the forex scandal broke the bank's board still had not received "a comprehensive written report" into what occurred.• the conflicts of PricewaterouseCoopers and this journal agrees with Walter that the conflicts were very real included 1,000 staff hours of work a year; $17 million in billings year (double that charged by KPMG as auditor); Tony Harrington, the lead PwC partner for the investigation quickly retired from thee task because of recognised conflicts; while Craig Hamer, the replacement partner, held the same conflicts, but wasn't bothered by them; and PwC staff were working on the forex options desk in November and December 2003, just as the losses accelerated from $50 million to $75 million.• Members of the board's risk committee were responsible for changes in the drafting, "and emphasis", of the PwC report, while there were "dramatic differences" between four PwC drafts.• Hamer and NAB's chair, Graham Kraehe, held a number of extended discussions, including late on the evening prior to the critical interview of Kraehe by PwC and APRA on 20 February.• The evidence pertinent to the forex losses "was not secured."• Kraehe misled the board on the existence and status of draft reports by PwC.• Kraehe used the bank's legal advisers to draft correspondence to Walter as part of the board war, in "breach of conflict rules."• The bank's chief in-house legal adviser, David Krasnostein, has place himself "in grave breach of the conflict rules", by taking sides in the board brawl.• The work of Elizabeth Johnstone at Blake Dawson Waldron was probity adviser "was so circumscribed as to be of limited utility. The same is true of Deloitte's given their inability to access highly relevant documents."• The PwC report could have rigorously