Shadow Attorney-General Denver Beanland yesterday said any investigation into reappointing former Supreme Court Judge Angelo Vasta must examine a wider range of events other than those considered by the Parliamentary Judges Inquiry established in late 1988.

Mr Beanland, who last month proposed a parliamentary committee into Mr Vasta's sacking, said the issue of paying Mr Vasta's legal fees and compensating him was a totally separate matter to the complex issue of his re-appointment to the bench.

He said Mr Vasta's suitability for the bench would require consideration of the relevance of events after the Judges Inquiry.

"That's another step," he said. "You've got the step of what happened at the inquiry and what happened later in relation to those issues."

Mr Vasta was removed from the Supreme Court bench following a motion carried in State Parliament on the voices at 3am on June 8, 1989.

Mr Vasta, and his brother-in-law, Santo Coco, were later charged over an alleged attempt by Mr Coco to bribe two taxation officers. Mr Coco was initially convicted and spent a year in prison, but he was later acquitted after the High Court ruled that secretly tape recorded evidence used in the trial had been improperly authorised and was inadmissible.

The case against Mr Vasta did not proceed, and eventually the illegally taped evidence was ordered destroyed.

However some of this evidence survived in transcript form.

In particular, a transcript has survived of tape-recorded conversations between Mr Coco and Mr Vasta from November 13-16, 1989 about a $5,000 donation to then Opposition frontbencher Terry Mackenroth.

References to the transcript were read into the Senate Hansard in August 1992 after they were expunged from State Parliament's Hansard in May that year. The issue was later comprehensively aired in the Queensland Parliament in September 1993.

The conversations confirmed Mr Coco gave Mr Mackenroth a $5,000 cash donation three weeks before the historic 1989 state election.

But the donation was not to be given in isolation.

The transcript indicated that on November 15, 1989, Mr Vasta had asked Mr Coco to accompany the $5000 with a letter seeking a review of his dismissal.

"I can give you a copy of the letter I'm gonna send to Goss you know. What time do you have to leave by?", Mr Vasta said.

In 1993, Mr Mackenroth tabled a receipt for the donation in State Parliament. The CJC later found "insufficient evidence of official misconduct or criminal offences to warrant further investigations".

But it is now Mr Vasta's role which is under scrutiny.

Mr Beanland said issues such as this complicated the Vasta case. Their relevance to his return to the Bench would have to be assessed, he said.

"You'd only look at those other issues if you're going to make a recommendation to that effect."

Meanwhile, the State Government is still conducting its review of Mr Vasta's case in light of the report by the Australian Section of the International Commission of Jurists in March this year.

The report said the Queensland Parliament should reconsider its decision to remove Mr Vasta, but said a decision to re-appoint him was "a matter for executive determination".

It recommended the government pay Mr Vasta's legal costs and consider compensating him. Mr Vasta paid his own legal costs for appearing at the judges inquiry.