NSW Premier Chris Minns told 2GB Radio shock jock Ben Fordham on June 17 that he will not appear before the NSW Legislative Council (LC) inquiry established to ascertain how long he had known that an explosive-laden caravan, found on a Dural property, might be a setup, as NSW Police had said publicly in January.
Following this incident, NSW Labor passed new criminal offences, alleging they were necessary because of an “antisemitic crime wave”.
The Daily Telegraph this week ran a piece about how the inquiry chair Independent MLC Rod Roberts would be signing summonses, calling upon the Premier’s chief of staff and two deputies to testify at the inquiry. It described the laws which compel witnesses to address the inquiry or face arrest as “pretty draconian”.
But an LC inquiry cannot compel Legislative Assembly MPs to testify, which means Minns does not have to even though the first of the inquiry’s terms of reference relate to how much he, NSW Police Minister Yasmin Catley and Attorney General Michael Daley knew about police doubts that the caravan was a legitimate terror plot prior to passing the new laws.
Established on March 19, the Select Committee on the Relationship between the Dural Caravan Incident and the Passage of Relevant Bills through the Legislative Council found, during its first hearing on April 7 with senior police, that Minns had been briefed “very early on” that the caravan may be a set-up, yet he continued to suggest it could be a “mass casualty event” and “terrorism”.
The inquiry will look at whether Minns passed three hate crime and anti-protest bills, even though NSW Assistant Police Commissioner David Hudson had told him “very early on” that there were serious doubts about the truth of the caravan incident.
Fordham said Roberts would be signing the summonses requiring three of Minns’ senior staff to testify because the NSW Premier and police minister refused to show. Minns replied that there are a “few reasons” behind his decision not to tell the inquiry what he knew.
“Firstly, we have a long — two long — periods of upper house investigations every year, estimates hearings, which I go to personally and they go for hours. They go for half a day,” Minns said.
After Fordham suggested that Minns’ refusal was “a bad look … dodging an inquiry”, the Premier retorted: “Obviously, I’ve got question time every day that parliament sits, and I’m available to the media and anyone else that wants to ask me and the executive questions.
“If the upper house did have their way,” Minns told Fordham, “and this is a group of Liberal, Independent and Greens MPs, they’d have government MPs up there from the lower house, every 24 hours. They are incredibly investigation minded, and, at the end of the day, Ben, I’ve got other things to do.”
Minns said the inquiry was based upon the suggestion that the Dural caravan posed no danger to the community, and he and his fellow ministers were well aware of this from the beginning. But he still pushed through the new hate crime laws based on the idea the caravan was a threat. The premier said these accusations were wrong and the committee members were running “a giant conspiracy”.
Roberts has issued summonses to Minns’ chief of staff James Cullen and two deputies, Sarah Michael and Edward Ovadia. All three had been called to appear before a May 22 hearing, but they all refused, via email, on May 16.
This appears to be why Roberts issued the new summonses on June 17, invoking a different law that can lead to arrest if those requested to testify do not do so.
The Premier wrote to LA speaker Greg Piper on May 15, regarding the inquiry’s terms of reference which he considers threaten the principle of comity between the two houses of parliament. He said he would have the Standing Committee on Parliamentary Privilege and Ethics scrutinise them to see if the inquiry should be abandoned.
Minns also said his newly summonsed staffers should not be compelled to appear before the inquiry because the police should be investigating.
Doubts abound
The caravan inquiry covers the period between January 19, when a caravan filled with explosives and a note listing Jewish premises were located on a property on Dharug land in Dural, and until February 20, when two of the three bills containing laws “responding to recent antisemitic behaviour … in Sydney” were passed.
The bills were rushed through as a wave of “antisemitic” and anti-Israel graffiti, and arson attacks across the Greater Sydney region, took place from late October last year to early February.
However, on March 10, the Australian Federal Police and the NSW police revealed that the caravan and the entire “antisemitic” crime wave were a “fake terror plot”.
Questions were raised about how long law enforcement bodies had considered these incidents a “criminal con job” and how much the Premier and his police minister knew before passing the rights-eroding laws which include new penalties for hate crimes, restrictions on protest near places of worship and incitement of racial hatred laws.
The public was only informed about the caravan full of explosives following a leak. Minns, standing alongside NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Dave Hudson, said on January 29 that the explosive-laden caravan was a potential “mass casualty event”, describing it as “terrorism”.
Hudson told the ABC on January 30 that police were seriously considering whether the caravan incident was staged as a threat against the Jewish community. He was right.
The AFP announced in March that the entire crime wave was a “fabricated terror plot” with organised criminals attempting to gain an advantage with police by providing tip offs about these “anti-Semitic” crimes to obtain lesser punishment.
The NSW inquiry is attempting to understand when Minns first became aware that the police were questioning how genuine the caravan incident was. Hudson told committee members in April that he was suspicious as to whether the caravan might be “a manipulation of the justice system” from “quite early on”. He also recalled briefing the police minister on January 21, although not Minns.
No time to be questioned?
While Minns told Fordham he doesn’t have time for the inquiry, he did however find time to divulge on that program some information the inquiry committee members would have likely preferred they could have questioned him about.
Fordham asked Minns whether, after he’d been told by the police deputy commissioner that the incident “might have a hoax element to it”, whether he’d “come clean straight away” or whether he’d “conceal that information”.
“Certainly didn’t conceal it,” Minns responded. “It was presented to me by NSW Police at some point after the initial disclosure of the caravan, as part of one of several lines of inquiry.
“Now, given those facts, I would have been in a position where I said, ‘It’s one of several lines of inquiry, is it?’ to the deputy commissioner. ‘Well, I am going to go out and do a media conference and say it might be this. I know you are investigating other lines of inquiry, as well.’”
The NSW Council for Civil Liberties described Minns’ refusal to appear before the inquiry or to let his staffer testify as yet “another example” of the Premier’s disregard for democracy.
“Chris Minns should be ashamed at his disregard for the health of our democracy here in NSW,” NSWCCL president Timothy Roberts said. “After acting so irresponsibly in passing these repressive laws – Minns will not, or cannot, defend them.”
“It is appalling that the premier and police minister have led the passing of laws criticised as being authoritarian, and then relied on executive power, liberties denied the rest of the citizens of NSW, in refusing to front up to a parliamentary inquiry that would otherwise assist in restoring community faith in our democratic processes,” the rights expert concluded.
[Paul Gregoire writes for Sydney Criminal Lawyers where this article was first published.