Allan Sutherland reveals toll taken on family by unfounded CCC charges

Fallen Moreton Bay mayor Allan Sutherland has revealed the toll taken on his family by corruption charges – and how he believes he was set up.

The mother of a former mayor charged with misconduct died broken-hearted before learning the charges against her son had been tossed out.

Shirley Sutherland died as Crime and Corruption Commission accusations of dishonesty swirled around her son Allan, who had served as mayor of Redcliffe and Moreton Bay regional councils for 16 years.

In an exclusive interview, Sutherland, 65, said his mother’s painful demise was the most agonising aspect of the “travesty of justice” that destroyed his career.

“People came up to Mum and asked: ‘Is your son going to go to jail?’,” he said.

She and her husband Bob were reluctant to leave their apartment and became “exiles”.

“It really got bad for me when Mum developed pancreatic cancer,” Sutherland said.

“She was anxious to find out an outcome because she knew she was going to pass.

“To her very last days she was continually asking, how it was going to end, Allan?

“It was really horrible knowing Mum was passing away with the anxiety of not knowing what was happening to her eldest son.

“It was tough on her. It was tough on Dad. It was tough on the whole family.

“Two days before she passed, she grabbed me by the hand and with tears rolling down her face asked if I would be all right.

“I will never forgive them for that. (The investigation) didn’t cause her death but it made her suffer terribly.”

Sensationally, Sutherland feels he was set up, and wants a parliamentary inquiry into “illegal practices” in Moreton Bay Regional Council where he alleges development applications were altered.

He even claims that the complaints against him caused a distraction from improper behaviour he had begun to investigate.

In December 2019, Sutherland was suspended from his position at the Moreton Bay council, after three carloads of armed police surrounded his house “and made themselves at home”.

“The police told me I was under house detention, and I was told I was not allowed to leave,” he said.

Sutherland said he was upstairs in the shower when his wife Gayle came to his door ashen-faced.

Allan Sutherland and wife Gayle

The police swarmed in and set up a portable table in his living room and demanded all computers, laptops, mobile phones and other electronic devices. Others began searching drawers and cupboards and his cars.

He says the police brought their own chairs.

Sutherland was charged with two counts of misconduct in relation to public office.

The CCC alleged he had tried to influence the council to change the timing and scope of a road upgrade between 2017 and 2018, which may have affected the value of a block of land on Paradise Rd, Burpengary, with the intent to dishonestly gain a benefit.

The prosecution, however, dropped the charges.

Sutherland and his wife Gayle purchased the block in 2010 but had not applied to develop it.

Although he knew he was innocent, Sutherland feared that despite his innocence he might go to jail because he felt he was getting “stitched up”.

He also revealed he had faced seven CCC investigations in 12 years, some for trivial matters. After years and years of investigations, the CCC found no evidence to bring a single successful prosecution.

Sutherland also believes that he experienced ongoing scrutiny after he publicly criticised an earlier CCC investigation, and for saying the crime watchdog had fleas. And he was proved right, he said.

The collapse of the Sutherland case followed other criticisms of CCC investigations that led to calls for the chairman Alan MacSporran to stand down. He did so this week.

Some of these investigations were outlined in parliament where the parliamentary crime and corruption committee found the CCC operated outside the limits of its powers, did not follow legal process and failed to act independently and impartially when charging seven Logan councillors with fraud in 2018.

There were calls for MacSporran’s sacking by the Local Government Association of Queensland and also by Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate after he, too, was cleared of wrongdoing by a two-year CCC probe.

Sutherland believes the CCC failed to act impartially against him and treated his wife appallingly when interrogating her.

And he is now concerned about what really lay behind the accusations.

Alan MacSporran resigned as CCC chair this week.

‘I WAS SET UP’

“I want an inquiry because I do believe I was set up,” he said.

“I believe development applications have been altered without the sign-off of council.

“I also believe there was important legal information withheld from council, important information that was not passed on, and that cost our organisation millions of dollars.”

He said the CCC charged him and he was ousted just as he was attempting to enlist former state government director-general Frankie Carroll, a solicitor, to conduct an independent inquiry into “highly suspicious practices” relating to the council.

He believes the council was misled, and he believes he has documents to prove it.

Sutherland said he and his legal team would first make a submission to the PCCC seeking an inquiry, not into his case but into council planning matters.

He stressed he was not reflecting in any way on the conduct of Mayor Peter Flannery, who was a straight shooter who acted honourably during his CCC ordeal.

Flannery was interviewed by the CCC because contentious Paradise Rd was in division 2 where he was the local councillor before he was elevated to the mayoralty.

It was Flannery, not Sutherland, who discovered the Paradise Rd upgrade originally set for 2018-19, had been mysteriously pushed back to 2025-26.

Sutherland and his wife also want an inquiry into the CCC investigation, which they believe cherrypicked evidence against him while failing to pursue witnesses who would have cleared him.

WIFE TOOK SICK LEAVE

The ousted mayor is also angry his wife developed shingles two days after a tough interview by the CCC. She had to take weeks off work to recover.

“She was in shock,” he said.

“The treatment of councillors’ spouses is nothing but cruel, with a complete lack of respect in any way.

“I was livid.”

Gayle agreed. She told me she felt that the tone of the questioning was “bullying and intimidating”.

She said she lost faith in the legal system.

The Sutherlands’ purchase of the Paradise Rd land was no secret.

Sutherland told the co-ordination committee meeting on October 19, 2010, that he had purchased the property.

Sutherland declared a possible conflict of interest three times.

Council minutes show Sutherland “retired from the meeting” two years later when discussions arose about a proposed sports centre up the road from his land.

Again, in May 2019, the record shows Sutherland declared a possible conflict of interest and left the meeting.

In preparing his defence he set up a “war room” in his home and combed thousands of documents. “We kept hammering away,” he said.

He has much unfinished business.

“It hasn’t gone away; it is not over. I haven’t finished yet.

“The CCC might like to think it is over and (the police) might think it is over, but it isn’t.”

Had the CCC investigation been more thorough at its beginning, the case would not have dragged on, he said.

Allan Sutherland today

He said that when police arrived at his house to charge him, they refused to tell him exactly what he had done wrong.

They asked for all information he had on the purchase of his investment property at 1 Paradise Rd, Burpengary, and he willingly delivered it.

“I had no idea what it was all about.”

When he bought the property, Sutherland said he duly declared it.

He said he also asked then chief executive officer John Rauber if it would create any conflicts for council.

Rauber told him “No”.

“The CCC refused to say exactly what they were investigating.

“There was all this cloak-and-dagger stuff.”

He continues to feel as though he is the subject of an ongoing “witch hunt”.

Earlier, Sutherland was asked whether he got a sweetheart deal when he purchased his house overlooking the water at Newport.

However, the records showed he paid a record price for the house. Next he was accused of accepting free timber for a deck at the back of his home. He duly produced the receipts, but more and more phony allegations were made about his alleged wrongdoing as mayor.

None of them stacked up.

He was quizzed about his electoral fundraising and a proposed railway station. “It was all nonsensical,” he said.

He was interviewed again by the CCC during Operation Belcarra, which probed accusations of integrity breaches at several councils.

Then mayor Allan Sutherland in period dress as then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk open the Moreton Bay rail line.

PHONE TAP REVELATION

Sutherland also revealed his phone was tapped and that the CCC recorded more than 8000 conversations over several years.

They contain private conversations with family members as well as editors and journalists and members of parliament including cabinet ministers.

“I had total confidence I had done nothing wrong because I don’t do naughty business,” he said.

“If I was in any way bent or corrupt the CCC would have found the evidence because of the phone taps.”

He said his children and his parents knew their intimate conversations had been recorded in the seemingly endless investigations against him.

“My family was thrown into the spotlight on many occasions,” he said.

“It caused heartache, especially for my parents.

“They were extremely proud their son was a mayor. I was known as Mr Redcliffe.

“When these false allegations came along their world came tumbling down.

“They stopped going to things. I had tears running down my face one day when Mum said, ‘Allan you don’t understand; my belly is in knots, and I can’t sleep for thinking about it’.

“My mother said: ‘Are we ever going to have a Christmas where we’re not living under the shroud of some inquiry?’

“She would ask: ‘When are we going to find out what’s going on?’ ”

He said his children grew up with wild accusations flying around in public.

“They had been living with that for some time. The kids had been growing up with it,” he said.

“I tried in public life to shelter my whole family. I kept them out of it – deliberately. I’ve seen the damage it’s done to others, to long-term politicians.”

Try as he may, his family “kept getting dragged into it”, he said.

One of his biggest regrets was not being able to attend the Moreton Bay university campus he fought so hard to build. He was not allowed to go because he would have crossed paths with Moreton Bay councillors in breach of his bail conditions.

Sutherland said the CCC needed a shake-up from top to bottom.

Allan Sutherland