Public hearings held in secret we can’t even tell you about

People are being questioned in secret hearings held at a CBD building. But we can’t tell you who, where or even why.

Today as you read this article, members of the public could well be being compelled to give evidence in secret hearings by the Ombudsman or the Crime Commission in NSW and you wouldn’t know.

Such is the extraordinary nature of these “Star Chamber” quasi-legal hearings, it is against the law to even mention they exist let alone who is being required to testify.

They have existed for sometime but the media could only detail their targeting of journalists and whistleblowers four years ago after it was detailed in the NSW parliament.

Australia’s Right to Know campaign launched last week which sees major media organisations in Australia join forces, demands an end to such secrecy and greater transparency, openness and reform to laws such as the Public Interest Disclosure Act that falls to protect whistleblowers and journalists from shining a light on issues that affect the public.

Journalist Neil Mercer gives evidence at Emblems inquiry at NSW State Parliament. Picture Cameron Richardson

In 2012 journalist Neil Mercer detailed the existence of an internal police report into a questionable anti-corruption program dubbed Operation Mascot more than a decade earlier that controversially bugged more than 100 police officers and civilians, with the warrants to get those bugs found to have been improperly obtained.

The existence of the damning report had been kept secret but ironically almost immediately so too the creation of another covert NSW Police operation targeting Mercer and others with several people compelled to give secret evidence before the Ombudsman.

The then NSW Ombudsman Bruce Barbour appears at an Upper House Committee at NSW State Parliament in 2015. Picture: Supplied

The front pages of major Australian newspapers replicate a heavily redacted government document, alongside an advertising campaign challenging laws that effectively criminalise journalism and whistleblowing. Picture: AAP

They were not allowed to reveal they had been ordered to give evidence nor the line of questioning including demands to reveal their sources with these private hearings only now being able to be written about because they were detailed in state parliament.

“It is still one of the most extraordinary episodes in my career,” News Corp veteran crime reporter Mark Morri said.

“It’s one thing to be asked about our sources but another to be compelled to give evidence in secret then told you even being in there, being kept secret.”

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Mercer, a former News Corp and Fairfax crime reporter, said to be called into these star chambers just for writing stories about issues within NSW Police and their public consequence, was incomprehensible in Australia in this day and age.

David Shoebridge (The Greens) and Robert Borsak (Shooters and Fishers Party) present the Select committee reports on the conduct and progress of the Ombudsman's inquiry Operation Prospect. Picture: Supplied

“I don’t think the public is aware that some of these bodies have these extraordinary powers to tell people to appear and not be able to talk about it, not even my wife,” he said yesterday. “It wasn’t as if this involved national security … it should have been an open and judicial inquiry but it was smothered in secrecy and at the end of the day that secrecy satisfied nobody, not the cops or anyone involved. And nobody knows if questions that should have been asked were asked, we just don’t know because it was all held in secret.”

He said the secret inquiry looking into the reporting of a secret inquiry was ridiculous but could be happening now.

“We don’t know what they are doing, we don’t know who they are hauling in for questioning and they are answerable to nobody, although they will argue they are answerable to parliament and in a sense they are, but most of the time we don’t know who is being hauled in and questioned,” he added.

Originally published as Public hearings held in secret we can’t even tell you about