The Snitch: Student activist who publicly denounced Turnbull is DPP’s daughter

The University of Sydney student activist who made headlines this week for disrupting a speech by ex-PM Malcolm Turnbull has relatives in high places, Snitch reveals.

So what do we know about the student leader who gave former PM Malcolm Turnbull a spray for the ages when he attempted to give a speech inside the University of Sydney this week?

Well, Lauren Lancaster is the daughter of Director of Public Prosecutions Sally Dowling SC.

Mr Turnbull had barely gotten started on his speech for the university Law Society’s alumni speaker series when student activists began chanting: “Malcolm Turnbull, get out, we know what you’re all about” and “Malcolm Turnbull, blood on your hands”.

One student shouted to Mr Turnbull: “F. k off to Mosman.” (Plot twist: he’s from Point Piper).

Mr Turnbull was part way through giving the kids a geography lesson when Ms Lancaster — the Student Representative Council president — came over the top with her megaphone.

She told the crowd Mr Turnbull had been, during his time in politics, “deleterious to higher education and the welfare of young people”.

Student Representative Council president Lauren Lancaster had plenty to say to ex-PM Malcolm Turnbull when he visited Sydney Uni last week.

She also rhetorically questioned why the university‘s Law Society would “invite someone like this on the campus under the guise of free speech when this man and his party have literally been one of the single most damaging forces to higher education, to climate change, to refugee policy, to welfare crisis …”

We’ll have to stop you there, Lauren, but we definitely get the picture.

Director of Public Prosecutions Sally Dowling SC

It seems the incident saw Ms Lancaster make good on the promise she made in 2021 should she be elected to the position of SRC president.

According to a video uploaded to a candidate profile section of one of the university’s student publications, Ms Lancaster said an experienced student activist would be “best-placed to fight for us against university management and the boardroom and against politicians who inevitably try and short-change young people and students.”

But it leaves us wondering how mother’s job as the state’s top prosecutor and daughter’s position as an activist, campaigning for the issues that students care so strongly about, go together?

How do dinner conversations go when it comes to, say, the problematic topic of Aboriginal deaths in custody?

Ms Dowling said: “Lauren is the elected President of the Students’ Representative Council of the University of Sydney. She is an independent young adult with her own views.”

Ms Lancaster responded: “There’s no link between our positions or conflict in our roles … I’m proud of my mother and respect the functions of an independent and apolitical DPP.”

Guess it’s all fine then.

AN0M TIPOFF

The AN0M phone bust is widely regarded as one of the greatest police stings in history — but some crooks were already onto it before the police made mass arrests.

The revelation on June 8, 2021, that the phones were trojan horse devices that allowed police to monitor millions of messages relating to drug-smuggling, murder and other crimes resulted in 800 people being arrested in 16 countries.

We had heard rumours that some high-level crooks received tip-offs about the phones and were able to flee to safer ground.

But what we now know to be the case is that some of the users were starting to piece together that the phones — which were sold on their high levels of encryption, which supposedly prevented police from eavesdropping — might be a carefully orchestrated trap.

At 11.43pm on June 7, 2021, an AN0M user known by their use of the handle “Clark” was sending warning messages to other users.

One of the messages said: “Please DB Nuke (wipe) from the profile and throw away your AN0M device. There have been too many arrests with links to AN0M.”

By then it was too late.

The phones had been in operation since 2018 and police across the world had collected millions of messages that they will say in court amount to evidence of high-level crimes being committed.

GOD GAVE ROCK AND ROLL TO YOU

We were under the impression that judges don’t like wasting time having fun.

But we’re told that one of their District Court ranks was spotted at the KISS concert at Homebush last week.

Our correspondent said the judge wasn’t sitting in the cheap seats, and left the gig in the cosy comfort of a private car rather than rattling their way back to civilisation on the train with the rest of the commoners.

Turns out the KISS tour was a who’s who affair, with fraudster-turned-reformed businessman Rodney Adler spotted at the gig carrying a band showbag.

Another of our correspondents reported spotting Comanchero boss Alan Meehan at the Melbourne show.

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