The Sauce: Political assassin Phuong Ngo flushed out flaws in Supermax

Phuong Ngo is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of Labor MP John Newman in 1994. So it might come as a surprise to hear he ‘fessed up when he found a security flaw in the Goulburn Supermax just after it was built.

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It was built to be the most ­secure jail in Australia but former prison boss Ron Woodham has revealed how inmate and political assassin, Phuong Ngo, showed how Supermax may not have been as secure as everyone thought.

Mr Woodham, who was the Corrective Services NSW Commissioner for a decade until his retirement in 2012, had been intimately involved in the development of the High Risk Management Unit at Goulburn.

Former NSW Corrective Services Commissioner Ron Woodham.

Ngo, who was given a life sentence for the murder of Labor MP John Newman in 1994, was among the first inmates to be moved to the facility.

Mr Woodham said he remembered taking a phone call from a Supermax prison officer who told him how Ngo had been found with “two to three” cut off screws.

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“He told the officer that the screws had fallen out of the door frame,” Woodham said.

“He said, ‘I always get blamed for everything, I don’t want to get blamed for this’.”

Ngo appeared to be telling the truth. A subsequent ­inspection uncovered a few other ill-fitting screws, which had some of the thread sawn off.

“I remember saying ‘for Christ sake, check all the doors’,” Woodham recalled, during a chat with The Sauce.

Political assassin Phuong Canh Ngo.

Ngo’s victim MP John Newman, pictured with fiancee Lucy Wang, was shot to death in his driveway in 1994.

“Here we had built one of the most secure prisons where no one could see out, where no helicopter could extract a prisoner, no drone could drop in a gun, and screws were falling out of the door frames.”

Woodham said it appeared some of the screws had been the wrong size, resulting in the builder sawing them off to make them fit.

However, being a “jail within a jail”, the prisoners were never going to go anywhere, he said. Nonetheless, the problem was quickly remedied.

LIBERAL SPILL

Arts Minister Don Harwin was in hot water again on Monday — quite literally.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian had been addressing Cabinet when, as our source put it, a “screech” was heard from where Harwin was sitting.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian was reportedly unimpressed …

… with Don Harwin’s Cabinet meeting coffee ruckus.

Ministers turned to see their well-dressed colleague wearing what had been a steaming cup of coffee over his beige chinos.

As Harwin went about cleaning up the spilt coffee, which had seeped through his Cabinet papers and on to his iPad, the Premier kept on with her address, although one source claimed she “did not look amused”.

“Nearly every Cabinet minister was trying hard to contain their laughter,” the source said.

After Cabinet was over, Harwin was overhead declaring he would have to go back to his hotel to change in to his jeans.

CASH SPLASH

With cash-strapped universities axing jobs, Labor has been quick to question the appropriateness of the federal government spending more than a half a million dollars on a new office and house for a senior diplomat in New Delhi.

Could it be to accommodate Brett Galt-Smith, who took up the role of Counsellor (Education and Research) for South Asia in December 2019?

The Department of Education, Skills and Employment (DESE) said the tender was for the renewal of existing accommodation leases for its staff.

The price of the three-year leases were based on an independent market rent assessment, it said.

“DESE staff in India are responsible for building our trade in education services, worth $6.1 billion in 2019,” it said.

Hmm, maybe not this year.

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Originally published as The Sauce: Political assassin Phuong Ngo flushed out flaws in Supermax