Children’s Commissioner’s Colleen Gwynne’s lawyers seek police documents in abuse of office case

Lawyers for Children’s Commissioner Colleen Gwynne are applying for police documents to be handed to the defence ahead of a committal hearing later this year.

NT Children's Commissioner Colleen Gwynne outside of court.

THE requirement that Children’s Commissioner Colleen Gwynne’s conduct must “warrant criminal sanction” for an abuse of office charge to be made out against her will be the “elephant in the room” at her trial, a court has heard.

Ms Gwynne was charged with the offence in July last year after she allegedly intervened to try to hand a plum job in her office to a close personal friend.

The court has previously heard the allegation relates to Ms Gwynne’s decision to seek to appoint her friend, Laura Dewson, as Assistant Commissioner in 2018.

Her lawyer, Phillip Boulten SC, is now applying for police records relating to how the allegation came to be investigated by police to be handed over to the defence ahead of a committal hearing later this year.

On Monday, Mr Boulten told the Darwin Local Court the documents would shed light on to what extent Ms Gwynne’s conduct ought to have attracted the attention of the criminal law.

“The defence case is that Ms Gwynne acted properly and appropriately and that she did nothing that was contrary to the public interest,” he said.

“A jury though might wonder and in fact a jury will wonder ‘Well if what she did was OK or not sufficiently bad to be punished criminally, what’s she doing here? Why did the police charge her?

“That is an elephant in the room that the accused is going to have to deal with at trial.”

In response, counsel for the Police Commissioner, Jon Bortoli said the inference that the case must be significant because it had attracted the attention of the police “wouldn’t be proper reasoning of any jury”.

“Obviously with simply the laying of the charge there’s going to be some police involvement in the matter but that doesn’t, in my submission, get over identifying a legitimate forensic purpose for the production of documents relating to how the police became involved,” he said.

Judge Anthony Gett will not make a final ruling on whether the documents should be released to the defence before hearing further legal arguments next month.

Mr Gett, a Queensland magistrate, has been sworn in to hear the case after Chief Judge Elizabeth Morris said finding a local judge who did not know Ms Gwynne, a former police officer, could be challenging.

A five-day committal hearing originally scheduled for October 11 has now been postponed until December to allow Mr Boulten to meet quarantine requirements after travelling from Sydney.

Mr Boulten has sought to cross examine a number of witnesses at the hearing, including former NT Public Employment Commissioner Craig Allen.