Husband of woman charged in Grace Hughes abduction a no show for Chief Minister civil suit

The husband of a woman charged over the alleged abduction of Darwin 5-year-old Grace Hughes was ‘manhandled’ at his ‘diplomatic immune embassy’ home, a court has heard.

THE husband of a woman charged over the alleged abduction of Darwin 5-year-old Grace Hughes was “manhandled” at his “diplomatic immune embassy” home, a court has heard.

Craig Oldroyd had challenged Health Minister Natasha Fyles’ extension of a state of emergency during the Covid pandemic in the Local Court, but was a no show when the case was due to be heard on Friday.

Instead, Mr Oldroyd was represented by Flinders University law student and “qualified floorman on an oil and gas rig”, John Quaremba, who said Mr Oldroyd had filed a police complaint after “alleged officers” had “taken some equipment”.

Mr Quaremba asked judge Ben O’Loughlin for a three week adjournment due to the “family emergency” after Mr Oldroyd’s sovereign citizen wife, Juliet Marie Oldroyd, faced the same court on Monday, charged with abducting Grace almost two weeks ago.

“All his brief of evidence (in the civil suit) has been taken from him, stolen,” he said.

Mr Quaremba said Mr Oldroyd was “one of the highest educated and qualified fire emergency engineers in this state”, who had also worked with him on oil rigs, which would form the basis of his case.

“Now, your honour, these are some of the most dangerous environments known to man, that we have to work in,” he said.

“When we have to make a flow chart or we have to have a system where we have to identify risk to employees — now that process is a highly trained process to know and understand when there is a risk, and when there is not a risk, in a certain situation.

“So the evidence that’s going to be produced by Mr Oldroyd going forward will be that there was no state of emergency and it will be proved that there was nothing under the sources through health and safety that would constitute a state of emergency with the facts that were at hand at the time.”

John Quaremba and Sam Majetic leave the Darwin Local Court on Friday.

Ms Fyles’ barrister, Greg O’Mahoney, said the material Mr Oldroyd had been unable to access “seems to be a notice of appeal with no grounds in it” as well as “a couple of sets of submissions and an affidavit”.

Mr O’Mahoney said he was happy to provide Mr Oldroyd with the documents immediately and that neither his lawsuit, nor a parallel case brought by Sam Majetic, “disclose what might be described as a cause of action”.

“Both of them are, in multiple respects, in the nature of being vexatious, scandalous or frivolous, such that to allow the proceedings in each instance to continue would constitute, in accordance with the rules, an abuse of process,” he said.

“We would respectfully submit that both of the appeals are laced with misconception, both legally and factually, and importantly for present purposes, they don’t identify any viable pathway to success — they have no prospect of succeeding.”

Mr Majetic said he didn’t “see how there can be a state of emergency” when the government had opened the Territory’s borders and allowed the Bass in the Grass music festival to go ahead.

“Everyone in this room would clearly agree that there was no need to extend that state of emergency if all the borders have been opened and you’re allowing people to go to festivals,” he said.

“Thousands of people gathering together, shoulder by shoulder, that just clearly indicates that there was nothing going on that requires such a decision to be made.”

Mr O’Loughlin reserved his ruling while allowing the parties more time to file any further submissions or evidence.