Children’s Commissioner ‘gave close friend plum job’, court hears

UPDATED: The details of an alleged abuse of office by Children’s Commissioner Colleen Gwynne have been aired in court for the first time.

CHILDREN’S Commissioner Colleen Gwynne allegedly intervened to try to hand a plum job in her office to a close personal friend, a court has heard.

Gwynne is facing a charge of abuse of office and on Monday her lawyer, Phillip Boulten SC, told the Darwin Local Court the allegation related to his client’s decision to seek to appoint her friend, Laura Dewson, as Assistant Commissioner in 2018.

Mr Boulten said Ms Dewson, a former NT Police human resources manager, had been acting in the role when it was advertised and put in an application after Gwynne wrote her a reference.

He said Gwynne did not sit on the selection panel which subsequently found her friend was suitable for the position, along with an external candidate, who they ultimately recommended for the job.

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Mr Boulten said Gwynne disagreed with the decision and “sought advice about what could be done, if anything, about this”, including from the head of human resources at the Attorney-General’s department.

He said she was advised she was entitled to make the appointment herself but the matter was later referred to the former Public Interest Disclosures Commission and then on to police.

“This is the Northern Territory, there are a very small number of people who are able and available for any particular role,” he said.

“People know each other very well, in all sorts of contexts and the fact that they’ve had professional and some personal contact would not be an unusual feature of employment in the NT public service.

“It is very common for people to go for jobs where the person deciding the position has known them for a long time, including going to their house for dinner on occasion etc.”

But Mr Boulten said all that happened before the legislation creating the offence Gwynne was charged with came into force and any alleged crime had to have occurred after that date.

He said Ms Dewson never took up her role and a new selection panel convened in 2019 nominated another woman who had previously acted as Assistant Commissioner as the preferred candidate.

Mr Boulten said Gwynne had “voiced disapproval” at the second panel’s pick “and that must be at the heart of the crime that she is said to have committed”.

But prosecutor Victoria Engel said the women’s “longstanding and very close relationship” amounted to a clear and undisclosed conflict of interest and Gwynne should have had no role in appointing her friend.

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“If somebody appoints a person that they genuinely believe is the best person for the role but their judgment is clouded by a clear conflict of interest, an undeclared conflict of interest, the very reason they should not be in a position to make that decision is because of the conflict of interest,” she said.

Judge Anthony Gett reserved his decision on which witnesses would be made available for cross examination by Mr Boulten when the case returns to court for a committal hearing later in the year.

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