It’s been a rough few months for NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb. Much has been made of her on-camera performances to the press and decision-making in the aftermath of major criminal incidents in her jurisdiction.
Many would remember the death of a 95-year-old resident in a Cooma nursing home who was tasered by a cop last year. Webb took three days to appear in public and answer questions from reporters. Meanwhile, hapless underlings paid a lot less were ordered before the cameras to absorb the mortar fire.
Webb was judged even more harshly during a double-homicide investigation involving another police officer, the execrable Beau Lamarre-Condon, earlier this year. Once again, it took several days for Webb to hold a press conference. When it finally happened she flubbed her lines and made a clumsy statement that seemed to praise the suspect for leading police to the victims’ bodies. The remark appalled viewers and she expressed regret the next day.
In the midst of it all, the commissioner made an even more egregious error on morning television, outraging many with her attempt to shoo away the critics.
“There will always be haters. Isn’t that what Taylor [Swift] says?” You bet there was an apology for that one, too, and her media adviser was sacked soon after.
Premier Chris Minns is a committed backer of Webb and continues defending her publicly. This is what leaders periodically have to do for embattled commissioners. Dominic Perrottet backed in Mick Fuller over his ownership of racehorses and Mike Baird circled the wagons for Andrew Scipione over that godforsaken “bugging scandal” that nearly cannibalised the entire organisation.
But now we’re wondering if Webb might have come up with a clever way to turn a corner. Margin Call has spotted a significant adjustment to her close, personal retinue that’s gone unannounced and unnoticed and which involves the quiet departure of her long-serving chief of staff, Christine McDonald.
McDonald and Webb are very close friends and she has been staffing for the commissioner since 2019, when Webb was appointed an assistant commissioner in the Transport Command. When Webb was appointed deputy commissioner two years later, McDonald came along for the ride, and did so again in 2022 when Webb was appointed Big Cheese.
Staff officers are usually rewarded with plum gigs for their loyalty, and McDonald has clearly given much of her career to Webb. The greatest prize to be doled out is leadership of the Homicide Squad, or the Counter Terrorism Squad. McDonald, we note, was given the Burwood Police Area Command.
And who’s her replacement in the commissioner’s office? Webb has hand-picked Detective Chief Superintendent Mick Sheehy, a renowned investigator and solver of sensitive homicides.
He locked up Roger Rogerson and the crew that assassinated Michael McGurk, and a psychopath named Sef Gonzalez, who slew his parents and sister to claim the inheritance money. For the last seven years he’s either been managing or leading the Counter Terrorism command.
Recruiting a guy like Sheehy almost certainly draws a line under all of Webb’s missteps in the recent months, some of which had nothing to do with McDonald, to be fair, because she left the office in January (she wasn’t around for the Lamarre-Condon gaffes).
But more than anything, it sends a blast signal internally that could pacify the factions, the many haters – because it’s much harder to snipe at Webb when a guy with Sheehy’s credibility is giving orders.
According to a NSW Police spokeswoman, he started in Webb’s office on March 25, just in time to deal with last week’s mass-casualty event in Bondi Junction. And plainly there’s been significantly less criticism of the commissioner’s performance in the aftermath since.
Chester consults
Meanwhile, in other Karen news, ASIC’s former deputy chair Karen Chester has hung out a shingle for a consulting business.
Clearly she’s been busy looking for something to do since retiring from the corporate regulator in January. Chester joined the Consumer Action Law Centre in February and Lifeline Australia just weeks ago – both are volunteer positions, which leads us to assume the job market’s a bit tight at the moment.
Chester is among the few ASIC leaders who left without a role to walk into. Former commissioner Sean Hughes departed in February 2023 for a role at Vanguard. Former deputy chair Daniel Crennan had a job lined up at stockbroking firm EverBlu Capital (and we all know how that turned out). Then again, Cathie Armour bailed on ASIC midway through 2022 and it took her almost a year to find work on the boards of Cboe and Housing Australia.
But someone as high-profile as Chester? Gosh, we thought the corporate world would pounce on her all at once.
Stone set free
And it looks like the NSW Liberal Party has finally cut the umbilical cord from former state director Chris Stone, who retired last year but remained a listed director of the party’s group of companies. At least until recently.
Margin Call reported this month on an advisory business that Stone registered in January, and which was due to receive $5500 for services provided to the party. We couldn’t work out if he just needed the money or if the party was desperate for more of his insights and services.
Trouble is, Stone remained a director of the very management services company that’s used to pay the party’s suppliers. It’s called Bunori Pty Ltd and, while Stone was a director, paying himself, essentially, it looked to some like a perceivable conflict.
Thankfully this appears to be cleared up. The party’s state executive voted to finally replace Stone on the paperwork with his successor, Richard Shields, so he’s now a director of Bunori and two other entities – Liberal Properties and Liberal Asset Management.
Not that this frisson of activity had anything to do with our reporting, apparently. The party said the delay was down to the NSW Electoral Commission only accepting Shields’s appointment as state director in April, even though the paperwork had been filed in December. How convenient.
Meanwhile, we’re still waiting for the party’s latest financial report to confirm whether or not Stone is still being paid as a consultant.
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