Chris Minns’ staffers to appear at caravan ‘terror plot’ inquiry after arrest threat
The staffers agreed to appear at the caravan ‘terror plot’ inquiry after being threatened with arrest, but the Premier has hit out at the ‘kangaroo court’.
NSW Premier Chris Minns has accused an upper house committee of “massive overreach” after it forced five senior government staffers to agree to appear before it under threat of arrest.
The staffers agreed to give evidence at the inquiry into the Dural caravan “terror” plot after Legislative Council president Ben Franklin told them he intended to seek arrest warrants in the Supreme Court, after seeking legal advice from top silk Bret Walker SC.
Mr Minns’ chief of staff James Cullen, deputy COS Edward Ovadia and senior adviser Sarah Michael, along with Yasmin Catley’s COS Ross Neilson and deputy COS Tilly South, who had last week refused to give evidence, will now appear on Friday morning.
Mr Minns and Police Minister Yasmin Catley have declined to appear before the committee because they are lower house MPs and cannot be compelled to front the upper house, leading inquiry chair Rod Roberts to order the appearance of their staffers under the Parliamentary Evidence Act.
On Wednesday Mr Minns described the committee as “star chamber” and said it was acting in a punitive way against the staffers in order to coerce him into appearing before it.
“I think that the very troubling information that staff would be arrested and held, potentially overnight in police custody is a massive overreach, and obviously, staff have to make their own minds up about these decisions,” Mr Minns said.
“It’s a troubling precedent for New South Wales, and I think that members of the committee are unleashing the extraordinary powers of the police and the courts and the judiciary in the service of a star chamber, in the service of what would be close to a kangaroo court.
“ That’s a breach or a step that no one has taken in the parliament’s history, and there’s a very good reason for that.”
The premier cited repeated calls by committee chairman Mr Roberts to introduce tougher hate speech laws after it had become clear that existing legislation was not allowing police to lay charges against clerics advocating for the death of Jews.
The staffers told Mr Roberts in a letter last week they would not appear before the inquiry, saying they were being hauled in as “proxies” for their bosses and were concerned the upper house was breaching parliamentary privilege in digging through the deliberations of the lower house.
While failing to give evidence to a parliamentary inquiry is an offence punishable by imprisonment in NSW, the laws remain untested.
When the hate speech laws – restricting hateful rhetoric and protest assembly – were first passed in February, news had broken less than a month before of a caravan found in Dural loaded with mining explosives alongside a note listing Synagogues to be targeted.
Police later revealed the incident was a bid by an organised crime figure to gain leverage for himself. The mastermind of the “hoax”, fugitive Sayet Akca, has been revealed to be an extreme anti-Semite who was also the alleged paymaster behind some of the arson and graffiti attacks that left Sydney’s Jewish community terrified throughout summer.
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