Ex-ALP boss Jamie Clements found guilty of electoral roll misuse

Former NSW ALP boss Jamie Clements has been found guilty of unlawfully misusing electoral roll information.

Former NSW ALP boss Jamie Clements has been found guilty of unlawfully misusing electoral roll information that was later passed to disgraced union leader Derrick Belan.

Clements, convicted in Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court yesterday, faces a maximum $22,000 fine at a July sentencing hearing after magistrate Beverley Schurr did not accept he made an honest mistake.

“When I consider the position of Mr Clements as state secretary of a political party, and his polit­ical experience since 2003, I am satisfied ... his mistaken belief that the material he accessed was commonwealth material was not reasonable,” she said.

The Australian first reported in December 2015 allegations that Clem­ents had received a request earlier that year from Mr Belan to ­access protected home address and phone information from the NSW Electoral Commission about a NSW north coast man, Craig Wilson, and then passed on that information to Mr Belan.

Clements resigned as ALP general secretary in January last year over unrelated sexual harassment allegations involving the fiancee of then Labor head office colleague David Latham.

He was subsequently charged by police following an investi­gation into the electoral data allegations. Police said that on different occasions in mid-2015, he had asked Mr Latham and ­another staffer, Dom Offner, to access confidential electoral information about Mr Wilson so it could be given to Mr Belan.

The electoral roll information concerned is available to major political parties but only on the condition it is used for legitimate campaign purposes.

According to evidence from Mr Offner during Clements’s trial in March, Clements made a quick phone call after receiving the first piece of confidential electoral ­database inform­ation about Mr Wilson and said Mr Belan was “probably sending a bikie now”.

During the trial, Clements said he had intended to provide the information to Mr Belan but denied doing so. He said he believed he was using commonwealth electoral roll data that was permissible to access, not protected NSW electoral data.

Ms Schurr said yesterday that Clements had used Mr Wilson’s information “for a purpose that was not permitted, that is, taken from the database to give to a colleague for personal reasons”.

The magistrate also accepted Clements had passed Mr ­Wilson’s details to Mr Belan.

She was not satisfied Clements knew he was accessing NSW electoral material, and dismissed a charge alleging he’d improperly disclosed the information.

Additional reporting: AAP