NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian refuses to stand down Police Minister David Elliott over guns

Gladys Berejiklian refuses to stand down David Elliott over his handling of two prohibited firearms.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian says NSW Minister for Police acted in good faith. Picture: AAP

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian is refusing to stand down Police Minister David Elliott over his handling of two prohibited firearms without a permit, claiming that he is not the focus of a criminal inquiry examining breaches of the Firearms Act at a shooting range in 2018.

Ms Berejiklian is relying on the fact that Mr Elliott is not the focal point of the inquiry — but her comments jarred with those made by the NSW Police Commissioner on Tuesday when he said the criminal investigation would examine if the Minister had broken the law.

The Premier told a budget estimates hearing at NSW parliament that Mr Elliott was acting in “good faith” when he picked up and fired the two prohibited weapons at the Mark Simmons shooting range, operated by Corrective Services NSW, in northwestern Sydney.

CSNSW has already accepted responsibility for an “administrative error” with its licensing arrangements; on Tuesday the department issued an apology to Mr Elliott after The Australian revealed he had fired a Glock pistol and a Heckler & Koch submachine gun without a permit.

The offence of possessing or using a prohibited firearm carries a maximum punishment of 14 years’ imprisonment.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian.

Under questioning from Labor, Greens and Shooters MPs, Ms Berejiklian insisted that Mr Elliott had acted in good faith when he handled the weapons in September 2018, and that there was no reason to stand him aside from his portfolio.

“It’s not an investigation into the minister,” Ms Berejiklian said. “He has not been singled out. I refer you to the statement issued by Corrections… which offers an unequivocal apology to the minister, and I take from that statement a lack of compliance.”

The Premier’s answers jarred with those of NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller, who said two days earlier that the minister would be one of several focal points of the inquiry.

He said the public could feel confident of a thorough investigation that would leave “no stone unturned”, and that there would be no imbalance of power between the detective undertaking the inquiry and the Minister under investigation.

“It will be an experienced detective from State Crime Command, and there will be an assistant commissioner, a deputy commissioner and a commissioner in between that individual and the minister,” Mr Fuller said. “We’ve arrested and charged and had members of parliament put in jail before and police have survived all that.”

Ms Berejiklian sought to shield her minister from repeated allegations of wrongdoing during the hearing, ranging from potential breaches of the legislation to claims of poor judgment by merely handling the weapon. Like Mr Elliott, she reiterated that he was acting in “good faith” at the time and was given “every assurance” that he was acting in a compliant manner.

“If you do something with good intent, without assuming you have broken the law, that means you may be innocent,” she said. “If you’re given certain advice on the spot and you take that advice, you assume that the person giving you that advice has done all the checks and is compliant with the law.”

Ms Berejiklian has so far resisted calls from Labor, Greens and Shooters MPs for Mr Elliott to be stood aside over the matter, and shrugged off claims that she was protecting him because of his powerful influence as a figurehead of the Liberal Party’s centre-right faction. Standing him aside, it has been alleged, could destabilise her leadership among the rest of her party.

In November Mr Elliott was cleared of a separate police investigation into an alleged road rage incident involving a teenage driver, during which he was accused of impersonating a police officer. A review of that inquiry found there was a lack of sufficient evidence to progress the matter further.

A month later he was widely-criticised for flying overseas just as the bushfire crisis markedly increased in NSW. He returned home almost immediately to resume his duties as Emergency Services Minister.

Asked by Greens MP David Shoebridge whether factional power was a reason why Mr Elliott continued to survive in cabinet, Ms Berejiklian said: “If you think that that is any consideration, given what’s going on in NSW at the moment, I feel sorry for you.”