Queensland integrity watchdog’s role highlighted in Logan council corruption case inquiry

Queensland’s integrity watchdog considered asking the state’s local government minister to sack the administrator of Logan City Council.

Crime and Corruption Commission chairman Alan MacSporran. Picture: Liam Kidston

Queensland’s integrity watchdog considered asking the state’s local government minister to sack the administrator of Logan City Council after she refused to reappoint the former chief executive who had turned star witness in a corruption case.

The revelation was raised in evidence on Wednesday in an extraordinary day of testimony before the parliamentary inquiry into the Crime and Corruption Commission’s aborted prosecution of seven Logan councillors.

Three Queensland police officers seconded to the CCC during the Logan investigation gave evidence and defended accusations that the CCC had unlawfully used evidence and tried to intervene in an unfair dismissal hearing involving their star witness.

An email referred to by parliamentary crime and corruption chair Jon Krause during the hearing revealed that CCC officers had suggested CCC chairman Alan MacSporran should phone former local government minister Stirling Hinchliffe in 2019 to ask for the sacking of interim administrator Tamara O’Shea, who had been ­appointed after the charges led to the council’s disbandment.

It came shortly after Ms O’Shea refused to reappoint former Logan council chief executive Sharon Kelsey, who had been dismissed by the council in 2018 and was challenging the dismissal in a lengthy and expensive case before the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission.

Her reappointment would have meant her legal fees were covered under the council’s insurance policy.

In charging the councillors with fraud in 2019, the CCC had ­alleged the councillors voted to sack Ms Kelsey after she turned whistleblower against the mayor, Luke Smith. The charges were dropped in April.

Mr Krause described the CCC’s actions as “extraordinary”.

“You’d charge people with fraud, the council is dissolved and yet still the CCC was talking about ways it could have Ms Kelsey reinstated,” he said.

The inquest has also heard a CCC officer deemed an “intercepted” conversation between former Logan mayor Mr Smith and his lawyer was “not legally privileged” because it seemed like a conversation “between mates”.

A lawyer for the CCC later said the conversation was privileged but not before the CCC had attempted to have it and other coerced evidence handed to the council’s acting chief executive, Silvio Trinca.

Once in Mr Trinca’s possession, Ms Kelsey’s lawyers tried to have it entered into her private unfair dismissal case in the QIRC, where it had already been deemed inadmissable. The inquiry has also heard accusations the CCC considered charging some of the councillors separately to convince the others to “co-operate”.

Police officers have also denied trying to influence the QIRC decision when they set a deadline to charge Mr Smith and the other seven councillors before May 2, 2019 – the same day closing submissions were to begin in the ­unfair dismissal inquiry.

The QIRC ruled against Ms Kelsey in April. “We really need to pinch Smithy and a decent portion of the Fab7 prior to 2 May,” an email from a police officer said.

Counsel assisting the inquiry, Jonathan Horton, suggested that the importance of the date was to have the council disbanded under Palaszczuk Labor government legislation.

“The fact the council was gone would help Ms Kelsey in her QIRC hearing and her quest to be reinstated,” Mr Horton said.