Release of files 'huge mistake'

THE acting chair and legal counsel of the CMC last year approved the release of highly sensitive Fitzgerald inquiry files.

THE acting chair and legal counsel of the Crime and Misconduct Commission last year approved the release of highly sensitive Fitzgerald inquiry files, despite no one in the watchdog inspecting the contents of the documents that named informants, detailed surveillance operations and aired untested allegations against prominent Queenslanders.

CMC director of information management Peter Duell yesterday told a parliamentary inquiry that when the documents were reclassified, after a series of requests from journalists and authors, he believed the watchdog was simply ridding itself of a "bureaucratic headache" in having to deal with individual applications to access documents he believed had already been made public.

Under a grilling at the hearings, Mr Duell said the release of the explosive documents had been a "huge mistake" after conceding he had not physically inspected the files.

But Mr Duell said the ultimate decision to effectively lift a 65-year embargo on the documents, from the date of the 1989 release of the Fitzgerald inquiry report, had been done in consort with the CMC's now acting chairman Warren Strange and general legal counsel Rob Hutchins.

The January 2012 agreement that paved the way for the files to be made public immediately was not recorded in any paperwork and was based on a three-page report by the CMC's record manager Suzanne Sweeper, a qualified librarian, who also did not audit the material.

The revelations will now put pressure on Mr Strange, who took over as acting CMC chairman last Friday after barrister Ross Martin SC stepped down, citing ill health.

Mr Duell said the decision to release the documents was made before Mr Martin joined the CMC, but that the watchdog's boss had been made aware of a complaint from former Queensland policeman Barry Krosch in May last year that sensitive documents had been made public.

After the complaint, Mr Duell said he ordered that 14 of the 17 files -- containing thousands of documents -- be retrieved from the public domain.

But the remaining three files -- which again, Mr Duell did not inspect -- still held explosive allegations that, the hearing heard, involved a prominent Queensland business identity and a then sitting judge.

"I told him we were changing all of the sensitive material back," Mr Duell told the hearing.

Mr Duell said Mr Martin had asked a CMC solicitor to review the process of transferring documents to the State Archives and had expressed his opinion that the documents should have remained at the watchdog's headquarters.