Latest news with #DuralCaravanPlot
ABC News
12 hours ago
- Politics
- ABC News
Dural caravan inquiry committee explore arrest warrants for NSW staffers over failure to give evidence
Five New South Wales government staffers face possible arrest warrants after defying a summons and not appearing before an Upper House inquiry into the Sydney Dural caravan plot. The five staffers asked to be excused from Friday's hearing in a letter, after being summonsed to give evidence about what and when the state government knew about the plot, after the caravan was found laden with explosives in January amid a spate of antisemitic vandalism. The ABC understands the committee will go to the president of the Legislative Council Ben Franklin to ask if he could request arrest warrants in the NSW Supreme Court. NSW Premier Minns had flagged the staffers — some of who worked for him — would not give evidence on Thursday, calling the inquiry into what the state government did or did not know about the alleged plot a "star chamber". At the state parliament's Macquarie Room on Friday morning, committee members waited to see if the five staffers would turn up, with their empty chairs carefully labelled. Inquiry chair and independent MP Rod Roberts said he was disappointed the witnesses had not turned up, describing it as a "very serious matter" and saying further action will be considered. "I am disappointed in the government's continued efforts to hinder and frustrate the work of this committee and ultimately the role of the legislative council to scrutinise the actions of government." Mr Roberts concluded the hearing with a short statement about the intention behind the staffers being summonsed to appear. "This committee was established to determine whether members of parliament debated and passed hate speech and protest laws through parliament based on misleading or incomplete information." During the committee, Mr Roberts revealed a letter dated June 19 undersigned by staffers and asking to be excused from appearing was received on Thursday. In the letter, the staffers said their giving evidence before the select committee would "be at odds with the principles of ministerial accountability and comity between the House of Parliament". The letter also stated that a separate parliamentary inquiry could also consider the compulsion of ministerial staff to give evidence, suggesting it infringed parliamentary privileged "or otherwise offends principles of our Westminster system of government". The letter ends with the request to be excused from the hearing. Mr Roberts told the hearing he objected to the arguments made in the letter. "It is a fundamental role of the Upper House to hold the government of the day to account." Before concluding the hearing, Mr Roberts said the witnesses scheduled to appear had failed to comply with the summons. The committee is believed to be considering its next step.
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Chris Minns blasts inquiry into Dural caravan plot as a 'giant conspiracy' as senior staffers are hit with arrest threat
NSW Premier Chris Minns has fiercely rebuffed calls for three of his senior staffers to appear before a parliamentary inquiry into the Dural caravan plot. Independent Upper House MP and inquiry chair, Rod Roberts, will on Tuesday sign summonses urging Mr Minns' chief of staff James Cullen and his two deputies – Sarah Michael and Edward Ovadia - to give evidence, the Daily Telegraph reports. Should they refuse, the Upper House could instruct its president, Ben Franklin, to request that a Supreme Court judge issue arrest warrants. But the premier made it clear he and his staffers would not cooperate, dismissing the inquiry as nothing more than a partisan attack. 'This is a giant conspiracy being pushed by the Opposition, Greens, and Independents,' Minns told 2GB radio on Tuesday. 'It's a conspiracy based on the false claim that we knew everything from the beginning and used it to push through laws to counter antisemitism.' In February, NSW introduced tougher hate speech laws following a series of antisemitic incidents across Sydney. One of the main triggers was a reported terror plot involving antisemitic threats and a caravan in Dural, a claim that was later revealed to be a hoax. Roberts said the inquiry would examine whether parliament was 'morally bullied' into passing the laws without knowing the full facts. The showdown follows refusals by both Minns and NSW Police Minister Yasmin Catley to appear before the inquiry. However, under parliamentary rules, Upper House inquiries cannot compel Lower House members such as Minns and Catley, to testify. Minns said Opposition and crossbench MPs had had opportunities to question him about the caravan plot during Question Time and biannual Upper House estimates. The premier said that claims he knew about the circumstances of the Dural caravan being a hoax from the very beginning were not true. He also denied claims that the incident was used to push through the anti-vilification laws passed earlier this year. 'My sense is that Mr Roberts made this outlandish conspiracy claim early on, and is trying to find some back fill evidence to justify it, and there is none there,' he said. Daily Mail Australia has contacted Roberts for comment. NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman told this publication that the inquiry was simply trying to get to the bottom of what happened. 'This isn't about targeting staff but getting to the truth,' he said in a statement. 'If the Premier and Police Minister won't front up, the committee has a duty to ask those who might know the facts, as the former opposition have done when we were in government. 'Staffers aren't the decision makers, but they might hold key evidence. The Jewish community deserves answers and NSW deserves a government that's honest and accountable.' Liberterian MP John Ruddick, who is a member of the inquiry, told Daily Mail Australia that the cross party group was holding the government accountable. 'The modus operandi of governments is to whip up fear and then rush in more laws to curb freedom so they appear to have done something,' he said. 'This needed to be reviewed by the parliament because if we just swept this under the carpet they'll do it again. 'There must be accountability and the inquiry is doing just that.' In 2023, the NSW Upper House invoked the Parliamentary Evidence Act in an attempt to compel the brothers of then Premier Dominic Perrottet to give evidence to an inquiry regarding the Hills Shire Council, a move then backed by the Labor Party.
News.com.au
22-05-2025
- Politics
- News.com.au
Sydney Dural caravan-anti hate inquiry to be referred to NSW parliamentary ethics committee
The NSW government will refer an inquiry into the relationship between the Dural caravan terror plot hoax and debate on controversial new anti-hate laws to an ethics committee amid fears parliamentary privilege could be infringed. Emails tendered during the second hearing of the NSW Legislative Council inquiry on Thursday reveal NSW Premier Chris Minns wrote to Legislative Assembly Speaker Greg Piper on May 15 with concerns about the inquiry's terms of reference. Mr Minns expressed concerns that the parliamentary privilege of the Legislative Assembly, where he spoke about the caravan on March 18, might be infringed as well as the 'observance of comity' between the two houses. Mr Minns said the state government would introduce a motion 'at the earliest available opportunity' to refer the select committee's terms of reference to the Standing Committee on Parliamentary Privilege and Ethics for inquiry. The revelations come after leading figures behind the scenes at the Premier's office and at the Legislative Council appeared before the inquiry to give evidence, including in relation to the earliest briefings Mr Minns received from police about the caravan. The discovery of the explosive-laden caravan at Dural in Sydney's northwest was made public after it was leaked to the media on January 29, having been found earlier on January 19 by police, who Mr Minns later said had stopped 'a potential mass casualty event'. It wasn't until March that the Australian Federal Police, working with NSW Police, revealed that it now alleged that the caravan, which included a note referencing Sydney Great Synagogue, was instead part of an elaborate criminal con job. That revelation came after the NSW parliament passed a suite of new anti-hate and anti-protest laws in February that outlawed most protests outside places of worship among other measures and critics claimed were rammed through. The inquiry was subsequently set up to investigate the relationship between the caravan and the proposed laws, including what Mr Minns and Police Minister Yasmin Catley knew and when and any reference to the van in briefings for the proposed laws. The inquiry will also examine any statements made during debate of the proposed laws by members of the executive government, as well as the provision of information to parliament and the impact of any decision to withhold or release information. Mr Piper wrote back to Mr Minns on May 16, noting that the motion would not be heard before Thursday's inquiry and it would be 'inappropriate' for the Assembly to accede requests from the Council for the witnesses to appear at the hearing. That was 'without the House first having the opportunity to consider any implications for exclusive cognisance and other rights and privileges of the Legislative Assembly, arising from the notice of the motion of referral' to the ethics panel. Informed of the correspondence, Legislative Council General Counsel deputy secretary Matt Richards wrote to the inquiry's chair, independent MLC Rod Roberts, on May 19 to say that the witnesses from the government would not be attending. 'In light of the Speaker's concerns, staff of the Premier's Department and The Cabinet Office would prefer that their appearance before the Committee be postponed until after these serious issues have been resolved by the parliament,' Mr Richards said. 'Accordingly, staff of the Premier's Department and The Cabinet Office do not propose to attend the hearing on May 22, 2025. 'On behalf of these staff, I respectfully request that the Committee refrain from pressing the invitation for them to appear before the Committee until there has been time for the matters referred to in the Speaker's letter to be addressed.' Ultimately, Premier's Department secretary Simon Draper and deputy secretary Kate Meagher and The Cabinet Office secretary Kate Boyd did appear before the committee, with Nationals MLC Wes Fang tabling the email exchange. Of the email from Mr Richards, Ms Boyd told the inquiry: 'I don't think we were seeking not to appear. 'I think the letter makes clear that we were happy to postpone or delay our appearance pending the resolution of these serious matters between the houses, so I think that's how I would paraphrase it.'
