Latest news with #publicInquiry
News.com.au
12 hours ago
- Politics
- News.com.au
Disgraced former MP Maguire guilty of lying to ICAC probe
Former MP Daryl Maguire is facing the prospect of being jailed after he was found guilty of giving misleading evidence to ICAC. Maguire, 66, fronted a Sydney court on Friday where he was found guilty by a magistrate of one count of giving false or misleading evidence at a public inquiry. Maguire, who was the MP for Wagga Wagga from 1999 to 2018, faced a hearing in the Downing Centre Local Court earlier this year where he pleaded not guilty to the lone count. The case centred on Maguire's evidence before the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in July 2018. During the ICAC probe, he denied asking to receive a financial benefit for brokering a property deal at Canterbury. However, recorded phone conversations led him to admit he had asked for a slice of the profits if the multimillion-dollar deal with a Chinese developer was finalised. Maguire had argued that he had not given misleading evidence and he answered questions to the best of his ability. Magistrate Clare Farnan on Friday handed down her judgment, finding him guilty of one count of giving false or misleading evidence at a public inquiry. Maguire faces a maximum penalty of two years in jail. The magistrate also rejected an application by Maguire's legal team on Friday afternoon for a non-publication order which would have kept the verdict under wraps. Maguire's lawyers applied for the non-publication order to protect against the possible prejudice to a jury ahead of a separate upcoming trial. Maguire is also fighting allegations relating to an alleged visa and migration fraud. He has pleaded not guilty to one count of conspiracy and is due to face a District Court trial later this year. Confusion reigned at the Downing Centre John Maddison Tower court complex on Friday. Maguire was listed in one courtroom and when his legal team and the prosecution arrived at court, they were told that the matter had to be adjourned until October. Maguire and his lawyers then left the court complex. However, they were later called back to another court where Ms Farnan handed down her judgment. The court was told that there was confusion because the Downing Centre court complex has been closed for four weeks due to damage to electrical infrastructure after the basement was flooded earlier this week, which has thrown thousands of legal matters into turmoil. Maguire returns to court in August. The former Wagga Wagga MP resigned from the NSW parliament in 2018 after ICAC launched a separate investigation into his conduct while in office. The inquiry revealed he had been in a secret five-year 'close personal relationship' with ex-Premier Gladys Berejiklian. She resigned from her position in September 2021 after ICAC announced it would investigate whether she breached the ministerial code of conduct. The commission found in July 2023 that both Maguire and Ms Berejiklian engaged in serious corrupt conduct.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Is Kemi Badenoch's grooming gangs outrage just politics or does she really care?
Here's a rule I tend to apply across the board in Westminster: If a politician is talking, politics is probably taking place. Add into that, if the topic of debate is especially grave or serious, be more prepared to apply the rule, not less. Which brings us to . There is no doubt Tory leader Kemi Badenoch was politicising the issue when she ripped into the government in the Commons on Monday. In fact, she admitted as much. Asked about it during her news conference, she said: "When I'm in the Commons, I will do politics. If every time we are pointing things out and doing our job we are accused of politicising something, it makes it a lot harder." So the question here is less about whether politics is at play (it almost always is and that's not necessarily a bad thing), and more about whose interests the politics is working towards. In other words, does Ms Badenoch care about the grooming scandal because she cares about victims or because she cares about herself? To answer that, it's useful to try and pinpoint exactly when the Tory leader started showing such a keen desire for a public inquiry. Was she always harbouring it? Or did it only arrive after Elon Musk and others pushed the scandal back up the news agenda? On this, she's not helped by the record of the governments she served in. Yes, the broader child abuse inquiry was announced under David Cameron, but there was no specific statutory grooming inquiry. As late as 2022, the then Tory safeguarding minister was batting away demands for a public inquiry on the basis that locally-led probes were preferable. That is - as it happens - the same explanation the current Labour safeguarding minister Jess Phillips offered to Oldham Council in the rejection letter that sparked outrage and set us on a path to this eventual outcome. Read more: "If we'd got this right years ago then I doubt we'd be in this place now," wrote Baroness Casey in her audit. If Labour can be attacked for acting too slowly, the Tories - and by extension Ms Badenoch - can be too. In response, her aides insist she was bound by collective responsibility while she was a minister, and that the issue was outside her brief. Ms Badenoch also points to her work with patients of the now closed Tavistock Gender Identity Clinic as evidence of her track record campaigning for change in thorny policy areas. In this context, the presence in the grooming scandal of questions around the role of gender and ethnicity mark this as an issue that you'd expect the Tory leader to not only be interested in, but to genuinely care about too. But as previously discussed, just because a politician is somewhat sincere in what they are saying, doesn't mean there isn't a dollop of politics mixed in too. And having dug out a recording of a post-PMQs briefing with Ms Badenoch's media adviser from January, that certainly seems to be the case here. Asked what had changed to trigger the calls for an inquiry, the spokesperson said: "We can all go back and look at the reasons why this entered the popular discourse. This is something that is of high public salience." Or to put it another way, the politics changed.
Sky News
2 days ago
- Politics
- Sky News
Is Kemi Badenoch's grooming gangs outrage just politics or does she really care?
Here's a rule I tend to apply across the board in Westminster: If a politician is talking, politics is probably taking place. Add into that, if the topic of debate is especially grave or serious, be more prepared to apply the rule, not less. Which brings us to the grooming scandal. There is no doubt Tory leader Kemi Badenoch was politicising the issue when she ripped into the government in the Commons on Monday. In fact, she admitted as much. Asked about it during her news conference, she said: "When I'm in the Commons, I will do politics. If every time we are pointing things out and doing our job we are accused of politicising something, it makes it a lot harder." So the question here is less about whether politics is at play (it almost always is and that's not necessarily a bad thing), and more about whose interests the politics is working towards. In other words, does Ms Badenoch care about the grooming scandal because she cares about victims or because she cares about herself? 1:03 To answer that, it's useful to try and pinpoint exactly when the Tory leader started showing such a keen desire for a public inquiry. Was she always harbouring it? Or did it only arrive after Elon Musk and others pushed the scandal back up the news agenda? On this, she's not helped by the record of the governments she served in. Yes, the broader child abuse inquiry was announced under David Cameron, but there was no specific statutory grooming inquiry. As late as 2022, the then Tory safeguarding minister was batting away demands for a public inquiry on the basis that locally-led probes were preferable. That is - as it happens - the same explanation the current Labour safeguarding minister Jess Phillips offered to Oldham Council in the rejection letter that sparked outrage and set us on a path to this eventual outcome. 1:56 "If we'd got this right years ago then I doubt we'd be in this place now," wrote Baroness Casey in her audit. If Labour can be attacked for acting too slowly, the Tories - and by extension Ms Badenoch - can be too. In response, her aides insist she was bound by collective responsibility while she was a minister, and that the issue was outside her brief. Ms Badenoch also points to her work with patients of the now closed Tavistock Gender Identity Clinic as evidence of her track record campaigning for change in thorny policy areas. In this context, the presence in the grooming scandal of questions around the role of gender and ethnicity mark this as an issue that you'd expect the Tory leader to not only be interested in, but to genuinely care about too. But as previously discussed, just because a politician is somewhat sincere in what they are saying, doesn't mean there isn't a dollop of politics mixed in too. And having dug out a recording of a post-PMQs briefing with Ms Badenoch's media adviser from January, that certainly seems to be the case here. Asked what had changed to trigger the calls for an inquiry, the spokesperson said: "We can all go back and look at the reasons why this entered the popular discourse. This is something that is of high public salience." Or to put it another way, the politics changed.
Daily Mail
4 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Will the sick cowards who covered up the rape gang scandal ever be punished? Don't hold your breath
Another day, as the well-known phrase or saying goes, another public inquiry. This time into the rape gangs, which Surkeir has been dodging up until now on the risible grounds that the unvarnished truth will lead to a 'far-Right' backlash. This one is long overdue and, for once, welcome. Let's hope that it throws a retina-scorching searchlight on those responsible. Not just the vile Stone Age sexual predators, but the evil politicians, social workers and police who deliberately turned a blind eye to the industrial-scale abuse of young white girls because they were terrified of being accused of 'racism' and 'Islamophobia'.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Grooming gangs in UK thrived in ‘culture of ignorance', Casey report says
A culture of 'blindness, ignorance and prejudice' led to repeated failures over decades to properly investigate cases in which children were abused by grooming gangs, a report has said. As the government announced a public inquiry into the scandal, Louise Casey said for too long the authorities had shied away from the ethnicity of the people involved, adding it was 'not racist to examine the ethnicity of the offenders'. Lady Casey said she found evidence of 'over-representation' of Asian and Pakistani heritage men among suspects in local data – collected in Greater Manchester, West and South Yorkshire – and criticised a continued failure to gather robust data at a national level. The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, confirmed the government would accept all 12 recommendations of Casey's rapid review, including setting up a statutory inquiry into institutional failures. This marked a significant reversal after months of pressure on Labour to act. 'While much more robust national data is needed, we cannot and must not shy away from these findings, because, as Baroness Casey says, ignoring the issues, not examining and exposing them to the light, allows the criminality and depravity of a minority of men to be used to marginalise whole communities,' Cooper said. The number of cold cases to be reviewed again over child sexual abuse by grooming gangs is expected to rise to more than 1,000 in the coming weeks, she told the Commons. Adult abusers targeted children, mainly girls, as young as 10, some of whom were in care, had physical or mental disabilities, or who had already suffered neglect or abuse. According to Casey, the ethnicity of grooming gangs has been 'shied away from' by authorities, allowing the continued abuse of hundreds of vulnerable girls, many of whom are now demanding justice. Casey said there should be 'a vigorous approach to righting the wrongs of the past' and state agencies should be held to account for any part they played in allowing these crimes to go undetected and unpunished. 'Blindness, ignorance, prejudice, defensiveness and even good but misdirected intentions, all play a part in a collective failure to properly deter and prosecute offenders or to protect children from harm,' she said. In the report, Casey said: 'We as a society owe these women a debt. They should never have been allowed to have suffered the appalling abuse and violence they went through as children.' On the question of ethnicity, it said: 'We found that the ethnicity of perpetrators is shied away from and is still not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators, so we are unable to provide any accurate assessment from the nationally collected data.' However, it added that at a local level for three police forces – Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire – there was enough evidence to show a 'disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds amongst suspects for group-based child sexual exploitation'. Asked if she was worried recording the data could lead to civil unrest, the peer told the Guardian at a press conference: 'So let's put it the other way around. If for a minute you had another report that ducked the issue, what do you think is going to happen? Do you think they're not going to use that as well?' She added: 'If good people don't grip difficult issues, in my experience bad people do.' Casey also looked at about a dozen live investigations and found that 'a significant proportion appear to involve suspects who are non-UK nationals', some of whom were claiming asylum in the UK. Casey's recommendations, which have been accepted in full, call for: Five existing local inquiries into grooming gangs to be coordinated by an independent commission which has full statutory inquiry powers. The collection of ethnicity and nationality data for all suspects in child sexual abuse and criminal exploitation cases to be made mandatory. The law to be tightened to ensure there is no exception to those who sexually penetrate a child under 16 being charged with rape. Casey said she believed the public would be horrified to realise this was not the case already. Research into the drivers for group-based child sexual exploitation, including the role of social media, cultural factors and group dynamics. Every local police force in England and Wales to review records to identify cases of child sexual exploitation that have not been acted upon, including a review of cases that have been reported but which have not resulted in prosecutions over the last 10 years. Convictions of the young victims, many of whom say they still face appalling discrimination, should be quashed. Casey cited police figures from the 1990s which found almost 4,000 police cautions were given to children aged between 10 and 18 for offences relating to prostitution. It took until 2015 for the term 'child prostitution' to be dropped and replaced with the term 'child sexual exploitation', when the legislation was changed in the Serious Crime Act. She said that victims had regularly been retraumatised over the years from the shame of their convictions and the anger and at not being believed or living alongside their perpetrators. 'Sometimes they have criminal convictions for actions they took while under coercion,' Casey said. 'They have to live with fear and the constant shadow over them of an injustice which has never been righted – the shame of not being believed.' The report detailed how 'group-based child sexual exploitation' is a 'sanitised' way of talking about multiple sexual assaults against children by multiple men, including beatings and gang rapes. Reacting to the report, the children's commissioner for England, Rachel de Souza, said that girls were failed in this scandal 'a source of national shame'. 'This inquiry must be a wake-up call for how we respond to vulnerable children, especially violence against girls,' she said. 'We cannot be more afraid of causing offence than we are of speaking out to protect children from exploitation and corruption.' The Home Office said a nationwide policing operation to bring grooming gang members to justice will be led by the National Crime Agency (NCA). Police have reopened more than 800 cases of child sexual abuse since the home secretary asked them to review cases in January.
