Court Reporter

by Jamelle Wells

  Here are just a few:

  •The ICAC has recommended criminal charges for a teacher who defrauded a Sydney TAFE to build a dog kennel.

  •A prison guard has told the ICAC he smuggled drugs into a Sydney jail to help inmates mellow out.

  •A Sydney council employee contacted the ICAC after a developer gave him a Christmas card filled with cash.

  •A contractor has told the ICAC that a Sydney Water employee solicited bribes from him for ten years.

  •A Sydney council worker accused of taking bribes from contractors has told the ICAC he didn’t try to hide a boat — he just relocated it.

  •The ICAC heard one and a half million dollars in kickbacks given to council staff across New South Wales might just be ‘the tip of the iceberg’.

  •A business owner has told the ICAC he did not try to influence a Sydney Harbour foreshore executive with a free trip to the Middle East.

  •The ICAC has heard a student accused of defrauding Sydney hospitals of $700,000 leased a BMW.

  •The ICAC has heard allegations a student pretended to be a doctor to get bank loans for her investment properties.

  •The ICAC has heard a Willoughby council building inspector claimed overtime for long lunches and having sex in a brothel.

  •A former mine official has told the ICAC large amounts of cash he kept in his wardrobe were not kickbacks from contractors.

  •A New South Wales corruption inquiry has heard a licence assessor put lives at risk by falsely certifying ninety-one people to drive heavy vehicles.

  •The ICAC commissioner warned an inquiry into former Labor ministers that threats against a witness can incur a jail term.

  The pest

  One of the most dramatic days at the ICAC was on 4 April 2014 during an inquiry into how infrastructure company Australian Water Holdings won contracts. The man dubbed a ‘serial pest’, Peter Hore, snuck into the public gallery of the former ICAC building in Castlereagh Street unrecognised. Hore has disrupted public events that included the funeral of Michael Hutchence, parliament and major sporting events.

  During the proceedings he jumped up and ran towards the front of the room screaming at former Commissioner Megan Latham about a ‘second coming’ and his ‘housemate being murdered’. He also screamed out that ICAC court staff were assaulting him.

  ‘This is excellent,’ proclaimed Sydney Morning Herald investigative reporter Kate McClymont who was one of the first reporters to bolt from the media room into the public gallery with her iPad out writing it all down. The Sydney Morning Herald legal affairs reporter Michaela Whitbourne later told me she was genuinely afraid that day that it was some sort of terrorist attack. Six ICAC special officers had to restrain Peter Hore and he was charged with assault after one of them suffered a head injury.

  Commissioner Megan Latham adjourned the hearing for a break, saying staff were ‘traumatised’.2

  Hore was charged over the assault. When he faced Downing Centre Local Court he read a newspaper and muttered to himself. Outside court he told me he thought the ICAC was corrupt.3

  Ministers in the spotlight

  Between 2011 and 2014, I spent months covering a sensational series of public inquiries into former New South Wales Labor government ministers. One inquiry that I covered into infrastructure company Australian Water Holdings (AWH) also examined the behaviour of some former Liberal Party ministers.

  In April 2014 during the AWH inquiry, former Liberal premier Barry O’Farrell was forced to resign after having been caught lying about receiving a $3,000 bottle of Hermitage Grange from AWH executive and Liberal Party fundraiser Nick Di Girolamo. However, no corruption findings were made against Mr O’Farrell.4

  The inquiries I covered were into two lucrative New South Wales mine licences worth hundreds of millions of dollars, which were then cancelled by the state government after corruption findings were made by the ICAC.

  There were also inquiries into farm water licences, Circular Quay café leases, a car purchase by a former Labor minister, contracts for a health services company and a water infrastructure company, and bribes offered to a former government minister to set up business meetings with energy companies.

  On 31 July 2013 the ICAC recommended criminal charges be considered for former Labor ministers Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald after one of the mine licence inquiries. That day the director of ABC News, Gaven Morris — who was then head of news content — sent me the email that every journalist wants to receive. It was a thank you for what he described as ‘persistence, dedication and professionalism’ doing almost daily live television crosses and radio and online stories on one of the most important days in New South Wales political history. Gaven thanked me for being ‘the model of a multi-platform journalist’.

  To me, working across platforms for these ICAC inquiries was not hard because there was so much material to make use of. Our online team also put out a live Twitter feed with my stories and I was able to tweet information in real time from the ICAC media room. Some days also included crosses for the former 7.30 NSW presenter Quentin Dempster and into the 7 p.m. television bulletin with Juanita Phillips.

  Waiting for a witness outside the former ICAC building in Castlereagh Street during the Mount Penny mine licensing inquiry in February 2013.

  Looking back, it was an interesting time to be covering the ICAC, not only because of the subject matter but because the organisation was at the height of its power then, and flavour of the month with the public.

  ‘Are you sure you are not making this up?’ ABC News Breakfast presenter Michael Rowland joked one morning as we discussed the evidence.

  Wherever I went outside work, people wanted to talk about the inquiries. It was as if they couldn’t believe the allegations that were being made about politicians behaving so badly and they wanted every detail.

  There was a small self-proclaimed ICAC ‘club’ of reporters who went along every day during that block of hearings and we had our own seats staked out in the media room. We even got to know the faces of the window washers who abseiled up and down the building.

  As a guest on ABC television The Drum during one of the mine licence inquiries, I talked about the long queues for the public gallery on level seven of the ICAC building in Castlereagh Street and the almost party-like atmosphere upstairs on the level twenty-one hearing room where a few hundred people watched the hearing on a television screen.

  The level seven hearing room was purpose built for these inquiries to accommodate the large number of lawyers involved. Up until then, all the ICAC public hearings I had covered had been up on level twenty-one.

  I relayed to The Drum panel that night, how when I had asked two men in the level twenty-one public gallery why they were wearing stripy yellow hats with propellers on top, one replied quite seriously, ‘Just to get into the mood — it’s so much fun.’

  Fellow Drum panellist and newspaper writer Peter FitzSimons quipped, ‘Not for Ian Macdonald.’ MacDonald had been grilled in the witness box for a second day about allegations he had received kickbacks but denied any wrongdoing.5

  Outside the ICAC building, cars would honk their horns and people shouted out the windows as they passed the media pack in Castlereagh Street. The ABC crew was often vying for a space to set up, as reporters and crews from other networks did their live crosses from the footpath outside.

  The Mount Penny and Doyles Creek mine licence inquiries attracted the most public interest, with two public galleries at the ICAC full most days and punters often turned away. The Mount Penny coal exploration licence had been granted by former mining minister Ian Macdonald over land owned by the Obeid family in the Bylong Valley near Mudgee between 2007 and 2009.

  After the ICAC made corrupt conduct findings, criminal charges were laid against Ian Macdonald, Eddie Obeid and his son Moses Obeid in relation to the Mount Penny licence. They denied any wrongdoing.

  The Doyles Creek mine licence in the Hunter Valley was awarded by Ian Macdonald to a
company headed up by the former union official John Maitland and after corrupt conduct findings by the ICAC they were both charged in relation to it.

  Waiting in the queue to get in one morning, a woman asked me if any politicians would be in the witness box that day. When I said no she turned to her husband with great disappointment and said, ‘Let’s go over to David Jones then.’

  One day a box of white stickers arrived in the media room addressed to Sydney Morning Herald journalist Kate McClymont. The stickers had been made by some members of the general public and had ‘We Love ICAC’ in a red heart on them. Kate handed them around.

  There was raucous laughter in the public gallery when witnesses gave the very stern Commissioner David Ipp lame excuses for changing their evidence that included ‘I may have been improvising it’ or ‘I may have been at golf that day’. Phone taps and video footage provide many ‘gotcha moments’ at the ICAC and were usually crowd favourites, as was the highly articulate and sharp witted Counsel Assisting Geoffrey Watson SC . The inquiries were also like a culinary guide to Sydney because of all the evidence that mentioned restaurants where the politicians had done deals.

  Doing a News Channel studio cross in May 2013 on the ICAC inquiry into the Doyle’s Creek mine licence. Photo by Matt De Groot.

  Reporters in the media room were as shocked as the punters in the public gallery as the corruption allegations rolled out. At times we turned to each other to confirm the amounts of money the allegations were about.

  We were also dismayed at the rudeness of some of the key witnesses, such as Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald, towards Commissioner David Ipp and Deputy Commissioner Anthony Whealy. During many heated exchanges, David Ipp reminded Macdonald and Obeid several times that they were in an ICAC hearing room — not in parliament.

  Apart from the commissioner and counsel assisting opening addresses, evidence given at an ICAC inquiry can’t be broadcast live from the hearing room, so the challenge each day was to get pictures or audio of the witnesses as they came and left the building. Or to get them during the lunch break when they usually flocked to the Chinese restaurant in the nearby shopping arcade. Trying to film witnesses often involved staking out all entrances to the building and waiting for what often seemed liked forever for them to come out.

  I did one live-radio cross with ABC Newcastle’s Paul Bevan from the middle of a media pack waiting for Ian Macdonald to leave. While I was holding my mobile phone to my ear with one hand and the ABC microphone in the other, Macdonald walked straight past me, raised an eyebrow as he heard me say his name and kept striding down Castlereagh Street into a waiting taxi.

  Another day I saw Eddie Obeid sitting by himself in the level twenty-one hearing room watching a television showing the evidence that was being given by another witness in the inquiry room below on level seven. That was a day of reporter mishaps — I ran into a glass door and spent the rest of the day reporting with an ice pack on my eye. Meanwhile Telegraph reporter Janet Fife Yeoman escaped serious injury when an ICAC ceiling panel in the media room fell on her head.

  Interest in the inquiries went way beyond Sydney. Eating out at a Thai restaurant in Eden on the New South Wales far south coast one weekend with friends, I was surprised when a waitress approached me.

  ‘Are you Jamelle? Is ICAC on again next week?’ she asked.

  She had been watching the public inquiry unfold on the ABC News Channel and as the restaurant was closing up for the night the kitchen staff came out and started talking to us about it.

  Travelling on a train to the west of Sydney, I sat near a man who talked non-stop about the inquiries.

  ‘How did they get away with it all?’ he asked. ‘And where did all the money go?’

  ‘They haven’t been charged or found guilty of anything yet,’ I had to remind him.

  The queues often began to form at 8 a.m. and staff handed out numbers so people could get back into the hearing room after the lunch break, yet there were still daily scuffles and accusations of people pushing in.

  There was outrage when a man in a hat pushed to the front of the line for the level seven public gallery one morning with a tray of coffee, while another couple brought a picnic hamper and fold-up chairs to sit on while waiting to get in. There were farmers from the Hunter Valley, the regular court watchers and families on a day out. A man had come to the ICAC with friends to celebrate his sixtieth birthday and they cut a sponge cake for him in the shopping centre food court during the lunch break.

  A man in the public gallery with electrodes attached to the back of his head told me during a lunch break that he was involved in medical research at a nearby training clinic and often came down to have a look during a break. I longed to know what the research was and what the electrodes were for but I was too busy filing and when I looked for him at the end of the day, he was gone.

  Another man went to sleep one day in the public gallery, with his singlet rolled half way up exposing his stomach, and began to snore. We watched him on the television screen in the media room. He seemed very content.

  Bizarre and unexplained things happened during the mine licence inquiries such as lesser-known witnesses who ran from the building one day to avoid the media, then turned up the very next day sitting in the public gallery.

  There are also odd bits of evidence that stick in my mind, such as documents showing one witness owned a Porsche, a gun collection worth $100,000 and a hand-made mobile phone featuring a ring tone played by the London Symphony Orchestra.

  After the inquiries into former Labor ministers wrapped up, the ICAC held a public inquiry from mid 2014 into corrupt Liberal party donations before the 2011 state election. That inquiry — Operation Spicer — saw ten Liberal party members resign or move to the back bench.

  Showing how public favour can quickly turn, the ICAC then came under intense criticism in 2015 after high profile Deputy Senior Crown Prosecutor Margaret Cunneen successfully challenged its powers to investigate allegations she tried to pervert the course of justice by telling her son’s girlfriend to lie after a car crash. Cunneen’s challenge weaved its way all the way up to the High Court. That court, the most powerful in the country, found that the ICAC did not in fact have the jurisdiction to investigate the allegations under the ICAC Act. No action was taken against Margaret Cunneen over the allegations by the DPP and she returned to her job after temporarily standing down.

  Cunneen is a survivor. I interviewed her for Jane Hutcheon’s One Plus One program on the ABC News Channel in 2012. Cunneen has had to fight every step of the way in a male-dominated sector to progress in her career. She said there were times when she felt like telling the legal profession to ‘take their job and shove it’ — but she hung in there.6

  Around 2015 a lot was written about the ICAC ‘getting out of control’ with its high profile public inquiries. Much was also said about the small number of criminal prosecutions that had resulted from ICAC inquiries, despite the enormous amount of publicity they received.

  ICAC changed

  It was no surprise when major changes were made to the ICAC in late 2016, but I wondered at the time if it was because it had been too good at its job. The Baird Liberal government announced a radical overhaul of the ICAC that some say may have weakened it and will create more red tape around its future public inquiries. ICAC public inquiries now have three commissioners presiding over them instead of just one and under the new set-up, two commissioners need to agree before a public inquiry can be held. The effect this will have on the ICAC’s ability to do its job well and the volume of cases it will be able to investigate remains to be seen.

  After former Premier Mike Baird’s announcement of the changes, Commissioner Megan Latham, who was halfway through her five-year stint as ICAC Commissioner resigned. Who could blame her? Under the changes she would have had to reapply for her own job. Never before had an ICAC commissioner been treated that way. Megan Latham issued a statement accusing the premier of an ‘unprecedented attack’ on the
ICAC’s independence and effectiveness as a leading anti-corruption agency.7

  She had a point.

  Some even viewed the radical overhaul of the ICAC as revenge against Megan Latham’s 2014 inquiry into Liberal party political donations. Critics have speculated that the new panel of commissioners might not be game enough to investigate the Liberal party for any possible future corruption allegations given the treatment Megan Latham received. However, not long after the changes in December 2016 the importance of ICAC’s work was validated.

  Eddie Obeid was jailed after standing trial and being found guilty of corrupt conduct in public office by lobbying a public servant over café leases at Circular Quay without disclosing the Obeid family’s interest in them.

  It was a big moment in public life in New South Wales. It’s not often that our politicians go to jail. Eddie Obeid, then seventy-three, was sentenced to five years jail with a non-parole period of three years.8

  On 13 September 2017, he lost an appeal against his conviction and sentence in a unanimous decision by a five-judge panel in the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal. He appealed against his conviction and sentence on thirteen grounds, including criticism of a legal team he sacked and that the sentence was excessive. Obeid had argued there was a miscarriage of justice because the case was an issue for the New South Wales Parliament and should never have gone to trial.

  But Chief Justice Tom Bathurst said, ‘It is inconceivable that a politician of that standing and experience did not know that his duty was to serve the public interest and that he was not elected to use his position to advance his own or his family’s pecuniary interests.’9

  The long-running ICAC inquiries I covered also led to Ian Macdonald being charged with misconduct in public office and John Maitland, with aiding and abetting misconduct in public office over the Doyles Creek mine licence. In early 2017 they stood trial together in the Darlinghurst Court Complex and were found guilty by a jury.