Senator McKIERNAN(7.47 p.m.) —Tonight I will address some remarks on an article that appeared in the West Australian newspaper on Friday last, 22 November. Also I will relate those remarks to some others I made in this place in September of this year regarding the Royal Commission into the City of Wanneroo which is proceeding in Western Australia right now.

The article in the West Australian is entitled `Davis criticises MHR'. It starts:

Wanneroo royal commissioner Roger Davis has accused Labor MHR Stephen Smith of acting irresponsibly by using parliamentary privilege to reveal Mr Davis had suppressed evidence by accountant Laurie Fowler and then ordered that no reference be made to the suppression.

Mr Davis is quoted as saying:

I am not of course able to identify the reasons which applied in the case of Mr Fowler without even further undermining the confidentiality I was seeking to enforce.

The article also states:

In his speech to the House on Monday, Mr Smith said the commission's decision raised very grave concerns for people interested in accountability. Mr Smith described Mr Davis' act of suppressing the suppression order as a "double banger"—and it is also a tongue twister.

One can understand why Mr Davis would not want to identify all his reasons for having taken the very unusual step of suppressing the fact that there had been a suppression order. But one would hope that his reasons for issuing that double-banger suppression order are not related to the state election which is under way in Western Australia now. One would hope also that Mr Davis is not protecting Premier Richard Court's chief political adviser, Richard Elliott. One would hope, indeed, that that is not the case.

It is important to draw a distinction between what is happening in this particular matter with the suppression of Mr Fowler's evidence as opposed to what happened in the commission recently to the suppression of evidence given by the previous commissioner into Wanneroo, Mr Peter Kyle, and the again quite extraordinary actions by the commissioner in lifting that suppression order on the evidence given by Mr Kyle. Again, one would hope sincerely that Mr Davis has not been influenced by fact that there is an election going on in the state of Western Australia at this time and, indeed, by the fact that Mr Kyle happens to be a candidate in that election.

In the speech I gave some months ago, to which I have referred, I mentioned that Mr Kyle had previously criticised police in Western Australia for going soft on corruption, for not vigorously investigating politicians and for refusing to hand over documents necessary to his inquiry—and this was reported in the West Australian on 11 April 1996. Mr Kyle also had earlier stated in the West Australian newspaper on 17 February that `some of the same police figures alleged to be involved in the Argyle diamonds disappearance also were involved in Wanneroo' and that `people in the drug trade had connections with Wanneroo'.

This royal commission we have proceeding in Western Australia is truly extraordinary and it continues to be extraordinary. Not only are there the matters I have referred to tonight but there are also the actions of the commission and the effects of the commission to date which are of grave concern to the good citizens of Western Australia. One of the casualties of the commission so far has been the intelligence unit of the Ministry for Justice which is involved in the gathering of information about one David King. David King was convicted of corruption and gaoled, and some of his evidence was given to the commission.

Mr King was subject to an axe job by the counsel assisting the commission. But of greater concern was that it was said that her attacks had serious implications for the fight against crime and corruption generally because all law enforcement agencies at both state and federal level depend on the information flow. Miss Narelle Johnson was critical of the ministry's intelligence unit.

The officer in charge of certain investigations before the commission, Detective McLeod, told the commission that the Police Bureau of Criminal Intelligence had been informed of an association between convicted former mayor of Wanneroo Bradshaw and convicted drug runner Allan Harriman, what had been done about this and about the contacts between Bradshaw and well-known criminal John Kizon.

The Royal Commissioner, Mr Davis, has decided not to require Harriman to give evidence because his information is outside the terms of reference. It seems to me that terms of reference can be particularly fluid from time to time as, indeed, it would appear that the use of suppression orders have been fluid from time to time, depending on who they are going to impact upon. But the matter of the intelligence unit and the impact of the commission on it is of importance. Previously it was staffed by eight people; it is now only going to be staffed by five people. Its name, of course, is also going to be changed. It is going to be called just the intelligence unit.

Part of the role of any intelligence unit is the gathering and collection of intelligence. Part of the gathering and collection of intelligence occurs in prisons. We have already witnessed the impact of the reduction in staff and, indeed, the impact of the reduction in the gathering of information in the prisons in Western Australia. On one particular weekend—the weekend of 26 and 27 October, just a month ago—a total of 10 prisoners escaped from the Karnet and Wooroloo prison farms. There were five escapes from each of them. A total of 39 escapes have occurred in Western Australia in the financial year to date—that is, from 1 July this year. Intelligence unit staff are now not permitted to go into prisons to gather information from prisoners and/or staff. They are now reliant on information passed to them by security staff within each institution. It is well known that this system of information gathering does not work. Prisons have a history of not passing on information for fear that their prison will be criticised for poor management practices.

The restricted movement of intelligence staff in prisons will lead to the reduction of criminal intelligence being passed to police. This will mean that vital criminal intelligence is not gathered or passed to the appropriate law enforcement agencies. With the reduction in the number of intelligence staff, the intelligence unit will also cease its weekend coverage. It will no longer be able to provide a service to prisons and police during the weekends.

I suppose I too could be criticised by Commissioner Davis for giving out that information, but I suspect that those incarcerated in the prison system in Western Australia will know that their weekends are quite free to plan whatever they care to plan. Of course, when we talk about illicit drugs and the use of illicit substances within the prison system, one really has to be concerned that the intelligence system is not there to detect these things at the moment. The matter of the Wanneroo royal commission is of grave concern, but I suggest that the behaviour of the commissioner—and, indeed, counsel assisting—may indeed be of even graver concern in the long term for Western Australia and for the justice system of Australia.