NSW Attorney-General Gabrielle Upton has denied she or her office is responsible for a leak of confidential information damaging to deputy NSW police commissioner Nick Kaldas in relation to a long-running bugging inquiry. Appearing before a parliamentary inquiry on Friday, Ms Upton repeated a denial she has previously made in parliament about her knowledge of the leak. The information appeared in a Sydney Morning Herald article in April.
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It revealed Ombudsman Bruce Barbour was considering seeking advice from the Director of Public Prosecutions over potential criminal charges against Mr Kaldas for allegedly misleading his inquiry into a decades old police bugging scandal. "There was no leak from me or my office," Ms Upton repeatedly told the inquiry on Friday.
Ms Upton said she had "sought relevant assurances" from staff in her office that they did not leak the information. But Ms Upton repeatedly refused to tell deputy chairman, Greens MP David Shoebridge and Labor MP Adam Searle what specific steps she had taken to assure herself her staff were not involved.
Mr Shoebridge asked if Ms Upton what assurances she had sought for her chief of staff, Kevin Wilde, regarding the leak such as checking emails or telephone logs or asking if he had spoken to the journalists who wrote the article. "I sought relevant assurances from members of my ministerial staff", Ms Upton replied and said she would not go into the inner workings of her office.
Asked why Mr Wilde had declined an invitation to appear at the inquiry, Ms Upton replied that she was the relevant elected official.
Ms Upton said the first she learned of the suggestion Mr Barbour was seeking the DPP's advice about Mr Kaldas was when she read the article.She also said she had not discussed the matter with the Office of the DPP or Mr Barbour. "If you have evidence of a leak from me or my office, show me," she challenged inquiry members.
Fairfax media reported in April that the allegation was that Mr Kaldas misled Mr Barbour's office about the source of documents given to him regarding the scandal over a police bugging operation, codenamed Operation Mascot. Mr Kaldas was bugged by Mascot, whose team leader was his fellow deputy commissioner Catherine Burn.
Mr Barbour has been conducting an inquiry into the bugging scandal for almost three years. The documents, produced by Mr Kaldas at a separate parliamentary inquiry earlier this year, suggested Ms Burn had first raised Mr Kaldas' name with Mascot investigators. But Mr Kaldas admitted to the parliamentary inquiry that when cross-examined by Mr Barbour he "did not initially give a candid account of how I became aware of this information".
Ms Upton's evidence follows a sensation development on Thursday night, when it emerged that a NSW Crime Commission investigator told the inquiry of his "suspicion" that the leak emanated from Mr Barbour's office.
Tim O'Connor, director of criminal investigations at the Crime Commission, made the suggestion in a letter to the inquiry.
But the Fairfax Media reporter who wrote an exclusive story based on the leaked information, Nick McKenzie, has denied his source was from inside the Ombudsman's office.
Mr Barbour and the director of public prosecutions Lloyd Babb are due to give evidence later on Friday.
