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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-02-05 Daily Xml
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EASLING, MR T.

The Hon. I.F. EVANS (Davenport) (15:33): I again rise to speak on the Tom Easling matter. A woman by the name of Audrey Stratton had been known to Tom Easling for many years through their joint youth work. At the time of Mr Easling's arrest, Audrey Stratton was in her fifth year of employment at the Victim Support Service. The Victim Support Service is an incorporated association. Audrey Stratton was not a public servant.

On the morning of Tom Easling's arrest, Audrey Stratton rang her employer and took three weeks leave. On the Monday after his arrest, Audrey Stratton attended the bail hearing while on holidays as a private citizen and in her own time. At the bail hearing, one of the investigators of the Special Investigations Unit took the names of those supporters of Easling who were in the gallery.

Ms Stratton was on holidays. She did not realise that, while she was on holidays, the Special Investigations Unit went to Michael O'Connell of the Attorney-General's Department and raised the matter of her attendance (as a private citizen while on holidays, I emphasise) at Tom Easling's bail hearing. We know this because we have documents released under Freedom of Information that show that.

Michael O'Connell gave an undertaking to the Special Investigations Unit that he would raise this matter with her employer, Michael Dawson, the CEO of the Victim Support Service. So, three weeks after Audrey Stratton returned to work from her holidays, Mr Dawson called her to a meeting at which he told her that he had just returned from a meeting with Michael O'Connell from the Attorney-General's Department and that he was giving her an ultimatum. The ultimatum was: if she went to court again, she would be instantly dismissed, that she was not to make public comment and she could not be publicly recognised. She could not agree to those conditions because she made it clear to her employer that she was almost certainly going to be called as a witness to the case. She was advised that the ultimatum stood.

Ms Stratton ended up taking 12 months' leave without pay and, at the end of that time, the ultimatum still stood and, essentially, she was forced to resign. She was forced to resign because, as a private citizen in her own time, she went to the court to support a friend who had been charged with serious crimes, ultimately to be acquitted of every one of those crimes of which he was accused. This raises very serious issues. The Victim Support Service is about 90 per cent funded by the Attorney-General's Department through the victims of crime levy.

First of all, what is the Special Investigations Unit doing raising with the government what a private citizen is doing on her holidays, after Mr Easling's arrest, during his bail hearing, while the police investigation is still going? What does that have to do with the Special Investigations Unit? What does it have to do with the Attorney-General's Department? What are they doing going to her employer (a private citizen's employer) saying, 'What has your employee been doing on her holidays?' This is a very serious issue.

The Attorney-General sat here today in all his glory as the Acting Premier—20 years in the parliament and he finally gets his one day at the top job—and he told the parliament that this is a surprise, that it came out of the blue to the government. Really? The following government MPs had been written to: Mike Rann, Jennifer Rankine, Jay Weatherill and Frances Bedford; and two chief executives had been written to. So, don't tell me that this is a surprise to the government. This is another reason why there should be a full inquiry into the Tom Easling matter because what happened to Audrey Stratton is an absolute disgrace.

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