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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-05-19 Daily Xml
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EASLING, MR T.

The Hon. I.F. EVANS (Davenport) (15:30): During the week, the member for Croydon has taken upon himself to use a couple of grievances to make comment about the government's supposed inquiry into the trial of Tom Easling. I want to comment in response to some of the issues raised by the member for Croydon so that the house has some balance in relation to that matter. Let's be quite clear. Mr Easling's lawyers wrote to the government, and the calls from the opposition were for an independent inquiry into—

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: A royal commission.

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: —an independent inquiry—royal commission or judicial—into the investigation of Tom Easling. What the government produced was a government inquiry into the trial of Tom Easling. That is exactly what it is entitled. The Crown Solicitor was asked by the then attorney-general to conduct an inquiry into the trial of Tom Easling. The Crown Solicitor, of course, provided advice to the investigations unit of the Department for Families and Communities that conducted the original investigation into Tom Easling.

The same Crown Solicitor's Office, or the Crown Solicitor's department, was then asked to conduct a supposed independent inquiry into the very investigation that it had given legal advice to. Even I can see the conflict of interest about the same law office providing an independent inquiry into an investigation to which it provided legal advice. For the attorney not to see that conflict and for the Crown Solicitor's Office not to see that conflict makes you wonder how they missed such an obvious conflict.

One might question why the government chose to exclude from this particular inquiry undertaken by the Crown Solicitor all of the committal hearing transcript—hundreds of pages of it. The concern about that is simply this: there are a lot of conflicts in the transcripts—evidence given at the committal trial and evidence given at the main trial.

The Crown Solicitor's investigation totally ignored the committal trial evidence. So, any conflict between the committal trial and the main trial was conveniently ignored. How can you have a proper, independent inquiry of the issue if you deliberately set up the inquiry to ignore one total set of transcript evidence, the whole committal trial, that is in direct conflict with the main trial? Why would the government do that? I will tell you why the government would do that. Because it wanted a particular outcome. That is my view.

There is no other excuse for not considering the committal trial evidence, but, of course, the Crown Solicitor only looked at the particular transcript and the judge's summing up. No other documents, no-one was actually spoken to or interviewed—it was simply a desktop review, if you like, of that information.

The then attorney-general walked in on the last day of parliament before the election, having raised these matters over a long period of time, and tabled that report, so that he as attorney-general cannot be questioned on it at any future sitting of parliament. Then, to his great embarrassment, he had to step down as attorney-general after the election so that he is not ultimately questionable on the report anyway.

The reality is that the Easling lawyers and the opposition asked for an independent inquiry into the investigation. We get a government inquiry into the trial. So I have not commented on it very much because, frankly, it is not worth a lot of comment because it was not anywhere near the task that the opposition asked it to do.

You only had to be in the house yesterday to see the bias from the member for Croydon in relation to this issue. He was shaking about this issue, and if that was the mindset overseeing the administration of justice on this issue, then that is a sad day for the state. The reality is that I wrote to the then attorney-general saying that we wanted an inquiry and would he send out an instruction to stop any departments shredding any documents. I submitted an FOI later about whether the attorney had done that and, of course, he had not. Why would the attorney do that?

The reality is the former attorney-general turned the attorney-general's office from a legal office of great integrity in the state to political office of absurdity. There are lots of other issues, and I will go to one simple point: it is a travesty for this state that this government still maintains that when a witness is given money by the investigators and by the government—

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: —that the government maintained that there was nothing wrong with the investigation.

The SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! No quarrels.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, the member for Davenport and the member for Croydon!

The Hon. I.F. Evans interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Torrens.

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