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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-03-31 Daily Xml
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Matters of Interest

Strike Force Wyndarra

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (15:37): I rise today to speak again on Strike Force Wyndarra. This has been an extraordinary time for women in this country and the rage and indeed the reckoning is rising. On 26 February this year, the ABC published details of a letter that had been sent to the Prime Minister, the Senate opposition leader Penny Wong, and Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young. That anonymous letter alleged that a 16-year-old girl was raped in Sydney in 1988 by a man who is now a senior member of the federal cabinet.

The letter also included a statement by the alleged victim who had reported the crime to New South Wales police in February the previous year. Four months later, she asked the New South Wales police to drop the investigation and the next day she took her own life. What we do know from questions in the New South Wales parliament by my colleague David Shoebridge, Greens MLC, is that in November 2019, an Adelaide woman approached SAPOL with historical rape allegations and we do know that they were against the former Attorney-General Christian Porter.

Some three months later, after SAPOL made referrals to the New South Wales Police Force, somewhere between 21 and 28 November 2019, the woman attended the New South Wales Kings Cross Police Station on 27 February 2020. She made a statement that day.

Following this, we believe the New South Wales Police Force set up Strike Force Wyndarra on 4 March to respond to these allegations. I have noted in this place before that wyndarra is an Aboriginal word that means 'west winds'. According to the New South Wales police commissioner, Mick Fuller, Strike Force Wyndarra officers were refused permission to enter South Australia following a request on supposedly 13 March 2020. Indeed, they had anticipated travelling to our state to interview the woman further on 16 March last year. That interview never happened.

During questioning by the Hon. David Shoebridge, Greens MLC in New South Wales, the police commissioner there stated that that request to South Australia Police was never made and never formalised because he decided, and his assistant commissioner decided, it was an occupational health and safety hazard to have his officers travel under COVID. What I would say is the date of that proposed 16 March interview was well and truly a week before our state borders even closed.

Indeed, that weekend, on 13 March, the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, had told people to go to the footy. He had said, 'Perhaps reconsider international travel,' but certainly there were no barriers to interstate travel. The warning was that, on Monday 16 March, gatherings of more than 500 would become restricted. I should not imagine there were 500 officers being sent to interview this woman.

It gets more and more curious and that is why the New South Wales parliament has unanimously supported a motion moved by the Hon. David Shoebridge that all documents relating to Strike Force Wyndarra be provided to the New South Wales upper house within a week, by the 31st of this month. I have today sought to lodge questions that I will also place on notice in the Notice Paper tomorrow demanding a similar response from SAPOL: to provide all documents relating to this investigation.

Why would the New South Wales police not travel when we know, under the pandemic, even with our closed borders, that following month, from late March to April, 9,241 essential travellers crossed the South Australian border from other states? Indeed, 10,750 non-essential travellers in that following month came into the state of South Australia. So if you are telling me that, given 20,000 people came into our state in the month following the request by Strike Force Wyndarra to interview this woman, somehow there was an inability to proceed with this prosecution, I am saying it raises more questions than it answers.

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