The NSW opposition has launched an extraordinary attack on the anti-corruption watchdog, warning the integrity agency may have broken the law.
The NSW opposition has launched an extraordinary attack on the anti-corruption watchdog, warning the integrity agency may have broken the law in its “reckless power grab” to obtain new powers to access potentially illegally recorded conversations.to access recorded private conversations in its investigation into claims senior Liberals were involved in branch stacking to help fugitive Jean Nassif secure development applications.
Speakman said the opposition would support a disallowance motion in the upper house, moved by Liberal Democrat MP John Ruddick, to block the regulation to grant the ICAC the extra powers. It is an offence under the NSW Surveillance Devices Act to use a listening device to “record a private conversation to which the person is a party”. The maximum penalty is an $11,000 fine or five years imprisonment, or both.
“It would give ICAC the power to possess, use and publish any surveillance device recording that has been made in the past or be made for almost the next two and a half years,” Speakman said. Geoffrey Watson, SC, from the Centre of Public Integrity, was counsel assisting a series of high-profile ICAC inquiries. He said that “we don’t know the circumstances in which this tape was made”.
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