Yesterday, the police got egg all over their faces when the Solicitor-General refused leave to lay charges under the Terrorism Suppression Act. A consequence of this was that all the evidence they had amassed - fifteen months worth of wiretaps and covert surveillance - could not be used in court and would never be publicly disclosed. So, sometime today, one of them leaked the whole lot of it to Three News.
On one level this is entirely unsurprising. Despite Police Commissioner Howard Broads very careful use of language during his official press conference, the police operation has leaked like a seive, with lurid claims of assassination plots and napalm bombs deliberately whispered to journalists in order to prejudice the case against the accused. But this is something new: an entire police case, dumped in the lap of a media organisation, clearly in the hope they'd publicise the most juicy bits. This is not only a violation of police regulations and the law (wiretap evidence is not to be disclosed except through the proper processes, and is supposed to be destroyed the moment it is no longer needed) - it also threatened to prejudice the cases under the Arms Act of the remaining accused, potentially resulting in a mistrial. But the leaker didn't care about that. Instead, all they cared about was getting a final smear in against those the police had wrongfully accused of terrorism.
Think about that for a moment. Our police force contains people who have utter contempt for the judicial process, the courts and the law they are supposed to enforce, and who put "getting their man" ahead of everything - even proper tests of guilt or innocence. It would be difficult to come up with a clearer example of Ross Meurant's insular, judgemental, and vindictive police culture than that.
As it stands, the material was not broadcast - the Crown Solicitor contacted Three News and made it clear they'd be prosecuted if they did. But this has shown that there is still something very wrong in our police force - a lawless element cut from the same cloth as Dewar, Rickards and Schollum. These people need to be purged. There should be no place in our police force for people who would deliberately try and undermine a fair trial, or leak sensitive police evidence to the media in an attempt to smear an accused.
This is something else Howard Broad will have to stake his reputation on: finding and sacking those responsible. Because if he doesn't, we can only assume that he condones this sort of lawless behaviour. And that makes him little better than a criminal himself.
