The New South Wales police commissioner, Mick Fuller, has denied providing advice to Scott Morrison about whether Angus Taylor should stand down over an investigation into an altered document used to attack the Sydney lord mayor, Clover Moore.
On Tuesday Fuller gave his account of a conversation which was the basis for the prime minister’s claim to parliament on 26 November that there was no need for the energy and emissions reduction minister to stand down.
On that day, Labor was targeting Taylor in question time over revelations the NSW police had launched Strike Force Garrad to investigate whether Taylor or his staff had forged a version of the City of Sydney’s annual report to exaggerate councillors’ travel spending and unlawfully used it influence an official in the conduct of their duty.
The NSW police later referred the matter to the Australian Federal Police, which dropped the investigation in February on the basis it was unlikely to obtain “sufficient evidence to substantiate a commonwealth offence”.
Fuller told a NSW legislative council estimates committee hearing he had set up the strike force because he judged the referral from the shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, to be a “well-constructed legal letter” that “deserved an investigative strategy”.
Fuller said the likelihood the NSW police would investigate an alleged “fraud without financial loss” if it were reported by a “run-of-the-mill civilian” was “extremely low” but he thought that, given the importance of the shadow attorney general, there should at least be a preliminary investigation.
The offence of using a forgery to influence an official in the conduct of their duty was a “rarely used” offence “but one that does exist, nonetheless”, he said.
Fuller told the hearing that Morrison called him on 26 November, which surprised him because he thought “only NSW knew about [the investigation]”. He said the conversation of four to six minutes’ duration was the only time he discussed the issue with Morrison. He denied he saw Morrison socially and the pair were “best friends”.
Fuller said Morrison was unaware the NSW police had commenced an investigation. Fuller twice explained to Morrison that the police had received a referral he thought worthy of investigation, it had not begun to collect fresh evidence, and police would “try to get it finished as soon as we can”.
Morrison then told the House of Representatives that he had spoken to Fuller “about the investigation, the nature and the substance of their inquiries, which he advised me were based only on the allegations referred by the shadow attorney general”.
“Based on the information provided to me by the commissioner, I consider there is no action required by me under clauses 7.1 and 7.2 [of the ministerial code of conduct].”
Asked about Morrison’s statement, Fuller said he “didn’t provide any advice or guidance on the future of Mr Taylor” to the prime minister.
“Other than a letter of complaint from a third party, there was no evidence of anyone having done anything wrong, it wasn’t a potential victim, it was a third party [that made the referral],” he said. “There was no evidence to even substantiate that there was a criminal offence.”
Fuller said the matter was later referred to the Australian Federal Police because the NSW police determined that if the document had been altered, “it occurred in the Australian Capital Territory”. He took on notice how the NSW police came to this conclusion.
Fuller said that if the conduct had occurred in NSW, it “would have required search warrants on probably two journalists and, certainly, wherever that offence took place” to investigate.
The investigation did not determine that a City of Sydney document had been forged or who had created the false version, although Fuller noted the version of the PDF online allowed users who downloaded it to save and make changes.
Fuller took a series of questions on notice about whether the NSW police established when the document was downloaded, the IP addresses of users who accessed it, and whether police had interviewed Taylor, Taylor’s friends, family or staff. The AFP has indicated it did not interview Taylor.
Fuller said he did not direct his investigating officers how to conduct the matter. “For a commissioner to get involved in the sort of granular detail on who somebody should or shouldn’t interview in a matter is highly irregular.”
Fuller also denied personal involvement in the decision to refer the investigation to the AFP, but said his office “would have prepared a covering report to send it to AFP”.
“I gave this evidence earlier, that if this was a civilian complaint, that this would be risk-assessed and wouldn’t be investigated. But because of the office, or the person’s office, I felt it was in the public interest that NSW police again act ethically and transparently and commence the investigation that we did.”
