In the New South Wales supreme court on Friday, an assistant commissioner in the state’s police force, Stacey Maloney, insisted she had taken no notice of comments made by her boss, Mick Fuller, on Sydney radio when she made her decision to apply for an order to block a planned Black Lives Matter protest in Sydney’s CBD next week.
It was a hard line for Felicity Graham, the barrister representing the protest organisers, to swallow.
Hours before Maloney made the decision to head to court, Fuller had been on Sydney radio station 2GB telling host Ben Fordham he had already given instructions to block the demonstration, branding protestors “selfish” and claiming it could hurt NSW for “five or 10 years economically” if it went ahead.
Maloney’s evidence, Graham suggested, was “a complete charade”. As a subordinate to Fuller she had been placed in “an absolutely impossible situation” by his comments and the required review of the application for the protest had been “an entirely hollow process”. It was, Graham said, “a sham”.
Maloney denied all of this. She had been aware of the commissioner’s comments, but they had “absolutely” nothing to do with her decision to sign off on the supreme court challenge. She understood all of her responsibilities and acted “independently regardless of the commissioner’s view”.
“I had made up my own mind,” she said.
The court on Thursday heard that protest organiser Padraic Gibson had only emailed “written representations” about the proposed rally to the NSW police three hours after Fuller appeared on Fordham’s show.
Judge Mark Ierace said he was concerned Fuller had failed to give “genuine consideration” to the protest application, which had included a Covid-19 safety plan.
Maloney’s evidence could be read one of two ways. Either one of his own assistant commissioners hadn’t paid any attention to his instructions, or, as Graham argued, Fuller had “thwarted” due process.
“All he needs to do is stay off the airwaves before the statutory processes are fulfilled,” Graham said on Thursday.
A ruling on whether the protest can proceed is expected on Sunday. But, by any measure, it’s been a bad couple of days for a commissioner who has never been shy of injecting himself into public debate.
Hardline views
A regular guest on the conservative-leaning 2GB and also Sky News, Fuller has expressed hardline views on issues such as pill-testing at music festivals and the use of strip-searches since he took on the top job in 2017.
His supporters applaud his tough talk, admiring his willingness to stand his ground and speak out on controversial issues. But critics both inside and outside the police force increasingly question his judgment.
During interviews this week, Fuller incorrectly linked a previous Black Lives Matters protest in Melbourne to Covid-19 outbreaks in the city’s public housing towers, saying the demonstrations had “put a lot of lives at risk”.
“From our perspective, it was obviously big numbers in Victoria and a number of people that came to the protest were living in those vertical towers so that certainly is enough for me,” he said.
The link, first reported by News Corp Australia, has been refuted by Victoria’s health department. The DHHS has repeatedly said there is no evidence linking the protest to the outbreaks at the public housing towers in North Melbourne and Flemington.
But despite that, Fuller has refused to retract the comments. The commissioner declined to be interviewed for this story, but in a statement to Guardian Australia a spokeswoman for the NSW police said Fuller “stands by his comments, particularly those urging all those individuals considering attending the protest next Tuesday to stay at home and not put lives at risk”.
‘Little bit of fear’
NSW Greens upper house MP David Shoebridge, an outspoken critic of Fuller’s who’s had a number of fiery encounters with the commissioner during parliamentary inquiries, said it was not the first time he had been “loose with the truth”.
During a budget estimates hearing in August last year, Fuller said it was “an absolute disgrace” for him to be asked questions by Shoebridge about testimony given by a teenage girl during a coronial inquiry who said a female officer threatened her with a “nice and slow” strip search at a music festival.
“Let the individual give their name if they are so concerned,” he said at the time.
“It is poor practice if this is going to be the way forward in coronials that mystery witnesses turn up and they are hidden behind the veil of anonymity and then I am held to account for that. I think it’s a disgrace to democracy, to be honest with you.”
But legal representatives acting for Fuller were later forced to correct the record, acknowledging during the coronial inquiry that the NSW police had known the woman’s name.
“The police, in that case, had this woman’s name and details all along [and] I found at that time he was either extremely cavalier or wilfully ignorant,” Shoebridge said.
Fuller has also been criticised by the former head of the Australian federal police, Mick Palmer, over some of his hardline stances.
In November, amid widespread criticism of police use of strip-searches on young people in NSW, Fuller claimed reducing the practice could lead to an increase in knife crime despite fewer than 1% of all searches in the state being conducted for that reason.
He told Sydney newspaper the Daily Telegraph that curtailing police powers would create a “generation of kids that have no respect for authority” and said young people should have “a little bit of fear” of police.
Palmer labelled those comments “terrifying”.
“As a long-time colleague of NSW police and a friend of several past commissioners, it is the first time I have ever heard the use of the word ‘fear’ as a basis for gaining respect and I am saddened by it,” he said at the time.
‘Blurred the line’
Despite those criticisms, Fuller’s powers have only widened. As the newly designated state emergency operations controller, he has become the face of the state’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Besides a healthy pay bump, the role gave him responsibility for enforcing the state’s unprecedented crackdown on civil liberties and public movement during the height of the lockdown.
Shoebridge said that appointment had “blurred the line” between the public health response to the pandemic and law enforcement, as well as cementing a view that the police were not independent from government.
“There’s no sense of any kind of political independence in the positions adopted by the NSW police force and it goes both ways,” the Greens MP said.
“The government feels under pressure to align itself to the force and Mick Fuller is on a mission to align himself with the government. The end result is a highly politicised police.”
That’s a view shared privately by senior figures within the NSW police and on the Labor opposition benches, who sometimes worry Fuller is too keen to appease the government which appointed him.
Of particular concern is police involvement in recent cases investigating Liberal MPs, including his own minister. Earlier this month, the Daily Telegraph revealed an internal police review into the decision not to pursue charges against David Elliott – for allegedly impersonating an officer – decided to “clear” him without waiting for its own legal advice. Elliott was also not charged after a photo surfaced of him firing a submachine gun at a rifle range for prison officers in 2018.
“He comes across as someone very keen to please premier Gladys [Berejiklian] and Elliott,” one senior Labor MP said.
