Supreme Court rejects Dean Hall's bid to find source of phone tap leak
Former ACT union boss Dean Hall has been dealt a setback in his bid to find the source of a leaked phone tap that ended Labor MLA Joy Burch's tenure as police minister and led to the resignation of her chief of staff.
The ACT Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected Mr Hall's application seeking information to help him decide whether to take legal action as he pursues the origin of a leaked phone conversation in which government staffer Maria Hawthorne briefed him on a meeting between Ms Burch and the territory's chief police officer.
Former ACT Police Minister Joy Burch.
Photo: Dion GeorgopoulosMr Hall told the court he believed the Australian Federal Police had leaked the details of the conversation to the media, or someone who later gave them to journalists, but Justice Michael Elkaim said the former Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union chief's bid failed to explain why the leak could not come from another source.
"There are other potential sources of the leak," Justice Elkaim said.
"There is nothing within the affidavit that elevates the plaintiff's belief beyond mere suspicion."
Justice Elkaim said he also dismissed the application because it failed to identify a cause of legal action which might arise from the information, if Mr Hall's bid to receive it was granted.
Rules governing the release of the information were intended to reveal material supporting a possible cause of legal action, "not to hopefully discover if any, as yet unidentified, cause of action might exist", Justice Elkaim said.
He ordered Mr Hall to pay costs for the federal government, the defendant. The former union boss would not comment on the Supreme Court decision when Fairfax Media contacted him on Sunday.
Ms Burch confirmed in 2015 she met with the ACT's chief police officer Rudi Lammers in April that year after Mr Hall raised concerns that police were being over-zealous in their treatment of union officials on Canberra work sites, and told her that officers needed "education" about health and safety rights of union representatives.
After the meeting, Ms Hawthorne briefed Mr Hall about the contents of the discussion in a phone conversation believed to have been recorded by the royal commission into trade union corruption, and later leaked.
The meeting came as the union and Mr Hall were being investigated as part of the royal commission into trade unions.
Fairfax Media reported that police were furious the contents of the meeting had been shared, and Ms Hawthorne quit as Ms Burch's most senior adviser in December 2015. Ms Burch later resigned as police minister.
In June 2016, the CFMEU - which suspects the AFP illegally leaked the recording - asked the Commonwealth Ombudsman to investigate the matter.
That same month, the Ombudsman referred the matter back to the AFP.
The matter was later referred to the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity, which then referred it back to the AFP for internal investigation.
The AFP launched the internal investigation in May.
Mr Hall quit as union secretary in February after eight years at the helm of the CFMEU's ACT branch.