Parliamentary Privilege

A Supreme Court ruling will see a laptop held by the WA parliament released to the Corruption and Crime Commission re misuse of a taxpayer-funded allowance. 

The senior bureaucrat accused of breaching parliamentary privilege last year will step down from his role immediately, but may return to the Western Australian Public Service in the future to help deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Amid an ongoing clash of constitutional powers in Western Australia, the corruption watchdog says the privileges committee can vet a swag of its evidence but has made it clear it does not want to be kept waiting long.

The fight between Western Australia’s top bureaucrat and a state parliamentary committee will continue at the Supreme Court, with Premier Mark McGowan continuing to back his head staffer.

Any citizen or resident who gets picked on in parliament has the right to ask for their side of the story to go into Hansard, and the former Australian Border Force commissioner wants to use it.

As governments hand ever-stronger powers of intrusion and electronic eavesdropping to law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, the immunities and protections of parliamentary privilege, enshrined in the Constitution, are facing new threats.