Two West Australian government ministers have appeared in court to provide evidence in a defamation trial embroiling other politicians, as well as journalists and local business owners.
Perth property developer Greg Poland has taken former journalists from this masthead to court over the publication of two stories based on a covert recording of a meeting held at the Subiaco Hotel in 2019.
In the recording, which has since been played in court, Poland can be heard offering advice to a businessman on a way to obtain a Myalup sand mining operation, in exchange for giving the state government a place to dump between two and eight million tonnes of “toxic” soil from one of its Metronet projects.
Poland can also be heard claiming responsibility for a plan involving increasing WA’s portion of lobster catch, and that then-Fisheries Minister Dave Kelly had botched it.
Kelly was one of the politicians who appeared in court on Thursday.
In the recording, Poland can be heard claiming he had put the idea to the minister’s office and written a plan up, but “the minister f—ed it up by changing what I wrote”.
“Now he’s got to backpedal and try and work it out. I just got a message, come and see him right away. Because now they’re working out how to get out of this hole he’s buried,” Poland states.
“Well, f— you. If you’d stick to what I said in the first place, you wouldn’t have to f—ing get out of a hole.”
“It’s absolutely not true, it’s not true at all,” Kelly said on Thursday afternoon.
“He didn’t put the idea to the office, or write it up.”
Kelly said he had received a letter from Poland about the availability of lobster, but that was regarding his own hospitality business, not the industry as a whole.
“A whole bunch of people wanted better access to lobster, particularly hospitality providers – I expect they still do,” he said.
Poland’s lawyer Martin Bennett questioned Kelly on the meeting he had with Poland over lobster allocation, and Poland’s claims he had used his personal business as an in for the meeting, before branching out to discuss the tourism industry as a whole.
That meeting is when Poland claimed he had given Kelly the idea while providing evidence last week.
But the former WA minister said they had worked on the policy for more than a year before it was announced in December 2018.
“We were getting final approvals to release it publicly when I had the meeting with Greg Poland,” he said.
“The suggestion that the meeting was the genesis of the policy doesn’t make any sense.”
He also said it would have been “completely inappropriate to discuss the restructure of the industry,” but that he had been keen to hear Poland’s thoughts as a hospitality provider for reserving a portion of catch for the local market.
Former Minister for Regional Development Alannah MacTiernan also appeared in court on Thursday.
In the recording of the meeting, Poland can be heard suggesting both MacTiernan and then-Transport Minister Rita Saffioti – now the deputy premier – asked him to find a solution to the problem regarding the disposal of “toxic soil” from the Forrestfield Airport Link redevelopment.
Poland also suggests that if you do a favour for either minister, then they would “just steamroll anything through”.
“The government, well Rita and Alannah and all of them, are pretty good for doing deals with, but you actually gotta [sic] get to them. Not the offsiders,” Poland says in the recording.
“What I’ll do is I’ll go to Alannah first, and then I’ll go to Rita. Alannah will probably want to stick her nose in. And that’s okay cos [sic] Alannah’s good.”
MacTiernan said she had no recollection of discussing the “toxic soil” disposal with Poland in any formal capacity.
“I would have been extremely reluctant to get involved in an issue that was in the purview of the transport minister,” she said.
MacTiernan said after receiving questions from a journalist regarding what was said at the meeting, she had spoken to Poland over the phone.
“I was of the view that he had spoken in a way that was really very inappropriate,” she said.
“I know, given my understanding of Greg, that it wasn’t with any kind of malfeasance. But … I said there is a freight train headed in your direction, and it is in your best interest to resign.
“He agreed to do so, but he was hurt. He had gone in the job to do the right thing.”
Poland gave evidence earlier in the trial that when MacTiernan had called him, she had said: “If its politics they [journalists] keep coming after you”.
“She told me, ‘I’ve accepted your resignation already [from the Peel Development Commission], that stops it’,” Poland claimed.
“I totally reject the suggestion that I said I have already accepted your resignation, I would not speak with someone like that,” MacTiernan said when Bennett questioned her on the stand.
The trial continues.
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