Illicit trade in native wildlife - witnesses Ando, Plant, Dawson, Green

t10/nj
CCC
WITNESS: - - - of the parrots are, in varying degree of.
There's no doubt that our black cockatoos are worth a lot more
overseas. Gang-gangs, some of the eastern states' black
cockatoos. Galahs and corellas have value overseas. Our
parrots are quite unique, so yes; they are valuable.
MR HALL: Now, can you tell me that in the conduct of your
work have you had any suspicions that CALM operations have
been compromised?---We - - I had received some information
from a couple of sources that suggested that that may be the
case. What we were doing at the time was, we - - you get that
all the time. People - - the best type of defence for them is
offence, and you often get - - they try to tarnish. So what
we do when we'd received the information, we were actually
collating it and validating it and trying to make a decision
as to where we would be sending that, but yeah; we have.
We heard Mr Mell say yesterday that one source of information
was tapes of conversations between Mr Mancini and Mr Green;
is that correct?---That's correct.
Now, did these issues relate to Mr Ando?---We had listened to
some - - I'd received information and, as a result of that,
what we try to do is validate it, so we were fairly convinced
that Mr Green and Mancini were aware of us listening to him,
so when we listened to the tapes we were quite cautious as to
what we believed, but they were talking in code or in - - in
not so much specifics. We received some information which
suggested that - - Mr Green would say, "My mate" or "Your
mate" or "Our mate" or "The mate over there" or "Your mate up
there."
So you had no name at that stage?---Not at all. But what we
did do is, if you actually listen to this - - spend a fair bit
of time and listen to the tapes you could actually pick up a
bit of a sequence. And I didn't listen to the actual tapes
personally until after they were vetted by Nick Phillips, my
partner, who spent a lot of time doing so. And when you put
them in sequence you could actually see that there was contact
between Phil Green and "My mate's mum" or "dad". So what we
did was we then conducted CCR checks and established that Phil
Green had contacted the Ando residence, or Ando senior
residence. As a result of that we were then trying to
establish what that meant.
Right. Now, I take it that your powers of investigation are
really quite limited. You are an investigator, generally
speaking, who focuses on wildlife offences?---Yeah. I've made
it very clear to my superiors that my job is to investigate
wildlife and not to investigate my fellow officers. I passed
the information as I've seen it's my duty to do so, and that's
as far as it's gone. I mean, there seems to be a perception
23.11.04 R.D. DAWSON XN 143
10.47