AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
[with video]
October 21, 2015
Jane Lee and Latika Bourke
A former royal commissioner has hit back at claims by senator Bill Heffernan that he failed to properly investigate lawyers who allegedly attended a “boy brothel”, as new details emerge of a “secret list” containing the names of high-profile alleged paedophiles.
The controversial Liberal senator used parliamentary privilege on Wednesday to claim that a former Australian prime minister was on the list, which he claims forms part of a police document.
Many of the people on the list and otherwise named in the documents were “prominent”, Senator Heffernan said: “They were delivered to me by a police agency some time ago because no one seems to want to deal with them.”
He also claimed every Commonwealth attorney-general since Philip Ruddock had seen the list.
Fairfax Media understands Mr Ruddock referred Senator Heffernan’s list to his department when he was the federal attorney-general in the Howard government between 2003 and 2007.
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