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A former Parramatta council employee said he was instructed to surveil people’s emails because the former chief executive was paranoid about information being leaked to a councillor and to the media, the corruption watchdog has heard.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption on Monday heard from former City of Parramatta employee John Crawford, who was the western Sydney council’s chief technology officer and left the council in 2025 with a deed of release.
He provided evidence on day six of the public inquiry in Operation Navarra, the ICAC’s hearing into multiple allegations against former Parramatta chief executive Gail Connolly and other staff, including that she spied on staff and a councillor, and used confidential information for improper purposes, including rewarding allies and removing critics or perceived opponents.
Crawford said he was requested in 2023 and 2024 to search the emails and Teams messages of staff, as well as the emails of councillor Kellie Darley, to find evidence of information being leaked. The requests were authorised by Connolly, he told the inquiry.
Up to half of these requests were given to Crawford verbally, he said, to avoid the creation of records that could be accessed under the Government Information (Public Access) Act, or GIPAs.
“Ms Connolly took objection to things being GIPA-ble, so there was a level of concern that things being put into writing could be GIPA’d, and there was concern mainly around, I would say, to start with one particular councillor, but that concern grew over time,” he said.
Crawford said that these requests involved him searching through “tens of thousands” of messages and would often require about 30 hours of work each week.
He told the inquiry he was also asked to do searches of phone records. It included searching the records of current and former staff twice to see if they had any contact with Darley.
In 2024, Crawford said he was asked by Connolly to search Darley’s emails to find any confidential information that was leaked in relation to the council’s $1.15 million sponsorship of the Parramatta Eels rugby league club, including searching for any email that was sent to Herald reporter Anthony Segaert. Crawford said he identified one email that was sent to this masthead, which was a media release.
Crawford said Darley was not aware that her emails and phone records were being searched.
To avoid his team being considered potential leaks, Crawford said he handled all the requests himself.
“The amount of what can only be best described again, in my opinion, is paranoia around information leaking, that if the more people that knew, the more people would be accused,” he said. “So I took a decision to protect my staff from it and do it myself.”
Crawford said he also searched the messages of former employee Sheree Gover, who gave evidence on day two of the hearing, under the authorisation of Connolly, which led to the scope of the investigation into Gover expanding to also include the messages of a number of other employees.
Despite having concerns about the justification of the surveillance, Crawford felt he couldn’t say no to the requests because the council didn’t have a safe working environment to raise complaints, particularly in relation to requests from the chief executive, he told the inquiry.
“It came back to justifiable cause. It was like it was Pandora’s box – the more that information was given, the further off course it [became],” he said.
The hearing continues.
Ellie Busby is a Parramatta reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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