4BC EXCLUSIVE

Mike Summerell, the state’s former archivist, says his world began to change in February, 2018.

In a 4BC Afternoons exclusive interview, Mr Summerell told Sofie Formica that was the time when the the state’s Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC) was removed from the archivist’s reports process and problems started to arise.

Mr Summerell says public officials sought legal advice and whittled away the independence of the office resulting in his job becoming “a constant battle”.

The interference in this role is something which Mr Summerell says could have potentially resulted in parliament being misled as his reports were being deliberately watered down.

Other key claims made in public from Mr Summerell so far include:

• He was pressured by department officials to remove content from a 2017-18 report that could be viewed as “bad news”.
• Ordered to remove mention of the then energy minister Mark Bailey’s email scandal in his annual report.
• Also ordered to remove all reference to the poor standard of government record-keeping in general in the annual report.

Now, Mr Summerell says an extensive email chain proves he was trying to raise these integrity issues with the government.

“When there are difficult conversations that you don’t want on the record, you have a face-to-face meeting or you have a phone call,” he said on 4BC Afternoons.

“I have an awful habit of sending an email back to say ‘further to our conversation about … this is what I think’.

“So I had real habit, deliberately, of making sure everything was on the record.”

Press PLAY to hear the full interview below