Contempt of an Australian Senate inquiry (crime) and/or APS Code of Conduct breaches

On 17 October 2025, I received a message alerting me that an email being read into the Senate sounded like words I would write when communicating via email. I was given a ParlView link to check, and sure enough, I recognised the words being read as my own. This piqued my interest, why is part of my email to Comcare suddenly being read out into the public?

It turns out that the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) is leading the charge on a Bill introduced to Parliament which would reform the Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation.

The Senate was holding an inquiry into the proposed Bill, and the APSC was asked by Senator Dorinda Cox to provide examples of abusive FOI requests particularly those made anonymously. A snippet of an email I had sent to Comcare on 30 July 2023 was read out by APSC employee Melanie McIntyre and you can hear it being read to the Senate committee at this timestamped ParlView link.

Below is an image of the email containing the snippet that was read out, including relevant context.

As you can see in the above email, no FOI request is being referred to, made, processed, discussed or anything like this! It does not fit the characterisation of the example it was purported as. What occurred was 10 days earlier, on 2o July 2023, Comcare employee Catherine Chan took offense to a reply I made to her, and I was told I was not allowed to email Comcare any longer and my emails would not be read. If my emails will not be read, how can I possibly make any FOI requests which are forced in writing?

This is incredibly embarrassing for Comcare. Elizabeth (Liz) Caitlin Bell is the Director of the Statutory Oversight team at Comcare. Ms Bell is Catherine Chan's boss, and it seems that Ms Chan asked her boss to put a service restriction on me because I upset Ms Chan's feelings. The Statutory Oversight team is the team that is supposed to ensure that Comcare is following the law. To follow the law, Comcare has a bunch of statutory obligations that are not optional. One such obligation is Freedom of Information (FOI) requests made under the Freedom of Information Act 1982.

Imagine my surprise when Senior Lawyer Liz Bell emails me, in writing, informing me that Comcare will not be performing its statutory obligations when dealing with me! This is unlawful... the government can't absolve itself of its obligations simply because staff have hurt feelings or anything like this... so this is an embarrassing breach of the law being made by the lawyer whose job is to make sure Comcare follows the law. The words taken as a snippet from my email wouldn't have even been said if Comcare was not making embarrassing breaches of law in the first place.

My words were teaching Ms Chan and Ms Bell about Comcare's statutory obligation to read my emails and ensure any FOI requests are actioned, and it is not even my role to be doing this teaching to them, but I had to do it because they were breaking the law and stripping me of my inalienable rights such as the right to make an FOI request. Surely the fact that I need to educate this lawyer how to do her job correctly is not appropriate to be used as an example of why APS staff need protection? Is it normal to protect people from their own failures within the APS? Seems so unfortunately, when a senior lawyer is allowed to email their intent to cause a government department to break the law, and this is totally fine, how can anyone say there exists any standards or accountability? I wrote a blog post about Ms Chan and Ms Bell's actions some time ago.

So given we can see that the snippet read into the Senate was in no way related to any FOI request, and was instead teaching Comcare about its statutory obligations, it can only be said as misleading to frame this snippet as an abusive FOI request (made anonymously or otherwise). The questions that therefore remain become who mislead the Senate, and did they intend to do so? I believe I have information that can help answer these questions.

First off, it is important to note that misleading (contempt of) an Australian Senate inquiry is a criminal offense, and that is why this cannot be taken lightly. I am not a lawyer so I will direct you to this article by lawyers which explains this criminal offending.

On 17 October 2025, after I was informed about my email being read in the Senate, I rang my claim manager at Comcare. I asked why my email had been shared from Comcare to the APSC without my knowledge, and I mentioned that it was nothing to do with any FOI request and my claim manager agreed with me after I draw his attention to the email, that it seems misleading to claim my email was an abusive FOI request, and he set about making inquiries. It was my understanding at this point that it was common ground between Comcare, and I, that an error had occurred where my email was purported as something it was not, and I had expected this error to be addressed. I also emailed the Senators Dorinda Cox, David Pocock and David Shoebridge about the misleading of the Senate that I believe is occurring, and interestingly only Senator Pocock's office responded to me.

On 2 December 2025, Senator David Pocock questioned Rachel Bacon and Melanie McIntyre of the APSC about the potential misleading of the Senate. What happened next is very disheartening, instead of owning up to the error, the APSC staff appeared to double down and continue to mislead the Senate. Here is a timestamped ParlView link of the interaction so you can witness it for yourself.

Senator David Pocock asked Ms McIntyre given that the email snippet is clearly related to a Comcare dispute and not abuse occurring during the course of an FOI request, if Ms McIntyre had followed up with Comcare to seek clarity around this potential misleading of the Senate. You can see Ms McIntyre attempt to deflect the question by stating that questions about the source material need to be directed to Comcare. Senator David Pocock then asks Ms McIntyre if she is concerned that she is essentially misleading the Senate by forwarding on faulty information, and concerningly Dr Bacon interjects and gives a speech about how the APSC takes its responsibility to not mislead the Senate seriously, but these are merely words, and the evidence shows this to be untrue. If the APSC genuinely took its duty to report true information to the Senate seriously, it would have taken steps to verify the information instead of just blindly forwarding it on as hearsay. The APSC could have required agencies to include the FOI request number alongside the snippet, such that a trail of accountability existed to affirm that the snippet was indeed related to an actual FOI request. The fact that the APSC very evidently took no steps whatsoever to check the veracity of the information supplied to them shows that they don't actually care about their obligation not to mislead the Senate, and Dr Bacon's words are merely that, words, words with no substance to back them.

Dr Bacon then goes on to claim that a Comcare claim dispute and an FOI request can co-exist, which is an obvious fact, however, Dr Bacon proceeds to assert that it is "her understanding" that in this case a Comcare dispute and an FOI request are co-existing in this email. To be clear, it is not a fact that the email contains a Comcare dispute and an FOI request co-existing. It had nothing to do with an FOI request, I was teaching Comcare about their statutory obligations. Notice how Dr Bacon used the words "it is my understanding", in my experience these are the words APS employees use when they know they are not being completely honest, and they want to be able to walk it back at a later time. When questioned in the future, Dr Bacon will simply say "well I said it was my understanding at the time, and maybe I just misunderstood it!". The dishonesty is then chalked up to a "misunderstanding" instead of being handled for what it is, clear and deliberate dishonesty, and it is about time APS employees start getting punished for behaving dishonestly like this. If Dr Bacon truly took her obligation to the Senate seriously, she doesn't arrive at the Senate with only an "understanding" that she can conveniently walk back in the future... she comes to the Senate with the facts, and she asserts those facts which is not something that she did.

Given that Ms McIntyre completely dodged Senator David Pocock's question asking if they had spoken to (and sought clarity from) Comcare since, he then asks Dr Bacon the same question. Dr Bacon admits that she personally has not had a conversation with Comcare, and therefore it would seem that she has not even bothered to clarify the information and everything she has based her "understanding" on appears to be hearsay. This is inappropriate, and therefore Dr Bacon is in no position to be defending the allegations of the Senate being misled when she hasn't even taken the basic step of clarifying the information with the supplier, Comcare.

Dr Bacon then throws Ms McIntyre under the bus, admitting that the APSC had discussions with Comcare, specifically Ms McIntyre, and Senator David Pocock then asks Ms McIntyre if her "understanding" is that there is a Comcare dispute and an FOI request co-existing in the email, which Ms McIntyre responds in the affirmative, finally admitting to seeking clarity with Comcare having previously deflected this question (this is important behaviour to observe). Ms McIntyre states that when she reached out to Comcare, they confirmed to her that the behaviours were in relation to FOI processing, meaning that these behaviours were observed during the processing of an FOI request which is simply untrue as you can see for yourself. If what Ms McIntyre is saying is true, then it can only be said that Comcare is lying to Ms McIntyre. It is a requirement of the APS Code of Conduct to "behave honestly and with integrity in connection with APS employment;" yet we all know that the APS Code of Conduct is rarely enforced.

But things are a bit more sinister than this. I actually don't believe that Ms McIntyre is telling the full story here, and I'll demonstrate why. I was contacted by a young journalist who had been informed of the situation through a mutual friend, and he was interested in running a story about the misleading of the Senate. Having obtained my version of events, emails and so forth, the young journalist set about putting out requests for comment to both the APSC and Comcare. I gave Comcare authority to answer his questions, however, I am informed that Comcare have not responded at all, not even a refusal to comment. This is not unusual, Comcare will always remain silent when they are doing the wrong thing, and so you can pretty much tell when Comcare is doing the wrong thing by seeking comment from them, and if they think they are doing nothing wrong they will say so, but when they think they are doing something wrong they just remain silent and do not respond, as is the case here. The APSC did respond and stated that they had nothing further to add.

It seems I am not the only person concerned about the APSC's behaviour, Senator David Pocock states to Ms McIntyre "I've got very serious concerns where you have the APSC reading out an email, which I've got, that clearly isn't to do with FOI, as a reason to overhaul FOI, and then when questioned about it you kind of just palm it off and say oh well it's Comcare's problem not mine, but you are, the APSC". Senator David Pocock is then interrupted rudely by Dr Bacon trying to make excuses for the APSC's behaviour, but the reality is there is no excuse for what has transpired. The Senator is absolutely on the money here; it is very concerning that the APSC is behaving in this manner.

Even more interesting is that in an attempt to get more information, the young journalist submitted an FOI request to the APSC, and the APSC refused his FOI request, refusing to either admit or deny the information sought existed!

There is a lot that is interesting about the FOI request interaction between the APSC and young journalist. For starters, Ms McIntyre claimed to the Senate on 17 October 2025, timestamped ParlView link, "often the people that are processing these kinds of [abusive] requests are junior staff members, that's certainly how it's structured in my organisation". It is clear that this FOI request, which is very obviously seeking data involving Ms McIntyre, and therefore is a conflict of interest and inappropriate for Ms McIntyre to be processing, involves information which could potentially incriminate her for misleading the Senate. Given the nature of the FOI request, Ms McIntyre should have delegated this FOI request to one of her "junior staff" which she claims would generally process FOI requests, or alternatively, sought an independent lawyer from the AGS to handle it, not process it herself.

The optics here suggest that Ms McIntyre wanted to control the outcome of this FOI request, but why? Why was Ms McIntyre willing to ignore the obvious perception of a conflict of interest/bias and ensure no information was given to young journalist? What is even more perplexing is that on the exact same day Ms McIntyre responded to young journalist, a release was made publicly available answering Questions on Notice asked by the Senate committee. It is my opinion given this information was intended to be (or already) released into the public domain, Ms McIntyre abused section 25 of the FOI Act, in an attempt to throw young journalist off the scent of her potential misleading of the Senate, by withholding the knowledge that these Questions on Notice existed. What reason can there possibly be to refuse to admit information you are releasing publicly that same day exists? This is absolute disgusting behaviour by an APSC staff member to abuse FOI law in this way, all the while attending the Senate committee and trying to have FOI laws further weakened.

Piecing it all together

I will now attempt to reconcile all the information I have collected into a timeline of events that I believe are most probable based on the information that has been collected to date.

17/10/2025

• I was alerted to my email being read in part and misrepresented to the Senate as an abusive FOI request which was processed.
• I contacted my claim manager at Comcare, who himself kicked off inquiries at Comcare into what was going wrong there to see my email being misinterpreted to the Senate like this. At this moment Comcare are made aware that the Senate is potentially being misled.
• I contacted 3 Senators, I gave them the above email context and explained that they were being misled into thinking that snippet was an example of an abusive FOI request when it was not.
• Young journalist contacts me and sets about collecting facts from me.
• Young journalist puts out requests for comment to Comcare and the APSC, Comcare does not bother to respond at all, APSC states they have no further comment to add.
• Young journalist submits his FOI request to the APSC.

18/10/2025 - 14/11/2025

• Having received young journalist's request for comment explaining that the Senate might have been misled by the APSC, Ms McIntyre reaches out to Comcare for clarification.
• It is my opinion that Ms McIntyre realised that Comcare fed her a hand grenade (false information to submit to the Senate). As a result, Ms McIntyre panics, instead of allowing the FOI request made by young journalist to be processed properly by an independent third-party who is free from bias or perceived conflict of interest, Ms McIntyre takes ownership of the FOI request and makes an (in my opinion) questionable finding of FOI law to sabotage young journalist from seeing information that could show she has potentially misled the Senate. There is no excuse for Ms McIntyre to have processed this FOI request, nor is there any excuse for Ms McIntyre to have refused to confirm the existence of documents which were released publicly the very same day. This is simply government corruption on display for all to see, the same government corruption that most of us are so used to occurring that we are not even shocked by it any longer. There is just no reason for this to have occurred, and it should never have occurred.

2/12/2025

• Senator David Pocock questions Dr Bacon and Ms McIntyre around the fact that the email clearly isn't about an FOI request, and the fact it is a Comcare dispute.
• Both Dr Bacon and Ms McIntyre make the claim that it is "their understanding" that the email contains a Comcare dispute and an FOI request in co-existence, this is demonstrably false, and Senator David Pocock can be seen clearly not buying this explanation. I don't believe that Ms McIntyre genuinely held that understanding, and I base this largely on the way she acted to refuse young journalist's FOI request. To me it is observed that Ms McIntyre just wanted to close down any avenue of investigation, through any means necessary, because she realised that the Senate had been misled.
• Senator David Pocock tries to raise how he is concerned that the APSC appears to be feeding false information to the Senate, Dr Bacon interjects by going on a largely irrelevant speech about how the APSC takes its obligations seriously, but these are words of little substance when you look at the facts. And a pertinent irrefutable fact is that the APSC misled the Senate by claiming the snippet of my email was abuse occurring during the processing of an FOI request when it was not.
• The APSC is clearly unperturbed that they have been fed false information by Comcare, and this should concern the public immensely.

Extraneous Food for Thought

If Comcare and/or APSC need to go as far back as mid 2023 (more than 2 years ago) trying to find examples of abusive FOI requests, and even so they were unable to actually locate any actual abusive FOI requests... I would like to put it out there that probably they don't have any great quantum of abusive FOI request examples to supply. The fact that they have nothing more recent to provide and thus have to resort to old examples which they misrepresent, should tell you that they are desperately trying to manufacture an issue that does not actually exist.

I also find it incredibly ironic that Melanie McIntyre used FOI legislation to incorrectly (in my opinion) refuse acknowledging the existence of a document that was being made public the very same day. It seems like a kick in the guts of the public to come to the Senate and tell Senators' that FOI legislation is not fit for purpose on the one hand, while using FOI legislation on the other hand to bury even just the knowledge that certain information exists simply because a journalist might find information that suggests you (and/or Comcare staff) have mislead the Senate.

It is evident that the APSC did no fact checking on the data they received from agencies, and this should concern the Senate. What this means is that an agency with an agenda, such as Comcare, can knowingly give false information to an agency such as the APSC, and then the APSC hands that false information to the Senate, and if it is not for vigilant members of the public such as myself catching the crime as it occurs, how could the Senate ever be confident that it is receiving factual information? For all we know this practice of false information being seeded into the Senate to change laws goes way back in time. It's all good and well for Dr Bacon to sit there and tell us that the APSC takes their obligations seriously, but the APSC taking its obligations seriously (allegedly) doesn't give them a free pass to fail in their duties and feed false information to the Senate. You can take your obligation seriously and still fail in your obligations; these are not mutually exclusive... What Dr Bacon was attempting to do was drop a verbal smoke screen saying the APSC takes their obligation seriously, hoping to distract attention away from the fact that the APSC has dropped the ball and failed in their obligation. It is a statement of fact that the APSC fed false information to the Senate, and therefore it is also a statement of fact that the APSC failed in it's obligation to give truthful and correct information to the Senate.

In the service restriction email above, Comcare told me that they were not reading my emails. By their own admission Comcare should have never read or even seen this email. Also, if Comcare had an issue with what I said, they should have mentioned it to me, but they didn't. Instead, Comcare lied to me, told me they wouldn't read my emails while continuing to read them anyway, and then putting them aside to use them years later to try and push for a law reform agenda that suits them. These people are truly disgusting, and it is a breach of the APS Code of Conduct to lie to the public, tell them one thing and do another, but Comcare (and seems like the APSC as well) is simply full of liars. The APS Code of Conduct is never enforced, you can be a habitual liar, and you will be right at home working in the APS.

What will be done about it? Absolutely nothing. The same bad actors will keep doing the same bad things. Politicians will continue to be fed false information by APS execs with a law reform agenda, and they won't even know it is happening. Indeed, this almost happened unknowingly! It is just by sheer luck that I found out my words were being misrepresented, and I caught it before the law was being reformed! Imagine if the law was passed and we caught this misinformation after the fact? How could the public ever be expected to tolerate such a betrayal?