Aus­tralia’s At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Di­vi­sion has ad­vised Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ac­tivist De­vant Ma­haraj to take his call for probe in­to the T&T Gov­ern­ment’s pro­cure­ment of Aus­tralian ves­sels to the Aussie po­lice as that coun­try’s AG di­vi­sion doesn’t do such probes.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has mean­while warned about Ma­haraj wast­ing po­lice’s time. Young made the point af­ter Ma­haraj is­sued a No­vem­ber 12 let­ter from the Aus­tralian AG’s Of­fice which he re­ceived fol­low­ing his Au­gust let­ter to Aus­tralia AG Chris­t­ian Porter, seek­ing probe of Gov­ern­ment’s pro­cure­ment of ves­sels from Aus­tralia’s IN­CAT and Austal com­pa­nies.

The let­ter to Porter de­tailed back­ground from the start in May when Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­thy Row­ley met the Aus­tralian ship­builders. It was lat­er an­nounced Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to pur­chase two new fer­ry ves­sels and at least one naval pa­trol ves­sel. Ma­haraj al­so de­tailed sub­se­quent de­vel­op­ments.

Ma­haraj claimed that “with­out the Cab­i­net an­nounc­ing that a de­ci­sion had been made or the spec­i­fi­ca­tions of the ves­sels be­ing agreed to,” Austal’s web­site an­nounced Gov­ern­ment’s plans to pur­chase two Austal Cape Class Pa­trol Boats “in a deal val­ued by Austal at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $100 mil­lion.”

Ma­haraj raised ques­tions on the pro­cure­ment process, why ten­ders weren’t in­vit­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and the “le­gal ba­sis” for the PM to de­cide on the sit­u­a­tion while vis­it­ing an­oth­er coun­try.

Ma­haraj told Porter that he “...firm­ly be­lieved this mat­ter war­rants the at­ten­tion of the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Aus­tralia and in­vo­ca­tion of (that of­fice’s) in­ves­tiga­tive func­tion. It has to be asked if the peo­ple of Aus­tralia would sim­i­lar­ly ac­cept if the Prime Min­is­ter of Aus­tralia on vis­it­ing a for­eign coun­try make a sim­i­lar pur­chase with­out any pro­cure­ment process be­ing ap­plied?”

In their No­vem­ber 12 re­ply, act­ing as­sis­tant sec­re­tary of the Aus­tralian AG’s In­tegri­ty branch, Lin­da Atkin­son, said Ma­haraj’s cor­re­spon­dence raised sev­er­al “con­cerns of un­eth­i­cal pro­cure­ment process and po­ten­tial crim­i­nal con­duct.”

How­ev­er, she said, “While the de­part­ment is re­spon­si­ble for in­tegri­ty pol­i­cy at Com­mon­wealth lev­el, it does not have an in­ves­ti­ga­to­ry role or the abil­i­ty to as­sess whether of­fences have been com­mit­ted. In­ves­ti­ga­tion of al­leged crime is a mat­ter for the polic­ing au­thor­i­ties.

“Ac­cord­ing­ly, we have re­ferred this mat­ter to the Aus­tralian Fed­er­al Po­lice for their con­sid­er­a­tion. If you have any fur­ther ev­i­dence re­gard­ing the mat­ter, you should pro­vide it to the AFP. You can vis­it the AFP’s Re­port a Crime page (ad­dress giv­en), which has de­tails on how to re­port a crime in Aus­tralia.”

Atkin­son said the de­ci­sion on in­ves­ti­gat­ing an al­leged of­fence is in po­lice’s dis­cre­tion and it wouldn’t be ap­pro­pri­ate for the AG’s of­fice to in­ter­vene in such de­ci­sions,

Re­spond­ing to this, Young said, “This ven­ture by this mem­ber of the op­po­si­tion of writ­ing to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Aus­tralia is yet an­oth­er des­per­ate at­tempt by the Op­po­si­tion to dis­tract the na­tion. The Prime Min­is­ter’s work­ing trip to Aus­tralia was as a re­sult of a dis­cus­sion that he had with the Prime Min­is­ter of Aus­tralia at the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment con­fer­ence in April, 2018.

“The Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment had rep­re­sen­ta­tives with the T&T del­e­ga­tion at all times when we held meet­ings in Aus­tralia with IN­CAT and Austal. In fact, the meet­ings were set up and fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment and in­clud­ed a meet­ing with the Aus­tralian EF­IC for fi­nanc­ing.

“Both com­pa­nies then put in pro­pos­als and made pre­sen­ta­tions to a Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed team chaired by me, which in­clud­ed pri­vate sec­tor and ex­perts. This team made rec­om­men­da­tions to Cab­i­net and then an­oth­er team in­clud­ing in­ter­na­tion­al lawyers and mar­itime ex­perts met and ne­go­ti­at­ed with IN­CAT and Austal.”

He added, “The Op­po­si­tion and its spokesper­son are mak­ing fools of them­selves and po­ten­tial­ly em­bar­rass­ing T&T. I hope Aus­tralian laws in­clude a crim­i­nal charge akin to wast­ing po­lice time and that they utilise it with re­spect to the com­plainant.”