Constable Daniel Keneally says he was tired, hungry and anxious about being treated differently because his mum was a former premier when he made an error that led to a man being jailed.
Keneally has accepted he should have taken notes during a phone call at Newtown police station in Sydney’s inner west on February 24, 2021.
However differences between his statements and a recording of the conversation with a man who was later arrested, were not part of an active effort to mislead, his lawyer says.
The 25-year-old son of former senator and NSW premier Kristina Keneally had recently chalked up two years in uniform and was manning the desk when Luke Brett Moore called.
Keneally had not eaten due to time pressures, was tired from working rotating shifts and had been feeling generally anxious, he told the Downing Centre Local Court on Monday.
“I have had situations where people have put two-and-two together so to speak and figured out who my mother is,” Keneally told the court, saying he has been treated differently by colleagues and the general public.
In the recording, played as Keneally gave evidence, Mr Moore informs him he’s the founder and CEO of a website called isuepolice.com, has succeeded in civil actions against police before and wants strip searches ended among other comments.
NSW Police have faced separate civil claims about strip searching and its use on children.
Keneally did not know Mr Moore was recording the conversation and he did not listen to every word said.
He did not take notes, but he looked up Mr Moore in the police database, and visited the website while on the phone with him, telling Mr Moore it was “quite interesting”.
Mr Moore had been “ranting for an extended period of time” when Keneally stopped listening and went to talk to his supervisor, he told the court.
Keneally made a statement hours after the phone call.
“The statement is the document that is the subject of the charge,” prosecutor Daniel Boyle said.
Keneally recorded threats being made against a detective in southern NSW.
"He is a pedophile in your ranks, he strip-searches children, I want him gone," Keneally reported hearing, along with clarifying "gone" meant "dead".
Keneally acknowledged there were no threats of any violence towards anyone in the recorded conversation.
Mr Moore also did not name the detective in the recording, although Keneally did in his statement, which he told the court he felt “pressured” to make.
The “extremely high-ranking officer directing me to provide a statement” also did not say what it would be used for, Keneally said.
Keneally’s lawyer Paul McGirr said discrepancies between the recording and the statement stemmed from time pressures, stress and the fact Keneally was reading Mr Moore’s website, containing similar information, while he spoke to him on the phone.
He conflated the two sources of information but did not fabricate information with the intention of misleading a judicial tribunal as charged, the lawyer told the court.
Prosecutors have a “high hurdle” to pass in proving he did, Mr McGirr added.
Keneally recorded asking questions of Mr Moore in his statement, that are not heard in the recording.
“In my statement I’ve wrote that I asked him things about the website and that’s what I believe,” he said.
“So you even got that wrong?” Mr Boyle said.
Keneally responded “yes”.
The hearing continues on Tuesday.
