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PART V PERSONS INVOLVED
to rule on this request for a private session we were told that she had again changed her mind and would give it neither in public nor in private.
303. Counsel for Mrs. ELLIOTT, in arguing that she should not be required to answer the question, advanced three grounds. Since she had indicated in her proof of evidence her reluctance to give this information and had reiterated that reluc tance when being examined by counsel for the Commission, it would, he said, now be unfair to make her disclose it. This argument was, in our opinion, unsound. Whatever she had stated in her proof would not give her a right to withhold material information; moreover, in it, she had merely indicated her 'reluctance', which is a very different thing from a determination not to reveal it in any circum- stances. She had in fact revealed other information which in her proof she had indicated a similar reluctance to disclose. Counsel went on to argue that, having regard to the test laid down in Attorney General v. Mulholland and notwith standing the Australian case of McGuinness v. Attorney General of Victoria, the information was not sufficiently relevant to the terms of the Inquiry to justify seeking this information since, unlike the Mulholland matter, the safety of the state was not involved: an argument that came strangely from a source which had done so much to give currency to the allegation in question as being of importance to the Inquiry. This contradiction did not seem to trouble counsel but his argument was, in any event, quite untenable. If there had been any truth in the allegation, it would clearly have been material to our Inquiry.
304. Finally, he endeavoured to argue that since in criminal cases the police are not required to disclose the names of their informers, a protection which is reinforced in narcotics cases by section 23 of the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance, Mrs. ELLIOTT should be entitled to conceal the source of the allegation which she had put before the Inquiry.
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305. This is an entirely false analogy. The Police informer provides informa tion to the authorities, sufficiently particularized and identified to enable investiga de tions to be initiated and prosecutions launched, and he provides it for that very purpose. In the present instance, not only was the source and substance of the information deliberately withheld from the authorities and the practical possibility fu of investigation stifled, but a policeman was being encouraged to disregard his duty and violate the oath which he takes when he enters the police force, whilst still continuing to be employed as a policeman for the very purpose which he was refusing to fulfil.
306. Moreover it is not the mere allegation of the police informer which is put before the court and the public but the facts on which it is based and which have been uncovered as a result of it: the very reverse of the present situation where the allegation was published for the purpose of creating suspicion whilst concealing the source, so that the suspicion could neither be substantiated nor dispelled.
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