Security of questionnaires compromised, Police accused of encouraging leaks

Carenne whistleblower "Karachi" has spoken to Carenne Gate about how the security of police questionnaires distributed last month has been compromised and how Mr Auld was encouraged to leak information to the blog. The whistleblower claims that some staff were told not to place security seals on their envelopes so that their responses could be checked by DET officials, while others were removed and placed in new envelopes with new seals supplied by another police officer.

The police questionnaire has been controversial since it was first distributed, with both the Teacher's Federation and the Public Service Association advising staff not to complete it.

Karachi claims that in addition to new envelopes and seals being used, the system used by the police to trace letters and questionnaires was known to select staff at the school. "Michael Auld told me that he was told by the Police how they could identify each questionnaire," said Karachi.

"When I asked him what the mechanisms were, he told me that when Neil Moon handed out the questionnaires he wrote down who was allocated which number. These numbers were also encoded on the covering letter of the questionnaire. Each letter belonged to a particular envelope. In the letter, a mark was placed underneath the letter corresponding with that envelope's number."

Karachi claims that the letter on this blog corresponded to envelope number 8, as the 't' in 'Bathurst', the 8th letter had been marked.

Karachi says they were seriously concerned that Mr Auld knew the security processes in place and says that Auld claimed to have been told by one of the investigating detectives how the system worked. "Michael told me that one of the detectives asked him to send questionnaires and letters marked in certain ways to the people running this blog so they could set those people up for leaking information and take the heat of Simone and Scott." Karachi claims that he took copies of some people's letters and questionnaires as they saw him in the release office with some of them on the computer screen, while Melinda Gavin was laughing over his shoulder.

This shows that the investigation must be suspended until a taskforce, composed of detectives from outside of Bathurst can be set up because at least one of the detectives running the investigation has no compromised it.