Gregory Andrews the Toxic Human If you would like to know the type of person, he is please read the article linked or below is a shortened version. Lateline described its chief witness in the story as a “former youth worker” who was once based in Mutitjulu, working in a joint community development project for the NT and federal governments. He was interviewed at his new home on the outskirts of Canberra. In order to protect his identity, the man’s face was filmed in shadow and his voice was digitized. There was, however, one fairly major hole in the story: he was never a youth worker. He was Gregory Andrews, an Assistant Secretary in the Office of Indigenous Policy Coordination, and the senior public servant who was advising Mal Brough specifically on violence and sexual abuse in remote Aboriginal communities, and in Mutitjulu in particular. Lateline knew Andrews worked for the minister, and chose to deliberately lie about his real identity. The interview had originally been negotiated through the media unit of Office of Indigenous Policy Coordination, and he was to have appeared as “Gregory Andrews, government bureaucrat” in the story. For reasons still unknown, Andrews instead appeared anonymously. And it’s that cover of anonymity afforded by Lateline that sent the story spinning out of control. Andrews wept openly on camera as he described how he’d made repeated statements and reports to police about sexual violence perpetrated against Aboriginal women and children during his time in Mutitjulu. But, he claimed, he’d withdrawn those statements after being threatened by men in the community. Despite now living several thousand kilometres away in Canberra, Andrews claimed he feared for his safety, and that of his family. NT Chief Minister Clare Martin later revealed in parliament that during his employment, Andrews never once made a single report to police about violence against women or children. His “withdrawn police statements” weren’t the only part of his story that collapsed. As government documents now reveal, prior to his interview Andrews provided Mal Brough a ministerial brief on what he intended to say to Lateline as a government representative. He told the Minister that he would tell Lateline that there were predatory men in the central deserts region who were preying on children; that things were so bad in the community that he saw women coming to meetings with broken arms. But when Andrews appeared on camera with his face blacked out, the story departed wildly from the ministerial brief. Andrews instead told Lateline this: “I saw women coming to meetings with broken arms, and with screwdrivers or other implements through their legs.” And his claim that “there are predatory men in the central deserts who are systematically abusing young children” instead became this: “It’s true that there are predatory men in the central deserts who are systematically abusing young children. I’ve been told by a number of people of men in the region who go to other communities and get young girls and bring them back to their community and keep them there as sex slaves and … exchange sex for petrol with those young petrol sniffers.” It’s pretty spectacular stuff, and all of it since dismissed by the Northern Territory police, and the Australian Crime Commission, both of which conducted extensive investigations into the allegations made by Andrews. As publicity around Andrews’ real identity gathered pace, it emerged that he’d grossly mislead a Senate Inquiry into Petrol Sniffing conducted a few months earlier, giving evidence about Mutitjulu that made his Lateline embellishments look almost honest. During his appearance before the Senate, Andrews told parliament that life in Mutitjulu was so bad that “children were hanging themselves from the church steeple on Sundays and their mothers were having to cut them down”. It never happened. Not once. Andrews also told the inquiry that he lived in Mutitjulu for nine months – he never lived in Mutitjulu a single day – and, most seriously, he misrepresented the findings of a coronial inquiry into a series of petrol sniffing deaths to federal parliament. With the Labor Opposition circling, Andrews was summonsed to appear before a Senate Estimates hearing, to explain himself. The government initially agreed, then withdrew. Andrews became the first bureaucrat in parliamentary history to avoid a Senate Estimates grilling on the grounds that he was “too stressed” to appear. redflag.org.au/article/seven…