Qld’s top cop under the pump in heated exchange with anti-vax lawyer

Carroll: “But there have been …”

Villa [raised voice]: “Commissioner, please!”

Villa: “How long have you been a police officer? Surely, this is not the first time you have given evidence to the court?”

Villa also questioned Carroll’s claim that her staff were at a higher risk of contracting or transmitting COVID-19, given their regular interaction with the public.

Villa: “You had no evidence before you to support the proposition that members of the Queensland Police Service were in a significantly increased risk of contracting or transmitting COVID-19, did you?”

Loading

Carroll: “We had very good evidence as to what occurred across the world in other policing organisations.”

Villa: “But you don’t refer to any of that evidence in your statement of reasons?”

Carroll: “But it is a consideration of what I have looked at – the United States national centre for diseases, the information that Doug Smith gave me, so it was a consideration.”

Villa: “All right. Well, your homework overnight, commissioner, will be to find where you say in the material you relied upon … any evidence that the QPS was at a significantly higher risk of contracting or transmitting COVID-19. Do you understand the task?”

Carroll: “Yes.”

Villa also made the point that none of his clients who applied for an exemption from the QPS with the reason of holding a conscientious objection to mandatory vaccination had been approved.

Villa: “Your suggestion that the ‘exceptional circumstances’ exemption would provide an avenue for conscientious beliefs to be taken into consideration was disingenuous, correct?”

Carroll: “No, it was not disingenuous.”

At one point, Villa also asked Carroll to answer his question and “not make speeches”.

Carroll is expected to be recalled to the witness box either at the end of this week or next week.