McRoberts likely to lose medal
Request to axe honours
JAILED former NT Police Commissioner John Ringland McRoberts will likely be stripped of his Australian Police Medal, the highest award for police service.
Now an inmate at Holtze prison, McRoberts was awarded the medal for “distinguished police service” in 2007, when he was an Assistant Commissioner in the Western Australia Police Force in charge of the traffic division.
In a statement to the NT News, WA Police Minister Michelle Roberts said she had written to Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove to request McRoberts’s Australian Police Medal be rescinded.
Official protocol says Sir Peter can terminate any award or medal he has issued, including the Australian Police Medal at the request of a the relevant government minister.
JAILED former NT Police Commissioner John Ringland McRoberts will likely be stripped of his Australian Police Medal, the nation’s highest award for police service.
Now an inmate at Holtze prison, McRoberts was awarded the medal for “distinguished police service” in 2007, when he was an Assistant Commissioner in the Western Australia Police Force in charge of the traffic division.
In a statement to the NT News, Western Australia Police Minister Michelle Roberts said she had written to Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove to request McRoberts’s Australian Police Medal be rescinded.
Official protocol says Sir Peter can cancel or terminate any award or medal he has issued, including the Australian Police Medal at the request of a the relevant government minister.
Among the grounds on which Sir Peter can cancel an award or honour is “if a conviction … has been recorded in relation to the holder of the appointment or award”.
Sir Peter also has the power to rescind an award at the rec- ommendation of the minister, if the recipient has “brought disrepute” to it.
McRoberts is serving a three-year jail sentence, to be suspended after 12 months served, for attempting to pervert the course of justice after he was found to have deliberately meddled with the fraud investigation into his secret lover, Xana Kamitsis. He withdrew a planned appeal against his conviction earlier this month.
In sentencing the former top cop in June, Justice Dean Mildren said McRoberts’s conduct “struck at the heart of the administration of justice” and involved “a gross misuse of power, primarily for personal reasons”. If Sir Peter rescinds McRoberts’s medal, he will be banned from using the postnominal “APM”.
He will also be struck off the register of medal recipients and will be required to return his medallion to Government House in Canberra.
The likely cancellation of his police medal will mark a final indignity for McRoberts, who arrived in the Territory in early 2009 to much fanfare.
Former Chief Minister and Police Minister Paul Henderson, who appointed McRoberts said at the time: “I am delighted to welcome John McRoberts to the Territory and look forward to him further building on the fine reputation already enjoyed by our police force.”
McRoberts began his policing career in Strathclyde, Scotland.
He then moved to Western Australia, where he started work as a Patrol Constable in 1979.
If his medal is rescinded, McRoberts will join the ranks of corrupt former New South Wales powerbrokers Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald, corporate fraudster Alan Bond and disgraced former Federal Court judge Marcus Einfield in having their awards and honours cancelled by the Governor-General.
NT Police Association president Paul McCue said McRoberts’s jailing was proof that the system worked and no one was above the law.
“Our members are looking forward to putting it all behind them,” he said.
McRoberts will be eligible for release on administrative home detention on Christmas Day.