Page 698 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 1 May 2007
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ranks. The job of an ACT police officer is a particularly difficult one; you serve two masters.
Audrey handled all her jobs in exemplary fashion. She was a magnificent role model, a wonderful human being, a great mother, a great wife, a wonderful member of her family and a great role model to so many people in the AFP, both male and female. The outpourings of grief and the shock that went through our close-knit police community were quite palpable in those days immediately after her death.
Audrey Fagan was a person we will sorely miss not only in Canberra but through the wider Australian community. On behalf of the opposition, I thank her. It has been a privilege for those of us who have known Audrey to know her; it has been a privilege to work with her; and it has been a privilege for Canberra to have been served by such a fine person.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services): I join with the Chief Minister and Mr Stefaniak in expressing my sincere and heartfelt sympathy and condolences to the family of Audrey Fagan, on her tragic passing only a few short days ago. With the passing of Audrey Fagan, Canberra has lost one of its own, a woman who was committed to the city, who grew up and became the person we knew in Canberra and who was committed to the work that she did for our community as a police officer.
She was, as the Chief Minister has said, appointed to the role of Chief Police Officer only on 4 July 2005. That appointment was, at that point, the culmination of a career spanning 20 years at local, national and international levels in policing. She began her policing career, as we know, with the AFP in Canberra in 1981, working first in protective services and then in the community policing area where she worked in a range of areas, including fraud and general criminal investigation. She went on to take on significant appointments within the AFP at a national and international level, including a posting to Christmas Island, international liaison, internal investigations and police recruit training.
In the 1990s, she accepted an advisory position as a law enforcement liaison officer in the federal government and worked with three federal ministers, advising on issues of policing and law enforcement, including the development of the national illicit drug strategy. It is a testament to her commitment to this particular part of her career that a number of senior federal ministers were present at her funeral.
In December 1998, Ms Fagan returned to the AFP, took up the position of chief of staff to the commissioner and was later promoted to a range of senior executive positions, including Director, Commercial Support, and General Manager of Protective Security. In this role in particular, she had a significant impact. She was responsible for overseeing close and personal protection to high officeholders, the national witness security program, protective security intelligence services and special events planning.
Some of her key achievements included the preparation of the security planning for CHOGM and the AFP protective security responses following the terrorist attacks on September 11. She was then appointed to the position of Executive Director,
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