Greg Andrews
Greg Andrews has over 25 years ’ experience as an investigator and has held the statutory position of A ssistant Ombudsman with the New South Wales Ombudsman since 1988. He has extensive experience in management, investigations, education and training. Prior to joining the office, he worked in educational change management, university teaching and research, and legal publishing.
Greg currently leads a 40 member Police Team in the NSW Ombudsman's Office. The team directly oversights the handling by the NSW Police Force of over 11,000 allegations of misconduct a year against its members. This includes conducting quality reviews of the investigation of the complaints
and the action subsequently taken on those matters. Some public interest complaints are subject to further monitoring which may include Ombudsman investigators sitting in on the police interviews. The Ombudsman also has direct investigation powers and can initiate own motion investigations into the conduct of police officers. The team is also charged with keeping the police complaints system under scrutiny and regularly undertakes investigations into systemic procedural and complaint handling issues.
Greg also manages the Ombudsman's functions of ensuring compliance by various law enforcement agencies with legislative obligations relating to telecommunication interceptions, the conduct of controlled operations and the use of surveillance devices. He also deals with complaints from participants in the witness protection program operated by the New South Wales Police Force and hears and determines appeals of decisions to exclude protected witnesses from the program or refuse persons entry into that program.
The NSW Ombudsman is the largest Ombudsman office in Australia and has a very wide jurisdiction. It deals with complaints and keeps under scrutiny agencies delivering public services including police, correctional centres and state owned corporations; organisations delivering services to children including both public and private schools and child care centres; and public and private sector organisations delivering community services (including services for people with a disability, people who are homeless and elderly people). Other specific functions relate to reviewing the causes and patterns of deaths of certain children and people with a disability; reviewing decisions by public sector agencies about freedom of information applications; reviewing the implementation of new pieces of legislation conferring additional powers on people such as police and correctional officers; and compliance auditing of agencies conducting covert operations.
Greg Andrews is one of four representatives on the INIOP steering group that represent the Asia/Pacific region.
