Tony Simpson,the former Liberal MP who was unseated by Urban in 2017,held serious doubts about his rival’s academic qualifications.
Even before the election came around,Simpson had office staff email the University of Leeds,where Urban claimed he earned a Bachelor of Arts with honours in physical education and applied social science.
Despite being advised by the university there was no record of anyone named Barry Urban attending or graduating,Simpson wasn’t confident enough to raise questions during an election campaign.
A mutual contact,a former journalist,suggested I talk to him and his staff member,but for the time being my key focus,after returning from covering then-premier Mark McGowan’s trip to China in November 2017,remained the validity of Urban’s medals.
Within a few days of being back in Perth,Urban telephoned me out of the blue with a different story about the origin of his overseas police medal.
It was both an unexpected twist,and another calculated attempt at saving his career and reputation.
“I will be honest with you,” he began. “The medal I have is totally different to the one I should have.
“I agree with you. I have been wearing the wrong one. This was sent to me in 2000,and I have been wearing it ever since. I have written to the UK police to find out what has gone on.”
Suddenly,I was supposed to believe that British police authorities had somehow managed to send Urban an Australian medal by mistake and that the politician had unwittingly worn the incorrect medal to reflect his overseas service in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Barry Urban unseated longtime MP Tony Simpson in 2017.Facebook/ Barry Urban
As soon as I hung up the phone I darted into the office ofThe West Australian newspaper editor,Brett McCarthy,to tell him we now had a strong story about Urban courtesy of his own admission.
At the very least,the MP accepted he had been displaying a specific medal he was not entitled to wear. Although,he still maintained he had been a medal recipient.
On November 18,the front page headline “MP’s fake medal” sat above the first story I would write across five years of reporting on Urban’s downfall.
The government and Urban’s Labor Party protectors swung into action by immediately under the MP’s name,which offered a completely new explanation for Urban’s medal.
It was no longer a mistake that UK police sent him the incorrect award. It was Urban’s “mistake” for ordering the wrong one.
“In the early 2000s,I ordered a Commemorative International Police Service medal from a military store in WA,” the statement read.
Clockwise from left:The statement almost a year after the first revelations (seven of the 14 charges were later dropped after it was deemed not in the public interest to pursue them);photos of medals Urban provided to the parliamentary inquiry,supposedly for his service in Cyprus;a close-up of a Police Overseas Service Medal.Supplied
“What I received instead was an Australian overseas service medal. The purchase of this medal was incorrect and wrong. I apologise to anyone that has been offended by the mistake. At no time did I ever intend to mislead anyone on my service.”
Urban had tried to deceive me twice with different accounts of how he came to have the medal,and now he was playing the mental health card by claiming his peacekeeping mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina had taken a toll on him.
But if I could prove he never even went to the war zone,then his sudden post-traumatic stress disorder would also be a fabrication.
Two things soon happened,which ensured the next front page article I wrote about the slippery MP,was headlined “Urban myth”.
Firstly,the United Nations and Overseas Policing Association had responded to my inquiries and Urban’s attempts to defend his right to wear a service medal.
“We note a number of inconsistencies in the information provided,” a statement read.
Barry Urban leaves Perth Magistrates Court on November 14,2018.AAP Image/Rebecca Le May
“We call on Mr Urban to review his stated position as our fallen,their families and our members deserve transparency. The people of Darling Range and the State of Western Australia deserve transparency.”
Secondly,the following paragraphs from Urban’s Facebook biography had vanished within 24 hours of his claim about ordering the incorrect medal from a WA military store:
“He has obtained a number of qualifications and spent a large portion of his career on exercises and military operations in Northern Ireland,Cyprus and Namibia,attaining military medals and a citation.”
“During his career in the police force Barry obtained Bachelor Degree and a Post Graduate Degree in police studies.”
“After returning from duties in Bosnia carrying out war crime investigations,he retired from the UK Police Force and was awarded a police medal and other citation.”
The editing had either been done by Urban,who knew his work of fiction had caught up with him,his staff,or by the Labor Party,which was beginning to accept that their man in Darling Range posed a clear and present danger to the government’s reputation.
The court case dragged on for three years,the sentencing judge describing how he had created a fabric of "lies upon lies upon lies".
On November 21,then-premier McGowan told parliament Urban had also misled him after my initial call to the MP about the police medal.
“He assured me there was nothing in it,” McGowan said.
“Therefore,I am disappointed in him,and I’m disappointed in what he advised the media.”
But the disappointment was only just beginning.
“New Urban doubt,” screamed across the next day’s front page.
I had been checking into Tony Simpson’s doubts,and Leeds University had come back to me with an emphatic statement about Urban’s claims of studying there in the early 1990s.
“I have checked the alumni databases and there is no record of a Barry Urban,” a staff member said.
A deeper dive by the university’s student archives team also came up empty.
If the Leeds qualifications were forged,it almost certainly meant Urban’s University of Portsmouth “certificate of higher education in policing” was also bogus.
Under siege,the MP on November 29,but he remained in the legislative assembly as an independent for another six months, just before an inquiry recommended he be expelled from parliament for his “serial dishonesty and deception” dating back 20 years.
He had lied to WA Police,lied to the parliament and therefore lied to the public.
“The member for Darling Range did not serve in the Balkans,” the parliament’s procedure and privileges committee concluded.
“He was not entitled to wear any form of commemorative international police service medal.”
Having given evidence to that committee’s inquiry,and later provided police with a statement,I was certain Urban’s academic forgeries would lead to criminal charges.
In June 2018,Labor lost a by-election in Darling Range to the Liberal Party,and four months later the major fraud squad whose compulsive lying set it all in train.
It wasn’t until 2021 the 52-year-old regarding four counts of forging a record and three counts of providing false evidence to parliament in the District Court. He was behind bars.
The judge described the ex-politician as the 'real life Pinocchio of Parliament' after his web of lies unravelled in 2017.
“You are,in fact,the real-life Pinocchio of parliament,” said Judge Carmel Barbagallo.
,when his actual life story would have been enough to satisfy the Labor Party ahead of its 2017 pre-selection process,is anyone’s guess.
But I do know the original tip-off about the man,the myth,the manipulator,which the then-premier’s strategy advisor had tried to tell me was a “bum steer”,turned out to be the best bum steer I’ve had in almost four decades of being a reporter.
Urban was released on parole on April 29,2023.
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