POLICE have released the audio of a seven minute phone call to the police assistance line on February 23, reporting the erratic driving of former Treasurer Troy Buswell.

Mr Buswell hit four parked cars and a telephone pole in Subiaco as he drove home from a Kings Park wedding in the early hours of that morning.

●Premier slams Mark McGowan’s Troy Buswell ‘bikie’ slur

The Vasse MP resigned from the Barnett Cabinet after the crash was made public and this week pleaded guilty to 11 driving charges. He was fined $3100 and disqualified from driving for 12 months.

FULL CALL TRANSCRIPT

Operator: “Assistance, how can we help you?”

Caller: “Yeah, I’m just ringing up. I’m just driving down Roberts Road and I’ve just had this car pull out in front of me. He’s reversed out and he’s backed up the whole front end of his car and he’s swerving all over Roberts Road.”

Operator: “Has he stopped or is he still driving?”

Caller: “He’s actually gone into a premises on Roberts Road. We actually pulled right up because he was all over the place. We kept an eye on him. And he’s got out of the vehicle and he’s struggling to stand up, he was struggling to stand up a fair bit.”

Operator: “So he got out of the car, has he?”

Caller: “Yep, to open up his gate, and he’s got like a gate out the front of his premises, by the look of it he’s got back in again, and after fumbling with the gate key, and then drove into his gate and then drove inside and gave us a weird-ass look. He’s smashed up all of his front end, and we’ve been down Roberts Road because we thought he might have hit a couple of cars on the way up but we couldn’t find anything but we thought we’d let you know anyway. We’ve got a rego.”

Operator: “Yeah, do you know where the house is?”

Caller: “Yeah, it’s . . .(caller supplies address)

Operator: “Do you know what the plate number is?”

Caller: “And the plate number . . (caller supplies registration)

Operator: “What sort of car is it?”

Caller: “It’s a white Commodore, it’s um, like a Statesman or something like that. A Caprice, I think it was. But it’s white in colour. The bloke was dolled up to the nines and clearly couldn’t stand on his own two feet.”

Operator: “So he was driving erratically on what road? On Roberts Road?”

Caller: “He wasn’t driving erratically, he was driving all over the place, on Roberts Road.”

Operator: “Swerving all over the road?”

Caller: “Yeah. He was taking up two lanes and nearly hitting everything on the side as well. And when we pulled up behind him out the front of his premises his whole front bumper was hanging off. The whole front end looked like it had been pretty smashed up. We just went up — after we watched him go into his premises, after a little while — we just went down Roberts Road to have a look at a couple of the cars that were parked up … but there seemed to be no damage there. I thought he might have done a hit and run.”

Operator: “So the front end has been all damaged. I’ll just write down you’re not sure if he’s been involved in an accident with another vehicle.”

Caller: “Yeah, not too sure what it’s been involved in.”

Operator: “Has the driver … has the driver arrived, or parked up on his property … possibly inebriated, and seems very intoxicated, and could barely stand, is that right?”

Caller: “Yes, he could barely stand, we actually watched him give it about three or four goes trying to get his gate open with the number pad. Then he’s actually walked out of his gate, jumped in his car, reversed up in front of my vehicle — and by that stage I was blocking one lane, I was a bit unsure of him — and then he’s gone forward, rammed his grate on the left hand side of his vehicle, sat there with his foot on the accelerator, and then finally realised, after a probably good minute and a half, and then reversed back up again and went and parked his car inside.”

Operator: “So he rammed into the gate, did he?

Caller: “Yeah, he rammed into the gate in front of us. There’s two of us in the vehicle here.”

Operator: “..Rammed into the gate. And realised that he’s driving a car or realised where he was, is that right?”

Caller: “Yeah, so he was … he had his foot on the accelerator, he basically rammed into the gate, and he’s just sitting there with his foot on the accelerator, the back wheels were spinning. And then he’s realised that he wasn’t going anywhere and he’s reversed up, turned to the right, and then driven through the gate and then parked up inside of the property. Yeah he wasn’t getting up his stairs very quickly.”

Operator: “Can you describe him?”

Caller: “Yeah, he’s probably about five foot 10 to about six foot? He’s probably late 40s early 50s, grey hair, thinnish, very thin. He was wearing glasses. Very chubby in the face and also probably really … yeah, we actually joked between ourselves and we thought it looked like Troy Buswell.”

Operator: “OK. And what about, what was he wearing?”

Caller: “He was wearing a pair of black suit slacks and there was a tux suit shirt underneath, a white tux shirt, and a bow-tie. So he’d been somewhere flash.”

(tape edited to cut out caller’s identifying details.

Operator: “This was in the last five minutes?”

Caller: “Probably about 10-15 now. It’s probably not worth sending anybody out to have a look.”

Operator: “I’ll speak to my supervisor anyway. Leave it with me. Thanks for your call [name removed], if we need to task police to respond I’ll organise it from here … we’ll call you if we need a statement.