Ex-MP Troy Bell will spend time in prison, joining short list of jailed politicians

Troy Bell was so charismatic, persuasive and so well-liked that he was twice re-elected while facing allegations he was a dishonest thief.

The former Mount Gambier MP diligently served as a representative for his local community for almost a decade, initially snaring his seat at the March 2014 state election with a 7.7 per cent swing.

Now he is adjusting to serving time in a prison cell, where he will spend at least the next two-and-half years.

He joins a short list of South Australian MPs who have found themselves in trouble with the law — but appears to be the first to be jailed in almost a century.

The long-forgotten politicians who have served time in years past include former Labor politician and solicitor Beasley James Kearney who, according to media reports from 1933, was sentenced to three years of hard labour after pleading guilty to three fraud offences for taking money from a trust account.

Two years earlier, Albert "Bert" Augustine Edwards, who had been the member for Adelaide, was jailed in 1931 for five years for an "unnatural offence" involving a teenage boy and his seat in parliament was "vacated by absence without leave".

Edwards was released from prison in 1933.

Bell sat emotionless in the District Court dock this week as he was sentenced to five years in jail, half of which he must serve before being eligible to apply for release on parole.

His offending occurred over a four-year period between 2009 and 2013 while he was employed by the Department for Education — before he swore an oath to represent his constituents in parliament in 2014.

Before becoming an MP, Bell helped establish and run the Independent Learning Centre (ILC), which provided an alternate pathway for at-risk students who had become disengaged from formal education.

The programs provided pathways for those students to complete their secondary education and progress to further education, work or apprenticeships.

Bell, a former teacher, had championed the cause which was widely recognised as successful — but while doing so, he stole more than $430,000 in public monies from the accounts of not-for-profit education associations.

In 2013, he quit the role to pursue a career in politics.

According to court documents, around the time he was first elected in March 2014, the Office of Public Integrity received a complaint and an investigation into the siphoning of funds meant for the ILC began.

The complaint made its way to the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption which found it "raised potential issues of corruption in public administration".

The lengthy investigation was referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions in May 2017 and three months later Bell was charged.

At the time, he said he would fight the charges, which he labelled "a political witch-hunt".

Bell quit the Liberal party to stand as an independent and was re-elected in 2018 and 2022 — while the theft and dishonesty charges were before the court and widely publicised.

After the distribution of preferences, Bell claimed 60.3 per cent in the 2018 poll, and in 2022 won by a slightly greater margin, winning 63.1 per cent of the final vote after preferences.

While he was winning the elections, he continued to fight against the criminal charges — with his legal team making numerous applications — which caused delays in the proceedings.

Few criminal cases take so long to reach a conclusion.

Bell's first legal representative died from terminal cancer, causing his first trial to be vacated.

Thereafter, for most of his prolonged court fight, Bell was represented by prominent barrister Marie Shaw KC, who launched dozens of applications revolving around matters like the disclosure and relevance of evidence and whether the matter should be severed and heard in six separate trials.

He also twice lost his bid in SA courts to have the proceedings permanently halted, before taking it to the High Court.

That application to the country's highest court was later withdrawn, but it had already caused his trial listing in February 2022 to be postponed.

Other delays also occurred, before Marie Shaw and her instructing solicitors withdrew from the case in mid 2023, leaving Bell unrepresented before he hired his current solicitors and barrister Nicholas Healy.

He eventually stood trial over three months between June and September last year, with the jury returning guilty verdicts to 20 counts of theft and five counts of dishonest dealings with documents.

However, his jail term was not imposed for more than a year, after Bell launched an appeal against the jury's verdicts, which was dismissed by the Court of Appeal.

Bell then announced he would stand down from his role as the member for Mount Gambier, before formally resigning from parliament days later.

The delays in Bell's case and applications caught the ire of Anthony Whealy KC, chair of The Centre for Public Integrity and former New South Wales Supreme Court judge, who this week told ABC Radio Adelaide that the number of delays in the case was "unusual".

"I think we have to say that's not in the interests of justice."

In sentencing Bell this week — more than eight years since his first court appearance — Judge Rauf Soulio also referred to the delays, which he noted had also cost Bell his assets.

"You've lost much because of your offending, including your seat in the parliament and your assets," he said.

He said this was "partly self-inflicted given your approach to contesting the charges".

Judge Soulio also noted Bell had never accepted any responsibility for the offending and had never sought to explain it, despite "the overwhelming evidence against" him.

He noted that it was Bell's position of "authority and trust" which had led to his offending.

He noted it was those attributes that also served Bell as a "hard-working and effective member of parliament", during his three terms serving the Mount Gambier community — who are now without a representative as the 2026 state election looms.

The marathon legal process has not quite ended for Bell — who still has a chance to appeal against the sentence — and will later this year appear in the Adelaide Magistrates Court over unrelated allegations he misused the Country Members Accommodation Allowance.

He is facing 52 charges of deception for allegedly falsely claiming he was entitled to collect more than $50,000 between 2015 and 2020.

He has strongly denied those charges.