NSW ex-Labor boss guilty of data breach

Former NSW Labor boss Jamie Clements faces a maximum $22,000 fine and conviction after he was found guilty of unlawfully using a man's enrolment information to give to a union boss.

Clements asked ex-Labor staffer David Latham to search the party's Campaign Central database for NSW man Craig Wilson's phone number and address in June 2015.

Clements, the party's general secretary, admitted he'd intended to give the details to then-National Union of Workers state secretary Derrick Belan, but said he never got the chance.

He said he thought he was using Commonwealth electoral data, not NSW electoral data, and that he knew nothing about the laws protecting electoral information.

But Magistrate Beverley Schurr dismissed this defence in a judgment in the Downing Centre Local Court on Friday.

"When I consider the position of Mr Clements as state secretary of a political party, and his political experience since 2003, I am satisfied ... that his mistaken belief that the material he accessed was Commonwealth material was not reasonable," she said.

Ms Schurr said Clements used Mr Wilson's information "for a purpose that was not permitted, that is, taken from the database to give to a colleague for personal reasons".

Clements was also found to have asked ex-Labor staffer Dominic Ofner to search Mr Wilson's details three weeks earlier in May 2015.

Ms Schurr accepted evidence that Clements passed Mr Wilson's details to Mr Belan over the phone that time.

Mr Ofner has previously said Clements then told him Mr Wilson would probably "be met by bikies".

However, Clements was cleared of a charge of disclosing enrolment information over the breach on Friday.

Ms Schurr said she wasn't satisfied Clements knew he was accessing NSW electoral material, which was required to prove that particular charge.

Clements resigned as Labor general secretary in January 2016 and is understood to be working as a solicitor.

He faces a sentence hearing in July.