CorruptPolice_Queensland


Police corruption rife in Qld, says former officer


Mark ColvinMark Colvin presents PM Monday to Friday from 5:10pm on Radio National and 6:10pm on ABC Local Radio. Join Mark for the latest current affairs, wrapping the major stories of each day.






Transcript

You can also listen to the story in REAL AUDIO and WINDOWS MEDIA and MP3 formats.

PM - Monday, 16 April , 2007  18:35:40

Reporter: Lindy Kerin

PETER CAVE: A key whistleblower at the Fitzgerald Royal Commission into Police Corruption in Queensland says it's time to repeat the process.

Retired police officer Col Dillon served more than three decades in the Queensland police force, and is one of Australia's most highly decorated Indigenous police officers.

He's told the ABC's Message Stick program, corruption in the force is still very much alive.

Full interview is lower down this page

Queensland Police

Queensland Police Service
Queensland Police Service emblem.
With Honour We Serve

Established: January 1, 1864
Headed by: Commissioner Robert Atkinson
Ministry: Police and Corrective Services
Headquarters: 200 Roma Street,
Brisbane, QLD 4000
Employees: 9003
Major units:
http://www.police.qld.gov.au/

The Queensland Police Service is the law enforcement agency responsible for policing the Australian state of Queensland. In 1990, the Queensland Police Force was officially renamed the Queensland Police Service and the old motto of "Firmness with Courtesy" was changed to "With Honour We Serve". The headquarters of the Queensland Police Service is located at 200 Roma Street, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.


History

The Queensland Police was established on January 1, 1864 and started operations with approximately 143 employees, including the first Commissioner of Police D.T. Seymour. The service had four divisions: Metropolitan Police, Rural Police, Water Police, and Native Police. Bicycles were introduced in 1895. At the turn of the century there were 845 men and 135 Aboriginal trackers at 256 stations in Queensland.

1900s

In 1904 the Queensland Police started to use fingerprinting in investigations. The first women police officers were inducted in 1931 to assist in inquiries involving women suspects and prisoners. Following World War II a number of technological innovations were adopted including radio for communication within Queensland and between State Departments. By 1950 the Service was staffed by 2,030 sworn personnel, 10 women police and 30 trackers.

1960s


In 1965 women officers were given the same powers as male officers.

1970s

The Queensland Police Academy complex at Oxley, Brisbane, was completed in 1972. Bicycles were phased out in 1975 and the Police put more cars and motorcycles into service, the Police Air Wing also became operational in 1975 following the purchase of two single-engine aircraft. In 1980, a new computerised message switching system was put into use throughout the State, giving Queensland one of the most effective police communication systems in Australia.

1980s

The 1980s were a turbulent period in Queensland's political history, allegations of high-level corruption in the Queensland Police and State government led to a judicial inquiry presided by Tony Fitzgerald. The Fitzgerald Inquiry which ran from July 1987 to July 1989 led to charges being laid against many long serving police including, Jack Herbert, Licensing Branch sergeant Harry Burgess, assistant commissioner Graeme Parker, [1]the Police Commissioner Terry Lewis (who was gaoled and served ten and a half years) and a perjury trial against the State Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

1990s

The Police Powers and Responsibility Act 1997, was passed by the Queensland government on July 1, 1997. The Act provides Police with powers necessary for modern effective policing. Technological introductions in the 1990s include Oleoresin Capsicum (OC) Spray, the Glock semi-automatic pistol, extendible batons and hinged handcuffs in 1998,and Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) laser-based detection devices and an Integrated Traffic Camera System in 1999 to enforce traffic speed limits.

2000s


The Police Powers and Responsibilities Act 2000 came into force in July 2000, consolidating the majority of police powers into one Act. The Queensland Police contribute to the national CrimTrac system and the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS), established in 2000. The Crime and Misconduct Act 2001 commenced 1 January 2002 and redefined the responsibilities of the service and the Crime and Misconduct Commission with respect to the management of complaints.

As of 30 June 2002 there were 8,367 sworn staff (20.2% women) and 2,925 staff members at 321 Police Stations, 40 Police Beat shopfronts and 21 Neighbourhood Police Beats throughout the state.

As of June 30 2004, the Queensland Police Service had 9,003 sworn staff (21.8% women) and 2,994 staff members.

Around 2006, some officers received a TASER stun gun.

In mid-2007, approximately 5,000 officers participated in the Pride in Policing march through Brisbane, Queensland's capital.

Mission

To serve the people of Queensland by protecting life and property, preserving peace and safety, preventing crime and upholding law in a manner which has regard for the public good and rights of individuals.

Regions


There are eight police regions in the State of Queensland, each under command of an Assistant Commissioner:

  • Far Northern Region
  • Northern Region
  • Central Region
  • North Coast Region
  • Metropolitan North Region
  • Metropolitan South Region
  • Southern Region
  • South Eastern Region

These regions are further divided into districts or divisions.

Ranks


See also: Australian police ranks

Ranks of the Queensland Police Service are as follows:

Non-Commissioned Ranks

Senior NonCommissioned Ranks

Commissioned Ranks


Constable Constable
(5 years)
Senior
Constable
Sergeant Senior
Sergeant
Inspector Superintendent



Chief
Superintendent
Assistant
Commissioner
Deputy
Commissioner
Commissioner


Rank insignia is worn only by uniformed officers. Officers at the rank of Inspector and above (commissioned officers) have the words 'Queensland Police' embroidered on their epaulettes, which are significantly larger than the epaulettes of lower ranks. Different paypoints apply within the same rank relative to years of service.

Specialist areas


Officers must serve a mininum of three to five years in general duties before being permitted to serve in specialist areas such as:


Commissioners

Period Served Name
2000 - Robert Atkinson
1992 - 2000 James Patrick O'Sullivan
1989 - 1992 Noel Ronald Newnham
1987 - 1989 Ronald Joseph Redmond
1976 - 1987 Terence Murray Lewis
1970 - 1976 Raymond Wells Whitrod
1969 - 1970 Norrin William Bauer
1958 - 1969 Francis Erich Bischof
1957 Thomas William Harrold
1955 - 1957 Patrick Glynn
1949 - 1954 John Smith
1934 - 1949 Cecil James Carroll
1925 - 1934 William Harold Ryan
1921 - 1925 Patrick Short
1917 - 1921 Frederick Charles Urquhart
1905 - 1916 William Geoffrey Cahill
1895 - 1905 William Edward Parry-Okenden
1864 - 1895 David Thomson Seymour
 
It is noted that most of the Police Commissions in Queensland above are senior Freemasons.
The Freemasons are a very strong force in the legal, political and police force in Queensland, and Freemasons have a code to protect  their own and if any tries to stand up against anyone of their members they quickly bring the full power of the legal, political and police system against them



Police corruption rife in Qld, says former officer


Mark ColvinMark Colvin presents PM Monday to Friday from 5:10pm on Radio National and 6:10pm on ABC Local Radio. Join Mark for the latest current affairs, wrapping the major stories of each day.






Transcript

You can also listen to the story in REAL AUDIO and WINDOWS MEDIA and MP3 formats.

PM - Monday, 16 April , 2007  18:35:40

Reporter: Lindy Kerin

PETER CAVE: A key whistleblower at the Fitzgerald Royal Commission into Police Corruption in Queensland says it's time to repeat the process.

Retired police officer Col Dillon served more than three decades in the Queensland police force, and is one of Australia's most highly decorated Indigenous police officers.

He's told the ABC's Message Stick program, corruption in the force is still very much alive.

He's also called for an inquiry to help mend relations between the police and the Indigenous communities.

Lindy Kerin reports

LINDY KERIN: When he retired six years ago, Col Dillon was the country's highest-ranking Indigenous police officer.

He rose to national prominence during the 1980s, when he blew the whistle on police corruption at the Fitzgerald Royal Commission.

Now Col Dillon has told the ABC's Message Stick program, things haven't improved and that police corruption in Queensland is rife.

COL DILLON: The culture that was pre-Fitzgerald is there today and every bit as strong as what it was pre-Fitzgerald. It may have softened a little bit after some of the reform processes come into place and so forth, but there's been backsliding of a great magnitude in terms of the police doing the services in this State.

LINDY KERIN: Col Dillon is now documenting his policing career.

He says his tell-all book will name corrupt figures who weren't identified in the Fitzgerald inquiry.

COL DILLON: There will be people out there that will be concerned and have some apprehension about what may be put to paper by me because there's no doubt in my mind, and I know for a fact that there are people when the net was cast to haul in the corrupt, there were quite a few that got away.

LINDY KERIN: Last December Col Dillon quit his job as a State Government adviser in Queensland. He resigned in protest over the handling of the death in custody of an Aboriginal man on Palm Island.

Col Dillon says he's deeply concerned about the relationship between Queensland police and the Indigenous community.

He says it's time for an inquiry into how the Queensland Police Service operates.

COL DILLON: To my mind I would say this without any fear of contradiction that it is high time again for another far reaching inquiry into our police service and the way that it operates.

LINDY KERIN: The Queensland Police Service has declined to respond to Col Dillon's comments. So too has the State's Police Union.

A spokesman Ross Musgrove says the union doesn't want to help promote Col Dillon's book.

He says if the former police officer has a legitimate complaint, he should take it to the Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission.

But the President of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, Terry O'Gorman, says Col Dillon's comments should be taken seriously.

TERRY O'GORMAN: Col Dillon's got an enormous store of credibility.

He was an inspector of police and an Aboriginal inspector of police in the Licensing Squad when he blew the whistle on corruption.

He stayed in the police for a period of time after that.

When he left the police he worked in Indigenous Affairs for the Queensland Government, while still keeping in close contact with the Queensland Police Service.

He's got enormous credibility and the Police Minister and the Police Commissioner cannot simply brush his well-founded criticisms aside.

And if he says that the Crime and Misconduct Commission is so compromised because it's over time fallen into a pretty ineffective oversight body against the Queensland police then perhaps an external inquiry needs to be set up.

PETER CAVE: Terry O'Gorman from the Australian Council for Civil Liberties ending that report from Lindy Kerin.

In a statement this afternoon, the Queensland Police Minister said she hadn't yet seen the program in which he makes these claims and would watch it when it goes to air tonight.

Judy Spence says if Mr Dillon is has any information on corruption in the Queensland Police Service he should report it to the appropriate bodies.

Queensland Detective Greg Stormont conspires with well known drug dealer Lisa Quain to break and enter a luxury Gold Coast home and steal $50,000 worth of Furniture

Judy Spence has been given evidence that can prove Queensland Detective Greg Storemont conspired with Lisa Quain and other police and criminals to break and enter a luxury home in Queensland Gold Coast and steal $50,000 worth of furniture......there were caught out by a long and expensive investigation by the INL News Group and became very scared abiut being exposed and ended up returning a lot of the furniture.
The robbery was done for a number of reasons including:

1. So well known drug addict Lisa Quain could raise money to feed her $1,000 a week drug habit and Greg Storemont a few extra dollars in his back pocket from the sale of the furniture

2. As part of a overall conspiracy involving Queensland Detective Greg Stormont and his criminal net work of drug lords and shaby lenders, bikie heavies and drug dealers and users, to try and create a false charge against the owner of the property where the furniture was stolen and  the borrowers of properties in Red Oak Drive Tallai in an overall conspiracy to defraud the borrowers of their $90 million in equity in these properties which the owners of seven properties in Red Oak Drive Tallai had a sale for $100 million. The plan was simple. Help Lisa Quain break and enter the property and steal two housefuls of expensive luxury furniture and get Lisa Quain to make a false statement to the police that the borrowers of the seven properties in Red Oak Drive, Tallai and the owner of the property where the furniture was stolen were involved in stealing the furniture themselves. This way Queensland Detective Greg Stormont can create false charges against the owners of the Seven properties in Red Oak Tallai that they were involved with breaking and entering and stealing the furniture, have them arrested on these false charges which would make it more difficult to be able to refinance these properties away from the 10% to 20% per month interest loans from a gaol cell trying to defend these false charges. In the mean time the shady lenders repossesses the properties and they are sold cheap to their associates, then sold a few year later for million in tax free profits.
Queensland Detective Greg Stormont and his criminal net work of drug lords and shady lenders, bikie heavies and drug dealers and users were also desperately wanting  to get hold of the ownership of the house where the $50,000 of luxury furniture was stolen at a cheap price so they also wanted to set the owner up of that property on a false charge. This way this robbery could achieve all their aims. They could use Lisa Quain's false police statement that the owner of the house where the robbery took place that the owner was involved in having their own furniture stolen, so when the insurance claim went was made a as result of the robbery, the owner of the house would be falsely charged for making a false insurance claim using the false statement of Lisa Quain, a drug dealer and user, who is a partner with the corrupt police like Greg Stormont, to support this false charge.

3. Use the robbery to see if there were papers in the house that could be used to try and set up the owner of the house and the owners of the seven house in Red Oak Drive Tallai of other false charges so that they could come back later and get an official police warrant  to falsely make out that papers they stole in the robbery where removed legally with the search warrant.
The problem now for Queensland Detective Greg Stormont and his criminal net work of drug lords and shady lenders, bikie heavies and drug dealers and users is that INL News Group can conclusively prove that papers that were stolen in the robbery by Queensland Detective Greg Stormont and his criminal net work of drug lords and shady lenders, bikie heavies and drug dealers and users where in the possession of Queensland Detective Greg Stormont the day before Queensland Detective Greg Stormont  obtained the official search warrant.
Like all criminals like Queensland Detective Greg Stormont

4. Use the robbery to steal the original series of books belonging to the INL News Group and its shareholders called the  The Triumph of Truth (Who's Watching the Watchers?) which in over 10,000 pages in six volumes setting out the most serious corruption and wrongful acts committed by Judges, Magistrates, low level, middle ranking and senior police, senior politicians, court clerks, corrupt business people, corrupt lawyers and barristers, corrupt public trustee officers and others. These books were about to be made into a series of feature films and television and Internet series which would have made the INL News Group hundreds of million sof dollars as ell has have the world know how corrupt the political, legal, public trustee, business and court system in Australia is.
These books were originally sold to the Western Australian Alexander Resource Library and were recorded on the computer references in the Library for two years, however the books were so provative and damaging to the most powerful people in the political, legal, public trustee, business and court system in Australia, that even without any court order, the crown law office in Western Australia demanded  that the library shred the books as though the library never brought them and just never existed. Normally when a book is written that someone is upset about it's contents, they issue a legal writ for damages and an injunction to stop it being published. However the powerful people in the political, legal, public trustee, business and court system in Australia  did not want to do this as this would bring world publicity to the contents of the books and they knew they would lose the court case because everything was the truth in the books and the contents was simply information that had already been lodged in the Local, District, Supreme, Federal and High Courts over three decades.

It is noted that the INL News Group has given notice on many occasions to the Government of Queensland and the Queensland Police Force that the longer they wrongfully hold onto these books the over $1 billion damage claim in mounting day by day. and the INL News Group are preparing to sue the Government of Queensland and the Queensland Police Force for over $1 billion in damages because the theft of these books has hindered the INL News Group from making the series of  films, TV series and Internet movies based on The Triumph of Truth (Who's Watching the Watchers?).

If it was not the the INL News Group expensive and lengthy investigation into this matter, the bulk of the furniture would not have been returned by Queensland Detective Greg Stormont and his criminal net work of drug lords and shady lenders, bikie heavies and drug dealers and users and the  INL News Group would not have gathered the conclusive evidence to prove that Queensland Detective Greg Stormont and his criminal net work of drug lords and shady lenders, bikie heavies and drug dealers and users were clearly involved with breaking and entering the house and stealing $50,000 worth of furniture. The INL News Group have constantly offered to provide the complete investigation file to the CMC,Judy Spence and anyone else that wanted ot have it to have this all investigates, but no one is interested in the truth that would mean Queensland Detective Greg Stormont would be sacked form the police force and end up in jail along with many others from his criminal net work of drug lords and shady lenders, bikie heavies and drug dealers and users

Letters written to Judy Spence, the Minister for the Police In Queensland and her response

Please read the following article on www.inlnews.com
and pass on to as many people and as many authorities as possible as this sort of behavior by the police has to stop as Australian Citizens are in danger and besides it is giving Australia a very bad name in the world as one of the most corrupt and dangerous societies to live, especially Queensland which seems to be the most corrupt
The CMC should supina Lisa Quain to get her to tell all about the police involvement with selling and taking drugs and helping to protect major drug dealers in Queensland and other states in Australia, Western Australia where she originally comes form she says has the same problems with corrupt police, they have been protecting her drug operation for years, however she is only a very low level drug dealer who is a young mum you ended up with a $1,000 a week speed habit as a result of the police who work in with the local bikie gangs supplying her with a large amount of speed and she then had to keep selling drugs for and with the police and their associates to support her $1,000 a week speed habit. Eventually they will provide her with a Hot Shot (a lethal dose of drugs)and kill her that way so she can not speak out anymore and tell the world what the police and their criminal drug dealing partners have been up to. There will simply be an article in the newspaper that a well know drug dealer and drug addict died of an overdose of drugs last night and nobody will give a dam. Lisa Quain needs protection by the CMC and to be looked after and she can help the CMC clean up the billion dollar drug operation in Queensland and have many of the corrupt police and drug dealers arrested. That is of course if the CMC are not corrupt themselves and want to clean up the drug problem and the corrupt police, in that case the CMC will do nothing, not bother to bring Lisa Quain in to tell all she knows, and she knows a lot, believe us. Lisa Quain can bring a lot of powerful people down and maybe force another royal commission into the Queensland police and the Federal Police to try and stop the corruption that helps make sure the multi Billion Drug industry survives in Queensland and keeps killing out young people and destroying their lives
Stop Press International News Flash
The Crime and Misconduct Commission of Queensland in Australia headed by John David Kallahan, Michael O'Connor, Dan Bartlet, Ian Thomas and others are accused of being used by powerful corrupt Queensland Police and their shady business associates which includes an ex-Queensland Police Officer for a wrongful purpose to cover up  serious crimes and wrongful acts committed by them which includes conspiracy to break and enter, conspiracy to defraud, major drug dealing in the Queensland's Gold Coast and to cover up major crimes committed by public company directors and their associates-
 INL News has been presented with evidence that senior state Queensland Police officers are involved with protecting major drugs dealers in the Gold Coast to help with developing and protecting the multi billion dollar drug industry thriving in the Gold Coast Queensland Australia who use their illegal drugs profits to lend out on shady high interest rate real estate loans at up to 15% interest per month using high profile lawyers trust accounts to launder the billions in drug profits-
INL News has been given evidence by  well known low level drug dealers and users who have agreed to help expose the corruption in the Queensland Police Force and the police involvement at high levels in drug taking and drug selling in the Gold Coast in Queensland-
the witnesses who have provided sworn evidence to INL are now in hiding for fear of their lives.....
Watch this space for more details soon to be published by INL News for the world to see what really goes on in the sunny Gold Coast Queensland Australia, which is fast becoming the crime capital of the world, with such crimes being developed, supported, maintained and protected by senior members of the Queensland Police Force-
INL has been told by one senior ex-police officer that used to be in the major crime squad, that he had to  leave the Queensland Police Force because he could not stand up against senior police protecting major drug dealers and allowing them to operate openly with senior police protection in the Gold  Coast Queensland... it became a choice to either join their corrupt and illegal activities or leave the police force and keep his integrity... but again he was too scared to speak up publicly as to what he saw for fear of his life and the life of his family living in the Gold Coast... these people will stop at nothing to protect their illegal business interests and because they are the police, there is no where to run and no where to hide from these people, who have no hesitation of having someone murdered to make sure of their silence and making threats of murder and physical body damage to anyone or their families  that
get in their way.....
INL News has such evidence well secured in an international location ready to be presented to the International Court of Justice if those involved with such criminal and wrongful behavior cause any further trouble to innocent people who are presently being wrongfully being harassed by The Crime and Misconduct Commission of Queensland in Australia headed by John David Hallahan, Michael O'Connor, Dan Bartlet, Ian Thomas and others being used by powerful corrupt Queensland Police and their shady business associates which includes an ex-Queensland Police Officer for a wrongful purpose to cover up  serious crimes and wrongful acts committed by them which includes conspiracy to break and enter, conspiracy to defraud, major drug dealing in the Queensland's Gold Coast and to cover up major crimes committed by public company directors and their assistants...

"...I texed Lisa Quain today, to ask her how she was... this is the reply.....having a bad day again, as per usual. trying to correlate the whole saga of extremely traumatic events.we are trying to put it in chronological order, with names and phone numbers of witnesses and government  authority contacts or departments that can verify facts that prove a gross misconduct and negligence or official corruption . its just too much to cope with. too much occurred . its a HUGE  amount of criminal  offences commited against us ! police refused to act on any of it, that includes hand guns  pointed at us. unbelievable , but all true......."

Subject: CMC used by corrupt Queensland police to cover up crimes police
have committed
From: patrick.obi@inlnews.com
Date: Mon, October 29, 2007 10:31 pm
To:
Cc: mailbox@cmc.qld.gov.au
media_unit@cmc.qld.gov.au.
attorney@ministerial.qld.gov.au
 
Urgent Attention
 
Attorney General for Queensland Honourable Kerry Shine MP
The Honourable Kerry Shine MP was appointed Queensland’s Attorney-General, Minister for Justice and Minister Assisting the Premier in Western Queensland on 1 November 2006.
Mr Shine was elected to State Parliament as the Member for Toowoomba North in 2001.
Floor 18
State Law Building 50 Ann Street Brisbane Qld 4000
GPO Box 149 Brisbane Qld 4001
Phone: (07) 3239 3520 Fax: (07) 3221 2534
Email: mailbox@justice.qld.gov.au
Floor 18 State Law Building 50 Ann Street Brisbane Qld 4000
GPO Box 149 Brisbane Qld 4001
Phone: (07) 3239 3478
Fax: (07) 3220 2475
Email: attorney@ministerial.qld.gov.au
The Crime and Misconduct Commission of Queensland in Australia headed by John David Hallahan, Michael O'Connor, Dan Bartlet, Ian Thomas

    * Switchboard: (07) 3360 6060
    * Toll free (outside Brisbane): 1800 061 611
    * Fax: (07) 3360 6333
    * Email: mailbox@cmc.qld.gov.au

 
Media contact
Contact the CMC's Communications Officer (Media) if you have a query, or wish to arrange an interview.
Telephone:  (07)  3360 6344
 
Mobile:  0407 373 803
 
Fax:  (07)  3360 6235
 
Dear  Sir or Madame
 
I am the editor of INLNews.com and I have authorized the world wide publication of the following article on our web site   www.inlnews.com
If you and/or any in your organization and/or anyone mentioned in the article are unhappy with the article and/or anything in it, please get your lawyers to email me your objection and any legal threats in relation to the objection you may have. If I do not hear form you the article will stay with further articles as follow up ones to be continued on the same lines with more detailed information
 
I look forward to hearing from you if you want to respond to this email and/or the attached artice that is now on public display on the world wide Internet.
 
yours kindly
 
Partick Obi
Editor of
 www.inlnews.com
 
 
Stop Press International News Flash
The Crime and Misconduct Commission of Queensland in Australia headed by John David Hallahan, Michael O'Connor, Dan Bartlet, Ian Thomas and others are accused of being used by powerful corrupt Queensland Police and their shady business associates which includes an ex-Queensland Police Officer for a wrongful purpose to cover up  serious crimes and wrongful acts committed by them which includes conspiracy to break and enter, conspiracy to defraud, major drug dealing in the Queensland's Gold Coast and to cover up major crimes committed by public company directors and their assistants-
 INL News has been presented with evidence that senior state Queensland Police officers are involved with protecting major drugs dealers in the Gold Coast to help with developing and protecting the multi billion dollar drug industry thriving in the Gold Coast Queensland Australia who use their illegal drugs profits to lend out on shady high interest rate real estate loans at up to 15% interest per month using high profile lawyers trust accounts to launder the billions in drug profits-INL News has been given evidence by a well known low level drug dealers and user who agreed to help expose the corruption in the Queensland Police Force and the police involvement at high levels in drug taking and drug selling in the Gold Coast in Queensland-the witnesses who has provided sworn evidence to INL is now in hiding for fear of their lives.....
Watch this space for more details soon to be published by INL News for the world to see what really goes on in the sunny Gold Coast Queensland Australia which is fast becoming the crime capital of the world, with such crimes being developed, supported, maintained and protected by senior members of the Queensland Police Force- INL has been told by one senior ex-police officer that used to be in the major crime squad that he had to the leave the Queensland Police Force because he could not stand up against senior police protecting major drug dealers operating openly with senior police protection in the Gold Coast Queensland... it became a choice to either join their corrupt and illegal activities or leave the police force and keep his integrity... but again was too scared to speak up publicly as to what he saw for fear of his life and the life of his family living in the Gold Coast... these people will stop at nothing to protect their illegal business interests and because they are the police, there is no where to run and no where to hide from these people, who have no hesitation of having someone murdered to make sure of their silence and making threats of murder and physical body damage to anyone or their families  that
get in their way.....
INL News has such evidence well secured in an international location ready to be presented to the International Court of Justice if those involved with such criminal and wrongful behavior cause any further trouble to innocent people who are presently being wrongfully being harassed by The Crime and Misconduct Commission of Queensland in Australia headed by John David Hallahan, Michael O'Connor, Dan Bartlet, Ian Thomas and others being used by powerful corrupt Queensland Police and their shady business associates which includes an ex-Queensland Police Officer for a wrongful purpose to cover up  serious crimes and wrongful acts committed by them which includes conspiracy to break and enter, conspiracy to defraud, major drug dealing in the Queensland's Gold Coast and to cover up major crimes committed by public company directors and their assistants


                                                         Queensland Government logo

 
Hon Judy Spence MP

Member for Mount Gravatt

                                                                                             
                                                                                              

Minister for Police, Corrective Services and Sport


Response to Ministerial Correspondence Received by E-mail

 

Ref:  8893 F1 WK

 

19 November 2007

 
Mr Patrick Obi

patrick.obi@inlnews.com

 
Dear Mr Obi

 
Thank you for your email of 31 October 2007 concerning your allegations against the Queensland Police Service.

 
This matter is receiving attention and you will be advised further as soon as possible.
 

Yours sincerely


Judy Spence MP

Minister for Police, Corrective Services and Sport



As Yet there has been no further communication from Judy Spence,  the Minister for Police, Corrective Services and Sport for Queensland.
INLNews.com does not expect to receive any further communication from Judy Spense, as it is quite clear that Judy Spence and the rest of the Government in Queensland are not in the least bit interested in tackling and or wanting to even admit the existence of the serious multi billion dollar illegal drug trade in Queensland that ex Major Queensland Crime Squad Detective Dan Lansky, now working for www.smartventures.com.au and Chapmans Limited says exists.
Mr Dan Lansky has stated to reporters of INLNews.com that he left the Queensland Police Force after a long and successful career because it sickened him so constantly get instructions from his more senior police officers that that instead of arresting well known drug lords in Queensland's Gold Coast that her saw living the life style of the rich and famous on other people's misery, he was constantly asked to protect the drug lords at the head of the food chain who make the billions each year out the illegal industry that thrives with the help of senior Queensland Police like Detective Greg Stormont, who heads a major criminal drugs and shady loans syndicate that involves Queensland Police at the most highest rank, multi millionaire and billionaire businessmen, well respected Lawyers, CMC Officers, Bikie gangs and standover and hit men.
Ex Queensland Major Crime Squad detective Dan Lansky says he does not regret for one minute leaving the Queensland Police Force to work in the high flyer world of Public listed company with Borris Ganke in Chapmans Limited and Brett Goldsworthy in www.smartventures.com.au. Dan Lansky says at least he now makes an honest living, rather than being paid by the Queensland Government to protect billionaire drugs lords living lavish life styles in Queensland's Gold Coast, which is fast becoming known as the drug and crime capital of the world.
If Judy Spence, the Commissioner of Police, the Premier of Queensland and the Criminal Misconduct Commission (CMC) and the rest of those in charge of running Queensland are serious about tackling the billion dollar illegal drug trade that is now a major part of Queensland's thriving economy, then they will get the CMC and other law enforcement and investigative bodies to interview people like Lisa Quain on the lower end of drug taking and selling drugs to feed her $1,000 a day drug habbit and people like Dan Lansky who can give clear evidence of his knowledge of illegal activities within the police force and also have another Royal Commission into the Queensland Police Force with a specific reference to exposing and investigating why a multi billion dollars illegal drug industry can thrive in Queensland right under the noses of State and Federal Police Authorities whoa re meant to be there to stop such illegal activity, rather than protect protect such activity and share in the billion dollars profits made each year form the suffering and misery of those who pay each week for these illegal drugs.
The other devastating and sad effect of this thriving billion dollar illegal drug industry in Queensland is that it is the major cause of the rest of the crime that takes place in Queensland such as robberies and violence as the hooked drug users like Lisa Quain have to break and enter house, cars and rob people in the street to obtain the money to pay for the drugs they are desperate to obtain each week. Such drug users also supliment the income they obtain from robberies and violence by selling drugs for the billionaire drug lords who have corrupt police and other criminal heavies protecting their business and making sure that low level drug users and sellers like Lisa Quain are well aware if the try to expose them in any way they will either end up dead by a bullet through the head, or just end up being found on some street corner one morning having died of a hot shot of lethal cocktail of drugs that have been given to  her by her more senior drug dealer under instructions from the power billionaire drug lords that run the whole illegal drug industry in Queensland.
It is noted that it is a well established fact that most of the illegal drugs that are sold in New South Wales and either grown and/or manufactured in Queensland and transported by truck, train and plane down daily to New South Wales.
If the Queensland authorities were serious about stopping the thriving billion dollar illegal drugs industry in Queensland, which could be down easily if the Queensland Police stopped protecting drug dealers and sharing in the yearly profits made from the illegal drug industry, and did the job they are paid to do by the Queensland people, that is, to stop crime rather than being involved with perpetuating crime and protecting the senior criminal fiqures that control crime in Queensland.
It is also a well know fact that the billionaire drug lords use senior well respected law firms to launder their drug profits and to keep this money circulating and making more money but placing these illegal drug profits into the trust accounts of the well respected law firms and then the money lend out to desperate business people who need cash in a hurray for a business deal at up to 20% per month for short term loans. They then secure these loans against the lenders real estate assets, knowing they will never be able to keep up with interest payments of 10-20% per month.
Then the next step in the loan scam is that the lenders use powerful corrupt estate agents like Ray White and LJ Hooker and corrupt registered valuers like Herron Todd White who all work together in the Gold Coast to devalue the borrowers home so it is impossible for them the refinance their homes with a normal bank lender. Because the false reduced value and market appraisal placed on the property by the Ray White Estate Agents and Herron Todd White Valuers means that the borrowers loan to equity ratio is too low for a normal bank to approve a refinancing of the property to get the borrower out of the now 20% per month loan that has gone into penalty rate form the original 10% per month rate .
What happens next is the drug lord billionaire lender now repossesses the home of the borrower, sells it up cheap at a mortgagee sale with the buyer being a partner of the lender. The property is eventually resold  year or so later for a big profit and the finds received form the sale of the property is then clean tax free money from attack form any of the regulatory and taxation bodies. The parter of the billionaire drug lord who brought the house cheap at mortgagee sale lives in the house as his own home so when it is sold the profit on the house is completely tax free.
In one instance in a street called Red Oak Drive Tallai, where the criminal syndicate headed by Queensland Detective Greg Stormont and his drug lord lenders, lend out about $7 million on properties which had the potential for making hundreds of millions in development profits because their large acreage and the sweeping Gold Coast and Hinze Dam Views. These loans where made in the hope that the borrower could not pay the loans back and included loans set up fees of about $100,000 per property besides the 10% per month interest rate that rose to 20% per month if the interest was not paid on time.Detective Greg Stormont ran around telling everyone in the street, in Tallai and the whole gold coast including valuers, estate agents and financiers that the companies that loaned the money were under investigation for a serious fraud, Ray White Real Estate Agents and Herron Todd White Valuers ran around saying the properties has an independent sworn valuation of $2-$3 million each were only worth about $500,000 to $600,000 being luxury large homes on about 10 acres each, with sweeping views of the Gold Coast and the Hinze Dam and only ten minutes drive from the ocean, ten major shopping centres, 20 minutes drive from the Gold Coast International Airport and only 50 minutes drive form Brisbane.
There powerful contacts even managed to get the valuers government body to instruct all valuers in Queensland to refuse to value these properties at any price. So that when the borrower had loans approved from various normal lenders at 8% per annum to refinance these properties and/or had any of these properties sold, they made sure that no valuation could be obtained so the refinance and/or the sale could not go ahead.

This way the 7 properties that had independent sworn valuations of about $21 million with overall loans of about $7-8 million, suddenly were un-refinancable and un-sale able and they could only be sold to cash buyers at  mortgagee sales at about $600,000 with anyone that showed any interest in purchasing the properties being told by Ray White Real Estate who are considered the God in real estate advice in the Gold Coast and Herron Todd White Valuers that these properties were only worth about $500,000 to $600,000 each and no more. this meant that no one was willing to pay anymore that these price sin the end the properties started to be sold for about $600,000 each.
For the borrowing companies this meant they had loans of about $7 million with sale prices and market appraisals of about $3.6 million, when only a few months before the borrowing companies had independent sworn valuations of about $21 million which meant that there should have been no problem about borrowing up to about $14 million at 8% per annum, paying out all the high priced 20% per months loans and having about $5 million in working capital to purchase a well established cash flow business making ample income to pay the the the 8% per annum interest on the $14 million loan.
In stead, the properties were forclosed on and the properties were being sold to parters and/or friends of the powerful drug lord/financiers/police at bargain prices of about $600 each.
The new buyers just have to make this their own home and eventually sell these properties for millions of dollars as valuable developments sites with luxury homes on them, with the profits all tax free as clean money as any profit from the sale of your own home where you live as your primary residence is completely tax free in Australia.
Now two years later properties in Red Oak Drive are no going on the market for over $2 million,
by the established estate agents who said that in two years ago they were only worth about $600,000.
A nice tidy tax  free profit for the criminal Drug Lords/Financiers/Police syndicate and their associates.
The situation even gets worse. Those that are in a position to threaten to expose this devious scam, are then frightened to speak about it all publicly by Detective Greg Stormont using his corrupt contacts in Queensland's Criminal Misconduct Commission (CMC) to drag innocent people into secret interrogation hearings where only a high priced corrupt lawyer at the cost of $3,000 a day can attend and be asked about these real estate deals and are told that if they speak to anyone about this they will be arrested by the CMC as under the Queensland Law it appears that anything that is discussed in these secret hearing is not allowed to be discussed outside to anyone. You are not even meant to tell anyone you have been dragged to these secret hearings.
The purpose of Detective Greg Stormont who is fronting for the criminal syndicate, for the CMC hearings to two fold:
1. The frighten the life out of anyone that could be a danger to speak out against the criminal syndicate;

2. The by pass the well established right to remain silent, so that trick questions can be asked at these hearings and can be used by the corrupt police such as Greg Storment to try and create a false charge against the witness.

Then a charge is laid against the witness that could have been a danger of exposing the criminal syndicate and then the police will try and oppose bail, and i n the mean time one of their corrupt layer mates will extract hundreds of thousand of dollars from the witness in legal fee defending these false charges against them. In the end the false charges are dropped when the police are forced by the courts to produce evidence that proves a criminal offense has been committed.
In the mean time the witness that has been falsely arrest has had their reputation destroyed, lost all their assets in legal fees and had a nervous breakdown. Under Queensland Law it is very difficult to be able to successfully sue a police officer for charging you with a criminal offense and then not producing any evidence that satisfies the court that a criminal offense has been committed, and the charges are thrown out by the court. Most lawyer will tell a person that you can not sue a police officer for laying charges that in the end had no basis.
So Detective Greg Stormont can corruptly use his power as a police officer and his corrupt contacts in the CMC to have anyone that could be see to be an enemy of his criminal business associates, dragged off the street and/or form their home into secret interrogation star chamber hearings, interrogated against their will and lose their normal right to remain silent, the charged with a criminal offense that simply has no basis whatsoever and force the person to spend a fortune on lawyers to have bail granted and defend these false charges for about two years. Then finally after spending all their money in high priced lawyers, had their creditability tarnished and had a nervous breakdown over all the victimization, Greg Storemont does not produce the evidence to the court to satisfy the court at a preliminary or committal hearing that the person has committed a criminal offense and  the charges are thrown out by the court.
Detective Greg Stormont knows nothing will happen to him and his criminal syndicate members who in the mean time are living the high life from all the profits of all their criminal activities.
However, what Greg Stormont does not understand that the INL News Group have in the past helped Tony Webster from Western Australia sue a police officer form Kalgoorlie Supreme Court for damages, called Sergent Lampard. The Master in the Supreme Court first dismissed the action saying that one can not sue a police officer. The INL News Group then help Tony Webster take an appeal to the High Court which ruled in Tony Webster's favour.
Now everyone in Australia can use this High Court case called
Webster v Lampard as a legal basis to sue a police officer personally for damages if it is felt hat his has gone beyond his normal call of duty.
There is no doubt that before long Detective Greg Stormont will be sued for multi millions in damages and his employers, the Queensland Government will be jointly and severally liable to pay this damage claim. This damage claim will be paid from hardworking Queensland tax payers money. This all could have been avoided if the Queensland parliamentarians like Judy Spence would take notice of all the evidence that there is serious and deep routed corruption in the Queensland Police Force and now also the CMC which is effectively been used by corrupt police like Greg Stormont and his and his other criminal members of his criminal syndicate as their personal Star Chamber t frighten the life out of anyone that could be a danger to them and to destroy other business people who may be in competition to them.

If something is not done soon to rectify the situation the it will all end up in the International Court of Justice and the world wide media will brand Queensland, their police force and their legal system and the politicians that run Queensland as the most corrupt place in the world.


Political corruption


World map of the Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International, which measures "the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians". High numbers (green) indicate relatively less corruption, whereas lower numbers (red) indicate relatively more corruption.
World map of the Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International, which measures "the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians". High numbers (green) indicate relatively less corruption, whereas lower numbers (red) indicate relatively more corruption.

In broad terms, political corruption is when government officials use their governmental powers for illegitimate private gain. Misuse of government power for other purposes, like repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is not considered political corruption. Illegal acts by private persons or corporations not directly involved with the government is not considered political corruption either.

All forms of government are susceptible to political corruption. Forms of corruption vary, but include bribery, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, patronage, graft, and embezzlement. While corruption may facilitate criminal enterprise such as drug trafficking, money laundering, and trafficking, it is not restricted to these organized crime activities. In some nations corruption is so common that it is expected when ordinary businesses or citizens interact with government officials. The end-point of political corruption is a kleptocracy, literally "rule by thieves".

What constitutes illegal corruption differs depending on the country or jurisdiction. Certain political funding practices that are legal in one place may be illegal in another. In some countries, government officials have broad or not well defined powers, and the line between what is legal and illegal can be difficult to draw.

Bribery around the world is estimated at about $1 trillion (£494bn) and the burden of corruption falls disproportionately on the bottom billion people living in extreme poverty.[1]






Police corruption rife in Qld, says former officer


Mark ColvinMark Colvin presents PM Monday to Friday from 5:10pm on Radio National and 6:10pm on ABC Local Radio. Join Mark for the latest current affairs, wrapping the major stories of each day.






Transcript

You can also listen to the story in REAL AUDIO and WINDOWS MEDIA and MP3 formats.

PM - Monday, 16 April , 2007  18:35:40

Reporter: Lindy Kerin

PETER CAVE: A key whistleblower at the Fitzgerald Royal Commission into Police Corruption in Queensland says it's time to repeat the process.

Retired police officer Col Dillon served more than three decades in the Queensland police force, and is one of Australia's most highly decorated Indigenous police officers.

He's told the ABC's Message Stick program, corruption in the force is still very much alive.

He's also called for an inquiry to help mend relations between the police and the Indigenous communities.

Lindy Kerin reports

LINDY KERIN: When he retired six years ago, Col Dillon was the country's highest-ranking Indigenous police officer.

He rose to national prominence during the 1980s, when he blew the whistle on police corruption at the Fitzgerald Royal Commission.

Now Col Dillon has told the ABC's Message Stick program, things haven't improved and that police corruption in Queensland is rife.

COL DILLON: The culture that was pre-Fitzgerald is there today and every bit as strong as what it was pre-Fitzgerald. It may have softened a little bit after some of the reform processes come into place and so forth, but there's been backsliding of a great magnitude in terms of the police doing the services in this State.

LINDY KERIN: Col Dillon is now documenting his policing career.

He says his tell-all book will name corrupt figures who weren't identified in the Fitzgerald inquiry.

COL DILLON: There will be people out there that will be concerned and have some apprehension about what may be put to paper by me because there's no doubt in my mind, and I know for a fact that there are people when the net was cast to haul in the corrupt, there were quite a few that got away.

LINDY KERIN: Last December Col Dillon quit his job as a State Government adviser in Queensland. He resigned in protest over the handling of the death in custody of an Aboriginal man on Palm Island.

Col Dillon says he's deeply concerned about the relationship between Queensland police and the Indigenous community.

He says it's time for an inquiry into how the Queensland Police Service operates.

COL DILLON: To my mind I would say this without any fear of contradiction that it is high time again for another far reaching inquiry into our police service and the way that it operates.

LINDY KERIN: The Queensland Police Service has declined to respond to Col Dillon's comments. So too has the State's Police Union.

A spokesman Ross Musgrove says the union doesn't want to help promote Col Dillon's book.

He says if the former police officer has a legitimate complaint, he should take it to the Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission.

But the President of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, Terry O'Gorman, says Col Dillon's comments should be taken seriously.

TERRY O'GORMAN: Col Dillon's got an enormous store of credibility.

He was an inspector of police and an Aboriginal inspector of police in the Licensing Squad when he blew the whistle on corruption.

He stayed in the police for a period of time after that.

When he left the police he worked in Indigenous Affairs for the Queensland Government, while still keeping in close contact with the Queensland Police Service.

He's got enormous credibility and the Police Minister and the Police Commissioner cannot simply brush his well-founded criticisms aside.

And if he says that the Crime and Misconduct Commission is so compromised because it's over time fallen into a pretty ineffective oversight body against the Queensland police then perhaps an external inquiry needs to be set up.

PETER CAVE: Terry O'Gorman from the Australian Council for Civil Liberties ending that report from Lindy Kerin.

In a statement this afternoon, the Queensland Police Minister said she hadn't yet seen the program in which he makes these claims and would watch it when it goes to air tonight.

Judy Spence says if Mr Dillon is has any information on corruption in the Queensland Police Service he should report it to the appropriate bodies.

Letters written to Judy Spence, the Minister for the Police In Queensland and her response

Please read the following article on www.inlnews.com
and pass on to as many people and as many authorities as possible as this sort of behavior by the police has to stop as Australian Citizens are in danger, and besides it is giving Australia a very bad name in the world as one of the most corrupt and dangerous societies to live, especially Queensland which seems to be the most corrupt
The CMC should supina Lisa Quain to get her to tell all about the police involvement with selling and taking drugs and helping to protect major drug dealers in Queensland and other states in Australia, Western Australia where she originally comes from. Lisa Qain says she has the same problems with corrupt police, they have been protecting her drug operation for years, however she is only a very low level drug dealer who is a young mum you ended up with a $1,000 a week speed habit as a result of the police who work in with the local bikie gangs supplying her with a large amount of speed and she then had to keep selling drugs for, and with the police and their associates to support her $1,000 a week speed habit. Eventually they will provide her with a Hot Shot (a lethal dose of drugs)and kill her that way so she can not speak out anymore and tell the world what the police and their criminal drug dealing partners have been up to. There will simply be an article in the newspaper that a well know drug dealer and drug addict died of an overdose of drugs last night and nobody will give a dam. Lisa Quain needs protection by the CMC and to be looked after, she can help the CMC clean up the billion dollar drug operation in Queensland and have many of the corrupt police and drug dealers arrested.
That is of course if the CMC are not corrupt themselves and want to clean up the drug problem and the corrupt police. In that case the CMC will do nothing, not bother to bring Lisa Quain in to tell all she knows, and she knows a lot, believe us. Lisa Quain can bring a lot of powerful people down and maybe force another royal commission into the Queensland police and the Federal Police to try and stop the corruption that helps make sure the multi Billion Drug industry survives in Queensland and keeps killing our young people and destroying their lives
Stop Press International News Flash
The Crime and Misconduct Commission of Queensland in Australia headed by John David Kallahan, Michael O'Connor, Dan Bartlet, Ian Thomas and others are accused of being used by powerful corrupt Queensland Police and their shady business associates which includes an ex-Queensland Police Officer for a wrongful purpose to cover up  serious crimes and wrongful acts committed by them, which includes conspiracy to break and enter, conspiracy to defraud, major drug dealing in the Queensland's Gold Coast and to cover up major crimes committed by public company directors and their associates-
 INL News has been presented with evidence that senior state Queensland Police officers are involved with protecting major drugs dealers in the Gold Coast to help with developing and protecting the multi billion dollar drug industry thriving in the Gold Coast Queensland Australia who use their illegal drugs profits to lend out on shady high interest rate real estate loans at up to 15% interest per month using high profile lawyers trust accounts to launder the billions in drug profits-
INL News has been given evidence by  well known low level drug dealers and users who have agreed to help expose the corruption in the Queensland Police Force and the police involvement at high levels in drug taking and drug selling in the Gold Coast in Queensland-
the witnesses who have provided sworn evidence to INL are now in hiding for fear of their lives.....
Watch this space for more details soon to be published by INL News for the world to see what really goes on in the sunny Gold Coast Queensland Australia, which is fast becoming the crime capital of the world, with such crimes being developed, supported, maintained and protected by senior members of the Queensland Police Force-
INL has been told by one senior ex-police officer that used to be in the major crime squad of the Queensland Police, that he had to  leave the Queensland Police Force because he could not stand up against senior police protecting major drug dealers and allowing them to operate openly with senior police protection in the Gold  Coast Queensland... it became a choice to either join their corrupt and illegal activities or leave the police force and keep his integrity... but again he was too scared to speak up publicly as to what he saw for fear of his life and the life of his family living in the Gold Coast... these people will stop at nothing to protect their illegal business interests and because they are the police, there is no where to run and no where to hide from these people, who have no hesitation of having someone murdered to make sure of their silence and making threats of murder and physical body damage to anyone or their families  that get in their way.....
INL News has such evidence well secured in an international location ready to be presented to the International Court of Justice if those involved with such criminal and wrongful behavior cause any further trouble to innocent people who are presently being wrongfully being harrassed by The Crime and Misconduct Commission of Queensland in Australia headed by John David Hallahan, Michael O'Connor, Dan Bartlet, Ian Thomas and others being used by powerful corrupt Queensland Police and their shady business associates which includes an ex-Queensland Police Officer for a wrongful purpose to cover up  serious crimes and wrongful acts committed by them, which includes conspiracy to break and enter, conspiracy to defraud, major drug dealing in the Queensland's Gold Coast and to cover up major crimes committed by public company directors and their assistants...
"...I texed Lisa Quain today, to ask her how she was... this is the reply.....having a bad day again, as per usual. trying to correlate the whole saga of extremely traumatic events....we are trying to put it in chronological order, with names and phone numbers of witnesses and government  authority contacts or departments that can verify facts that prove a gross misconduct and negligence or official corruption . its just too much to cope with. too much occurred . its a HUGE  amount of criminal  offenses committed against us ! police refused to act on any of it, that includes hand guns  pointed at us. unbelievable , but all true......."

Subject: CMC used by corrupt Queensland police to cover up crimes police
have committed
From: patrick.obi@inlnews.com
Date: Mon, October 29, 2007 10:31 pm
To:
Cc: mailbox@cmc.qld.gov.au
media_unit@cmc.qld.gov.au.
attorney@ministerial.qld.gov.au
 
Urgent Attention
 
Attorney General for Queensland Honourable Kerry Shine MP
The Honourable Kerry Shine MP was appointed Queensland’s Attorney-General, Minister for Justice and Minister Assisting the Premier in Western Queensland on 1 November 2006.
Mr Shine was elected to State Parliament as the Member for Toowoomba North in 2001.
Floor 18
State Law Building 50 Ann Street Brisbane Qld 4000
GPO Box 149 Brisbane Qld 4001
Phone: (07) 3239 3520 Fax: (07) 3221 2534
Email: mailbox@justice.qld.gov.au
Floor 18 State Law Building 50 Ann Street Brisbane Qld 4000
GPO Box 149 Brisbane Qld 4001
Phone: (07) 3239 3478
Fax: (07) 3220 2475
Email: attorney@ministerial.qld.gov.au
The Crime and Misconduct Commission of Queensland in Australia headed by John David Hallahan, Michael O'Connor, Dan Bartlet, Ian Thomas

    * Switchboard: (07) 3360 6060
    * Toll free (outside Brisbane): 1800 061 611
    * Fax: (07) 3360 6333
    * Email: mailbox@cmc.qld.gov.au

 
Media contact
Contact the CMC's Communications Officer (Media) if you have a query, or wish to arrange an interview.
Telephone:  (07)  3360 6344
 
Mobile:  0407 373 803
 
Fax:  (07)  3360 6235
 
Dear  Sir or Madame
 
I am the editor of INLNews.com and I have authorized the world wide publication of the following article on our web site   www.inlnews.com
If you and/or any in your organization and/or anyone mentioned in the article are unhappy with the article and/or anything in it, please get your lawyers to email me your objection and any legal threats in relation to the objection you may have. If I do not hear form you the article will stay with further articles as follow up ones to be continued on the same lines with more detailed information
 
I look forward to hearing from you if you want to respond to this email and/or the attached article that is now on public display on the world wide Internet.
 
yours kindly
 
Partick Obi
Editor of
 www.inlnews.com
 
 
Stop Press International News Flash
The Crime and Misconduct Commission of Queensland in Australia headed by John David Hallahan, Michael O'Connor, Dan Bartlet, Ian Thomas and others are accused of being used by powerful corrupt Queensland Police and their shady business associates which includes an ex-Queensland Police Officer for a wrongful purpose to cover up  serious crimes and wrongful acts committed by them which includes conspiracy to break and enter, conspiracy to defraud, major drug dealing in the Queensland's Gold Coast and to cover up major crimes committed by public company directors and their assistants-
 INL News has been presented with evidence that senior state Queensland Police officers are involved with protecting major drugs dealers in the Gold Coast to help with developing and protecting the multi billion dollar drug industry thriving in the Gold Coast Queensland Australia who use their illegal drugs profits to lend out on shady high interest rate real estate loans at up to 15% interest per month using high profile lawyers trust accounts to launder the billions in drug profits-INL News has been given evidence by a well known low level drug dealers and user who agreed to help expose the corruption in the Queensland Police Force and the police involvement at high levels in drug taking and drug selling in the Gold Coast in Queensland-the witnesses who has provided sworn evidence to INL is now in hiding for fear of their lives.....
Watch this space for more details soon to be published by INL News for the world to see what really goes on in the sunny Gold Coast Queensland Australia which is fast becoming the crime capital of the world, with such crimes being developed, supported, maintained and protected by senior members of the Queensland Police Force- INL has been told by one senior ex-police officer that used to be in the major crime squad of the Queensland Police, that he had to the leave the Queensland Police Force because he could not stand up against senior police protecting major drug dealers operating openly with senior police protection in the Gold Coast Queensland... it became a choice to either join their corrupt and illegal activities or leave the police force and keep his integrity... but again was too scared to speak up publicly as to what he saw for fear of his life and the life of his family living in the Gold Coast... these people will stop at nothing to protect their illegal business interests and because they are the police, there is no where to run and no where to hide from these people, who have no hesitation of having someone murdered to make sure of their silence and making threats of murder and physical body damage to anyone or their families  that
get in their way.....
INL News has such evidence well secured in an international location ready to be presented to the International Court of Justice if those involved with such criminal and wrongful behavior cause any further trouble to innocent people who are presently being wrongfully being harassed by The Crime and Misconduct Commission of Queensland in Australia headed by John David Hallahan, Michael O'Connor, Dan Bartlet, Ian Thomas and others being used by powerful corrupt Queensland Police and their shady business associates which includes an ex-Queensland Police Officer for a wrongful purpose to cover up  serious crimes and wrongful acts committed by them which includes conspiracy to break and enter, conspiracy to defraud, major drug dealing in the Queensland's Gold Coast and to cover up major crimes committed by public company directors and their assistants


                                                         Queensland Government logo

 
Hon Judy Spence MP

Member for Mount Gravatt

                                                                                              


                                                                                              

Minister for

                                                                                              

Police, Corrective Services and Sport

 

 

Response to Ministerial Correspondence Received by E-mail

 

Ref:  8893 F1 WK

 

19 November 2007

 

Mr Patrick Obi

patrick.obi@inlnews.com

 

Dear Mr Obi

 

Thank you for your email of 31 October 2007 concerning your allegations against the Queensland Police Service.

 

This matter is receiving attention and you will be advised further as soon as possible.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Judy Spence MP

Minister for Police, Corrective Services and Sport






As Yet there has been no further communication from Judy Spence,  the Minister for Police, Corrective Services and Sport for Queensland.
INLNews.com does not expect to receive any further communication from Judy Spense, as it is quite clear that Judy Spence and the rest of the Government in Queensland are not in the least bit interested in tackling and or wanting to even admit the existence of the serious multi billion dollar illegal drug trade in Queensland that ex Major Queensland Crime Squad Detective Dan Lansky, now working for www.smartventures.com.au and Chapmans Limited says exists.
Mr Dan Lansky has stated to reporters of INLNews.com that he left the Queensland Police Force after a long and successful career because it sickened him so constantly get instructions from his more senior police officers that that instead of arresting well known drug lords in Queensland's Gold Coast that her saw living the life style of the rich and famous on other people's misery, he was constantly asked to protect the drug lords at the head of the food chain who make the billions each year out the illegal industry that thrives with the help of senior Queensland Police like Detective Greg Storemont, who heads a major criminal drugs and shady loans syndicate that involves Queensland Police at the most highest rank, multi millionaire and billionaire businessmen, well respected Lawyers, CMC Officers, Bikie gangs and standover and hit men.
Ex Queensland Major Crime Squad detective Dan Lansky says he does not regret for one minute leaving the Queensland Police Force to work in the high flyer world of Public listed company with Borris Ganke in Chapmans Limited and Brett Goldsworthy in www.smartventures.com.au. Dan Lansky says at least he now makes an honest living, rather than being paid by the Queensland Government to protect billionaire drugs lords living lavish life styles in Queensland's Gold Coast, which is fast becoming known as the drug and crime capital of the world.
If Judy Spence, the Commissioner of Police, the Premier of Queensland and the Criminal Misconduct Commission (CMC) and the rest of those in charge of running Queensland are serious about tackling the billion dollar illegal drug trade that is now a major part of Queensland's thriving economy, then they will get the CMC and other law enforcement and investigative bodies to interview people like Lisa Quain on the lower end of drug taking and selling drugs to feed her $1,000 a day drug habit and people like Dan Lansky who can give clear evidence of his knowledge of illegal activities within the police force and also have another Royal Commission into the Queensland Police Force with a specific reference to exposing and investigating why a multi billion dollars illegal drug industry can thrive in Queensland right under the noses of State and Federal Police Authorities whoa re meant to be there to stop such illegal activity, rather than protect protect such activity and share in the billion dollars profits made each year form the suffering and misery of those who pay each week for these illegal drugs.
The other devastating and sad effect of this thriving billion dollar illegal drug industry in Queensland is that it is the major cause of the rest of the crime that takes place in Queensland such as robberies and violence as the hooked drug users like Lisa Quain have to break and enter house, cars and rob people in the street to obtain the money to pay for the drugs they are desperate to obtain each week. Such drug users also supliment the income they obtain from robberies and violence by selling drugs for the billionaire drug lords who have corrupt police and other criminal heavies protecting their business and making sure that low level drug users and sellers like Lisa Quain are well aware if the try to expose them in any way they will either end up dead by a bullet through the head, or just end up being found on some street corner one morning having died of a hot shot of lethal cocktail of drugs that have been given to  her by her more senior drug dealer under instructions from the power billionaire drug lords that run the whole illegal drug industry in Queensland.
It is noted that it is a well established fact that most of the illegal drugs that are sold in New South Wales and either grown and/or manufactured in Queensland and transported by truck, train and plane down daily to New South Wales.
If the Queensland authorities were serious about stopping the thriving billion dollar illegal drugs industry in Queensland, which could be down easily if the Queensland Police stopped protecting drug dealers and sharing in the yearly profits made from the illegal drug industry, and did the job they are paid to do by the Queensland people, that is, to stop crime rather than being involved with perpetuating crime and protecting the senior criminal fiqures that control crime in Queensland.
It is also a well know fact that the billionaire drug lords use senior well respected law firms to launder their drug profits and to keep this money circulating and making more money but placing these illegal drug profits into the trust accounts of the well respected law firms and then the money lend out to desperate business people who need cash in a hurray for a business deal at up to 20% per month for short term loans. They then secure these loans against the lenders real estate assets, knowing they will never be able to keep up with interest payments of 10-20% per month.
Then the next step in the loan scam is that the lenders use powerful corrupt estate agents like Ray White and LJ Hooker and corrupt registered valuers like Herron Todd White who all work together in the Gold Coast to devalue the borrowers home so it is impossible for them the refinance their homes with a normal bank lender. Because the false reduced value and market appraisal placed on the property by the Ray White Estate Agents and Herron Todd White Valuers means that the borrowers loan to equity ratio is too low for a normal bank to approve a refinancing of the property to get the borrower out of the now 20% per month loan that has gone into penalty rate form the original 10% per month rate .
What happens next is the drug lord billionaire lender now reposesses the home of the borrower, sells it up cheap at a mortgagee sale with the buyer being a partner of the lender. The property is eventually resold  year or so later for a big profit and the finds received form the sale of the property is then clean tax free money from attack form any of the regulatory and taxation bodies. The parter of the billionaire drug lord who brought the house cheap at mortgagee sale lives in the house as his own home so when it is sold the profit on the house is completely tax free.
In one instance in a street called Red Oak Drive Tallai, where the criminal syndicate headed by Queensland Detective Greg Storemont and his drug lord lenders, lend out about $7 million on properties which had the potential for making hundreds of millions in development profits because their large acreage and the sweeping Gold Coast and Hinze Dam Views. These laoans where made in the hope that the borrower could not pay the loans back and included loans set up fees of about $100,000 per property besides the 10% per month interest rate that rose to 20% per month if the interest was not paid on time.Detective Greg Storemont ran around telling everyone in the street, in Tallai and the whole gold coast including valuers, estate agents and financiers that the companies that loaned the money were under investigation for a serious fraud, Ray White Real Estate Agents and Herron Todd White Valuers ran around saying the properties has an independent sworn valuation of $2-$3 million each were only worth about $500,000 to $600,000 being luxury large homes on about 10 acres each, with sweeping views of the Gold Coast and the Hinze Dam and only ten minutes drive from the ocean, ten major shopping centres, 20 minutes drive from the Gold Coast International Airport and only 50 minutes drive form Brisbane.
There powerful contacts even managed to get the valuers government body to instruct all valuers in Queensland to refuse to value these properties at any price. So that when the borrower had loans approved from various normal lenders at 8% per annum to refinance these properties and/or had any of these properties sold, they made sure that no valuation could be obtained so the refinance and/or the sale could not go ahead.

This way the 7 properties that had independent sworn valuations of about $21 million with overall loans of about $7-8 million, suddenly were un-refinanceable and un-sale able and they could onlt be sold to cash buyers at  mortgagee sales at about $600,000 with anyone that showed any interest in purchasing the properties being told by Ray White Real Estate who are considered the God in real estate advice in the Gold Coast and Herron Todd White Valuers that these properties were only worth about $500,000 to $600,000 each and no more. this meant that no one was willing to pay anymore that these price sin the end the properties started to be sold for about $600,000 each.
For the borrowing companies this meant they had loans of about $7 million with sale prices and market appraisals of about $3.6 million, when only a few months before the borrowing companies had independent sworn valuations of about $21 million which meant that there should have been no problem about borrowing up to about $14 million at 8% per annum, paying out all the high priced 20% per months loans and having about $5 million in working capital to purchase a well established cash flow business making ample income to pay the the the 8% per annum interest on the $14 million loan.
In stead, the properties were forclosed on and the properties were being sold to parters and/or friends of the powerful drug lord/financiers/police at bargain prices of about $600 each.
The new buyers just have to make this their own home and eventually sell these properties for millions of dollars as valuable developments sites with luxury homes on them, with the profits all tax free as clean money as any profit from the sale of your own home where you live as your primary residence is completely tax free in Australia.
Now two years later properties in Red Oak Drive are no going on the market for over $2 million,
by the established estate agents who said that in two years ago they were only worth about $600,000.
A nice tidy tax  free profit for the criminal Drug Lords/Financiers/Police syndicate and their associates.
The situation even gets worse. Those that are in a position to threaten to expose this devious scam, are then frightened to speak about it all publicly by Detective Greg Storemont using his corrupt contacts in Queensland's Crminal Misconduct Commission (CMC) to drag innocent people into secret interrogation hearings where only a high priced corrupt lawyer at the cost of $3,000 a day can attend and be asked about these real estate deals and are told that if they speak to anyone about this they will be arrested by the CMC as under the Queensland Law it appears that anything that is discussed in these secret hearing is not allowed ot be discussed outside to anyone. You are not even meant to tell anyone you have been dragged to these secret hearings.
The purpose of Detective Greg Storemont who is fronting for the criminal syndicate, for the CMC hearings to two fold:
1. The frighten the life out od anyone that could be a danger to speak out against the criminal syndicate;

2. The by pass the well established right to remain silent, so that trick questions can be asked at these hearings and can be used by the corrupt police such as Greg Storement ro try and create a false charge against the witness.

Then a charge is laid against the witness that could have been a danger of exposing the criminal synidicate and then the police will try and oppose bail, and i n the mean time one of their corrupt layer mates will extract hundreds of thousand of dollars from the witness in legal fee defending these false charges against them. In the end the false charges are dropped when the police are forced by the courts to produce evidence that proves a criminal offense has been committed.
In the mean time the witness that has been falsely arrest has had their reputation destroyed, lost all their assets in legal fees and had a nervous breakdown. Under Queensland Law it is very difficult to be able to successfully sue a police officer for charging you with a criminal offense and then not producing any evidence that satisfies the court that a criminal offense has been committed, and the charges are thrown out by the court. Most lawyer will tell a person that you can not sue a police officer for laying charges that in the end had no basis.
So Detective Greg Storemont can corruptly use his power as a police officer and his corrupt contacts in the CMC to have anyone that could be see to be an enemy of his criminal business associates, dragged off the street and/or form their home into secret interrogation star chamber hearings, interrogated against their will and lose their normal right to remain silent, the charged with a criminal offense that simply has no basis whatsoever and force the person to spend a fortune on lawyers to have bail granted and defend these false charges for about two years. Then finally after spending all their money in high priced lawyers, had their creditability tarnished and had a nervous breakdown over all the victimization, Greg Storemont does not produce the evidence to the court to satisfy the court at a preliminary or committal hearing that the person has committed a criminal offense and  the charges are thrown out by the court.
Detective Greg Storemont knows nothing will happen to him and his criminal syndicate members who in the mean time are living the high life from all the profits of all their criminal activities.
However, what Greg Storemont does not understand that the INL News Group have in the past helped Tony Webster from Western Australia sue a police officer form Kalgoorlie Supreme Court for damages, called Sergent Lampard. The Master in the Supreme Court first dismissed the action saying that one can not sue a police officer. The INL News Group then help Tony Webster take an appeal to the High Court which ruled in Tony Webster's favour.
Now everyone in Australia can use this High Court case called
Webster v Lampard as a legal basis to sue a police officer personally for damages if it is felt hat his has gone beyond his normal call of duty.
There is no doubt that before long Detective Greg Stroremont will be sued for multi millions in damages and his employers, the Queensland Government will be jointly and severally liable to pay this damage claim. This damage claim will be paid from hardworking Queensland tax payers money. This all could have been avoided if the Queensland parliamentarians like Judy Spence would take notice of all the evidence that there is serious and deep routed corruption in the Queensland Police Force and now also the CMC which is effectively been used by corrupt police like Greg Storemont and his and his other criminal members of his criminal synjdicate as their personal Star Chamber t frighten the life out of anyone that could be a danger to them and to destroy other business people who may be in competition to them.

It something is not done soon to rectify the situation the it will all end up inthe International Court of Justice and the world wide media will brand Queensland, their police force and their legal system and the politicians that run Queensland as the most corrupt place in the world.


Cc: michelle-roberts@dpc.wa.gov.au
Bcc: sue-ellery@dpc.wa.gov.au


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Murder by Queensland's CMC and its officers of an unborn
Child]
From: patrick.obi@inlnews.com
Date: Wed, December 12, 2007 4:22 am
To: nyitfest@gmail.com
Cc: nyitfest@yahoo.com



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Murder by Queensland's CMC and its officers of an unborn Child
From: patrick.obi@inlnews.com
Date: Wed, December 12, 2007 4:20 am
To: attorney@ministerial.qld.gov.au
Cc: mailbox@cmc.qld.gov.au, media_unit@cmc.qld.gov.au

 
 
 
Murder by Queensland's CMC
and its officers of an unborn Child
 
Attention:
Dan Bartlet
The Crime and Misconduct Commission of Queensland in Australia (CMC)
headed by John David Hallahan, Michael O'Connor, Dan Bartlet, Ian Thomas
mailbox@cmc.qld.gov.au attorney@ministerial.qld.gov.au media_unit@cmc.qld.gov.au

You all will  be proud of yourselves having succeeded in you wish to murder of an unborn child that one of the  CMC's  innocent victim's  was carring, before she was deliberately, callously, cowardly, wrongfully dragged into secret interrgation hearings by yourselves for no useful purpose, other than to help deliberately murder an innocent unborn child that the CMC's  innocent victim was carrying at the time.  
The CMC and its officers have stated that they were tapping the CMC's  innocent victim's phone and email for some time when they issued a notice of demand that the CMC's  innocent victim  be cross examined by the CMC at secret interrogation hearings about a subject that she simply knew nothing about, and could not be of any real assistance to what the CMC was investigating.
From listening to the CMC's  innocent victim's telephone conversations and reading her emails, the CMC and its officers clearly knew that that the CMC's  innocent victim was pregnant, when they had their corrupt police officer attend the CMC's  innocent victim's home to wrongly and falsely tell her that. in his and the CMC's oppinion, she was a criminal and was in a lot of trouble, and to serve the demand notice that the CMC's  innocent victim attend on just two days notice to the CMC, to be interrogated at secret hearings where only a high priced laywer at $1,600 a day is allowed to attend with her

A lawyer that the CMC's  innocent victim could not afford. Not many ordinary Australian can afford $1,600 a day for a lawyer to attend the CMC's secret interrogation hearings. As no one other than a lawyer is allowed to attend with an innocent victim of the CMC, the CMC's innocent voctim has no choice but to borrow the money to pay a high proceed lawyer to attend the CMC's secret interrogation hearings with them.
It is a fact that the CMC's  innocent victim spoke on her mobile phone 
(which the the CMC officers clearly admitt had been tapped by the CMC for a long time),  
on the Monday  and excitedly discussed her pregnacy.
 Then the next day, on Tuesday, with the CMC knowing full well the CMC's innocent victim was pregnant, the CMC had a corrupt police officer attend her home to serve the CMC's   demand for the CMC's  innocent victim to be interrogated, about a subject the CMC's  innocent victim knew nothing  about, and could clearly not be of any real assistance to what the CMC was investiagting.
The CMC's  innocent victim's unborn child is now dead, as a direct result of the malicious, deliberate and calculating actions of the CMC and its officers. 
Without  the wrongful actions of the CMC and its officers, that unborn child would still be alive today. The attached email warned the CMC and its officers of what they were doing was very wrong and illegal, but they continuted on this wrongful and illegal path to help murder an unborn child.
 
The INL News Group will now publish this email and information on the world wide web on as many  web sites as possible, and let the world know what these individuals and Queensland's CMC have done.

 They all should hang there head in shame for ever.

Their families, friends and associates should be absolutely ashamed of these people, and the world generally, that read this information on the world wide web, will also be horrified of this horrendous crime.
 This horrendous crime has also been sanctioned by the Queensland and Australian Governments, who has also been warned, as a copy of the attached email was also sent to the Queensland Attorney General and also the previous Liberal Attorney General of Australia, that has now been removed by the Australian people at the recent 2007 Federal Elections.
The INL News Group will also fund an application in the Internatonal Court of Justice, to have these criminals brought to justice, as there is no doubt these criminals will be protected by their mates in the Australian Courts which is run by judges who are all ex-lawyers.
The CMC is run by Australian lawyers, who also one day could become judges who would then themselves be in the powerful position to protect corrupt laywers running the CMC..
I have been brought up in Africa and have seen some horrendous wrongful things happen, but nothing I have ever seen is as horrendous as what the CMC and its officers and appointed representatives have deleiberately done here, with their involvement of the murder of an innocent unborn child.

yours truly

PATRICK OBI
Managing Editor of the INL News Group
The INL News Group note that, had the CMC's  innocent victim been the daughter of Rupert Murdoch, the most powerful person in the world today, controlling a majority of the world's mainstream media outlets, worth hundreds of billions of dollars, the Queensland's CMC would never had treated the the CMC's  innocent victim in this manner and the CMC's  innocent victim's unborn child would have still been alive today.
This is another example that there is one rule for the rich and powerful, and another rule for an ordinary  innocent victim, trying their best to live a normal and innocent life with their partner and new child due to be born, and find some basic happiness after trying to recover from a serious nervous beakdown in the last five years, which the CMC had full knowledge of, from tapping the the CMC's  innocent victim's telephone and emails for a long time




sa_logo_colour.JPG
Crime and Misconduct Commission

Yes, the CMC protects corrupt police offices who live beyond their means and that can not provide any lawful evidence as to where their funds comes from, in particular large drug dealers that provide funds to support the employees of the Crime and Misconduct Commission to support our expensive life styles.. as the wages that the people of Queensland are simply not enough to pay for all our expensive life styles...


Yes, the CMC supports criminal behavour by police officers in Queensland, in fact anywhere really, as long as they have some sort of police badge we make sure they can continue their criminal behaviour without being harassed in their activities...if anyone tries to expose these criminal activities we have unlimited powers to drag them and/or their families into secret hearings that cost about $2,000 a day to pay a lawyer to attend these hearings with them, as we have made the rules such that only a lawyer can attend with the person we get our corrupt police to drag off the street on only two days notice into these secret hearings.. at the same time we are all paid large salaries by the people of Queensland and the cash we receive on the side from our corrupt police mates and other other criminal mates...


Yes, the CMC supports misconduct as long as it is misconduct by any of our criminal mates  employed in the Police Service and/or another Government Departments or other private criminals that are friends, who are prepared to offer funds to support our expensive life styles that the salaries we obtain from the Queensland Taxpayers do not cover... we specialise in supporting, protecting and encouraging the Queensland and Federal Police and others to import and sell illegal drugs and break and enter houses without a warrant to steal whole housefuls of furniture (as they did in Tallai) and steal the original manuscripts of books such as the Triumph of Truth (Who's Watching the Watchers) that was in the process of being published world wide by International News Limited in books and films and a TV series that would have brought a lot of world wide attention to our criminal behaviour of our corrupt police mates and expose our own criminal activities.. we simply had no choice but to break into that house with the help of our drug taking and selling mates and the Queensland Police, were we suspected this book could be stored.. after all we had to protect our livelihood and our business associates who provide our ability for ourselves to live beyond our means... we at the CMC of course can not be investigated as we are not going to investigate ourselves and we are the only ones with such power... we are simply untouchable and have a very protected monopoly in that regard





Subject:
       
From:
postmaster@cmc.qld.gov.au (Add as Preferred Sender)  ?
Date: Wed, Dec 12, 2007 4:21 am
To: patrick.obi@inlnews.com
Thank You.

Your mail message "Murder by Queensland's CMC and its officers of an unborn Child" dated Wed, 12 Dec 2007 04:20:33 -0700 has been received by the Crime and Misconduct Commission mail server.

If you have contacted us through our Contact Form, then your message has been received and is being attended to. If your message was addressed to a specific officer or a specific section it will be delivered shortly. If it cannot be delivered, you will receive an error message and be asked to check the address.

Please contact us on (07) 3360 6060 (or email Desktop_Services) if you require further assistance.

Subject:
       
From:
patrick.obi@inlnews.com (Add as Preferred Sender)  ?
Date: Mon, Nov 05, 2007 12:39 am
To: mailbox@cmc.qld.gov.au
Cc: attorney@ministerial.qld.gov.au
Bcc: media_unit@cmc.qld.gov.au
Urgent Attention:
Dan Bartlet
The Crime and Misconduct Commission of Queensland in Australia headed by John David Hallahan, Michael O'Connor, Dan Bartlet, Ian Thomas
Just a friendly reminder that the INL news group are happy to help with the CMC's investigations in Red Oak Drive Tallai property dealings as the INL group has a large file of information the CMC would be interested if they are wanting the truth. Also the CMC is put on notice that Suzanna Lea who is currently being interrogated by the CMC regarding her knowledge of properties dealings in Red Oak Drive Tallai and other matters has just found out she is pregnant and as a result of the pressure the CMC is currently putting on her by interrogation from 10 am to 6.30 pm in one day there is every chance Suzanna Lea will have a miscarriage and/or feel because the pressure become mentally unstable and have another nervous breakdown and make some rash decision in an unstable mind to terminate the pregnancy. If any of the above happen you and the rest of the people behind having her interrogated at this present time will be responsible for murder of that child. If this happens then the CMC and the people that are behind the scenes in this matter will all be charged with wilful murder in the International Court of Justice and not stone and/or resources will be held back to make sure each and every one of you are made fully accountable for that deliberate murder, you all will be named in the international media and be hounded for the rest of your lives until justice is seen to be done and in fact is done. Even if you get away without being prosecuted because of your powerful connections protecting you will have this murder on your conscience for the rest of your lives and have to explain to your families and friends why you became involved with this deliberate murder and calculated murder. INL News suggests that you immediately inform Mr Andrew Maloney Suzanna Lea's lawyer of Ryan and Bosscher on Tel: 00061 (0) 7 5532 0066 Mob: 0061 (0) 412 041 143 situated at 100 Scarborough Street Southport, who is being paid for form funds provided to INL News Group by Fusako Tsuji at 41,600 a day, that Suzanna Lea is no longer required to attend court on the 9th of October and/or any other time by the CMC until Suzanna has had a healthy baby and is well enough to attend any further interrogation by the CMC. You would be better off calling other witnesses who know a lot more than Sue about what the CMC are inquiring about and if you can provide a list of witnesses that the CMC want to call but can not find at present, the vast resources of the INL News investigations section will be able to assist the CMC free of charge to find these witnesses and help the CMC bring to be interrogated. The CMC would be better off calling in all the vendors of Red Oak Drive Tallai to see what they know and in particular Fusako Tsuji who Suzanna Lea as trustee for in a number of matters. Any funds and/or assets that have been in Suzanna Leas possession in the last few years have been as trustee for Fusako Tsuji in a very complex financial arrangement between S Lea, F Tsuji and the INL Media Group. Fusako Tsuji has been very generous is providing funds to help develop the media group and purchase real estate assets for the media group to use for various needs. All the funds used by S Lea and the media group have been as trustee for Fusako Tsuji and have to be returned to her in good shape and value eventually. Please provide a list of question that you want answered in relation to any of these matters and the INL News Group will help as far as possible to these answers for the CMC. It is noted that it is highly unusual to have a sick mentally unstable young girl who has just found out she is pregnant interrogated on two days notice from 10 am to 6.30 pm on Friday the 2nd of November 2007. If the INL News Media Group and/or Fusako Tsuji did not provide the $Aust 1,600 to Mr Andrew Malony and his legal firm to attend the interrogation of Suzanna Lea then Suzanna Lea would have had to go into the interrogation all by herself, being mentally and physically sick including just finding out she is pregnant out of wedlock which alone for a young girl is a traumatic experience to deal with. There could never have been that much of an urgency for such aggressive interrogation of a young innocent girl. The CMC as a body and as individuals should be absolutely ashamed of yourselves for what you have done and should hope that Suzanna's Lea's baby is still alive. If not, you are definitely all absolutely guilty of murder in the first degree. You should on an urgent basis issue instructions to Suzanna Lea's attorneys, that Suzanna Leas is no longer required as a witness on the 9th of November 2008 and in fact not required again till she has had a healthy baby, and maybe not even then if the CMC has in the mean time satisfied their inquiries form other means. I am a Nigerian and have not been trained in English that well, so I apologise if there are spelling and grammar mistakes in this email but I am doing my best with English and grammar and I am very appreciated in the INL Group giving me the opportunity to have this job and I thank Fusako Tsuji for providing funds to support the media group to help people like me to be employed and gain work experience in the Weston media.
yours kindly
Patrick Obi Managing Editor of INL News.com
cc: Andrew Maloney Ryan and Bossher Attorneys 100 Scarbourgh Street Southport, Gold Coast Queensland Tel: 0061 (0) 55320066 Mob: 0061 (0) 412 041 145



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [FWD: RE: lisa Quain Drug Dealer-user prepared to tell all
about corrupt police in Queensland]
From: patrick.obi@inlnews.com
Date: Thu, November 01, 2007 12:26 am
To: mailbox@cmc.qld.gov.au
Cc: attorney@ministerial.qld.gov.au




-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: lisa Quain Drug Dealer-user prepared to tell all about
corrupt police in Queensland
From: patrick.obi@inlnews.com
Date: Thu, November 01, 2007 12:00 am
To: patrick.obi@inlnews.com
Cc: jdweller@westnet.com.au

Attention John Weller
Tel: 0061 (0) 414779155
Fax: 0061 (0) 2 66809043
Email: jdweller@westnet.com.au
urgent Attention:
John David Kallahan, Michael O'Connor, Dan Bartlet
Crime and Misconduction Commission
Level 3 Terrica Place, 140 Creek Street (cnr Adelaide & Creek Streets), Brisbane
  • Switchboard: (07) 3360 6060
  • Toll free (outside Brisbane): 1800 061 611
  • Fax: (07) 3360 6333
  • Email: mailbox@cmc.qld.gov.au
Attorney General for Queensland Honourable Kerry Shine MP
The Honourable Kerry Shine MP was appointed Queensland’s Attorney-General, Minister for Justice and Minister Assisting the Premier in Western Queensland on 1 November 2006.
Mr Shine was elected to State Parliament as the Member for Toowoomba North in 2001.
Floor 18
State Law Building 50 Ann Street Brisbane Qld 4000
GPO Box 149 Brisbane Qld 4001
Phone: (07) 3239 3520 Fax: (07) 3221 2534
Email: mailbox@justice.qld.gov.au
Floor 18 State Law Building 50 Ann Street Brisbane Qld 4000
GPO Box 149 Brisbane Qld 4001
Phone: (07) 3239 3478
Fax: (07) 3220 2475
Email: attorney@ministerial.qld.gov.au
From the large file our media group has on the activities of the Queensland Police and their corrupt asssociates and others in relatoin to the goings on and affairs of delaings in real estate in Red Oak Drive which the Coimmisison is currently bringing in people ofr cross examination, it seems clear that you are using the wide powers of the Commissoon for a worngful purpose to help corrupt police and theit shady business associates to obtain properties in red Oak drive Cheap so they can make million od dollars, you are using the Commissions powers to help these corrupt police frighten the life out of people so they are too scared to get about their normal business  and thus are helping these corrupt police who we have clear evidence have been involved with breaking and entering illegally changing locks, stand over tactics, drug relatated offecnes and clearly acting in a wrong, illegal and corrupt manner to help their shady business associates make money.
These police have crossed the line in their duties and you can read much of the detail of all this in the court cases that are on file in the Supreme and Appeal courts in Queensland concerning John Carew-Reid and the mortgagees over the court application to try and remove caveats that were lodged by Mr Carew-Reid over 109 and 6 Red Oak Drive Tallai to try and stop the mortagees trying to sell these properties at one quarter of the sworn valuations placed on the property by sworn valuer Mr Phillp Petterson 9 a well known and respected valuer in Queensland). Our media group has ample evidence that can be presented to the CMC that conclusively proves there has been a clear conspiracy by powerful real estate agents such as Ray White and L J Hooker, the police, powreful valuers, shady financiers, people working for news Limited ( our opposition meida group) and their powerful property developer connections, to destroy the valuations and perceived pubic price image of the properties in Red Oak Drive Tallai and the nearby streets that are well known as the Holliwood Hills of the Gold Coast.
 
This has been done for a number of reasons which include:
1. To destroy the real estate asset base of friendly investors that were prepared to financially back our media group to launch alternative newpapers in Australia called Aus News,  the Australian Weekend News, Yahoo Real Estate etc becasue they wouldbe in serious competition to other powerfulnewpsapers and web sites run by our powerful opposition media group,News Limited worth over 300 billion dollars and have the most corrupt and powerful connections n every area and are quite happy to use these connections for a wrrongful purpose to destroy any opposition.
 
2. There are powerful property developers and investors who wanted to purchase the properties in Red Oak Drive cheap and wait when their powerful estate agents connections in Ray White Real Estate are ready to help them publicly create the next big boom in the Hills surrounding the Gold Coast, of which Tallai is the premium piece of real etsate that has the exclusive name of being the Holliwood Hills of the Gold Coast.
 
3. It seems clear that there is a particular concerted effort by powerful people that are enemies of John Carew-Reid and his efforts over many years to bring to public light serious corruption in the political, legal,public trustee and businees world through is nespsaper and books that have been publishied in Australia by the Weekend News and the Australian Weekend News. One of these books is called The Triumph of Truth (Who's watching the Watchers?)  and the original manuscript of six volume with over 10,000 pages has been has been stiolen by the Queensland Polic ein an effiort to try and bury all the material on corruption. It was stolen by the Queensland Police from 6 Earl Court Tallai where the police and theri shady associates were also involved with stealing two housefuls of furniture, illegally changing locks etc from the owner of the house Ingrid Pluktchy. they wnated papers formt he hosue that they could not get and could not get a warrant to search the hosue without first organising the robbery, taking the papers which included the Book the Triumph of Truth, as well as other contracts and papers concerning properties in Red Oak Drive Tallai. this was done on the tuesday, then on the Wednesday the polcie were at one of the vendors places interviewing him over these contracts to verify that he had signed these contracts. With this information the polcie then were able to get an official warrant to search now an empty house on the Thursday two days after the robbery. It was on Thursday the police rang Ingrid Pluktchy form 6 Earl Court stating they were in the hosue the house was open, they were just driving by and entered and that all the furniture was taken and there was nothing left.
Ingrid rang another rental estate agent to go to the house and make sure it was locked up. This agent arrived about 5pm on the Thursday and found that the police had left the house unattented and open for anyone to walk in. This is extremely unusual behaviour by the polcie.  If there has been a robbery and the police are notified to attend then normally the polie will make sure the place is secure before they leave the premisies. the agent found some keys behind the front door ont he floor and checked that they fitted the front door. then locked the hosue uop and went home. On the next Tuesday the police obtain another warrant to go to the house. While at the house on the Tuesday for the second warrant they organise the change the locks back to the original keys that firred the house before the robbery. This was confirmed by the fact that the agent with the keys that were found on the Thursday before that fitted the front door, no longer fitted the front door after the police attended on the next Tuesday for the second Warrant. Then Ingrid Pluktchy organised the original agent that had the original keys to attend 6 Earl Court Tallai with photgraphers to take photos of the house inside and out. The original agent attended 6 Earl Court with the original keys which now fitted the lock. That agent was not told the other agent had found keys for the door that then fitted on the Thursday after the polcie had attended ( now no longer fitted).
The whole idea was that the polcie orgaised the locked to be changed so they could break into the hosue and do the robery with their criminal associates, then change t he lockls back to make it look like the origonal kesy must have been used to enter th house, which John carew-Reid and Ingrid Pluktcy were meant to be the only ones with these keys. In that way either John Carew-Reid and/or Ingrid Pluktchy could be set up and be accused of the robbery as they were the only ones with the original keys besides the estate agent and the alarm codes.
the other person who had the alarm codes was Lisa Quain who had been staying there until Ingrid Plukcthy told her to leave and changed the locks so she no longer had a key. Lisa had been bringing all sort of strange peopel to the house and her ex boyfriend opened up and siad she had a serous $1,000 a week speed habit and was working in with the corrupt police and drug dealers on the Gold Coast selling drugs for them and sleeping with them to obtain the drugs each day to feed her drug habit.
When Ingrid Pluktchy found out about this she made sure the lockls were chjnaged and lisa hasd no further access tot he house. However, she still knew the security code.
We have clear evidence that Lisa Quain was involved with the police and others in breaking into 6 earl Court and helping rob two house fulls of furniture. She provided the security code for the alarm and th epolcie orgabise dthe locked to be changed so that it did not look like a break and and the police were going to set up Ingrid Pluktchy and John Carew-reid on false charges of breaking into the house when Ingrid called on her insurance policy for the lost goods. After the media group and Ingrid Pluktchy put great pressure on the police they gotr scared and suddenly produced the furniture and told Ingrid that is was at a secure storage unit inthe Gold oats where Ingrid Pluktchy organised to pick it up. thdere were still some things missing including mist of the furniture that she purchased off the original owners of 194 Red Oak Drive Tallai, a fridge, bed linen and crockery, the original manuscript of the book the Triumph of the Truth etc,
 
there is much mor einformation available tot he CMC by our media group if the CMC are not corrupt and ttrying to protect the guilty police instead of exposing them,. At this present time it appears that the CMC and its officers are actinf in a corrupt manner and are using their powers to protect corruption instead of exposing it and hlep put worngful pressure on inoccnet people to scare the hell out of them by sneding corrupot police to their door whao verbally accuse these innocent people of being a criminal and at the same time handing the supina to them fromt he Cmc giving them only two day notice to attend a secret hearing were not even family members can attend to support them. Unless you start to correspond back to our media group as to these allegations against you and the CMC you names will be publiclly exposed and this and other information will be posted on many of our world wide web sites for the wporkd to see how ytou are other sre using the almost unlimited powers of the CMC for a wrongfull and illegal purpose.
 
kind regards
 
 Patrick Obi
Managing Editor of INL News
 
Urgent Attention
 
Attorney General for Queensland Honourable Kerry Shine MP
The Honourable Kerry Shine MP was appointed Queensland’s Attorney-General, Minister for Justice and Minister Assisting the Premier in Western Queensland on 1 November 2006.
Mr Shine was elected to State Parliament as the Member for Toowoomba North in 2001.
Floor 18
State Law Building 50 Ann Street Brisbane Qld 4000
GPO Box 149 Brisbane Qld 4001
Phone: (07) 3239 3520 Fax: (07) 3221 2534
Email: mailbox@justice.qld.gov.au
Floor 18 State Law Building 50 Ann Street Brisbane Qld 4000
GPO Box 149 Brisbane Qld 4001
Phone: (07) 3239 3478
Fax: (07) 3220 2475
Email: attorney@ministerial.qld.gov.au
The Crime and Misconduct Commission of Queensland in Australia headed by John David Hallahan, Michael O'Connor, Dan Bartlet, Ian Thomas
  • Switchboard: (07) 3360 6060
  • Toll free (outside Brisbane): 1800 061 611
  • Fax: (07) 3360 6333
  • Email: mailbox@cmc.qld.gov.au
 
Media contact
Contact the CMC's Communications Officer (Media) if you have a query, or wish to arrange an interview. 
Telephone:  (07)  3360 6344
 
Mobile:  0407 373 803
 
Fax:  (07)  3360 6235
 
Dear  Sir or Madame
 



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re:lisa Quain Drug Dealer-user prepared to tell all about
corrupt police in Queensland
From: patrick.obi@inlnews.com
Date: Tue, October 30, 2007 10:04 pm
To: mailbox@cmc.qld.gov.au
Cc: attorney@ministerial.qld.gov.au

 
Please read the following article on www.inlnews.com
and pass on to as many people and as many authorities as possible as this sort of behaviour by the police has to stop as Australian Citizens are in danger and besides it is giving Australia a very bad name in the world as one of the most corrupt and dangerous societies to live, especially Queensland which seems to be the most corrupt
The CMC should supine Lisa Quain to get her to tell all about the police involvement with selling and taking drugs and helping to protect major drug dealers in Queensland and other states in Australia, Western Australia where she originally comes form she says has the same problems with corrupt police, they have been protecting her drug operation for year, however she is only a very low level drug dealer who is a young mum you ended up with a $1,000 a week speed habit as a result of the police who work in with the local bikie gangs supplying her with a large amount of speed and she then had to keep selling drugs for and with the police and their associates to support her $1,000 a week speed habit. Eventually they will provide her with a Hot Shot (a lethal dose of drugs)and kill her that way so she can not speak out anymore and tell the world what the police and their criminal drug dealing partners have been up to. There will simply be an article in the newspaper that a well know drug dealer and drug addict died of an overdose of drugs last night and nobody will give a dam. Lisa Quain needs protection by the CMC and to be looked after and she can help the CMC clean up the billion dollar drug operation in Queensland and have many of the corrupt police and drug dealers arrested. That is of course if the CMC are not corrupt themselves and want to clean up the drug problem and the corrupt police, in that case the CMC will do nothing, not bother to bring Lisa Quain in to tell all she knows, and she knows a lot, believe us. Lisa Quain can bring a lot of powerful people down and maybe force another royal commission into the Queensland police and the Federal Police to try and stop the corruption that helps make sure the multi Billion Drug industry survives in Queensland and keeps killing out young people and destroying their lives
Stop Press International News Flash
The Crime and Misconduct Commission of Queensland in Australia headed by John David Kallahan, Michael O'Connor, Dan Bartlet, Ian Thomas and others are accused of being used by powerful corrupt Queensland Police and their shady business associates which includes an ex-Queensland Police Officer for a wrongful purpose to cover up  serious crimes and wrongful acts commited by them which includes conspiracy to break and enter, conspiracy to defraud, major drug dealing in the Queensland's Gold Coast and to cover up major crimes committed by public company directors and their associates-
 INL News has been presented with evidence that senior state Queensland Police officers are involved with protecting major drugs dealers in the Gold Coast to help with developing and protecting the multi billion dollar drug industry thriving in the Gold Coast Queensland Australia who use their illegal drugs profits to lend out on shady high interest rate real estate loans at up to 15% interest per month using high profile lawyers trust accounts to launder the billions in drug profits-
INL News has been given evidence by  well known low level drug dealers and users who have agreed to help expose the corruption in the Queensland Police Force and the police involvement at high levels in drug taking and drug selling in the Gold Coast in Queensland-
the witnesses who have provided sworn evidence to INL are now in hiding for fear of their lives.....
Watch this space for more details soon to be published by INL News for the world to see what really goes on in the sunny Gold Coast Queensland Australia, which is fast becoming the crime capital of the world, with such crimes being developed, supported, maintained and protected by senior members of the Queensland Police Force-
INL has been told by one senior ex-police officer that used to be in the major crime squad, that he had to  leave the Queensland Police Force because he could not stand up against senior police protecting major drug dealers and allowing them to operate openly with senior police protection in the Gold  Coast Queensland... it became a choice to either join their corrupt and illegal activities or leave the police force and keep his integrity... but again he was too scared to speak up publiclly as to what he saw for fear of his life and the life of his family living in the Gold Coast... these people will stop at nothing to protect their illegal business interests and because they are the police, there is no where to run and no where to hide from these people, who have no hesitation of having someone murdered to make sure of their silence and making threats of murder and physical body damage to anyone or their families  that
get in their way.....
INL News has such evidence well secured in an international location ready to be presented to the International Court of Justice if those involved with such crimial and wrongful behavior cause any further trouble to innocent people who are presently being wrongfully being harrashed by The Crime and Misconduct Commission of Queensland in Australia headed by John David Hallahan, Michael O'Connor, Dan Bartlet, Ian Thomas and others being used by powerful corrupt Queensland Police and their shady business associates which includes an ex-Queensland Police Officer for a wrongful purpose to cover up  serious crimes and wrongful acts commited by them which includes conspiracy to break and enter, conspiracy to defraud, major drug dealing in the Queensland's Gold Coast and to cover up major crimes committed by public company directors and their assistants...
"...I texed lisa Quain today, to ask her how she was... this is the reply.....having a bad day again, as per usual. trying to correlate the whole saga of extremely traumatic events.we are trying to put it in chronological order, with names and phone numbers of witnesses and government  authority contacts or departments that can verify facts that prove a gross misconduct and negligence or official corruption . its just too much to cope with. too much occured . its a HUGE  amount of criminal  offences commited against us ! police refused to act on any of it, that includes hand guns  pointed at us. unbelievable , but all true......."


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [FWD: CMC used by corrupt Queensland police to cover up crimes
police have committed]
From: patrick.obi@inlnews.com
Date: Mon, October 29, 2007 10:46 pm
To:
Cc: mailbox@cmc.qld.gov.au




-------- Original Message --------
Subject: CMC used by corrupt Queensland police to cover up crimes police
have committed
From: patrick.obi@inlnews.com
Date: Mon, October 29, 2007 10:31 pm
To:
Cc: mailbox@cmc.qld.gov.au
media_unit@cmc.qld.gov.au.
 
Urgent Attention
 
Attorney General for Queensland Honourable Kerry Shine MP
The Honourable Kerry Shine MP was appointed Queensland’s Attorney-General, Minister for Justice and Minister Assisting the Premier in Western Queensland on 1 November 2006.
Mr Shine was elected to State Parliament as the Member for Toowoomba North in 2001.
Floor 18
State Law Building 50 Ann Street Brisbane Qld 4000
GPO Box 149 Brisbane Qld 4001
Phone: (07) 3239 3520 Fax: (07) 3221 2534
Email: mailbox@justice.qld.gov.au
Floor 18 State Law Building 50 Ann Street Brisbane Qld 4000
GPO Box 149 Brisbane Qld 4001
Phone: (07) 3239 3478
Fax: (07) 3220 2475
Email: attorney@ministerial.qld.gov.au
The Crime and Misconduct Commission of Queensland in Australia headed by John David Hallahan, Michael O'Connor, Dan Bartlet, Ian Thomas
  • Switchboard: (07) 3360 6060
  • Toll free (outside Brisbane): 1800 061 611
  • Fax: (07) 3360 6333
  • Email: mailbox@cmc.qld.gov.au
 
Media contact
Contact the CMC's Communications Officer (Media) if you have a query, or wish to arrange an interview. 
Telephone:  (07)  3360 6344
 
Mobile:  0407 373 803
 
Fax:  (07)  3360 6235
 
Dear  Sir or Madame
 
I am the editor of INLNews.com and I have authorised the world wide publication of the following article on our web site   www.inlnews.com
If you and/or any in your organisation and/or anyone mentioned in the artilce are unhappy with the article and/or anything in it, please get your lawyers to email me your objectyion and any legal threats in relation to the objection you may have. If I do not hear form you the artilce will stay with further artilces as follow up ones to be continued on the same lines with more detailed information
 
I look forward to hearing from you if you want to respond to this email and/or the attached artilce that is now on public display on the world wide internet.
 
yours kindly
 
Partick Obi
Editor of
 
 
Stop Press International News Flash
The Crime and Misconduct Commission of Queensland in Australia headed by John David Hallahan, Michael O'Connor, Dan Bartlet, Ian Thomas and others are accused of being used by powerful corrupt Queensland Police and their shady business associates which includes an ex-Queensland Police Officer for a wrongful purpose to cover up  serious crimes and wrongful acts commited by them which includes conspiracy to break and enter, conspiracy to defraud, major drug dealing in the Queensland's Gold Coast and to cover up major crimes committed by public company directors and their assistants-
 INL News has been presented with evidence that senior state Queensland Police officers are involved with protecting major drugs dealers in the Gold Coast to help with developing and protecting the multi billion dollar drug industry thriving in the Gold Coast Queensland Australia who use their illegal drugs profits to lend out on shady high interest rate real estate loans at up to 15% interest per month using high profile lawyers trust accounts to launder the billions in drug profits-INL News has been given evidence by a well known low level drug dealers and user who agreed to help expose the corruption in the Queensland Police Force and the police involvement at high levels in drug taking and drug selling in the Gold Coast in Queensland-the witnesses who has provided sworn evidence to INL is now in hiding for fear of their lives.....
Watch this space for more details soon to be published by INL News for the world to see what really goes on in the sunny Gold Coast Queensland Australia which is fast becoming the crime capital of the world, with such crimes being developed, supported, maintained and protected by senior members of the Queensland Police Force- INL has been told by one senior ex-police officer that used to be in the major crime squad that he had to the leave the Queensland Police Force because he could not stand up against senior police protecting major drug dealers operating openly with senior police protection in the Gold Coast Queensland... it became a choice to either join their corrupt and illegal activities or leave the police force and keep his integrity... but again was too scared to speak up publiclly as to what he saw for fear of his life and the life of his family living in the Gold Coast... these people will stop at nothing to protect their illegal business interests and because they are the police, there is no where to run and no where to hide from these people, who have no hesitation of having someone murdered to make sure of their silence and making threats of murder and physical body damage to anyone or their families  that
get in their way.....
INL News has such evidence well secured in an international location ready to be presented to the International Court of Justice if those involved with such crimial and wrongful behavior cause any further trouble to innocent people who are presently being wrongfully being harrashed by The Crime and Misconduct Commission of Queensland in Australia headed by John David Hallahan, Michael O'Connor, Dan Bartlet, Ian Thomas and others being used by powerful corrupt Queensland Police and their shady business associates which includes an ex-Queensland Police Officer for a wrongful purpose to cover up  serious crimes and wrongful acts commited by them which includes conspiracy to break and enter, conspiracy to defraud, major drug dealing in the Queensland's Gold Coast and to cover up major crimes committed by public company directors and their assistants

 
 
 


Subject:
       
From:
postmaster@cmc.qld.gov.au (Add as Preferred Sender)  ?
Date: Thu, Nov 01, 2007 12:25 am
To: patrick.obi@inlnews.com
Thank You.

Your mail message "[FWD: RE: lisa Quain Drug Dealer-user prepared to tell all about corrupt police in Queensland]" dated Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:26:05 -0700 has been received by the Crime and Misconduct Commission mail server.

If you have contacted us through our Contact Form, then your message has been received and is being attended to. If your message was addressed to a specific officer or a specific section it will be delivered shortly. If it cannot be delivered, you will receive an error message and be asked to check the address.

Please contact us on (07) 3360 6060 (or email Desktop_Services) if you require further assistance.


Program Transcript
THEME

Peter Beattie: The Fitzgerald Report has been the most single important catalyst for improved behaviour in this State since we became a State in 1859.

Paul Barclay: Ten years ago, Tony Fitzgerald delivered a Report that was to have an extraordinary impact on the State of Queensland, a bold attempt to pull The Moonlight State out of a mire of vice, cronyism, and illegality.

The Fitzgerald Inquiry uncovered corruption and misconduct at the highest levels of the police force and government, and led to the jailing of government ministers and the Commissioner of Police.

But it was far more than a prescription for catching crooked cops and politicians with their snouts in the trough. It was a blueprint for rebuilding confidence in the police, the parliament and the bureaucracy.

More than anything Tony Fitzgerald wanted to ensure Queensland would never again sink to the depths of such appalling official impropriety. And the only way this could be guarded against, he reasoned, was a complete overhaul of the State's discredited public institutions.

But he cautioned, the citizens and their elected representatives would need to be always on their guard. His report warned:

Reader: There are many ways in which the agenda for reform could be delayed or subverted by political or bureaucratic opponents. This has happened previously.

Paul Barclay: Ten years on, has Queensland been faithful to the Fitzgerald vision?

Hello, and welcome to Background Briefing. I'm Paul Barclay.

Wayne Goss: I think it's a courageous and a perceptive document; I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to Mr Fitzgerald, I think it's a blistering indictment on the National Party and on National/Liberal governments, but it's a blueprint for the future, it's a blueprint for a better Queensland and it deserves all of our support.

Paul Barclay: The then Queensland Opposition leader, Wayne Goss.

In early 1987 Courier Mail journalist Phil Dickie was just another pesky young reporter, posing it seemed nothing more than a minor irritation to the State's police force, and the 19-year-old National Party government of Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen.

His allegations that police were turning a blind eye to illegal brothels and gambling houses in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley were new, but no more shocking than other claims bandied about frequently in Queensland.

Then in May that year, along came Chris Masters, and The Moonlight State.

FOUR CORNERS THEME

Russ Hinze: I don't know of any illegal gambling. If there's any going on well then of course I don't know where it is. My commissioner informs me, advises me, that he doesn't know where it is.

Chris Masters: When police and politicians 'can't find' an illegal casino in a Brisbane main street, it's unlikely that in such a morally upright climate, they could discover anything more sinister.

ORGAN MUSIC

Paul Barclay: The allegations in this one television program aroused complacent Queenslanders and prompted an immediate response from a government many thought would simply dismiss Chris Masters' revelations.

But the day after that Four Corners program went to air, and with Sir Joh out of the country, acting Premier Bill Gunn announced a judicial inquiry.

Bill Gunn: A favourite saying of the late Russell Hinze was 'You never hold an inquiry unless you know what the outcome will be.' He hade informed me of that, but this was such a serious situation where we considered it was the hierarchy, and I say there was a possibility in for many, many years that there had been corruption in the police force.

Paul Barclay: Do you think Joh would have set up the Fitzgerald Inquiry himself if he'd been in charge?

Bill Gunn: No. No, I don't believe he would and I believe that if he could have stopped it, it would have.

Paul Barclay: The cynics said the Inquiry would last six weeks; it dragged on for two years. It's clear that many people in Queensland give Fitzgerald credit for not just cleaning up The Moonlight State, but also for being instrumental in the birth of the modern, outward-looking Queensland that exists today.

Phil Dickie won the highest accolade in Australian journalism, the Gold Walkley, for his efforts in revealing the tip of the corruption iceberg in Queensland. But when I met up with him, over a glass of his home brew, it's hard to elicit from him any enthusiasm for the progress of the past ten years.

Phil Dickie: Fitzgerald presented Queensland ultimately with a, you know, sort of once or twice a century chance to do a whole lot of spring cleaning, and I'd suggest that ten years out we've probably missed the boat now. We tried, and we tried valiantly in the early years, and then all the institutional constraints caught up with us. And Queensland is, unfortunately, sort of settling back a bit into the pattern, and we might eventually get better prostitution laws. We might eventually get a better police force out of it, and we might already have a better police force out of it, but the overall game of sort of a better, fairer, more just, more open, more accountable society I think we've lost it.

Paul Barclay: Phil Dickie is a rarity among reporters. Unlike, say, Chris Masters after breaking the biggest story of his career, Phil Dickie turned his back on journalism. After uncovering the problem he wanted to be part of the solution.

And the Criminal Justice Commission is a large part of that solution. The CJC is the permanent embodiment of the Fitzgerald Inquiry, with virtually the same wide-ranging powers. It acts as a corruption watchdog, but also promotes criminal justice reform.

Phil Dickie joined the CJC as a special adviser, believing radical change to the criminal justice system was possible.

He left in 1994, disillusioned. Now he enjoys a quieter life, bringing up his young son and their motley collection of chooks, just down the road from where all the action was happening a decade earlier in Fortitude Valley. Sitting with him in his tropical backyard, his disappointment is obvious.

Phil Dickie: I saw it as the Inquiry came down and said, 'Look, here is a chance to remake the institutions of a society so that they are more open, more accountable, more receptive to better ways of doing things, and that the CJC was to be the institution that would turn its attention to our criminal justice system, our interactions with crime and how we best deal with it, far, far more than just being another arm of another police force.'

Paul Barclay: So rather than being a crime fighting agency investigating official misconduct, corruption and until recently organised crime, it should have been a research-driven organisation that was developing new approaches to dealing with crime and actually overhauling the whole criminal justice system.

Phil Dickie: There's no 'should have been' about it, it's quite explicit when you read the recommendations of the Fitzgerald Inquiry, it's quite explicit in the legislation that the CJC was set up under. It's the CJC itself which has chosen to interpret its role basically in a cops and robbers sense, or a corruption watchdog sense.

Paul Barclay: Phil Dickie is not alone in his criticism of the CJC. Almost everyone I spoke with had their own assessment of its flaws. And what are those faults? Well that depends on who you talk to you.

Rob Borbidge: The Criminal Justice Commission took it upon itself to be totally unaccountable, and took it upon itself to assume the role of de facto government in Queensland.

Paul Barclay: Ex-Premier, now Opposition leader, Rob Borbidge.

Rob Borbidge: Now that was not what Fitzgerald proposed, and we saw, in my view, an undermining of the parliamentary process by the CJC particularly under its former chairman who I believe was extremely politically active. Part of the problem is that under previous chairmen, the CJC wanted everyone else to be accountable to them, but they did not want to be accountable to anyone.

Paul Barclay: How did that manifest itself, the CJC playing a role as the de facto government?

Rob Borbidge: Well I guess the most alarming example of their interference in the political process was what amounted to an effective coup d'etat against my minority government over the MOU that was signed with the police union.

Paul Barclay: The 1996 Memorandum of Understanding between the police union and the then coalition opposition triggered a brawl between the CJC and the coalition, soon after it won government. Coalition claims of political interference were to follow, prompting counter claims of attempted intimidation of the CJC.

Suddenly it was conceivable that Fitzgerald's legacy could be gutted, even abolished.

The Memorandum of Understanding was a deal signed in secret during a by-election campaign, by the National Party leader Rob Borbidge, his police spokesman, and representatives of the police union. Among other things the memorandum appeared to give the police union a right to veto the appointment of a Police Commissioner, and to commit the coalition to watering down the powers of the CJC. In addition it named six assistant commissioners the union wanted made redundant.

In return for signing the deal, the police union threw its weight behind the Coalition's campaign to win the Mundingburra by-election, a by-election that would decide who would govern. The National Party candidate won in a tight contest. And the coalition was back in power.

Secretary of the Queensland police union, Merv Bainbridge, says the Memorandum of Understanding was not improper.

Merv Bainbridge: To this day I see nothing improper. Memorandums of Understanding have been around from time immemorial. I can remember in the early days of Bob Hawke when he was with the ACTU, he would go to the Labor opposition and put the proposition: 'If you are in government, what can you do for our members?' and basically this is all that the police union did; we went to the alternative government said, 'If you were in government, what are you prepared to do for us?'

Paul Barclay: It did appear though that there were some Assistant Commissioners that you apparently wanted to get rid of, and included that in the Memorandum of Understanding, for those officers to be made redundant.

Merv Bainbridge: It was suggested that their contracts not be renewed. No-one was to be sacked etc. but when they came up it was suggested perhaps that their contracts not be renewed over (I've got to be very careful what I say here), but going into their previous administration.

Paul Barclay: After the February by-election, the police union boasted it was responsible for helping return the conservatives to government. Soon after, the union's newsletter revealed the existence of the Memorandum of Understanding.

The media went berserk. There were suggestions the Electoral Act may have been breached. The government was forced to refer the matter to the CJC which appointed retired New South Wales judge, Kenneth Curruthers, to determine if there was any wrongdoing by Premier Rob Borbidge, his Police Minister, or union officials.

Terry O'Gorman, from the Council for Civil Liberties.

Terry O'Gorman: The historical record shows that the then Police Minister, Russell Cooper, referred the Memorandum of Understanding issue to the CJC in the early weeks of the then conservative government having won office, principally by virtue of the role of the Memorandum of Understanding in a relevant by-election. However, while it was quite proper for the CJC to look into the Memorandum of Understanding, it's after that period of looking into it where the waters start to get muddy, the relevant conservative politicians, the ex-Premier Mr Borbidge, the ex-Police Minister, Mr Cooper, have a point to an extent of saying, 'Why should we have had to go through months and months of anguish, months and months of interference with our parliamentary duty, running up huge amounts of money in legal bills, when there was an opinion locked away in a safe that in fact they had done nothing wrong?'

Paul Barclay: By now, Mr Borbidge viewed the CJC as a sort of Star Chamber, out of control and gunning for his government.

Rob Borbidge: We had a situation where legal advice from Cedric Hampson, who at that time was President of the Bar Association, that said that neither Russell Cooper nor I had a case to answer and we were told that there would be a brief inquiry into the police union's involvement that should go for about 12 days. It went for the best part of eight or nine months; it was a loaded dice and in my view it was nothing short of a deliberate attempt to bring about a properly elected and constituted democratic government, to bring that government down. I mean they went on for months and months and months, and if not for the Connolly Ryan Inquiry, no-one would ever have known that they had legal advice that the government of the day did not have a case to answer.

Paul Barclay: The Carruthers Inquiry into the deal between the police union and the coalition distracted the government for months. The coalition was so infuriated by the Inquiry that it launched a counter Inquiry into the CJC itself, the Connolly Ryan Inquiry.

Lawyer Terry O'Gorman again.

Terry O'Gorman: That complaint by Mr Borbidge and Mr Cooper as I see it, was at least a reasonably valid complaint, but the way that the government then chose to deal with investigating that complaint was a problem of the government's own making because they appointed an Inquiry which was clearly a 'get square, let's kick the CJC in the face' Inquiry. Inevitably that Inquiry was declared to be biased, by the Queensland Supreme Court, and shut down.

Paul Barclay: In broad terms, was the Connolly Ryan Inquiry an attempt to muzzle the CJC?

Terry O'Gorman: I saw it as that, and most informed observers did. When you saw the way in which the Inquiry was set up, when you saw the way in which the Inquiry confronted and successfully, stared down Carruthers when he wasn't finished, it clearly was an attempt to not only muzzle but possibly completely abolish the CJC. But when you look at the way the Connolly Ryan Inquiry was conducted, and when you look at the stinging criticisms that were made by Mr Justice Thomas, the judge that shut it down in the Supreme Court, and when you look at the fact that the Connolly Ryan Inquiry chose not to appeal to the Court of Appeal against its closure, then that I think, says it all.

Paul Barclay: From the outset of the Connolly Ryan Inquiry, the coalition undermined its own case that the CJC and the Carruthers Inquiry were out to get it. And it did this by appointing an ex-Liberal Party member, and former judge, Peter Connolly to inquire into the CJC. His professional abilities weren't in question, but the appointment raised concerns about the impartiality of the Inquiry.

Rob Borbidge: Well Peter Connolly had been a very distinguished and senior member of the Bench, and in all his years on the Bench I think 30 years or thereabouts, there had never been any suggestion or any allegation of bias on the part of Mr Connolly, and the same for Kevin Ryan when he served as a Supreme Court judge. Both of those men were highly regarded and at no time during their judicial careers, during their time on the Bench, had anyone suggested that they were politically motivated in respect of any of their judgements handed down probably over hundreds of cases in decades of service to the Supreme Court of Queensland.

Paul Barclay: But at the very least, wouldn't it have been easier to appoint someone who didn't have a Liberal background? You would have still been able to conduct the Inquiry, look into the problems that you saw with the CJC without the perception of a conflict of interests.

Rob Borbidge: Well we held the view that by having two commissioners, that we were ensuring impartiality and independence in regard to that particular review. I mean it wasn't as if Mr Connolly was the only person appointed, Mr Ryan, Kevin Ryan was appointed.

Paul Barclay: Ex-Premier, now Opposition leader, Rob Borbidge.

Professor Ross Homel, a recently retired CJC commissioner, presented me with an altogether different view of the Connolly Ryan period, a view he also shared with the Supreme Court.

Ross Homel: As a part-time commissioner I was called in on a couple of occasions to have a chat with the two people running the commission Inquiry, Kevin Ryan and Peter Connolly. On one of those occasions, Peter, I think we were just chatting in a room, or in a corridor, and he remarked that now that the conservative side of politics was in power, they were in a position to do a proper evaluation of the Fitzgerald experiment. In fact what he said was, it was more along the lines of, 'Now that our side of politics is back in power, we can do a proper evaluation of the Fitzgerald experiment.' And that was the phrase of course, that was I gather fairly important in the ultimately successful challenge to that Inquiry by the CJC in the Supreme Court. But I think that has to be seen in the context of an overall experience over many months of an Inquiry that seemed to be getting more and more out of control. From the inside of the CJC it was like being in a trench in World War One, with missiles coming over and exploding at regular intervals.

Paul Barclay: By October, in this suffocating climate of mutual mistrust, Kenneth Carruthers decided he was unable to complete his Inquiry into the Memorandum of Understanding. He quit, stating the Connolly Ryan Inquiry into the CJC interfered intolerably with his investigation. And later, as we've heard, the CJC successfully challenged the validity of the Connolly Ryan Inquiry, the Supreme Court agreeing it was indeed biased.

Despite these events it would be a mistake to conclude that hostility towards the CJC comes only from the conservative side of politics.

True, current Labor Premier Peter Beattie remains a strong ally. Not so former Labor Premier Wayne Goss, who's antipathy toward the CJC is still apparent. Wayne Goss quit the party leadership shortly after the Mundingburra by-election defeat consigned Labor to Opposition, and eventually left politics.

LIFT ARRIVES

Paul Barclay: I meet Mr Goss on the 26th floor of the Harry Seidler designed Riverside building, from where you get a great view of the physical changes, good and bad, wrought on Brisbane.

If Wayne Goss' election triumph in 1989 made him the big political winner from the Fitzgerald Inquiry, it didn't prevent him from clashing with the CJC. And today, he thinks it's time the CJC was thoroughly reviewed.

Wayne Goss: The Criminal Justice Commission needs an independent review, carried out by somebody that all sides of politics are happy with and that looks at its role. I think whatever happens, the CJC should be maintained in some form to detect and deter corruption, whether that be in the public sector or in particular bodies like the police, but whether it needs some of its other functions, that should be open to debate and one shouldn't be accused of undermining the reform process for simply asking the question.

Paul Barclay: While Mr Goss deserves credit for implementing crucial reforms, he too fell foul of the head of the Criminal Justice Commission, in this case inaugural Chairman, Sir Max Bingham, a former Liberal Deputy Premier of Tasmania, appointed in the dying days of coalition rule. To make matters worse, a CJC investigation into parliamentary travel expenses led to the embarrassing resignation of a number of Labor Ministers.

Speculation was that relations between the CJC and the Labor Government were so poisonous the Commission would have been abolished if Caucus had been asked to vote on the matter.

Wayne Goss: No, the CJC wouldn't have been abolished, because I was committed to the work that it had to do. It was far from perfect, particularly in the first three years, some of its research was very shoddy. I mean the SP bookmaking report, the poker machine report that was quashed subsequently by the High Court for fundamental mistakes of law; there was also a bit of a personality problem between the Chairman and myself. I never realised that he harboured some resentment over the fact that he wasn't confirmed in his position on election night, which would have been quite inappropriate. And that was unfortunate, but I was committed to the work of the Criminal Justice Commission even though some of the senior players I think were involved in other agendas.

Paul Barclay: Former Queensland Premier, Wayne Goss.

It should surprise nobody that the Criminal Justice Commission does not endear itself to governments. Scrutiny of government is a key reason for the CJC's existence, but it's not the only reason. The CJC is also supposed to combat official corruption. Most experts agree there is no concrete evidence of significant corruption or misconduct within the police service, or the bureaucracy.

Nonetheless this doesn't mean everyone's convinced the State's public sector is today corruption free.

Phil Dickie.

Phil Dickie: Corruption by its very nature is a crime committed between consenting adults in private. Very often there's no reason for either of them to complain; there's often no-one else who knows about it. However the whole Fitzgerald Inquiry was, particularly the media investigations at the beginning, was not so much an exercise in uncovering actual instances of corruption, because we didn't have the resources or the legal power to do that. What it was, was an exercise in uncovering the unmistakable symptoms of corruption, it was a research exercise if you like. And we found and were able to demonstrate with very few resources really, that there was no reasonable explanation for what was happening in Queensland but that the place was corrupt.

Now that sort of methodology, applied with all the resources of an institution like the CJC, would if it was properly employed, find the largest amount of corruption is involved with local governments and land decisions, State governments and contract decisions and that police and criminals come a long way behind that.

Paul Barclay: No-one can dismiss the possibility of hidden corruption. The CJC does catch misbehaving public servants and police, but it's largely dependent on whistleblowers and complainants. The CJC website proudly affirms its complaints section is the 'hub' of the organisation.

Michael Barnes is the head of this section. What does he say to the criticism that the CJC is too reactive to complaints?

Michael Barnes: That would be a flawed approach if that's all we did, but there's two limbs to our approach to detection and eradication of corruption. Firstly, officers who are involved in corruption do tend to attract complaints, they're not out there pursuing their professional responsibilities with a full vigour and application of more appropriately focused officers. So we tend to get complaints about their conduct for other things that causes us to have concerns about them.

But secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the complaints process is only one small part of detection of corruption. We have active, ongoing covert operations, target development committees that look at a whole range of indicators to determine whether or not corruption may be occurring in any particular area, not just the police service, but the public sector generally.

Paul Barclay: Terry O'Gorman agrees with Phil Dickie. The CJC can't afford to sit back and wait to be handed information on alleged corruption. He thinks it should go out and find corruption, as it's occurring, by testing the integrity of police officers, a tactic the CJC employs, but that this civil libertarian would like to see enhanced.

Terry O'Gorman: There can be no real objection to the CJC using the same undercover covert listening device and other tactics that police use day in, day out against citizens. I think it is a legitimate criticism, and unless the CJC starts to become proactive in integrity testing in a serious way, there is an unacceptable risk that corruption will return, particularly in view of the fact that there are a reasonable number of police now at Senior Sergeant rank and at Inspector rank who were pretty suspect during the period that Fitzgerald was looking into, but who escaped his examination because there was simply a limit to what he could do.

Paul Barclay: Integrity testing appals the police union. They've even co-opted the language of civil libertarians, branding it 'entrapment'. I put it to the union's Merv Bainbridge that there was a fear of police corruption reappearing without covert testing.

Merv Bainbridge: That fear only comes I think from probably certain solicitors and members of the legal profession, the civil libertarians etc. You know, I just point out to people if they'd like to check and find the number of police officers that are currently in prison for matters of corruption and the number of solicitors that are in, they'll find that there are many, many times more solicitors either being investigated in our prisons for matters of corruption, than police officers. And for calls to come from the legal fraternity for this is I think, totally hypocritical. To set out to entrap police officers I think is totally distasteful and should be avoided at all costs.

Paul Barclay: But if the police have done nothing wrong, then they have nothing to fear.

Merv Bainbridge: Well I'll give you an example of what I call entrapment, and it happened in New South Wales, where they have a totally different system to us, and what happened in New South Wales is a gentleman came to the front counter of a police station, with a carton of beer and he intended to leave it there for a couple of officers that he claimed had assisted his wife at a road accident, and were very helpful. The officer on duty at the counter said, 'No, I don't want it thank you, take it away', and this fellow was very insistent. And at the end of the day did take it away. But they looked around the corner, and here were a couple of police officers and quite obviously they were being set up to take this carton of beer. Now I don't see that as any kind of test, I just find the whole episode of that particular example as it was recounted to me from friends in New South Wales, as disgraceful and disgusting.

Paul Barclay: Merv Bainbridge doesn't defend the behaviour of the rotten police under corrupt Commissioner Terry Lewis, but he reckons there was only a handful of bad guys. There's also no doubt he's a touch nostalgic, and yearns for a time when no-one is breathing down the neck of the officer on the beat.

Merv Bainbridge: What has happened is the CJC has made some police officers, what I call gun shy. In other words, it's just do your eight hours, do no more, don't look left or right, otherwise you'll be complained about. And I can give you a quick example of that if you like. Where two officers are on patrol in the Mount Gravatt area a number of years ago, in the early hours of the morning, and they see two youths walking down the street with a Gladstone bag. So they stop and speak to them, ask can they check inside the bag, which they do, and nothing untoward is found, and bid them Good Morning and off they go. One of the youths' father's complains, doesn't complain about the police being rude, he says that the police weren't rude; he just wishes to know by what authority those police officers searched his son's Gladstone bag. So as a result, those two young police officers were disciplined. So as one of them said to me, 'In future, if I'm driving down Logan Road, Mount Gravatt at three o'clock in the morning and I see someone carrying, if a youth carrying a video on his shoulder, as far as I'm concerned I look straight ahead, I see nothing, I know nothing, I just keep driving.'

But the CJC's Michael Barnes says such fears are baseless.

Michael Barnes: I'm very surprised to hear that a union would say its members are not doing their job properly. I know that the vast majority of police would be greatly affronted by the police union suggesting they were scared of doing their job, and think the people of Queensland simply wouldn't believe it. We know that police officers continue to make arrests in quite discretionary areas where they could quite easily avoid preferring charges if they were dissuaded from doing their job. We know that arrests for simple possession of drugs and the like, where police officers could simply look the other way if they were frightened about becoming involved in some incident which could lead to a CJC investigation would diminish. In fact our research shows that those discretionary types of arrests continue to increase at a rate that exceeds the general arrest rate, so I think the evidence shows that police officers aren't discouraged from their job.

Rob Borbidge: I don't think there's much doubt that particularly young police officers are very cautious in terms of perhaps street offences, dealing with certain groups within the community where there is a problem, because they're scared that they may well be reported to the CJC. And I mean common knowledge, there are legal groups that hand out little bits of paper to their clients, that if the police stop you, this is what you can do, this is what you can't do, and you contact the CJC and all the rest of it. So I don't think there's much doubt that in certain cases it has inhibited the ability of the police to do their job. It's great having one of the best police services in the world, but if the constable on street duty isn't game to take on the thugs because he's scared of being reported, then I think the community then has a legitimate question to ask in respect of the process.

Paul Barclay: Ex-Premier, now Opposition leader, Rob Borbidge.

There's no denying the audacious misbehaviour and illegality that riddled the force ten years ago is no longer evident.

But that's not to say the Police Service has radically changed its approach to policing. For clearly, it has not. Preventative community policing, for instance, is not by any stretch of the imagination the 'primary policing strategy' Tony Fitzgerald argued it should be. This is in spite of evidence from CJC research that putting more police on the beat actually does reduce crime.

Just as the Police Service has been dragged, sometimes reluctantly, into the 1990s, so too have the institutions of democracy in Queensland.

Man: What do you understand by the doctrine of the separation of powers under the Westminster system?

Bjelke-Petersen: Of the?

Man: Of the Westminster system.

Bjelke-Petersen: Well the doctrine you refer to in relation to the, where the government stands, and where the rest of the community stands, and where the rest of the instruments of government stand. Is that what - ?

Man: No.

Bjelke-Petersen: Well you tell me, and I'll tell you whether you're right or not. Don't you know?

Paul Barclay: An ABC dramatisation of Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen giving evidence before the Fitzgerald Inquiry.

PROTEST

Paul Barclay: Throughout the '70s and '80s what passed for democracy in Queensland was a national laughing stock.

Protesters daring to dissent by marching in the street were routinely jailed; historic buildings were demolished in the dead of night; and the gerrymander meant a vote for the Nationals in the bush had greater value than a vote for Labor in the city. So impotent did this render the Opposition, and so inconceivable was it they'd ever win office, a virtual one-party State prevailed.

Ethics Professor Noel Preston spent much of this era at odds with Joh Bjelke Petersen and his government, which back then, he says, made decisions by executive fiat.

Noel Preston: Fitzgerald very properly identified that their abuse of executive power was the central issue that brought the problems that emerged in his Inquiry and that at the heart of this was the way the parliamentary process was not working; that executive government controlled in this unicameral one house parliamentary system we had in Queensland. You've got the numbers in the Lower House, there's no Upper House and you do what you like. So the system of parliamentary committees needed to be beefed up. It was very minimal in 1989, and that has happened, with the passage of the 1995 Parliamentary Committees Act, was sort of the zenith of that flowing out of EARC-style reforms.

Paul Barclay: EARC was the Electoral and Administrative Review Committee. It was a less glamorous Fitzgerald progeny than the Criminal Justice Commission, but no less important. In its short three years it helped breathe life back into Queensland's decrepit public institutions. It killed off the gerrymander and proposed the State's first Freedom of Information laws. And instigated a process to give aggrieved citizens the opportunity to object to Public Service rulings. EARC was also instrumental in bolstering the Parliamentary Committee system.

David Solomon was EARC's final Chairman before it was disbanded in 1994. He thinks it can at least take credit for the fact that governments today are more accountable. Nonetheless, Cabinet still rules the roost, despite Parliamentary Committees.

David Solomon: They've certainly made governments more accountable, and that's probably about as much as you can get. They have not weakened the executive government, strangely enough that hasn't even occurred despite the fact that we've had a minority government situation for a little while. But governments are certainly more accountable than they were pre-Fitzgerald, as well as the Parliamentary Committee system, we've also had a judicial review system, which has made decisions by governments reviewable in the courts. And we've also had Freedom of Information legislation introduced. That has worked pretty well, though it suited both Labor and conservative governments to water down the provisions of the FOI legislation and to allow them to, in effect, hide anything they wanted to hide simply by classifying it as a Cabinet document.

Paul Barclay: One would not need to be a cynic to suggest that if you only need to reclassify a document as a Cabinet document, when all that probably means is that you take it in a manilla folder into a Cabinet room, but it doesn't actually get discussed, that that would almost completely destroy the intent of FOI.

David Solomon: Yes, in fact you didn't even have to take it into the Cabinet room. I mean the final version of it just had a Minister or a senior official, declaring that it was of interest to the Cabinet, even if Cabinet didn't see it.

Paul Barclay: So that's an ad hoc process. They just arbitrarily nominate a document to be a Cabinet document and hence the media or other interested parties cannot access it.

David Solomon: Well essentially that's what could happen, yes. And that was in a change made to the FOI law.

Minister: 'This file contains the complete set of available papers except for a small number of secret documents, a few others which are part of selective files, some correspondence lost in the floods of 1967.' Was 1967 a particularly bad winter?

Sir Humphrey: No, it was a marvellous winter; we lost no end of embarrassing files.

Minister: '??? which went astray in the move to London, and others when the War Office was incorporated in the Ministry of Defence; and the normal withdrawal of papers whose publication could give grounds for an action for libel or breach of confidence or cause embarrassment to friendly governments.' Well that's pretty comprehensive. How many papers does that normally leave for them to look at? About 100 or so? Fifty? Ten?

Paul Barclay: Wayne Goss was derided by the media for running a closed government. As Premier, he amended the FOI law to expand the Cabinet loophole.

When David Fagan was Queensland Bureau Chief for The Australian newspaper, he regularly sought information under FOI. But after the Goss Government changed the law, he became increasingly frustrated by the ease with which his requests were thwarted.

David Fagan: In 1994 I applied under FOI for some documents that were prepared by the Public Service for Ministers. Now those documents were to brief Ministers appearing before Budget Estimates Committees. Clearly they weren't a Cabinet document, they weren't designed to go to Cabinet, never were going to. But they did probably set out the problems that Government was experiencing at that time, the sorts of issues that Ministers might be asked about when they appeared before a Parliamentary Committee.

So I applied for those under FOI and looked like I might get them. And a few weeks later the Cabinet office got all the Ministers to hand in their briefing papers and they put them in a box, stuffed them in the hold of the Government jet and took them up to a Cabinet meeting in Mount Isa where they were taken to the meeting. I don't know what happened to them there, presumably they just sat in the corner, but on that basis, they were exempted from release. So we were never able to see what was in those documents.

Terry O'Gorman: That was a cynical move brought in by the Goss Government, which the then conservative Opposition criticised. When the conservatives came into government, surprise! surprise! they did nothing about it. Now Labor is back in, what have they done? A typical thing of 'Refer it to a Parliamentary Committee'. It just shows that the current Labor government right throughout all its ministerial ranks, right throughout all of its back bench, are spineless. All they simply have to do is to bring in a one-line amendment to repeal that Cabinet blanket knackering of FOI. There's no need to refer it to a Parliamentary Committee.

Paul Barclay: Terry O'Gorman of the Council for Civil Liberties.

Peter Beattie: I believe in Parliamentary Committees. And one of the things you'll recall that the Fitzgerald Report talked about was the need for a greater role for Parliamentary Committees.

Paul Barclay: Premier Peter Beattie.

Peter Beattie: As Chairman of the first Parliamentary Criminal Justice Committee, I'm committed to that. FOI has been a political football, and therefore we need to ensure that it's handled properly by both sides of politics. You see the strength of what Fitzgerald did in establishing bipartisan or multi party Parliamentary Committees in this Parliament, was to ensure that politicians had to work together to come up with an outcome. Now there will always be, and it has always been envisaged, that there will be some exemption for Cabinet documents, and so there should be.

Paul Barclay: But the current situation is ludicrous, it simply requires almost an arbitrary reclassification of a document that doesn't even need to make it into the Cabinet room, to stop journalists and members of the public getting access to it.

Peter Beattie: Well I've made it clear that our position is, and this will always be our position, if the documents pertain to Cabinet decision-making process, then that's the appropriate place for them to be exempt. If they're not part of that process, then in fact they aren't exempt. Now that's the practice that we follow. I've issued an instruction to that effect, that's the practice we are following.

Paul Barclay: It seems to me though that what you're saying is that the only documents that you're not allowing access to now are legitimate Cabinet documents. Does that mean then that you're loath to actually amend the legislation, because you're currently acting in the spirit of what you regard FOI is?

Peter Beattie: No, I'm simply acting in the spirit of what I think FOI is and how it was to apply to Cabinet. But the Parliamentary Committee should have a look at the FOI laws, and as I stress, this is what I promised prior to the election, and that's why they're looking at it.

Paul Barclay: But will you change them?

Peter Beattie: Well I want to see, I mean you already get an indication from our practices as to what I believe, or the Government believes. But clearly, what I want to see is what the Committee says.

Paul Barclay: At least the FOI laws were introduced. A number of reforms proposed by the Electoral and Administrative Review Committee have never seen the light of day. Reforms such as a State Bill of Rights, a new constitution, an Administrative Appeals Tribunal and an Office of Public Sector Ethics.

There is much unfinished business in Queensland. Too much to warrant the mood of self-satisfaction I commonly encountered. Perhaps this is a hint of the complacency Tony Fitzgerald warned of all those years ago.

No government, for instance, has yet had the courage to meaningfully reform laws relating to prostitution and drugs.

But the Queensland of today is a long way from the Moonlight State. Even the National Party has been forgiven by the voters, returning briefly to the Government benches before losing the last election. But their leader Rob Borbidge rejects the popularly held view that Tony Fitzgerald helped create contemporary Queensland.

Rob Borbidge: Joh Bjelke Petersen was the builder of modern Queensland, and no-one will ever take that away from him, especially Mr Fitzgerald. And you know, like all governments, good things happen and things happen that aren't so good. But I think that the recent political experience shows that the person in the street, whilst acknowledging the lessons of Fitzgerald, doesn't hold anything from that era against the modern National Party.

Paul Barclay: For two decades, Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen personified Queensland. It's instructive to hear him talk about what has become of the State today.

Joh Bjelke Petersen: We were told at the time the report was given that Queensland would be 'squeally clean', whatever the expression they used that day on TV, you'll find it in the records if you look it up, but Queensland was going to be 'squeally clean'; there would be no more corruption forever and a day. And instead of that of course, those of us who have a bit of background, a bit of experience, knew jolly well that violence and robbery and murder, it's unbelievable. We were right ahead of our time, the police force were in stopping drugs. Nowadays after the Fitzgerald era, goodness me, you're not game to go out along the streets anywhere today, any part of Queensland, simply because they neglected the opportunity and the position that had been created by the police force in their control of drugs and all these other vices that have escalated.

Paul Barclay: I meet Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen in the boardroom of Brisbane's Mineralogy House, where he still maintains an office. The man I met is frail, he's now 88, and no longer the imposing political warrior who once inspired such loathing and admiration. But Sir Joh remains convinced Fitzgerald did Queensland more harm than good.

Joh Bjelke Petersen: The CJC again is a fairly political operation, the whole exercise. And I said many times after my experience in the court, I said I would have dismantled it long ago and got it back to the system that we operated under.

Paul Barclay: Is the CJC an effective watchdog against corruption and misconduct?

Joh Bjelke Petersen: It's always after the event. We stopped it before it happened, and the police force in my day stopped it before it happened. Street marches, law and order was obeyed, unions were controlled, I was called a dictator but Queensland prospered, and people voted for me increasing numbers, in spite of the fact that some of those street marchers we put a thousand people or more in the lock-up. All I will say this, and I want this recorded and I want it broadcast: the four years that I was being investigated for nothing cost me an awful lot of money and a lot of property, but there's nothing, absolutely nothing, there is nothing and I repeat that will ever restore my confidence in the justice system. After I saw that exercise and what happened to me, as I saw and experienced, sat in that dock and sat and was questioned and investigated, nothing, there's absolutely nothing, and in that you ask many a policeman that was tossed out on the rubbish heap, same as I was, after a long period of being investigated and all the rest of it.

Paul Barclay: Tony Fitzgerald no longer lives in Queensland. He moved to New South Wales shortly after being overlooked by the Queensland Coalition as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Now a Justice on the New South Wales Court of Appeal, he is perfectly happy to let history be the judge of his achievements, or failures. He has no desire to publicly set the record straight, on any matter.

The Queensland Police Service also declined to participate in this program. Their media spokesman, Brian Swift, would say only that the Fitzgerald era was in the past.

But preventing Queensland from revisiting its past will depend on constant vigilance.

Terry O'Gorman.

Terry O'Gorman: In all similar jurisdictions to Queensland, other places in Australia, UK, US, Canada, history shows ten years or so after a major Police Royal Commission where the police are cleaned up, unless there is an active body in there, preventing a re-elapse into corruption, it happens.

THEME

Paul Barclay: You've been listening to Background Briefing. Co-ordinating Producer is Linda McGinness; Research by Jim Mellor; Technical Production by Colin Preston and Mark Don; Executive Producer is Stephen Alward.

I'm Paul Barclay
Further information

    Queensland Criminal Justice Commission
    http://www.cjc.qld.gov.au

    Queensland Police Union
    http://www.qpu.asn.au

    University of Queensland Library
    Reading list: The Government of Queensland
    http://www.library.uq.edu.au/ssah/gt206.html

ou're currently acting in the spirit of what you regard FOI is?

Peter Beattie: No, I'm simply acting in the spirit of what I think FOI is and how it was to apply to Cabinet. But the Parliamentary Committee should have a look at the FOI laws, and as I stress, this is what I promised prior to the election, and that's why they're looking at it.

Paul Barclay: But will you change them?

Peter Beattie: Well I want to see, I mean you already get an indication from our practices as to what I believe, or the Government believes. But clearly, what I want to see is what the Committee says.

Paul Barclay: At least the FOI laws were introduced. A number of reforms proposed by the Electoral and Administrative Review Committee have never seen the light of day. Reforms such as a State Bill of Rights, a new constitution, an Administrative Appeals Tribunal and an Office of Public Sector Ethics.

There is much unfinished business in Queensland. Too much to warrant the mood of self-satisfaction I commonly encountered. Perhaps this is a hint of the complacency Tony Fitzgerald warned of all those years ago.

No government, for instance, has yet had the courage to meaningfully reform laws relating to prostitution and drugs.

But the Queensland of today is a long way from the Moonlight State. Even the National Party has been forgiven by the voters, returning briefly to the Government benches before losing the last election. But their leader Rob Borbidge rejects the popularly held view that Tony Fitzgerald helped create contemporary Queensland.

Rob Borbidge: Joh Bjelke Petersen was the builder of modern Queensland, and no-one will ever take that away from him, especially Mr Fitzgerald. And you know, like all governments, good things happen and things happen that aren't so good. But I think that the recent political experience shows that the person in the street, whilst acknowledging the lessons of Fitzgerald, doesn't hold anything from that era against the modern National Party.

Paul Barclay: For two decades, Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen personified Queensland. It's instructive to hear him talk about what has become of the State today.

Joh Bjelke Petersen: We were told at the time the report was given that Queensland would be 'squeally clean', whatever the expression they used that day on TV, you'll find it in the records if you look it up, but Queensland was going to be 'squeally clean'; there would be no more corruption forever and a day. And instead of that of course, those of us who have a bit of background, a bit of experience, knew jolly well that violence and robbery and murder, it's unbelievable. We were right ahead of our time, the police force were in stopping drugs. Nowadays after the Fitzgerald era, goodness me, you're not game to go out along the streets anywhere today, any part of Queensland, simply because they neglected the opportunity and the position that had been created by the police force in their control of drugs and all these other vices that have escalated.

Paul Barclay: I meet Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen in the boardroom of Brisbane's Mineralogy House, where he still maintains an office. The man I met is frail, he's now 88, and no longer the imposing political warrior who once inspired such loathing and admiration. But Sir Joh remains convinced Fitzgerald did Queensland more harm than good.

Joh Bjelke Petersen: The CJC again is a fairly political operation, the whole exercise. And I said many times after my experience in the court, I said I would have dismantled it long ago and got it back to the system that we operated under.

Paul Barclay: Is the CJC an effective watchdog against corruption and misconduct?

Joh Bjelke Petersen: It's always after the event. We stopped it before it happened, and the police force in my day stopped it before it happened. Street marches, law and order was obeyed, unions were controlled, I was called a dictator but Queensland prospered, and people voted for me increasing numbers, in spite of the fact that some of those street marchers we put a thousand people or more in the lock-up. All I will say this, and I want this recorded and I want it broadcast: the four years that I was being investigated for nothing cost me an awful lot of money and a lot of property, but there's nothing, absolutely nothing, there is nothing and I repeat that will ever restore my confidence in the justice system. After I saw that exercise and what happened to me, as I saw and experienced, sat in that dock and sat and was questioned and investigated, nothing, there's absolutely nothing, and in that you ask many a policeman that was tossed out on the rubbish heap, same as I was, after a long period of being investigated and all the rest of it.

Paul Barclay: Tony Fitzgerald no longer lives in Queensland. He moved to New South Wales shortly after being overlooked by the Queensland Coalition as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Now a Justice on the New South Wales Court of Appeal, he is perfectly happy to let history be the judge of his achievements, or failures. He has no desire to publicly set the record straight, on any matter.

The Queensland Police Service also declined to participate in this program. Their media spokesman, Brian Swift, would say only that the Fitzgerald era was in the past.

But preventing Queensland from revisiting its past will depend on constant vigilance.

Terry O'Gorman.

Terry O'Gorman: In all similar jurisdictions to Queensland, other places in Australia, UK, US, Canada, history shows ten years or so after a major Police Royal Commission where the police are cleaned up, unless there is an active body in there, preventing a re-elapse into corruption, it happens.

THEME

Paul Barclay: You've been listening to Background Briefing. Co-ordinating Producer is Linda McGinness; Research by Jim Mellor; Technical Production by Colin Preston and Mark Don; Executive Producer is Stephen Alward.

I'm Paul Barclay
Further information

    Queensland Criminal Justice Commission
    http://www.cjc.qld.gov.au

    Queensland Police Union
    http://www.qpu.asn.au

    University of Queensland Library
    Reading list: The Government of Queensland
    http://www.library.uq.edu.au/ssah/gt206.html

Program Transcript
THEME

Peter Beattie: The Fitzgerald Report has been the most single important catalyst for improved behaviour in this State since we became a State in 1859.

Paul Barclay: Ten years ago, Tony Fitzgerald delivered a Report that was to have an extraordinary impact on the State of Queensland, a bold attempt to pull The Moonlight State out of a mire of vice, cronyism, and illegality.

The Fitzgerald Inquiry uncovered corruption and misconduct at the highest levels of the police force and government, and led to the jailing of government ministers and the Commissioner of Police.

But it was far more than a prescription for catching crooked cops and politicians with their snouts in the trough. It was a blueprint for rebuilding confidence in the police, the parliament and the bureaucracy.

More than anything Tony Fitzgerald wanted to ensure Queensland would never again sink to the depths of such appalling official impropriety. And the only way this could be guarded against, he reasoned, was a complete overhaul of the State's discredited public institutions.

But he cautioned, the citizens and their elected representatives would need to be always on their guard. His report warned:

Reader: There are many ways in which the agenda for reform could be delayed or subverted by political or bureaucratic opponents. This has happened previously.

Paul Barclay: Ten years on, has Queensland been faithful to the Fitzgerald vision?

Hello, and welcome to Background Briefing. I'm Paul Barclay.

Wayne Goss: I think it's a courageous and a perceptive document; I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to Mr Fitzgerald, I think it's a blistering indictment on the National Party and on National/Liberal governments, but it's a blueprint for the future, it's a blueprint for a better Queensland and it deserves all of our support.

Paul Barclay: The then Queensland Opposition leader, Wayne Goss.

In early 1987 Courier Mail journalist Phil Dickie was just another pesky young reporter, posing it seemed nothing more than a minor irritation to the State's police force, and the 19-year-old National Party government of Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen.

His allegations that police were turning a blind eye to illegal brothels and gambling houses in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley were new, but no more shocking than other claims bandied about frequently in Queensland.

Then in May that year, along came Chris Masters, and The Moonlight State.

FOUR CORNERS THEME

Russ Hinze: I don't know of any illegal gambling. If there's any going on well then of course I don't know where it is. My commissioner informs me, advises me, that he doesn't know where it is.

Chris Masters: When police and politicians 'can't find' an illegal casino in a Brisbane main street, it's unlikely that in such a morally upright climate, they could discover anything more sinister.

ORGAN MUSIC

Paul Barclay: The allegations in this one television program aroused complacent Queenslanders and prompted an immediate response from a government many thought would simply dismiss Chris Masters' revelations.

But the day after that Four Corners program went to air, and with Sir Joh out of the country, acting Premier Bill Gunn announced a judicial inquiry.

Bill Gunn: A favourite saying of the late Russell Hinze was 'You never hold an inquiry unless you know what the outcome will be.' He hade informed me of that, but this was such a serious situation where we considered it was the hierarchy, and I say there was a possibility in for many, many years that there had been corruption in the police force.

Paul Barclay: Do you think Joh would have set up the Fitzgerald Inquiry himself if he'd been in charge?

Bill Gunn: No. No, I don't believe he would and I believe that if he could have stopped it, it would have.

Paul Barclay: The cynics said the Inquiry would last six weeks; it dragged on for two years. It's clear that many people in Queensland give Fitzgerald credit for not just cleaning up The Moonlight State, but also for being instrumental in the birth of the modern, outward-looking Queensland that exists today.

Phil Dickie won the highest accolade in Australian journalism, the Gold Walkley, for his efforts in revealing the tip of the corruption iceberg in Queensland. But when I met up with him, over a glass of his home brew, it's hard to elicit from him any enthusiasm for the progress of the past ten years.

Phil Dickie: Fitzgerald presented Queensland ultimately with a, you know, sort of once or twice a century chance to do a whole lot of spring cleaning, and I'd suggest that ten years out we've probably missed the boat now. We tried, and we tried valiantly in the early years, and then all the institutional constraints caught up with us. And Queensland is, unfortunately, sort of settling back a bit into the pattern, and we might eventually get better prostitution laws. We might eventually get a better police force out of it, and we might already have a better police force out of it, but the overall game of sort of a better, fairer, more just, more open, more accountable society I think we've lost it.

Paul Barclay: Phil Dickie is a rarity among reporters. Unlike, say, Chris Masters after breaking the biggest story of his career, Phil Dickie turned his back on journalism. After uncovering the problem he wanted to be part of the solution.

And the Criminal Justice Commission is a large part of that solution. The CJC is the permanent embodiment of the Fitzgerald Inquiry, with virtually the same wide-ranging powers. It acts as a corruption watchdog, but also promotes criminal justice reform.

Phil Dickie joined the CJC as a special adviser, believing radical change to the criminal justice system was possible.

He left in 1994, disillusioned. Now he enjoys a quieter life, bringing up his young son and their motley collection of chooks, just down the road from where all the action was happening a decade earlier in Fortitude Valley. Sitting with him in his tropical backyard, his disappointment is obvious.

Phil Dickie: I saw it as the Inquiry came down and said, 'Look, here is a chance to remake the institutions of a society so that they are more open, more accountable, more receptive to better ways of doing things, and that the CJC was to be the institution that would turn its attention to our criminal justice system, our interactions with crime and how we best deal with it, far, far more than just being another arm of another police force.'

Paul Barclay: So rather than being a crime fighting agency investigating official misconduct, corruption and until recently organised crime, it should have been a research-driven organisation that was developing new approaches to dealing with crime and actually overhauling the whole criminal justice system.

Phil Dickie: There's no 'should have been' about it, it's quite explicit when you read the recommendations of the Fitzgerald Inquiry, it's quite explicit in the legislation that the CJC was set up under. It's the CJC itself which has chosen to interpret its role basically in a cops and robbers sense, or a corruption watchdog sense.

Paul Barclay: Phil Dickie is not alone in his criticism of the CJC. Almost everyone I spoke with had their own assessment of its flaws. And what are those faults? Well that depends on who you talk to you.

Rob Borbidge: The Criminal Justice Commission took it upon itself to be totally unaccountable, and took it upon itself to assume the role of de facto government in Queensland.

Paul Barclay: Ex-Premier, now Opposition leader, Rob Borbidge.

Rob Borbidge: Now that was not what Fitzgerald proposed, and we saw, in my view, an undermining of the parliamentary process by the CJC particularly under its former chairman who I believe was extremely politically active. Part of the problem is that under previous chairmen, the CJC wanted everyone else to be accountable to them, but they did not want to be accountable to anyone.

Paul Barclay: How did that manifest itself, the CJC playing a role as the de facto government?

Rob Borbidge: Well I guess the most alarming example of their interference in the political process was what amounted to an effective coup d'etat against my minority government over the MOU that was signed with the police union.

Paul Barclay: The 1996 Memorandum of Understanding between the police union and the then coalition opposition triggered a brawl between the CJC and the coalition, soon after it won government. Coalition claims of political interference were to follow, prompting counter claims of attempted intimidation of the CJC.

Suddenly it was conceivable that Fitzgerald's legacy could be gutted, even abolished.

The Memorandum of Understanding was a deal signed in secret during a by-election campaign, by the National Party leader Rob Borbidge, his police spokesman, and representatives of the police union. Among other things the memorandum appeared to give the police union a right to veto the appointment of a Police Commissioner, and to commit the coalition to watering down the powers of the CJC. In addition it named six assistant commissioners the union wanted made redundant.

In return for signing the deal, the police union threw its weight behind the Coalition's campaign to win the Mundingburra by-election, a by-election that would decide who would govern. The National Party candidate won in a tight contest. And the coalition was back in power.

Secretary of the Queensland police union, Merv Bainbridge, says the Memorandum of Understanding was not improper.

Merv Bainbridge: To this day I see nothing improper. Memorandums of Understanding have been around from time immemorial. I can remember in the early days of Bob Hawke when he was with the ACTU, he would go to the Labor opposition and put the proposition: 'If you are in government, what can you do for our members?' and basically this is all that the police union did; we went to the alternative government said, 'If you were in government, what are you prepared to do for us?'

Paul Barclay: It did appear though that there were some Assistant Commissioners that you apparently wanted to get rid of, and included that in the Memorandum of Understanding, for those officers to be made redundant.

Merv Bainbridge: It was suggested that their contracts not be renewed. No-one was to be sacked etc. but when they came up it was suggested perhaps that their contracts not be renewed over (I've got to be very careful what I say here), but going into their previous administration.

Paul Barclay: After the February by-election, the police union boasted it was responsible for helping return the conservatives to government. Soon after, the union's newsletter revealed the existence of the Memorandum of Understanding.

The media went berserk. There were suggestions the Electoral Act may have been breached. The government was forced to refer the matter to the CJC which appointed retired New South Wales judge, Kenneth Curruthers, to determine if there was any wrongdoing by Premier Rob Borbidge, his Police Minister, or union officials.

Terry O'Gorman, from the Council for Civil Liberties.

Terry O'Gorman: The historical record shows that the then Police Minister, Russell Cooper, referred the Memorandum of Understanding issue to the CJC in the early weeks of the then conservative government having won office, principally by virtue of the role of the Memorandum of Understanding in a relevant by-election. However, while it was quite proper for the CJC to look into the Memorandum of Understanding, it's after that period of looking into it where the waters start to get muddy, the relevant conservative politicians, the ex-Premier Mr Borbidge, the ex-Police Minister, Mr Cooper, have a point to an extent of saying, 'Why should we have had to go through months and months of anguish, months and months of interference with our parliamentary duty, running up huge amounts of money in legal bills, when there was an opinion locked away in a safe that in fact they had done nothing wrong?'

Paul Barclay: By now, Mr Borbidge viewed the CJC as a sort of Star Chamber, out of control and gunning for his government.

Rob Borbidge: We had a situation where legal advice from Cedric Hampson, who at that time was President of the Bar Association, that said that neither Russell Cooper nor I had a case to answer and we were told that there would be a brief inquiry into the police union's involvement that should go for about 12 days. It went for the best part of eight or nine months; it was a loaded dice and in my view it was nothing short of a deliberate attempt to bring about a properly elected and constituted democratic government, to bring that government down. I mean they went on for months and months and months, and if not for the Connolly Ryan Inquiry, no-one would ever have known that they had legal advice that the government of the day did not have a case to answer.

Paul Barclay: The Carruthers Inquiry into the deal between the police union and the coalition distracted the government for months. The coalition was so infuriated by the Inquiry that it launched a counter Inquiry into the CJC itself, the Connolly Ryan Inquiry.

Lawyer Terry O'Gorman again.

Terry O'Gorman: That complaint by Mr Borbidge and Mr Cooper as I see it, was at least a reasonably valid complaint, but the way that the government then chose to deal with investigating that complaint was a problem of the government's own making because they appointed an Inquiry which was clearly a 'get square, let's kick the CJC in the face' Inquiry. Inevitably that Inquiry was declared to be biased, by the Queensland Supreme Court, and shut down.

Paul Barclay: In broad terms, was the Connolly Ryan Inquiry an attempt to muzzle the CJC?

Terry O'Gorman: I saw it as that, and most informed observers did. When you saw the way in which the Inquiry was set up, when you saw the way in which the Inquiry confronted and successfully, stared down Carruthers when he wasn't finished, it clearly was an attempt to not only muzzle but possibly completely abolish the CJC. But when you look at the way the Connolly Ryan Inquiry was conducted, and when you look at the stinging criticisms that were made by Mr Justice Thomas, the judge that shut it down in the Supreme Court, and when you look at the fact that the Connolly Ryan Inquiry chose not to appeal to the Court of Appeal against its closure, then that I think, says it all.

Paul Barclay: From the outset of the Connolly Ryan Inquiry, the coalition undermined its own case that the CJC and the Carruthers Inquiry were out to get it. And it did this by appointing an ex-Liberal Party member, and former judge, Peter Connolly to inquire into the CJC. His professional abilities weren't in question, but the appointment raised concerns about the impartiality of the Inquiry.

Rob Borbidge: Well Peter Connolly had been a very distinguished and senior member of the Bench, and in all his years on the Bench I think 30 years or thereabouts, there had never been any suggestion or any allegation of bias on the part of Mr Connolly, and the same for Kevin Ryan when he served as a Supreme Court judge. Both of those men were highly regarded and at no time during their judicial careers, during their time on the Bench, had anyone suggested that they were politically motivated in respect of any of their judgements handed down probably over hundreds of cases in decades of service to the Supreme Court of Queensland.

Paul Barclay: But at the very least, wouldn't it have been easier to appoint someone who didn't have a Liberal background? You would have still been able to conduct the Inquiry, look into the problems that you saw with the CJC without the perception of a conflict of interests.

Rob Borbidge: Well we held the view that by having two commissioners, that we were ensuring impartiality and independence in regard to that particular review. I mean it wasn't as if Mr Connolly was the only person appointed, Mr Ryan, Kevin Ryan was appointed.

Paul Barclay: Ex-Premier, now Opposition leader, Rob Borbidge.

Professor Ross Homel, a recently retired CJC commissioner, presented me with an altogether different view of the Connolly Ryan period, a view he also shared with the Supreme Court.

Ross Homel: As a part-time commissioner I was called in on a couple of occasions to have a chat with the two people running the commission Inquiry, Kevin Ryan and Peter Connolly. On one of those occasions, Peter, I think we were just chatting in a room, or in a corridor, and he remarked that now that the conservative side of politics was in power, they were in a position to do a proper evaluation of the Fitzgerald experiment. In fact what he said was, it was more along the lines of, 'Now that our side of politics is back in power, we can do a proper evaluation of the Fitzgerald experiment.' And that was the phrase of course, that was I gather fairly important in the ultimately successful challenge to that Inquiry by the CJC in the Supreme Court. But I think that has to be seen in the context of an overall experience over many months of an Inquiry that seemed to be getting more and more out of control. From the inside of the CJC it was like being in a trench in World War One, with missiles coming over and exploding at regular intervals.

Paul Barclay: By October, in this suffocating climate of mutual mistrust, Kenneth Carruthers decided he was unable to complete his Inquiry into the Memorandum of Understanding. He quit, stating the Connolly Ryan Inquiry into the CJC interfered intolerably with his investigation. And later, as we've heard, the CJC successfully challenged the validity of the Connolly Ryan Inquiry, the Supreme Court agreeing it was indeed biased.

Despite these events it would be a mistake to conclude that hostility towards the CJC comes only from the conservative side of politics.

True, current Labor Premier Peter Beattie remains a strong ally. Not so former Labor Premier Wayne Goss, who's antipathy toward the CJC is still apparent. Wayne Goss quit the party leadership shortly after the Mundingburra by-election defeat consigned Labor to Opposition, and eventually left politics.

LIFT ARRIVES

Paul Barclay: I meet Mr Goss on the 26th floor of the Harry Seidler designed Riverside building, from where you get a great view of the physical changes, good and bad, wrought on Brisbane.

If Wayne Goss' election triumph in 1989 made him the big political winner from the Fitzgerald Inquiry, it didn't prevent him from clashing with the CJC. And today, he thinks it's time the CJC was thoroughly reviewed.

Wayne Goss: The Criminal Justice Commission needs an independent review, carried out by somebody that all sides of politics are happy with and that looks at its role. I think whatever happens, the CJC should be maintained in some form to detect and deter corruption, whether that be in the public sector or in particular bodies like the police, but whether it needs some of its other functions, that should be open to debate and one shouldn't be accused of undermining the reform process for simply asking the question.

Paul Barclay: While Mr Goss deserves credit for implementing crucial reforms, he too fell foul of the head of the Criminal Justice Commission, in this case inaugural Chairman, Sir Max Bingham, a former Liberal Deputy Premier of Tasmania, appointed in the dying days of coalition rule. To make matters worse, a CJC investigation into parliamentary travel expenses led to the embarrassing resignation of a number of Labor Ministers.

Speculation was that relations between the CJC and the Labor Government were so poisonous the Commission would have been abolished if Caucus had been asked to vote on the matter.

Wayne Goss: No, the CJC wouldn't have been abolished, because I was committed to the work that it had to do. It was far from perfect, particularly in the first three years, some of its research was very shoddy. I mean the SP bookmaking report, the poker machine report that was quashed subsequently by the High Court for fundamental mistakes of law; there was also a bit of a personality problem between the Chairman and myself. I never realised that he harboured some resentment over the fact that he wasn't confirmed in his position on election night, which would have been quite inappropriate. And that was unfortunate, but I was committed to the work of the Criminal Justice Commission even though some of the senior players I think were involved in other agendas.

Paul Barclay: Former Queensland Premier, Wayne Goss.

It should surprise nobody that the Criminal Justice Commission does not endear itself to governments. Scrutiny of government is a key reason for the CJC's existence, but it's not the only reason. The CJC is also supposed to combat official corruption. Most experts agree there is no concrete evidence of significant corruption or misconduct within the police service, or the bureaucracy.

Nonetheless this doesn't mean everyone's convinced the State's public sector is today corruption free.

Phil Dickie.

Phil Dickie: Corruption by its very nature is a crime committed between consenting adults in private. Very often there's no reason for either of them to complain; there's often no-one else who knows about it. However the whole Fitzgerald Inquiry was, particularly the media investigations at the beginning, was not so much an exercise in uncovering actual instances of corruption, because we didn't have the resources or the legal power to do that. What it was, was an exercise in uncovering the unmistakable symptoms of corruption, it was a research exercise if you like. And we found and were able to demonstrate with very few resources really, that there was no reasonable explanation for what was happening in Queensland but that the place was corrupt.

Now that sort of methodology, applied with all the resources of an institution like the CJC, would if it was properly employed, find the largest amount of corruption is involved with local governments and land decisions, State governments and contract decisions and that police and criminals come a long way behind that.

Paul Barclay: No-one can dismiss the possibility of hidden corruption. The CJC does catch misbehaving public servants and police, but it's largely dependent on whistleblowers and complainants. The CJC website proudly affirms its complaints section is the 'hub' of the organisation.

Michael Barnes is the head of this section. What does he say to the criticism that the CJC is too reactive to complaints?

Michael Barnes: That would be a flawed approach if that's all we did, but there's two limbs to our approach to detection and eradication of corruption. Firstly, officers who are involved in corruption do tend to attract complaints, they're not out there pursuing their professional responsibilities with a full vigour and application of more appropriately focused officers. So we tend to get complaints about their conduct for other things that causes us to have concerns about them.

But secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the complaints process is only one small part of detection of corruption. We have active, ongoing covert operations, target development committees that look at a whole range of indicators to determine whether or not corruption may be occurring in any particular area, not just the police service, but the public sector generally.

Paul Barclay: Terry O'Gorman agrees with Phil Dickie. The CJC can't afford to sit back and wait to be handed information on alleged corruption. He thinks it should go out and find corruption, as it's occurring, by testing the integrity of police officers, a tactic the CJC employs, but that this civil libertarian would like to see enhanced.

Terry O'Gorman: There can be no real objection to the CJC using the same undercover covert listening device and other tactics that police use day in, day out against citizens. I think it is a legitimate criticism, and unless the CJC starts to become proactive in integrity testing in a serious way, there is an unacceptable risk that corruption will return, particularly in view of the fact that there are a reasonable number of police now at Senior Sergeant rank and at Inspector rank who were pretty suspect during the period that Fitzgerald was looking into, but who escaped his examination because there was simply a limit to what he could do.

Paul Barclay: Integrity testing appals the police union. They've even co-opted the language of civil libertarians, branding it 'entrapment'. I put it to the union's Merv Bainbridge that there was a fear of police corruption reappearing without covert testing.

Merv Bainbridge: That fear only comes I think from probably certain solicitors and members of the legal profession, the civil libertarians etc. You know, I just point out to people if they'd like to check and find the number of police officers that are currently in prison for matters of corruption and the number of solicitors that are in, they'll find that there are many, many times more solicitors either being investigated in our prisons for matters of corruption, than police officers. And for calls to come from the legal fraternity for this is I think, totally hypocritical. To set out to entrap police officers I think is totally distasteful and should be avoided at all costs.

Paul Barclay: But if the police have done nothing wrong, then they have nothing to fear.

Merv Bainbridge: Well I'll give you an example of what I call entrapment, and it happened in New South Wales, where they have a totally different system to us, and what happened in New South Wales is a gentleman came to the front counter of a police station, with a carton of beer and he intended to leave it there for a couple of officers that he claimed had assisted his wife at a road accident, and were very helpful. The officer on duty at the counter said, 'No, I don't want it thank you, take it away', and this fellow was very insistent. And at the end of the day did take it away. But they looked around the corner, and here were a couple of police officers and quite obviously they were being set up to take this carton of beer. Now I don't see that as any kind of test, I just find the whole episode of that particular example as it was recounted to me from friends in New South Wales, as disgraceful and disgusting.

Paul Barclay: Merv Bainbridge doesn't defend the behaviour of the rotten police under corrupt Commissioner Terry Lewis, but he reckons there was only a handful of bad guys. There's also no doubt he's a touch nostalgic, and yearns for a time when no-one is breathing down the neck of the officer on the beat.

Merv Bainbridge: What has happened is the CJC has made some police officers, what I call gun shy. In other words, it's just do your eight hours, do no more, don't look left or right, otherwise you'll be complained about. And I can give you a quick example of that if you like. Where two officers are on patrol in the Mount Gravatt area a number of years ago, in the early hours of the morning, and they see two youths walking down the street with a Gladstone bag. So they stop and speak to them, ask can they check inside the bag, which they do, and nothing untoward is found, and bid them Good Morning and off they go. One of the youths' father's complains, doesn't complain about the police being rude, he says that the police weren't rude; he just wishes to know by what authority those police officers searched his son's Gladstone bag. So as a result, those two young police officers were disciplined. So as one of them said to me, 'In future, if I'm driving down Logan Road, Mount Gravatt at three o'clock in the morning and I see someone carrying, if a youth carrying a video on his shoulder, as far as I'm concerned I look straight ahead, I see nothing, I know nothing, I just keep driving.'

But the CJC's Michael Barnes says such fears are baseless.

Michael Barnes: I'm very surprised to hear that a union would say its members are not doing their job properly. I know that the vast majority of police would be greatly affronted by the police union suggesting they were scared of doing their job, and think the people of Queensland simply wouldn't believe it. We know that police officers continue to make arrests in quite discretionary areas where they could quite easily avoid preferring charges if they were dissuaded from doing their job. We know that arrests for simple possession of drugs and the like, where police officers could simply look the other way if they were frightened about becoming involved in some incident which could lead to a CJC investigation would diminish. In fact our research shows that those discretionary types of arrests continue to increase at a rate that exceeds the general arrest rate, so I think the evidence shows that police officers aren't discouraged from their job.

Rob Borbidge: I don't think there's much doubt that particularly young police officers are very cautious in terms of perhaps street offences, dealing with certain groups within the community where there is a problem, because they're scared that they may well be reported to the CJC. And I mean common knowledge, there are legal groups that hand out little bits of paper to their clients, that if the police stop you, this is what you can do, this is what you can't do, and you contact the CJC and all the rest of it. So I don't think there's much doubt that in certain cases it has inhibited the ability of the police to do their job. It's great having one of the best police services in the world, but if the constable on street duty isn't game to take on the thugs because he's scared of being reported, then I think the community then has a legitimate question to ask in respect of the process.

Paul Barclay: Ex-Premier, now Opposition leader, Rob Borbidge.

There's no denying the audacious misbehaviour and illegality that riddled the force ten years ago is no longer evident.

But that's not to say the Police Service has radically changed its approach to policing. For clearly, it has not. Preventative community policing, for instance, is not by any stretch of the imagination the 'primary policing strategy' Tony Fitzgerald argued it should be. This is in spite of evidence from CJC research that putting more police on the beat actually does reduce crime.

Just as the Police Service has been dragged, sometimes reluctantly, into the 1990s, so too have the institutions of democracy in Queensland.

Man: What do you understand by the doctrine of the separation of powers under the Westminster system?

Bjelke-Petersen: Of the?

Man: Of the Westminster system.

Bjelke-Petersen: Well the doctrine you refer to in relation to the, where the government stands, and where the rest of the community stands, and where the rest of the instruments of government stand. Is that what - ?

Man: No.

Bjelke-Petersen: Well you tell me, and I'll tell you whether you're right or not. Don't you know?

Paul Barclay: An ABC dramatisation of Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen giving evidence before the Fitzgerald Inquiry.

PROTEST

Paul Barclay: Throughout the '70s and '80s what passed for democracy in Queensland was a national laughing stock.

Protesters daring to dissent by marching in the street were routinely jailed; historic buildings were demolished in the dead of night; and the gerrymander meant a vote for the Nationals in the bush had greater value than a vote for Labor in the city. So impotent did this render the Opposition, and so inconceivable was it they'd ever win office, a virtual one-party State prevailed.

Ethics Professor Noel Preston spent much of this era at odds with Joh Bjelke Petersen and his government, which back then, he says, made decisions by executive fiat.

Noel Preston: Fitzgerald very properly identified that their abuse of executive power was the central issue that brought the problems that emerged in his Inquiry and that at the heart of this was the way the parliamentary process was not working; that executive government controlled in this unicameral one house parliamentary system we had in Queensland. You've got the numbers in the Lower House, there's no Upper House and you do what you like. So the system of parliamentary committees needed to be beefed up. It was very minimal in 1989, and that has happened, with the passage of the 1995 Parliamentary Committees Act, was sort of the zenith of that flowing out of EARC-style reforms.

Paul Barclay: EARC was the Electoral and Administrative Review Committee. It was a less glamorous Fitzgerald progeny than the Criminal Justice Commission, but no less important. In its short three years it helped breathe life back into Queensland's decrepit public institutions. It killed off the gerrymander and proposed the State's first Freedom of Information laws. And instigated a process to give aggrieved citizens the opportunity to object to Public Service rulings. EARC was also instrumental in bolstering the Parliamentary Committee system.

David Solomon was EARC's final Chairman before it was disbanded in 1994. He thinks it can at least take credit for the fact that governments today are more accountable. Nonetheless, Cabinet still rules the roost, despite Parliamentary Committees.

David Solomon: They've certainly made governments more accountable, and that's probably about as much as you can get. They have not weakened the executive government, strangely enough that hasn't even occurred despite the fact that we've had a minority government situation for a little while. But governments are certainly more accountable than they were pre-Fitzgerald, as well as the Parliamentary Committee system, we've also had a judicial review system, which has made decisions by governments reviewable in the courts. And we've also had Freedom of Information legislation introduced. That has worked pretty well, though it suited both Labor and conservative governments to water down the provisions of the FOI legislation and to allow them to, in effect, hide anything they wanted to hide simply by classifying it as a Cabinet document.

Paul Barclay: One would not need to be a cynic to suggest that if you only need to reclassify a document as a Cabinet document, when all that probably means is that you take it in a manilla folder into a Cabinet room, but it doesn't actually get discussed, that that would almost completely destroy the intent of FOI.

David Solomon: Yes, in fact you didn't even have to take it into the Cabinet room. I mean the final version of it just had a Minister or a senior official, declaring that it was of interest to the Cabinet, even if Cabinet didn't see it.

Paul Barclay: So that's an ad hoc process. They just arbitrarily nominate a document to be a Cabinet document and hence the media or other interested parties cannot access it.

David Solomon: Well essentially that's what could happen, yes. And that was in a change made to the FOI law.

Minister: 'This file contains the complete set of available papers except for a small number of secret documents, a few others which are part of selective files, some correspondence lost in the floods of 1967.' Was 1967 a particularly bad winter?

Sir Humphrey: No, it was a marvellous winter; we lost no end of embarrassing files.

Minister: '??? which went astray in the move to London, and others when the War Office was incorporated in the Ministry of Defence; and the normal withdrawal of papers whose publication could give grounds for an action for libel or breach of confidence or cause embarrassment to friendly governments.' Well that's pretty comprehensive. How many papers does that normally leave for them to look at? About 100 or so? Fifty? Ten?

Paul Barclay: Wayne Goss was derided by the media for running a closed government. As Premier, he amended the FOI law to expand the Cabinet loophole.

When David Fagan was Queensland Bureau Chief for The Australian newspaper, he regularly sought information under FOI. But after the Goss Government changed the law, he became increasingly frustrated by the ease with which his requests were thwarted.

David Fagan: In 1994 I applied under FOI for some documents that were prepared by the Public Service for Ministers. Now those documents were to brief Ministers appearing before Budget Estimates Committees. Clearly they weren't a Cabinet document, they weren't designed to go to Cabinet, never were going to. But they did probably set out the problems that Government was experiencing at that time, the sorts of issues that Ministers might be asked about when they appeared before a Parliamentary Committee.

So I applied for those under FOI and looked like I might get them. And a few weeks later the Cabinet office got all the Ministers to hand in their briefing papers and they put them in a box, stuffed them in the hold of the Government jet and took them up to a Cabinet meeting in Mount Isa where they were taken to the meeting. I don't know what happened to them there, presumably they just sat in the corner, but on that basis, they were exempted from release. So we were never able to see what was in those documents.

Terry O'Gorman: That was a cynical move brought in by the Goss Government, which the then conservative Opposition criticised. When the conservatives came into government, surprise! surprise! they did nothing about it. Now Labor is back in, what have they done? A typical thing of 'Refer it to a Parliamentary Committee'. It just shows that the current Labor government right throughout all its ministerial ranks, right throughout all of its back bench, are spineless. All they simply have to do is to bring in a one-line amendment to repeal that Cabinet blanket knackering of FOI. There's no need to refer it to a Parliamentary Committee.

Paul Barclay: Terry O'Gorman of the Council for Civil Liberties.

Peter Beattie: I believe in Parliamentary Committees. And one of the things you'll recall that the Fitzgerald Report talked about was the need for a greater role for Parliamentary Committees.

Paul Barclay: Premier Peter Beattie.

Peter Beattie: As Chairman of the first Parliamentary Criminal Justice Committee, I'm committed to that. FOI has been a political football, and therefore we need to ensure that it's handled properly by both sides of politics. You see the strength of what Fitzgerald did in establishing bipartisan or multi party Parliamentary Committees in this Parliament, was to ensure that politicians had to work together to come up with an outcome. Now there will always be, and it has always been envisaged, that there will be some exemption for Cabinet documents, and so there should be.

Paul Barclay: But the current situation is ludicrous, it simply requires almost an arbitrary reclassification of a document that doesn't even need to make it into the Cabinet room, to stop journalists and members of the public getting access to it.

Peter Beattie: Well I've made it clear that our position is, and this will always be our position, if the documents pertain to Cabinet decision-making process, then that's the appropriate place for them to be exempt. If they're not part of that process, then in fact they aren't exempt. Now that's the practice that we follow. I've issued an instruction to that effect, that's the practice we are following.

Paul Barclay: It seems to me though that what you're saying is that the only documents that you're not allowing access to now are legitimate Cabinet documents. Does that mean then that you're loath to actually amend the legislation, because you're currently acting in the spirit of what you regard FOI is?

Peter Beattie: No, I'm simply acting in the spirit of what I think FOI is and how it was to apply to Cabinet. But the Parliamentary Committee should have a look at the FOI laws, and as I stress, this is what I promised prior to the election, and that's why they're looking at it.

Paul Barclay: But will you change them?

Peter Beattie: Well I want to see, I mean you already get an indication from our practices as to what I believe, or the Government believes. But clearly, what I want to see is what the Committee says.

Paul Barclay: At least the FOI laws were introduced. A number of reforms proposed by the Electoral and Administrative Review Committee have never seen the light of day. Reforms such as a State Bill of Rights, a new constitution, an Administrative Appeals Tribunal and an Office of Public Sector Ethics.

There is much unfinished business in Queensland. Too much to warrant the mood of self-satisfaction I commonly encountered. Perhaps this is a hint of the complacency Tony Fitzgerald warned of all those years ago.

No government, for instance, has yet had the courage to meaningfully reform laws relating to prostitution and drugs.

But the Queensland of today is a long way from the Moonlight State. Even the National Party has been forgiven by the voters, returning briefly to the Government benches before losing the last election. But their leader Rob Borbidge rejects the popularly held view that Tony Fitzgerald helped create contemporary Queensland.

Rob Borbidge: Joh Bjelke Petersen was the builder of modern Queensland, and no-one will ever take that away from him, especially Mr Fitzgerald. And you know, like all governments, good things happen and things happen that aren't so good. But I think that the recent political experience shows that the person in the street, whilst acknowledging the lessons of Fitzgerald, doesn't hold anything from that era against the modern National Party.

Paul Barclay: For two decades, Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen personified Queensland. It's instructive to hear him talk about what has become of the State today.

Joh Bjelke Petersen: We were told at the time the report was given that Queensland would be 'squeally clean', whatever the expression they used that day on TV, you'll find it in the records if you look it up, but Queensland was going to be 'squeally clean'; there would be no more corruption forever and a day. And instead of that of course, those of us who have a bit of background, a bit of experience, knew jolly well that violence and robbery and murder, it's unbelievable. We were right ahead of our time, the police force were in stopping drugs. Nowadays after the Fitzgerald era, goodness me, you're not game to go out along the streets anywhere today, any part of Queensland, simply because they neglected the opportunity and the position that had been created by the police force in their control of drugs and all these other vices that have escalated.

Paul Barclay: I meet Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen in the boardroom of Brisbane's Mineralogy House, where he still maintains an office. The man I met is frail, he's now 88, and no longer the imposing political warrior who once inspired such loathing and admiration. But Sir Joh remains convinced Fitzgerald did Queensland more harm than good.

Joh Bjelke Petersen: The CJC again is a fairly political operation, the whole exercise. And I said many times after my experience in the court, I said I would have dismantled it long ago and got it back to the system that we operated under.

Paul Barclay: Is the CJC an effective watchdog against corruption and misconduct?

Joh Bjelke Petersen: It's always after the event. We stopped it before it happened, and the police force in my day stopped it before it happened. Street marches, law and order was obeyed, unions were controlled, I was called a dictator but Queensland prospered, and people voted for me increasing numbers, in spite of the fact that some of those street marchers we put a thousand people or more in the lock-up. All I will say this, and I want this recorded and I want it broadcast: the four years that I was being investigated for nothing cost me an awful lot of money and a lot of property, but there's nothing, absolutely nothing, there is nothing and I repeat that will ever restore my confidence in the justice system. After I saw that exercise and what happened to me, as I saw and experienced, sat in that dock and sat and was questioned and investigated, nothing, there's absolutely nothing, and in that you ask many a policeman that was tossed out on the rubbish heap, same as I was, after a long period of being investigated and all the rest of it.

Paul Barclay: Tony Fitzgerald no longer lives in Queensland. He moved to New South Wales shortly after being overlooked by the Queensland Coalition as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Now a Justice on the New South Wales Court of Appeal, he is perfectly happy to let history be the judge of his achievements, or failures. He has no desire to publicly set the record straight, on any matter.

The Queensland Police Service also declined to participate in this program. Their media spokesman, Brian Swift, would say only that the Fitzgerald era was in the past.

But preventing Queensland from revisiting its past will depend on constant vigilance.

Terry O'Gorman.

Terry O'Gorman: In all similar jurisdictions to Queensland, other places in Australia, UK, US, Canada, history shows ten years or so after a major Police Royal Commission where the police are cleaned up, unless there is an active body in there, preventing a re-elapse into corruption, it happens.

THEME

Paul Barclay: You've been listening to Background Briefing. Co-ordinating Producer is Linda McGinness; Research by Jim Mellor; Technical Production by Colin Preston and Mark Don; Executive Producer is Stephen Alward.

I'm Paul Barclay
Further information

    Queensland Criminal Justice Commission
    http://www.cjc.qld.gov.au

    Queensland Police Union
    http://www.qpu.asn.au

    University of Queensland Library
    Reading list: The Government of Queensland
    http://www.library.uq.edu.au/ssah/gt206.html

A FORMER top Victorian officer recruited to help clean up police corruption in Queensland after the Fitzgerald inquiry yesterday slammed as entirely inappropriate the secret election deal the Bracks Government struck with the police union.
And Bob Falconer, another former deputy commissioner in Victoria who went on to run the West Australian police force, joined Noel Newnham in condemning the pact that has seen the previously hostile police union strongly urge its members to back Labor at tomorrow's election.

Mr Newnham, a former Victorian deputy commissioner now retired from a senior role at the Australian Graduate School of Police Management, said it was "unbelievable" that Victorian police chief Christine Nixon was not involved in the talks.

"Policing ought to be above politics," he said.

"It should always be overt and open. Policing is about enforcing the law, the preservation of police and the safety of the public.

"The public have a right to know about the decisions that affect policing. There has to be accountability so that corruption is not even seen to be an issue."

Mr Bracks yesterday denied any wrongdoing but admitted he "argued and urged" the police union to support Labor's policies at a secret meeting revealed by The Australian yesterday.

The Premier also confirmed he gave Police Association secretary Paul Mullett a series of written commitments but yesterday refused to release the details.