Police corruption rife in Qld, says former officer
Mark 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
This is a transcript from PM. The program is
broadcast around Australia at 5:10pm on Radio National and 6:10pm on
ABC Local Radio.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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 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
This is a transcript from PM. The program is
broadcast around Australia at 5:10pm on Radio National and 6:10pm on
ABC Local Radio.
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
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.
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 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
This is a transcript from PM. The program is
broadcast around Australia at 5:10pm on Radio National and 6:10pm on
ABC Local Radio.
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
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.
-------- 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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
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
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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.
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.
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.
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.