Before I Sleep (24 page)

I received a bitter note from some postgraduate (and therefore presumably more mature) students, charging me with betrayal of our joint understanding that police were not to be used to repress dissent but only to maintain civil order. Then it became known that the police union had passed a motion of no confidence in me because of my policy of using as little violence as possible — called “gentleness”—in dealing with demonstrators. It also became public knowledge that the premier had signalled which side he was supporting by granting the police extra leave without any application for this from me. The postgraduates then sent a note of apology for their earlier letter. As it was, the Tower Mill Hotel was blacklisted by the trade unions. It went rapidly downhill and the owners had considerable difficulty selling it.

It was another student demonstration that played a major role in my final showdown with the premier. Joh had decreed that there were to be no street demonstrations without permits from the police. He had instructed me to issue no permits. The students had decided to march from the university to the city. I talked to the leaders and told them I couldn't issue a permit and advised them that if they were going to march, it would be best to do it on the footpath. Of course, they didn't keep to the footpath. Their route took them under a bridge, which provided a useful vantage point for the television cameras. It was just before this bridge that the inspector in charge of the Motor Traffic Branch used his men to stop the demonstrators. A slight, seventeen-year-old girl with a placard on a stick directly confronted the inspector. The inspector grabbed the stick. The girl held on. The inspector hit her over the head with his baton. The cameras on the bridge captured all the action and I, like most Queenslanders, saw it on the TV news that night.

Zelman Cowan and the president of the Student Union came to see me. I told them I would inquire into the matter. On their way out of Police Headquarters, the student leader said to the waiting press: “The Commissioner is going to investigate this.” It was a tactical error, although obviously unintentional. All I had told him was that I was going to “inquire”. This meant getting a report on the incident, which I could do as a routine internal procedure. But when the fact that I was going to investigate the incident was published in the midday press, Joh immediately issued a decree that I was not to conduct an investigation. If I was to investigate anything, he said, I was to investigate what the students were doing on the road without a permit. I still thought it was my right to inquire into the conduct of one of my own officers and that the premier's pronouncement breached the doctrine of the separation of powers. But to conduct an inquiry I would have needed the cooperation of the members of the Motor Traffic Branch. Now that the premier had issued his decree, I doubted that I would be able to obtain this cooperation. If I couldn't obtain it, the way would then be open for charges that my men had revolted, mutinied. I couldn't afford to run the risk of this happening. I backed down and there was no inquiry. This did my reputation with the students no good.

The raid on the Cedar Bay commune was a different matter. Here I could go against the dictates of the premier because I could use officers whom I trusted. The Cedar Bay raid had been carried out by local police on a hippie commune in the far north of the state. About a hundred people had been involved in the raid, which included the use of a naval patrol boat. It appeared to have been an extreme over-reaction — the hippies were alleged to have been growing marijuana. In the raid, property had been destroyed and vegetable patches trampled, but no charges were laid. People from the commune complained to me and again I said I would arrange for an inquiry. When the premier heard of this he decreed that I was not to send any officers north of Cairns to investigate. Cedar Bay is north of Cairns. I called in Norm Gulbransen and a junior officer whom I knew I could trust. I told them that I was issuing a direct order to them in contravention of the premier's directive to me: they were to go to Cedar Bay and investigate. They indicated that this was good enough for them and proceeded to Cedar Bay. Their report was critical of the local police's actions.

When later I announced I would be leaving the Queensland Police Force, the president of the Students' Union at the University of Queensland sent me a card endorsed with the words: “We are very sorry that you are leaving. You gave us hope.” It was the nicest thing that happened to me.

Nigel Powell has made a strong plea not to take police problems out of their social context. Police come from, marry into, survive and retire in a social milieu. In this regard, Jill Bolen quoted a number of social commentators who described the culture of Queensland society during my time in office as “populist, conservative, anti-intellectual, and authoritarian”. I found Queenslanders to be cheerful, self-reliant, family- and community-orientated and industrious, but overall my experiences in that state did nothing to disprove the commentators' descriptions.

These characteristics explained the public support for the policies of the hillbilly dictator, Sir Joh, and his continuing endorsement of the long reign of Commissioner Lewis. Lewis was more a true son of this culture than I ever could be. At best I was an adopted son from a different, and therefore inferior, culture — a “Mexican” from south of the border. I did not condone a black — albeit prosperous — economy supported by the delivery of large sums of money in brown paper bags.

In my foreword to Jill Bolen's book,
Reform in Policing: Lessons from the Whitrod Era,
I suggest that the material in it may justify the upgrading of the folk saying, “A community gets the type of police force it deserves” into an accepted social principle. And this is true in a general sense. But it was my predecessor, Frank Bischof, who bequeathed the particular network of corruption and resistance to change that ultimately drove me to resign. As I have said, I came to the conclusion that Bischof, in his own way, was an astute operator. His selection of Tony Murphy, Glen Hallahan and Terry Lewis as his personal team showed considerable managerial acumen. What the exact relationship had been between these three and the commissioner I never knew. But I discovered that Detective Hallahan had enjoyed the freedom of travelling interstate whenever he chose. I had come across some references to him when I was Commonwealth commissioner, which had placed him in a western country town when some counterfeit notes were being unloaded. And later, on Shirley Brifman's information, I learnt that Hallahan was mixed up with eastern states colleagues in the distribution of counterfeit notes.

Soon after I had arrived in Brisbane, I was called upon by a young barrister. He told me he had been given the task of defending a man who had been charged with breaking and entering a warehouse and stealing a large stock of goods. The barrister said that Hallahan had given evidence that he had found the man in possession of the stolen goods and consequently the man, who had a criminal record, was convicted and sentenced to four years' gaol. The barrister told me that the criminal had complained that he actually had nothing to do with this particular break and enter; it was a set-up by Glen Hallahan. The criminal said that Hallahan had loaded him with a portion of the goods, having disposed of the rest for his own profit. I said I'd make inquiries. I sent for Inspector Bill Simpson, who was then head of the CIB. I thought Bill Simpson was a friend of mine because I knew him from the course that McKinna and I had run some years earlier in Canberra and we'd got on well together. I told him I'd received a complaint about Glen Hallahan, that he'd loaded up a criminal with goods he didn't steal.

I said: “Bill, what sort of chap is Hallahan? Can you give me any assessment about him?”

Simpson said: “Yes, Commissioner, he's a first-class detective. It's common practice for criminals to make these allegations. Don't believe a word this bloke says. I'll vouch for Hallahan's honesty.”

Now I knew that Hallahan was a doubtful character, so it seemed to me that Simpson was saying: “Is this what you want me to say for the official record?” But he didn't wink or give any indication that this was so. Or he was saying: “If you don't know, Commissioner, you're a dope and I'm not going to tell you.”

I said: “Thanks, Bill. That's helped me a lot,” and he left.

All this meant, of course, that I was going to have difficulty getting through to the detective branch my vision of what I thought police work was all about.

But while Bischof had been very astute in his selection of these three young men, I think that in any circumstances they would have risen to the top just through hard work and their abilities as detectives, if they'd chosen to do it that way. Of the three, I formed the opinion that Murphy clearly was the controller. There was mention by one of the Fitzgerald witnesses that Murphy was known as “The Boss”. In comparison, Glen Hallahan was a very bright, good-looking, active young man and a very capable operator. Murphy and Hallahan were, in my view, superior to Lewis. Terry Lewis had something about him that worried me. I never knew what it was, but I thought that he was not as robust as the other two. As the years have gone by and Lewis has maintained his innocence during his seven years of imprisonment, he has surprised me. According to newspaper reports, he has shown no remorse for the crimes for which he was convicted. I think that this supports Bischof s judgment of him.

Murphy was an all-round figure of authority. He was a member of the Police Union executive and he would tackle me most aggressively any time I was invited to address the executive. He treated me with some degree of superciliousness — he clearly thought he knew a great deal more about the Queensland Police Force and the associated justice system than I did. He was able to work the system very much to his own advantage. As an example, after he retired as assistant commissioner — a position he reached despite the premier knowing his background — he was able to secure a TAB contract for himself on Stradbroke Island following a recommendation by Sir Edward Lyons, then chairman of the TAB.

I discussed with my little team at headquarters what we might do to minimise the Lewis, Murphy, Hallahan influence. We set up the Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU), as we called the small group designed to investigate police corruption, with a few very brave souls, especially Basil Hicks who really did get rough treatment later on. Just before he took up his appointment with the CIU, Basil tells about being taken to the roof of Police Headquarters by Tony Murphy, who said: “There's no need for us to be always fighting. Why don't you join us? There's nine of us — Terry, Glen and I are the main three and there's the other six. If you join us, you will be one of the main ones — there will be me, you, Terry and Glen.”

Hicks said: “What about Whitrod?”

Murphy said: “We'll surround him.”

According to Basil Hicks, he made a vague arrangement with Murphy to meet again and left to report the conversation to Norm Gulbransen. Tony Murphy has always denied that there was any improper discussion between himself and Basil Hicks.

Two days before I left the Queensland Police Force, Basil came to me and said that he had acquired a lot of information from outside informants about the rat pack. He said that he'd given the informants his word that their identities would never be revealed to the rat pack. With me leaving, Basil was worried that he would no longer be able to shield his sources. He asked me what I thought he should do with his files.

I said: “Burn them. I'll give you written instructions to burn them.”

He took the files home and burnt them. He had a hard time in the Queensland Police Force after I left.

We were alarmed when suddenly Shirley Brifman died so mysteriously a few days before she was due to give evidence against Murphy on four counts of perjury relating to the National Hotel Royal Commission case some years previously. Shirley Brifman was a prosecution witness. It had taken some time to find Brifman and convince her to come to Brisbane to give evidence. She had been promised police protection. Then she died very suddenly from what was found to be an overdose of drugs. She left no suicide note and questions have been asked as to whether her death was actually a suicide. The Fitzgerald Inquiry found there was no evidence to suggest Murphy was involved in any way in Brifman's death, her death being a fatal occurrence which had since been associated with a number of other informers who had been drug users. Because of Brifinan's untimely death it meant that Murphy's guilt or innocence on the peijury charges was never resolved, although he is of course entitled to the presumption of innocence.

I had arranged for Murphy and Lewis to be posted to far western police stations at Longreach and Charleville in the hope that this might minimise their influence. I think that at least one newspaper has claimed that by being posted out in the far west they were able to gain closer contact with Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen and the National Party and to convince Joh that I was an ardent ALP supporter.

Whoever thought up the move to get Lewis appointed assistant commissioner was a very shrewd man. With Joh's pronouncement that Lewis would be appointed to the position, my opponents put themselves in a win—win situation. If Lewis was appointed my assistant and I remained commissioner then there would be a direct channel that would allow Bjelke-Petersen to get things done in the way that he wanted, by simply bypassing me. I now had no avenue through which to complain. My minister, Max Hodges, had been downgraded and I had no supporter left in Parliament. On the other hand, if I decided to retire because of the appointment of Lewis — which is what I did — it meant that Lewis could be appointed commissioner at a very young age with many years in the position before him. As I say, it was a very shrewd move, made, I think, with some knowledge of the way I was likely to react. I could have stayed on and been a thorn in their side, but if I felt my name was being used to give legitimacy to activities that I did not agree with, then obviously I would eventually resign. I wondered how Joh obtained that correct assessment of my likely moves. It seems to me that the impetus or information must have come from somebody who'd known me for a long time. There is only one person I can think of who fits that description, an old drinking mate of Lewis and Murphy.