Jacks and Jokers (52 page)

That day, with the
Courier-Mail
screaming its Mafia headline, Lewis noted in his diary that he’d received another phone call from Hinze ‘re contact to be made with Mr K. Hooper’.

Lewis popped out for an Australian Finance Conference luncheon before returning to his office and getting in touch with the renegade Hooper. ‘Phoned Mr Hooper M.L.A. at 1.07 pm at Parlt House, said “Does not wish to talk about matter. Will contact me if decides to talk. It’s politics at the moment old mate.” ’

Allen Callaghan was also on the phone to Lewis about the Hooper bombshell.

It didn’t end there.

On Thursday 15 October, the
Courier-Mail
kept the saga going on page one: 3 DENY MAFIA CLAIM.

‘The doors of Brisbane’s “illegal casinos” were tightly closed yesterday as three men denied allegations made in state parliament on Tuesday that they were Mafia “godfathers”.’

Gerry and Tony Bellino described Hooper’s assertions as ‘malicious, unfounded rumours’. Luciano Scognamiglio also denied any association with organised crime. ‘We have nothing to do with any of those allegations,’ Gerry Bellino said. ‘Just because you are Italian, you are Mafia.’

Scognamiglio was nonplussed. ‘I have never had anything to do with the Mafia,’ he told the newspaper. ‘It is a pack of lies.’

The editorial cartoon for that day by the
Courier-Mail
’s Alan Moir would go down in history. It featured a police officer walking down a street in the Valley and passing a vice den ablaze with advertising – ILLEGAL CASINO HERE EVERY NIGHT. GALS GALS GALS.

The officer is wearing dark sunglasses and tap-tapping a white cane as he passes the entranceway.

Commissioner Lewis seemed fairly unperturbed by the mounting publicity and its farcical overtones. On that Thursday he did speak with Ron Edington, former union boss, about Hooper’s assertions, who suggested the ALP be rubbished ‘for past policies re prostitution’. This approach distilled Lewis’s attitude to damning allegations against himself and the force. It was all just politics. Forget suggestions that corrupt police were protecting illegal gaming and prostitution and probably being paid for the privilege. Forget that year after year stories emerged that here was a constabulary rotten to the core. This was just a snarky ALP trying to score points against the National Party.

Hinze did phone about the statement of reply he was going to make in parliament. And that was that.

On that Thursday night, Lewis attended the opening of a new tavern in Carindale, the honours being performed by Dr Llew Edwards. And later he dropped into the T&G Building to have a yarn with his good friend Sir Edward Lyons.

Not only did the story not go away, it intensified.

The Honourable Russ Hinze, a crafty parliamentary performer and not lacking in bluff, bluster and confidence, turned what was already a circus into what the
Courier-Mail
would describe as a comic opera. The front-page headline for Friday, 16 October 1981, said it all: CITY CASINOS ‘ALL LIES’ SAYS HINZE.

‘Anyone who said they had visited an illegal casino in Brisbane’s Valley area was “a liar”, the Police Minister, Mr Hinze, said yesterday.

‘ “My police officers don’t think there are any illegal casinos,” Hinze said during a press conference. “I don’t know of any illegal gambling casinos [sic] and I don’t know where it is. I don’t think it would be beyond Mr Hooper to dream these charges up.” ’

Several journalists at the media briefing informed Hinze that they had actually been inside illegal casinos in Fortitude Valley.

The Minister was unmoved.

Accompanying the story was another colourful piece, this time by ‘a Staff Liar’ (actually staff writer Matt Robbins). ‘Somewhere in the last two months I have lost several hours out of my life,’ the article said. ‘I thought I spent the time at an illegal casino, but Mr Hinze assures me that such places do not exist in Brisbane. Now I’m not sure where I was.’

He offered to take Hinze and his staff on a tour of the casinos. The offer was rejected. (Hooper would offer the same thing to Hinze and Lewis, the gesture labelled by Hinze as a ‘gimmick’.)

‘The illegal casino row could be amusing if it were not so serious a matter,’ Robbins concluded. ‘Mr Hooper will not name his senior police informant for fear of repercussions. My name does not appear on this article for the same reason.’

That day Lewis met with Premier Bjelke-Petersen to discuss a range of matters, including ‘casinos’ and ‘Kevin Hooper and Ron Edington’.

That night, Don Lane phoned Lewis to discuss the casino saga.

Hinze phoned Lewis again – on the Saturday morning – about comments by the media on ‘casinos’, and the Commissioner fielded another call, this one from Sir Edward Lyons.

How did this drama get so out of hand? Lewis, if his diaries are accurate, did not seem overly concerned by it all. But Hinze’s silly quips didn’t help Lewis.

The Commissioner took an unprecedented initiative.

‘I said to Hinze, look, what about getting in a car with the head of the Licensing Branch [Noel Dwyer] … I said not [with] me so that I don’t influence you … and they could show you these places,’ Lewis remembers. ‘They went and showed him what must have been Wickham Street and something in Ann Street and he didn’t walk up the steps of course. It would have been beyond him.

‘He visited these casinos. They’re just little sleazy gambling joints. I’d never been in one of them …’

Lewis recorded in his diary for Monday 19 October 1981: ‘… With D/Insp Dwyer to TAB, then with Hon Hinze to 701 Ann St, 677 Ann St, 648 Ann St, 142 Wickham St, & 121 Brunswick St, and viewed premises re alleged “casinos”.’

Hinze’s press secretary, Russell Grenning, says he remembered the famous press conference where Hinze said he didn’t know of the existence of gambling dens and massage parlours.

‘When Hinze – who was no fool – made this comment it was with a wink that would have felled an elephant but winks don’t get recorded in transcripts,’ Grenning says. ‘He knew there were brothels and illegal casinos in the Valley and elsewhere but felt utterly powerless to do anything about it due to Lewis’s relationship with Joh.

‘There was a mutual loathing between Lewis and Hinze which built up gradually over 1981. Lewis had cultivated Don Lane and Joh so he could – and did – circumvent Russ and frustrate him at every turn. In a sense, it was an affront to him [Hinze] that Joh let Lewis do this.

‘Another reason for their mutual loathing was the fact that “Top Level” Ted Lyons was a great mate of Lewis and, of course, Joh. Hinze always regarded him [Lyons] as a malevolent influence on Joh and the whole government.’

Years later, Colin Lamont, the former member for South Brisbane and champion of civil liberties, remembered the flurry of publicity around the non-existent casinos in Fortitude Valley.

‘Russ was on the front page of the
Courier-Mail
saying that there was no corruption in the Valley, there was no gambling in Fortitude Valley,’ Lamont said in an interview. ‘And a friend of mine [asked] if I’d ever been to one of these places and I said, “No”. And he said, “Do you want to go?” And I said, “Yes, I’ll take the risk.” And I did. And this was after I was in parliament.

‘We went up the back stairs of this Bubbles Bath House, and up the fire escape and knocked on the door and got in. And the first person I met was Russ Hinze. And he bought me a drink and I said, “Russ”, I said, “you … how can you afford to be here?” He said, “No journalist can get within a mile of this place tonight.” And … there he was in one of these joints that he said didn’t exist. The man had, had balls, if nothing else.’

Grenning believes the story to be false. ‘Frankly it is absurd to think that Hinze went to Bubbles Bath House – in his own perhaps curious way he had quite old-fashioned views about that sort of thing,’ he says. ‘In any case, he would have known that if he did anything that stupid it would instantly be known – and not just “alleged” by somebody who demonstrably was relying on hearsay.’

On Monday 26 October 1981, as the story ultimately petered out, Lewis made a curious note in his diary. ‘… saw Col Chant [president of the Police Union] … re S/Const Campbell, W’Gabba informing to K. Hooper MLA …’

The Rise of Fitzgerald

By 1981 Tony Fitzgerald had more work than he could handle with a busy practice that constantly took him interstate and away from his young family in Brisbane. He was facing a serious quandary – how could he put in the hours that the job demanded and still be an engaged father to small children?

At just 39, an extraordinary offer came his way.

In 1976, Nigel Bowen, barrister and former politician, had set up the Federal Court of Australia and was appointed its Chief Judge (later Chief Justice). Both the
Administrative Appeals Tribunal Act
and
the
Administrative Decisions Judicial Review Act
were put in place around the same time. It meant that for the first time administrative decisions could be effectively challenged. It was a fundamental shift in the law.

Bowen was both a popular lawman and politician who had left politics and gone to the Court of Appeal in New South Wales, when he was asked to set up the Federal Court framework. The court initially proved controversial; the states loathed it.

Bowen withstood the barrage. He was soon attracting the very best of the Sydney bar to join the Federal Court. Eventually they approached Fitzgerald and asked him to set up the court in Brisbane. He would become the youngest Federal Court judge ever appointed.

Fitzgerald found space in a Commonwealth building in Adelaide Street. It became a very popular court quite quickly for the local lawyers. It was hated by the local Supreme Court.

Fitzgerald would find that the old legal guard were split down the middle – some treated him decently, others were outwardly difficult. According to the
Lex Scripta
: ‘He was the Federal Court’s first resident Judge in Brisbane, and quickly set about establishing the reputation of the Federal Court in this State as a hard-working and efficient outpost of the Federal Court’s national network.

‘During Fitzgerald’s period as the only Brisbane-based Federal Court Judge, the Queensland District Registry constantly out-performed other State Registries in dealing with its judicial workload and producing decisions which withstood appeal.

‘At the same time, the then Chief Judge of the Federal Court, Sir Nigel Bowen, held Fitzgerald in such high regard that he frequently sat on the Full Federal Court in other State capitals, where he was allocated the most difficult and challenging appeals.’

Again, his hours were long and his dedication to the task absolute. Fitzgerald, without doubt, was a rising star in the legal profession. But at what cost?

Take It to the Top Level

Who was ‘Top Level’ Ted Lyons? The man so trusted by Premier Bjelke-Petersen? The man who kept Commissioner Terry Lewis so enthralled with his stories in his business office high up in the T&G Building in Queen Street?

Lyons had certainly made the Katies women’s clothing chain a huge success, but he was hopelessly addicted to punting. And, seemingly, to alcohol.

Insiders at Katies said many strange things went on in the office. ‘He used to bet with police officer’s money and then he would ring the manager at the main Katies store in Queen Street and he’d say to her, “Just keep a cheque out on one side for Sergeant such and such.” Which meant he’d lost; he had to pay it.’

There were concerns too within Katies management about Lyons’ behaviour. ‘Katies organisation wanted him out of the main Queen Street store because of the way he sort of used to treat staff, and have all these people, including ladies, to the top office,’ one former manager remembers. ‘And you could see the bottle of Scotch.

‘He was a horror, a real horror. He’d say would I meet him down at Lennons because the Lennons Hotel was down in the city at that stage. You used to walk into the room and look around like this and find out there was a chair with just room enough for one person.’

She said Lyons used to boast about his close relationship with the Premier. Government money, too, made its way into Lyons’ coffers from a number of sources.

Katies at some point was receiving government funds to assist in traning seamstresses. ‘It was all a lot of rubbish because all that they’d done was they had borrowed money from the government and they had to show what they were doing [with it],’ the former manager recalls. ‘And rather than take the blame and do the interviews with the different ones, he pushed me forward to do all that. And I thought, “You so and so”, I don’t want to end up in gaol for you.

‘He was really corrupt. He would have paid for his knighthood. I can remember a call coming through from Sydney so I just stepped outside from the door but you could hear what was going on. Then I heard the accountant ask what had happened to cheque number such and such to the value of $25,000. And I thought that must be what he paid for the knighthood.’

Lewis’s friendship with ‘Top Level’ Ted also grew over the years. It extended to personal business advice. ‘The only two times that he mentioned anything to me was when we sold up … my wife had bought a house up the road [in Garfield Drive, Bardon, where the Lewises already had a house at number 12], we borrowed the money … we kept it for four years and doubled the price of it,’ Lewis said in an interview with
Courier-Mail
journalists Ken Blanch and Peter Charlton. ‘I said to him [Lyons], what’s the best place to put this money in until … we were always planning to build a house, and he said Rothwell’s.