Jacks and Jokers (54 page)

Lewis entered his sixth year as Commissioner unaware that soon to be retired Bob Campbell was about to tread down that well-worn, ultimately pointless, and often very deadly path of the whistleblower.

Nationwide

In the New Year, young ABC journalist Alan Hall got a call from one of his good contacts, Kevin Hooper, the opposition spokesman on police and prisons. Hooper had been elected to parliament in 1972; it was the same election that the great corruption fighter Col Bennett, having lost his ALP preselection for the seat of South Brisbane, ran as an independent and lost.

Hooper, by generational fate or design, quickly took up Bennett’s mantle. Under parliamentary privilege he poked and prodded at the government and in particular successive police ministers. His prized targets, though, were Terry Lewis and Tony Murphy.

Private secretary to Tom Burns, Malcolm McMillan, remembers the atmosphere in Parliament House when it was suspected Hooper was about to lob a grenade within the chamber.

‘He glowed, he was luminous,’ says McMillan. ‘He’d come into the press room clutching an envelope and say: “Boys and girls, have I got a story for you today!” ’

Hooper was given the nickname ‘Buckets’. He had an interesting tale for Hall, who worked for the ABC television current affairs program
Nationwide
.

Hooper had been in touch with a disaffected Queensland police officer who – incredibly – was happy to go on camera and deride what he saw as institutionalised corruption in the force. The officer had had a ‘gutful’, his career had suffered because of his honesty, and he wanted to unburden. The prospective whistleblower was Bob Campbell, one of the co-authors of that unsettling in-house news sheet,
The Woolloongabba Worrier
, that had so enraged his superiors, including the Commissioner. Campbell was due to formally resign from the force on the last day of February.

In turn, Hall learned of Kingsley Winston Fancourt – the disaffected Licensing Branch officer who had come close to exposing Herbert and the Rat Pack in the 1970s. It was an irresistible story for the gung-ho Hall, then 23.

Hall tracked down Fancourt in the small western Queensland town of Anakie. He telephoned and left a message at the local hotel.

A few days later, Fancourt entered the public bar. ‘I didn’t go to the pub all that often but on this occasion I did,’ says Fancourt. ‘The barmaid gave me a message, which had been sitting there for a few days. It was from Alan Hall.

‘I rang him and told him I’d be willing to come down to Brisbane. He sent up a charter flight for me.’

Fancourt flew out of Emerald for Brisbane and was put up in a hotel. In the presence of his lawyer, Dale Smith, he recorded several interviews with Hall for
Nationwide
. He never came in contact with or discussed any matters with Bob Campbell, who was interviewed separately. ‘There couldn’t be seen to be any collusion,’ recalls Fancourt.

Hall was thrilled that the two former police officers were willing to go on the record for the story. ‘They’d raised questions internally [within the department] and were told to either shut up or get out,’ Hall remembers. ‘At first I went and talked to them individually. Fancourt complained about senior police taking pay-offs from criminals. And Campbell had been involved in the Ted Lyons drink-driving incident.

‘I eventually compiled the report that alleged widespread corruption that kept pointing towards Tony Murphy and Terry Lewis.’

The program was due to go to air on Wednesday 3 March. As the story was being put together, Lyons was banned from driving for four months and fined $175 over his drink driving charge.

Then on 2 March, Kev Hooper, knowing what was to be broadcast on national television the following night, rekindled the Lyons scandal and tabled two controversial documents – the bench sheet and breathalyser certificate – in parliament.

Hooper said the so-called Lyons and Lewis conspiracy over the matter deserved an inquiry and criminal charges should be laid. When Hinze asked him what he had against Lewis, Hooper replied: ‘I’ve nothing against him personally. I just think he is a corrupt crook.’

It was the perfect build-up to
Nationwide
’s explosive story.

In the segment, Fancourt and Campbell claimed – with either breathtaking courage or naivety – that senior police were involved in the drug trade, illegal gambling and prostitution rackets, and were masterminding much of the state’s criminal activity.

On the program, Hooper weighed in on the attack. ‘The corruption is in the highest echelon of the force and it is difficult for the honest police officer to carry out his duties.’

Campbell added that he had been threatened by police following an internal complaint he’d made several months earlier. Fancourt went on to allege that pay-offs to police were ‘coordinated’ by what was known as ‘the Rat Pack’, which was made up of three senior detectives.

Don Lane MP got straight on the phone to Lewis at home early the next morning. Lewis was at his desk at 7.40 a.m. ‘Phoned Hon Hinze re “Nationwide” attack on Police. Discussed matter with Snr Officers. With messrs Duffy, Atkinson, Murphy, Dwyer, Early and Hatcher to Parlt House and saw Hon Hinze and prepared Ministerial Statement. Hon Hinze phoned re D/C Duffy and a Crown Law officer to see Campbell and Fancourt and request signed statements.’

Hinze was initially apoplectic. He called the
Nationwide
segment and the former officers’ allegations ‘a cock and bull story’, and Campbell and Fancourt ‘two disgruntled malcontents with a grudge against the police force’.

He called Campbell a ‘bludger’ and a ‘professional student’. He ordered police to locate the two men and ‘wait upon them’ if they had to. He challenged the two men to come forward with signed statements about what they knew of this so-called corruption.

What the public didn’t know was that Hinze was already in possession of Campbell’s statement, and he was about to receive Fancourt’s, quite literally, in the middle of his parliamentary condemnation of the two former officers.

Fancourt was in Parliament House in George Street that day too, and submitted his signed statement to Hinze’s staff. In the middle of the Minister’s tirade, the document was handed to him. Hinze briefly paused, tucked it into a folder he was holding, and continued his attack.

‘He had the statement right there, handed to him,’ Kingsley Fancourt remembers. ‘Hinze didn’t even mention it.’

Hinze went to town on Campbell and Fancourt. ‘I am reliably informed that Robert J. Campbell is the author of an underground newspaper known as the
Woolloongabba Worrier
,’ he bellowed. ‘This grubby little rag, which has seen three issues, was published anonymously and clearly expounds philosophies that were repeated in last night’s scurrilous attack on
Nationwide
.’

Hinze then turned his attention to Fancourt: ‘What I would like to know is why it took Mr Fancourt approximately six years to summon the courage to come forward with his allegations. ‘As all honourable members would know, Mr Fancourt left the police force before the present Commissioner, Mr Lewis, was appointed. Whilst in the police force he was the mining warden in Anakie and used this position to obtain some of the best mining leases available.’

‘What a filthy smear,’ Kev Hooper interjected.

‘What did you do about it?’ asked Tom Burns. ‘He did nothing, only tip the bucket over him six years later.’

‘As I said,’ Hinze continued, ‘he used his position as mining warden in Anakie to obtain some of the best mining leases available.’

‘So have some of your ministers,’ the ALP member for Nudgee, Ken Vaughan, retorted.

In a press conference later, an enraged Hinze faced a barrage of tough questions from Alan Hall. The two men stoushed. Hinze guaranteed he would have Hall ‘out of a job’.

Lewis then called in Tony Murphy and they discussed Campbell.

Early the next week, Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen also phoned Lewis to discuss ‘action on Campbell and Fancourt’s allegations’.

Predictably, Campbell, married and the father of young children, faced a now familiar counter-attack. His wife and children were threatened by men who arrived in an unmarked CIB vehicle. Campbell fled with his family to Tasmania. Fancourt returned to the gemfields of central Queensland.

Just over a week after the
Nationwide
segment went to air, Lewis had a meeting with lawyer Des Sturgess about a potential defamation writ. Murphy joined Lewis in the court action. Both, in their writs, identified themselves and Glen Patrick Hallahan as members of the so-called ‘rat-pack’ referred to in the program.

In his statement of claim, Murphy declared: ‘Among police officers in Queensland the words ‘the Rat Pack’ had since the 1960s been used to refer to and include the plaintiff, Terence Murray Lewis and one Glen Patrick Hallahan who served with them in the police force.’

Detective Sergeant Neal Freier also sued, claiming he was an unnamed police officer in the show, and that he had been defamed. Bjelke-Petersen decided the government would financially assist Lewis’s and Murphy’s legal action.

Hall stood his ground: ‘I talked to ABC management and I didn’t resile from any of the allegations made by Fancourt and Campbell. As a journalist there was an acceptance that some of the cops were bent. Murphy in particular was the object of many allegations. It always went back to Murphy.’

Nationwide
didn’t stop. Another story – featuring actors dramatising two more unnamed whistleblowers including a Gold Coast prostitute – aired on 18 March. In that episode there were further allegations that small, entrenched groups within the Queensland Police Force were involved in prostitution, gambling and SP bookmaking. The groups were controlled by ‘a high ranking officer’.

The actor relayed one of the male police officers’ allegations: ‘The people we’re talking about are very cunning operators. They’re very astute people and very, very intelligent people.’ He added they were ‘versed in the intricacies of law in Queensland and the criminal mind’. It was a punishing follow-up to the Campbell and Fancourt story.

Hinze immediately told parliament he would ask Cabinet to establish a tribunal to hear complaints against the police from inside and outside the force. While there was no evidence to support allegations of corruption, the media was ‘continually bringing up the matter’ and it was now time to clear the air.

The loquacious Police Minister described the latest
Nationwide
story as ‘a new soap opera’, and that it ‘would have done proud’ the likes of
General Hospital
and
Days of Our Lives
.

Hinze, ever volatile on the floor of the House, declared: ‘The allegations were vague, meaningless, non-specific, but successfully cast another cloud over the Queensland Police Force.’

In the aftermath, Bjelke-Petersen banned Alan Hall from any future government-related press conferences. It didn’t worry Hall. ‘I think I was too young, too excited about doing the job. I had a healthy dose of paranoia to feed on, especially over a few beers in the pub at the end of the day.’

Lewis was furious at the press coverage of the
Nationwide
aftermath. On Tuesday 6 April, he, along with ‘all Snr Officers and Supts’ arrived at the offices of the
Courier-Mail
, the
Sunday Mail
and the Brisbane
Daily Telegraph
, a rectangular red-brick building beside the railway tracks in Campbell Street, Bowen Hills.

According to his diary, Lewis had ‘very frank’ discussions with: ‘Messrs H. [Harry] Gordon, D. [David] Smith, D. [Doug] Flaherty, K. [Kevin] Kavanagh and snr officials of Qld newspapers re very unbalanced reporting on Police in recent months’.

That night at home, he had a phone call from Jack Herbert over a police inquiry in New South Wales. There is little doubt they discussed this latest media assault on the Queensland force, and ways to make it go away.

A Typical Day for Anne Marie Tilley

Anne Marie Tilley, the young prostitute from Sydney made good, was sitting on a vice empire that was almost gowing too rapidly to contain.

On any given day she would get up, make herself a coffee, and check the rosters for her parlour receptionists. Tilley would then ring each and every parlour to check with the girls and make sure everything was on track. They had developed a special code, so if one of the girls told Tilley ‘the kittens have been born’, it meant there was trouble and somebody would be dispatched immediately to the parlour.

Tilley made at least 20 to 30 calls, checking up on business from the previous night. If one of the girls was sick, she’d man the reception herself. By nightfall Tilley would do her round of checks again. She would inspect the day books to see how business was going and make sure that all the girls had been paid.

‘Work just kept going, you didn’t stop,’ says Tilley. ‘Hec might stay up late, to 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. I might stay up … to make sure everything was okay … it was 24 hours. I was an alcoholic, but nobody ever knew I was drunk, you could never tell. I just drank Scotch one after the other – rum and coke – just one after the other. The old fella was Bourbon and coke. I had my other little bits of pills and stuff, hash oil. Nobody knew I used drugs. If I was overtired, I’d have a bit of hash, relax me down, have a little nap. Anything else, speed, to keep me awake. I never ever had a holiday in 25 years.’