23 May 2007

Mr Greg Chamberlin,
Courier Mail

Official misconduct the Fitzgerald Inquiry missed?

I noted your account of the difficulties that The Courier Mail experienced in its creditable efforts to expose police corruption in Queensland in the 1980s.

My interpretation of your article: Courier Mail and ABC were regularly exposed to Stopper Writs in 1980s - and there was fear of legal action in relation to Phil Dickie's exposure of who controlled brothel industry in Brisbane. Many writs were issued to inhibit inquiries. Phil Dickie was often at risk in the course of investigations, and others reporters were harassed. Fitzgerald was uneasy about media investigations once inquiry had started. After the inquiry the task of monitoring the reform process and helping to rebuild confidence in shattered institutions followed. (Chamberlin G., 'No stopping judgment', Courier Mail, 19-20/5/07).

Unfortunately the later efforts to rebuild confidence in previously shattered institutions that you referred to may have contributed to the cover-up of ongoing problems, as:

• it seemed likely that there was wider institutionalized corruption in Queensland that the Fitzgerald inquiry did not get to grips with (eg perhaps in the judiciary, and involving illegal drugs production); and
• abuses of political power of a different kind emerged in the institutions Fitzgerald recommended reforming. This received little public attention, and ultimately created the dysfunctional and crisis prone system of government from which Queensland now suffers. An account of what went wrong is attempted in Queensland's Worst Government - which refers in turn to an outline of growing indicators of official misconduct that could be as bad as in the 1980s.

Furthermore I also noted an anonymous article adjacent to yours in The Courier Mail on 20/7/07 which implied, on the basis of various legal points, that the destruction of the Heiner documents was only a trivial matter.

My interpretation of that other article: Former Fitzgerald whistleblower, Col Dillon, has revealed that his forthcoming book will focus on the Heiner affair. He suggests that claims by government and law enforcement agencies that the affair had been fully investigated is a self-serving myth. Dillon claimed recently that he would expose further police corruption - and claims that Heiner matter exposes prima facie evidence of corruption. The Heiner inquiry was improperly constituted as it provided no legal protection for those who took part, and on legal advice cabinet destroyed the evidence collected - an act which some have held to be illegal ('Dillon campaign over protracted Heiner inquiry', Courier Mail, 19-20/5/07).

I should like, through you, to draw the attention of the author of that article to the fact that:

• a former Chief Justice of the High Court (Sir Harry Gibbs) apparently believed that (because of various precedents): "if the ... Queensland Cabinet on the 5th March, 1990 knew that legal proceedings were likely, and that the material which it ordered to be shredded might be required in evidence in those proceedings, there is at least a prima facie case that those members of the Cabinet who ordered the shredding were in breach of the law" (Upholding the Australian Constitution Vol 17, Proceedings of 17th Conference of Samuel Griffiths Society, 2005, p v);
• a private citizen seems to have been subsequently prosecuted for the same offence that was deemed to not require legal action when officials were responsible (op cit, p50); and
• while this action might be regarded as technically illegal but little more than an unfortunate blunder by an inexperienced government, the fact is that the Heiner documents apparently related to sexual abuse at a state child correctional facility, and (after related documents were destroyed) there was no subsequent investigation of the events or the facility that had been under investigation by Heiner. This failure, by both sides of politics, to find alternative ways to address that abuse and institution could be anything but a trivial matter if there is any substance to rumours of the existence of a paedophilic network in Queensland institutions dealing with children (ie a network similar to that which has been alleged to exist in Victoria), as such a network could provide huge potential to exert control over state government and judicial actions through blackmail of those involved.

An aside added later: An inquiry has found that sexual abuse of children in state institutions has been widespread in South Australia [1]

Regards

John Craig