tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/joh-bjelke-petersen-9529/articlesJoh Bjelke-Petersen – The Conversation2019-06-30T19:32:29Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1191672019-06-30T19:32:29Z2019-06-30T19:32:29ZThirty years on, the Fitzgerald Inquiry still looms large over Queensland politics<p>This week marks 30 years since the landmark Fitzgerald Inquiry report was handed down in Queensland.</p>
<p>It’s no overstatement to suggest the inquiry’s findings transformed Queensland’s political landscape more than any event in the past six decades. Such was the inquiry’s impact that the state’s politics are now typically characterised in “pre-” and “post-Fitzgerald” terms. </p>
<h2>‘Players in a vast drama’</h2>
<p>The Fitzgerald Inquiry – officially the <a href="http://www.ccc.qld.gov.au/about-the-ccc/Our-History">Commission of Inquiry</a> into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct – was a watershed moment in exposing entrenched police and government corruption.</p>
<p>It’s regarded as having established <a href="http://transparency.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/QNISA_Report.pdf">important procedural precedents</a> for investigating official malfeasance. These included granting indemnities to witnesses for providing crucial evidence, and holding public hearings with open media access.</p>
<p>The inquiry was instigated by Queensland’s police minister and deputy premier, Bill Gunn, in May 1987. Gunn was prompted to act following media reports of barely restrained criminal activity in Brisbane “vice dens”, under the protection of police officers.</p>
<p>Most notable among this media coverage were reports by Courier-Mail journalist Phil Dickie, and the now renowned <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/the-moonlight-state---1987/2832198">Moonlight State</a> Four Corners episode, filed by ABC investigative reporter Chris Masters.</p>
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<p>Earlier Queensland investigations into illicit activities, such as the Sturgess Inquiry in 1985, had resulted in little change to police practices and were largely <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10349952.1990.11876735">overlooked by government</a>.</p>
<p>Gunn wanted an inquiry to root out the problem of corruption in police ranks, but expected the task to last only a matter of weeks. Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen <a href="http://netk.net.au/Whitton/Hillbilly35.asp">warned his deputy</a> that “you’ve got a tiger by the tail, and it’s going to bite you”.</p>
<p>Undeterred, Gunn eventually appointed little-known barrister and judge Gerald “Tony” Fitzgerald QC to head a Commission of Inquiry, established by <a href="https://medium.com/the-machinery-of-government/1987-queensland-cabinet-minutes-1dce95763fae">Order in Council</a> while Bjelke-Petersen was absent on a US trade mission.</p>
<p>Referred to colloquially as the “Fitzgerald Inquiry”, its twice-broadened terms of reference and later expanded powers of investigation helped lay bare a secretive political establishment and a sordid network of police graft (known as “The Joke”), depicted recently in unprecedented detail in Matthew Condon’s gripping <a href="https://www.uqp.uq.edu.au/Book.aspx/1227/Three%20Crooked%20Kings">trilogy</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/issues-that-swung-elections-the-dramatic-and-inglorious-fall-of-joh-bjelke-petersen-115141">Issues that swung elections: the dramatic and inglorious fall of Joh Bjelke-Petersen</a>
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<p>The inquiry’s hearings lasted almost two years, with startling evidence from 339 witnesses broadcast regularly to an incredulous public. Several senior police figures – including disgraced Police Commissioner Terry Lewis – and four former state government ministers were found to have engaged in corrupt conduct and were later jailed.</p>
<p>“Minister for Everything” Russ Hinze was also identified as corrupt, but died before facing court. At the very top, Bjelke-Petersen was charged with perjuring himself before the inquiry, but his 1991 trial was <a href="https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/players-in-a-vast-drama/story-e6freubo-1111113531404?sv=7d60de3363144b968d3a60ad3dfff7ca">abandoned with a hung jury</a>.</p>
<h2>Fitzgerald’s broad and immediate impact</h2>
<p>The Fitzgerald report has been described since as a “<a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Whats_On/Conferences/sl_conference/papers/copley#ftnref4">blueprint for accountability</a>” in Queensland. Previously, commitment to this principle had been sadly lacking.</p>
<p>The report, and Fitzgerald’s interim media briefings, were damning of not only a defective police leadership, but also a self-serving political culture of patronage and unaccountability. <a href="http://www.ccc.qld.gov.au/about-the-ccc/research-and-publications/publications/police/the-fitzgerald-inquiry-report-1987201389.pdf">It</a> made dozens of recommendations intended, in Fitzgerald’s words, “to bring about improved [administrative] structures and systems”. The bulk of these went to criminal justice oversight and electoral law reform.</p>
<p>In the slightly frenzied aftermath of Bjelke-Petersen’s drawn-out resignation in December 1987, new Premier Mike Ahern might have been expected to sideline such reform proposals and concentrate primarily on readying Brisbane to host World Expo ‘88.</p>
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<span class="caption">As Queensland premier, Mike Ahern was determined to tie his government to Fitzgerald’s recommendations.</span>
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<p>Yet Ahern preemptively – and quite deliberately, as he later told Masters in a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/beyond-bethany/8953232">Four Corners interview</a> – tied his government to Fitzgerald’s recommendations “<a href="https://griffithreview.com/articles/moonlight-reflections/">lock, stock and barrel</a>”.</p>
<p>Ahern’s sincerity towards the accountability agenda was evident in late 1988 when he established the long called-for <a href="https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/queensland/vaults-of-history-unlocked-as-fitzgerald-era-committee-documents-released-20190404-p51apk.html">Public Accounts Committee</a> to scrutinise government expenditure.</p>
<p>Despite such commitments, the repercussions for the National Party from the inquiry’s findings, delivered in Fitzgerald’s report on July 3, 1989, were politically grave and probably unavoidable.</p>
<p>Shortly afterwards, and barely two months out from an election, the rattled Nationals jettisoned Ahern for Russell Cooper as leader. But they could not stem the popular tide turning against a government seen as <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-28/25th-anniversay-qld-labor-winning-qld-election/5924592">lacking legitimate authority</a>.</p>
<p>After Wayne Goss was elected premier in December 1989, his government was quick to begin the electoral reform and public administration overhaul that marked its first term in office.</p>
<p>Goss’ win signalled “the end of the Bjelke-Petersen era”, as he put it on election night. He might have added, the “beginning of the Fitzgerald era”.</p>
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<span class="caption">Labor leader Wayne Goss claims victory in the 1989 Queensland state election.</span>
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<p>An Electoral and Administrative Review Commission (EARC) and Criminal Justice Commission (CJC), major recommendations of the inquiry report, had been <a href="https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p69721/html/ch16.xhtml?referer=&page=20">legislated or instigated</a> under Ahern and then Cooper. In both cases, their implementation, staffing and resourcing were rounded out and given momentum by Goss.</p>
<p>Notably, Goss had a “fractious” relationship with the CJC’s inaugural commissioner, Sir Max Bingham, and <a href="https://queenslandspeaks.com.au/wayne-goss">revealed in interview</a> prior to his premature death his personal misgivings about the Commission’s operations while he was premier.</p>
<p>Several other “Fitzgerald reforms” and initiatives were promptly implemented by Goss’ administration, including freedom of information (FOI) provisions, MPs’ pecuniary interest registers, and the right to peaceful public assembly. It also dismantled the state’s system of electoral malapportionment (the long-derided “<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-14/firth-gerrymandering-has-no-place-in-australia/5891592">gerrymander</a>”).</p>
<p>The Electoral Act 1992 confirmed an electoral redistribution based largely on the principle of “<a href="https://legalanswers.sl.nsw.gov.au/hot-topics-voting-and-elections/drawing-electoral-boundaries">one vote, one value</a>”, applying for the first time at the September 1992 state election – at which Goss was duly returned.</p>
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<p>Yet even under Goss’ leadership, the full extent of reforms mapped out in Fitzgerald’s report were not <a href="https://eprints.qut.edu.au/25520/1/25520_lauchs_2007005685.pdf">wholly realised</a>.</p>
<h2>Lasting legacy, or unfinished business?</h2>
<p>Changes to Queensland’s accountability systems since the Fitzgerald Inquiry have been significant, if not committed to consistently by <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/queensland-ten-years-after-fitzgerald/3565808">ensuing administrations</a>.</p>
<p>Critics point to periodic regressions or <a href="https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/fitzgerald-reports-reforms-ignored/news-story/980acbd0131f7b3228da3f638fd91240?sv=14f7e42d759913f89dbf8996460b8d42">executive reluctance</a> to maintain the reform process. Inconsistently applied whistleblower protections and impediments to FOI access, among other transparency failings under governments on both sides of politics, have at times <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Janet_Ransley/publication/45109291_The_Fitzgerald_Symposium_an_Introduction/links/00b7d52dc53ff24ac8000000/The-Fitzgerald-Symposium-an-Introduction.pdf">dulled the shine</a> on the post-Fitzgerald integrity framework.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-07-29/fitzgerald-in-new-qld-corruption-warning/1370686">Fitzgerald himself</a> has seen fit on occasion to highlight Queensland politicians’ departures from a commitment to reform and accountability.</p>
<p>Campbell Newman found this to his cost when sustained criticism of his “undermining” of the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-29/tony-fitzgerald-criticises-queensland-government/5557762">judiciary’s independence</a>, or harking back to Joh-era electoral <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-28/fitzgerald-queensland-must-put-a-stop-to-the-political-rot/6052310">pork-barrelling</a>, eroded his hold on executive authority.</p>
<p>Equally, the current Palaszczuk government’s changes to Queensland’s voting laws, opportunistically reverting to full preferential voting, were decried as being <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-21/electoral-law-ructions-in-the-queensland-parliament/9388770">against the intent</a> of Fitzgerald reforms.</p>
<p>An often-cited illustration of improved accountability is the example of Gordon Nuttall, the former Beattie government minister sacked then convicted in 2009 and 2010 on charges of <a href="http://www.ccc.qld.gov.au/corruption/past-investigations/gordon-nuttall/2009-gordon-nuttall-jailed-for-official-corruption">corruption and perjury</a>. He was sentenced to a total of 12 years in prison.</p>
<p>As Queensland political scientist Rae Wear eloquently <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:278669/UQ278669_OA.pdf">put it</a>:</p>
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<p>…denial [of corruption] of the kind practised by Bjelke-Petersen and Russ Hinze was no longer a viable option. Nor was the acceptance of cash in brown paper bags.</p>
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<p>The CJC and its successor, the Crime and Misconduct Commission (now the Crime and Corruption Commission) – as well as New South Wales’ ICAC, established in 1988 – are held up as models for <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/a-watchdog-for-every-house/news-story/db171f9eb29a3b920a5566172de300ca">corruption watchdog agencies</a>, potentially including a future federal ICAC.</p>
<p>The inquiry’s report has become something of an article of faith within Queensland’s civic life. Noted Queensland historian Raymond Evans <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Whats_On/Conferences/sl_conference/papers/copley#ftnref4">described it</a> as the product of “the most remarkable Commission of Inquiry in Australia’s history”.</p>
<p>Indeed, elected members (including the current Labor Premier) have been known to brandish the report in parliament, manifesto-like, to cast aspersions of impropriety at their <a href="https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/tony-fitzgerald-to-meet-with-deputy-premier-jeff-seeney-in-private/news-story/09562ef891d2a1527b33bcb0649f85b8">opposite numbers</a>. This reflects the extent to which the Fitzgerald Inquiry became a millstone around the necks of conservative Queensland politicians at its inception over 30 years ago.</p>
<p>The taint of official corruption exposed by the inquiry, and the public’s faith in accountability reforms embodied in Fitzgerald’s report, can partly explain why the Nationals and Liberals (now LNP) have struggled to regain and hold office over the past three decades in Queensland.</p>
<p>But the accountability agenda is one that leaders on both sides of Queensland politics <a href="https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/queensland/a-year-of-necessary-change-mike-ahern-on-his-short-but-vital-premiership-20181220-p50ngj.html">have pursued before</a> and should commit to upholding still.</p>
<p><em>This article has been corrected. It originally stated three state government ministers were found to have engaged in corrupt conduct. That has been changed to four former state government ministers.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119167/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Chris Salisbury is affiliated with Queensland's TJ Ryan Foundation.</span></em></p>With its details of widespread corruption, the Fitzgerald report remains a cataclysmic event in Queensland politics, and still resonates today.Chris Salisbury, Research Assistant, School of Political Science & International Studies, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/578822016-05-08T20:06:43Z2016-05-08T20:06:43ZLessons from history in how to run a good election campaign – or how to avoid a really bad one<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121460/original/image-20160506-5690-1bsuyyc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bill Shorten and Malcolm Turnbull will be working hard to prevent the kind of errors and complacency that have tripped up leaders before them.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Federal elections are fecund sources of lessons for the political class. </p>
<p>From 1993 they learned not to make a big target of yourself as an opposition party. The Coalition’s <a href="http://australianpolitics.com/1993/01/15/liberal-party-video-fightback.html">Fightback!</a> gave Paul Keating hundreds of pages to work with. It helped produce an iconic moment when Liberal leader John Hewson was unable to explain to television interviewer Mike Willesee how the proposed Goods and Services Tax would affect the price of a birthday cake. Hewson never recovered.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Mike Willesee’s famous ‘birthday cake interview’ with John Hewson.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Far better, political operatives concluded, to slip into office quietly, promising little (except the hardy perennial of tax cuts). John Howard won office with a small-target strategy in 1996, vowing to make Australians <a href="http://australianpolitics.com/1996/02/19/john-howard-comfortable-and-relaxed-enjoying-dylan.html">“comfortable and relaxed”</a>. </p>
<p>In 2007 Kevin Rudd presented himself as Howard-lite, a fiscal conservative who <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/federal-election-2007-news/rudd-to-move-forward/2007/11/24/1195753382042.html">advised Labor supporters</a> on election night to go home and have a strong cup of tea and some Iced VoVos. </p>
<p>Tony Abbott also made a small target of the Coalition in 2013. This had disastrous consequences when voters came to realise, in the wake of the 2014 budget, that he intended changes wildly out of line with the impression created earlier.</p>
<p>Our politics have for the last generation been haunted – some might say impoverished – by the “small-target” lesson of 1993. It has arguably acted as a disincentive to hard policy work in opposition, to the bold articulation of big ideas by political parties, and to frankness in campaigns. Detail is the enemy. </p>
<p>Labor under Bill Shorten has given the impression that it would like to do things a little differently, by revealing some policy detail <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-big-policy-a-big-political-risk-for-bill-shorten-and-labor-54814">well in advance</a> of the campaign.</p>
<p>Malcolm Turnbull, too, has tried to promote policy debate since taking the leadership in September, but has grown more cautious in the face of attacks by Labor and the right wing of his own party, as well as disappointing polling.</p>
<p>The weeks ahead will show to what extent the lessons of 1993 have been learned. But there are clearly some on the Labor side who seem willing to flirt with the idea that if you make yourself too small a target, you will lack a mandate to do anything once in office. This is the hard lesson of Abbott’s prime ministership.</p>
<p>Other election campaigns have also acted as tutorials in how to do, or not to do, federal politics in Australia. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_federal_election,_1984">1984 campaign</a> seems to have particular relevance at present. It was a very long campaign – about as long as the one on which we have just embarked. An early election called by Prime Minister Bob Hawke, it was intended to take advantage of his stellar personal popularity and economic recovery. </p>
<p>Most commentators expected a crushing Labor victory. But the swing from the government was almost 2%. Its majority shrank from 25 to 16 seats in a House of Representatives that had been enlarged from 125 to 148.</p>
<p>A post-election internal Labor review identified the unusual length of the campaign as one of the reasons for this disappointing result. The enduring lesson learned from 1984 was: don’t do long election campaigns. </p>
<p>Whether this is bad news for Turnbull is not entirely clear. It is true that the polls suggest he is in a notably weaker position than Hawke was in 1984; that surely points to vulnerability. </p>
<p>But Labor’s 1984 postmortem speculated that Hawke’s extraordinary ascendancy might actually have worked against the government: that expectations of a landslide led some to clip Hawke’s wings, to discourage a Labor government from getting too far ahead of itself.</p>
<p>There were, in any case, other reasons why Labor did poorly in 1984. Hawke was off his game – one of his daughters had a drug addiction and he was suffering a painful eye injury due to a cricketing accident. And Labor’s campaign, even by its own account, lacked vision, purpose and direction, with opposition leader Andrew Peacock able to set the agenda. </p>
<p>No doubt Shorten would like this comparison, with its hint of opportunity for a smart and dogged alternative leader.</p>
<p>Some commentators have seen parallels between this year and the 2004 election, when Labor’s Mark Latham won a series of tactical victories before the election only to lose the election itself. But the comparison seems forced. Latham began to falter well before the campaign (notably over Labor’s policy in Iraq) while actually performing creditably during most of the campaign itself. </p>
<p>The wheels fell off in an obvious way only at the end, especially over forestry policy in Tasmania and in another of those iconic election moments: an <a href="http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/mark-lathams-famous-overly-physical-hand-shake-with-john-howard-revisited/news-story/ae926777c1a669d8a6d145c15f2e8da0">aggressive handshake</a> with Howard on the campaign trail. </p>
<p>While it is easy enough to predict what kinds of scare campaigns will be launched against Shorten – over union power, carbon taxes and negative gearing – it cannot be taken for granted that these will have an effect comparable to Howard’s <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2004-11-17/howard-latham-clash-over-interest-rates/587030">over interest rates</a> against Latham.</p>
<p>The truth is that while the lessons taken out of particular campaigns can have enduring effects, each presents a unique pattern of opportunities and dangers for the participants. Right now, in the aftermath of a budget, Turnbull will be hoping for a scenario like in 1987, when Labor ran a successful campaign in the last double-dissolution election on the back of Keating’s well-received May economic statement.</p>
<p>However, Turnbull will not get the kind of assistance that Hawke’s 1987 effort received from Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s crazed effort to become prime minister – unless, of course, there’s an unstable Labor premier lurking out there with cunningly disguised federal ambitions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57882/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frank Bongiorno does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The recent history of elections in Australia is a varied one, with some spectacular crashes and own goals along the way.Frank Bongiorno, Associate Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/247002014-03-26T19:44:05Z2014-03-26T19:44:05ZJacks and Jokers: Bjelke-Petersen and Queensland’s ‘police state’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44502/original/n7k5xbks-1395619008.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3599%2C2370&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">With the Queensland Police Force covering his back, Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen (pictured right) was impervious in his time in power.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">srv007</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><strong><em>In his latest book, <a href="http://www.uqp.uq.edu.au/book.aspx/1283/Jacks%20and%20Jokers">Jacks and Jokers</a>, Matthew Condon traces the rise and influence of Queensland Police Commissioner Terry Lewis during the Joh Bjelke-Petersen years. In this extract, Condon writes how within a year of Lewis’ elevation as commissioner, Bjelke-Petersen effectively controlled a police state in Queensland.</em></strong></p>
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<p>In the last week of 1982, Queensland Police Commissioner Terry Lewis tidied a few things up before his 28 days’ annual leave.</p>
<p>He launched the exciting new “Kiss a Cop” campaign prior to New Year’s Eve festivities and attended the opening of the 13th Australian Jamboree “by His Excellency Sir Ninian Stephen, Chief Scout for Australia”.</p>
<p>It had been another big year – his sixth as Commissioner. But Lewis could be well satisfied. He had what appeared to be an inviolable friendship with the premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, and had also made powerful friends in Queensland National Party president Sir Robert Sparkes and TAB chairman Sir Edward Lyons.</p>
<p>He had seen off police ministers who didn’t sit well with his philosophies and how he ran his ship, the latest being the formidable Russ Hinze. Earlier in the year his police force had survived yet another call for a royal commission into its corrupt ways, and Lewis and the government had established a Police Complaints Tribunal that, in the not too distant future, would be put in the hands of his old mate Judge Eric Pratt.</p>
<p>And though it may have taken six years, Lewis had dismantled and in most cases seen off the final clutch of supporters of Ray Whitrod, his predecessor as police commissioner.</p>
<p>In the world away from his big office in police headquarters and his home up on Garfield Drive, his old smooth-talking friend Jack Herbert had hooked into the Hapeta and Tilley money-making vice machine and was reeling in tens of thousands of dollars in corrupt payments for The Joke. </p>
<p>Down at 142 Wickham Street, upstairs in the casino that didn’t exist, punters were enjoying the patronage of Geraldo Bellino, the drinks, the girls, and having a flutter into the early hours of the morning.</p>
<p>Commissioner Lewis had unexpectedly lost a great ally in Tony Murphy, a colleague who he had worked alongside and admired from the late 1940s. Murphy had taught Lewis a lot, and had been indispensable in ridding the force of Whitrod and opening the commissioner’s door to Lewis.</p>
<p>And while on paper – certainly according to the department’s annual reports – Lewis was doing a stellar job, his administration in the eyes of many still carried about it the stench of corruption. It was not difficult to understand why.</p>
<p>The 1970s in Queensland, and particularly Brisbane, had seen the evolution of a bona fide underworld, where crime syndicates had formed and carved out their turf. Like anywhere else in the world, criminal real estate was closely protected and transgression from rivals was often met with violence. </p>
<p>Quaint little Brisbane, with its jacarandas and poinsettias, its church raffles and hollering paper boys at the main city intersections, had not been spared the growth of the drug and vice trade, and the attendant criminals that presided over it.</p>
<p>Indeed, those involved in the city’s underworld in the 1970s and into the 1980s described the local scene, straight-faced, as being just as violent and dangerous as anywhere else in Australia.</p>
<p>The body count was testimony to such observations. In 1973, the Whiskey Au Go Go inferno was the greatest mass murder in the country’s history to that point.</p>
<p>There was the controversial “drug overdose” of Shirley Margaret Brifman, the assassination of National Hotel manager Jack Cooper, the murder of boxer Tommy Hamilton, the disappearance of prostitutes Margaret Ward and Simone Vogel, and the vanishing of Barbara McCulkin and her two young daughters. </p>
<p>The bulk of these cases, and many others, had attracted the suspicion of police involvement.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44500/original/tpm3ftt5-1395618559.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44500/original/tpm3ftt5-1395618559.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44500/original/tpm3ftt5-1395618559.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44500/original/tpm3ftt5-1395618559.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44500/original/tpm3ftt5-1395618559.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44500/original/tpm3ftt5-1395618559.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44500/original/tpm3ftt5-1395618559.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44500/original/tpm3ftt5-1395618559.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UQP</span></span>
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<p>When Commissioner Whitrod had moved on the so-called Rat Pack – Lewis, Murphy and Glen Hallahan – he was ultimately removed, fleeing the state in fear of his life.</p>
<p>Case after case in Queensland courts against alleged corrupt police, illegal casino operators or friends to crooked officers fell over like dominoes. Within the force, police officers who dared voice their opinions against a corrupt regime were forced out of the job and the state, drank themselves to death, or lost their families under the pressure of the need to do what was right. Hundreds of promising careers were destroyed, further perpetuating a cycle of corruption by leaving behind those who toed the line.</p>
<p>And Herbert, master conman and liar, organised supremely a corrupt system that flourished in the Lewis era and proved resilient to everything thrown at it. Over time, its impact was far greater than its original intention – the effort to keep it hidden from sight and the wheels moving smoothly in turn reached into the public service, the judiciary and into the halls of government itself, and began buckling them out of shape.</p>
<p>Lewis’s need to please and impress Bjelke-Petersen had worked brilliantly for both men. Within a year of Lewis taking the chair, Bjelke-Petersen controlled a police state. Ordinary civil liberties disappeared and would only be returned when and if the premier deemed it appropriate to return them. </p>
<p>With the Queensland Police Force covering his back, Bjelke-Petersen was impervious.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Matthew Condon will be appearing at an In Conversation Event with Quentin Dempster at <a href="https://gleebooks.worldsecuresystems.com/BookingRetrieve.aspx?ID=154571">Gleebooks</a> in Sydney on April 10 and at <a href="http://brisbanepowerhouse.org/events/2014/04/13/matthew-condon-and-chris-masters-jacks-and-jokers/">Brisbane Powerhouse</a> on April 13 with Chris Masters.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24700/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Condon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In his latest book, Jacks and Jokers, Matthew Condon traces the rise and influence of Queensland Police Commissioner Terry Lewis during the Joh Bjelke-Petersen years. In this extract, Condon writes how…Matthew Condon, Adjunct Professor, School of Creative Industries, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.