Authors: Matthew Condon
Fitzgerald himself had conditionally accepted the position during the call to Clauson from the Roma telephone booth. The details had yet to be ironed out, but Fitzgerald was pleased with the distraction. He was successful but he was bored, he wanted to do something different.
Sir Joh’s former right-hand man, Allen Callaghan, then in prison for fraud for less than a month, believes – like Lewis – that Gunn’s broader strategy was to take over as Premier. ‘Gunn believed Joh wasn’t going to go and he’d never get his chance as Premier, that was my personal view,’ Callaghan says. ‘I think he thought they’d have a little inquiry down the Valley and that was it, but it got out of hand.’
Rapid Fire
The Premier and his Cabinet had returned to Brisbane from Roma by Tuesday 19 May, and there was a flurry of activity down at police headquarters in Makerston Street. Police Commissioner Terry Lewis’s personal assistant, Greg Early, recorded in his diary that on that day he, Lewis and other senior officers had a meeting with Gunn in his office.
Early wrote that it had been decided a draft press statement would be written up in preparation for notices served on those affected in the massage parlour industry. The blitz wasn’t restricted to Brisbane. All of Queensland would be hit. ‘It was agreed that Minister [Gunn] would give COP [Commissioner of Police] a written direction as to the Government’s policy to be followed. It was resolved not to worry about escorts [escort agencies]. Discussion was then had on legal aid for the senior officers and the Union.’
The next day Early wrote that he ‘spoke to Ken Crooke [Press Secretary to Hon Premier] re a written direction from the Minister as none had been forthcoming’.
Gunn may have been avoiding the police department, but he was forging ahead with commission of inquiry business. The initial terms of reference, prepared by the Justice Department and published in the Queensland Government Gazette on the same day – 26 May 1987 – were initially limited to matters arising from allegations contained within the
Four Corners
report. The specific focus would be on Geraldo Bellino, Antonio Bellino, Vincenzo Bellino, Vittorio Conte, Hector Hapeta and their involvement with prostitution, unlawful gambling or the sale of illegal drugs.
The terms also asked if those men had ‘directly or indirectly provided or attempted to provide any benefit or favour, whether financial or otherwise, to, for or on behalf of any member of the police force …’
Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, still on his quixotic Joh for PM campaign, happened to be in Disneyland in California on the day of the announcement and issuing of the terms of reference.
Former Attorney-General and minister for justice, Paul Clauson, says preparatory work on the terms of reference was kept ‘fairly close’. ‘We worked on that through my department with the Department of Premier and Cabinet,’ Clauson recalls. ‘When amendments or extensions were required, they were granted within reason.’ While they liaised with Fitzgerald, he says Bjelke-Petersen was not involved.
The next day, Early recorded in his diary that the Department of Justice rang him ‘re getting the addresses of the three Belino [sic] brothers, Conte and Habita [sic]’.
He said he arranged for a Detective Inspector Scanlan to ‘pick up the subpoenas at 5.20 pm from the chambers of Tony Fitzgerald, QC, on the 13th level of the MLC Centre and spoke to Stewart and Scanlan re service of the subpoenas’.
Early later spoke with ‘Regional Superintendent [Kev] Dorries and Detective Inspector Churchill in Cairns with a view to serving a subpoena on Vincenzo Bellino who lived in Cairns or at his Chillagoe marble mine at 6.00 am the next morning’. The police jet, with a subpoena on board, left for Cairns that night.
Also on that day, Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke announced a Federal election for July. A few days later Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen officially abandoned his quest for the Lodge.
Amid all this high drama, former constable Dave Moore, the former children’s television personality who had nearly brought the force to its knees in late 1984 following a sex scandal, was re-tried and sentenced to two and a half years’ prison.
Moore was originally charged with conspiring with radio announcer Billy Hurrey to commit homosexual acts on boys under 17 years, between January 1982 and November 1984. He was also charged with sodomy, having permitted sodomy, and five charges of indecent dealing and attempted indecent dealing. He had pleaded not guilty to all charges.
In November 1986 Moore was found guilty of all charges and was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment. However, in March 1987 Moore appealed the verdict. The Court of Criminal Appeal found that justice had miscarried in the November trial, and Moore was released from prison. A few months later, in June, Moore was re-tried and found guilty on two sex charges against a 16-year-old boy. He was sentenced to 30 months’ gaol.
A tawdry chapter in the force’s history had quietly closed. But another, of titanic proportions, was about to open.
Grubby Little Gambling Joints
Commissioner Terence Lewis remained flabbergasted by all the fuss and bother over the
Courier-Mail
stories, and the
Four Corners
investigation. Why would you call for a Royal Commission into some grubby little gambling joints that had been operating in the shadows of Fortitude Valley since time immemorial?
‘Everybody knew, everybody including Dickie … I mean, the number of people who told me that Dickie and other journalists used to go to 142 Wickham Street … it was no secret thing if you’re like from the public, the press, the police,’ Lewis says. ‘And contrary to what they thought or suggested in some of the articles, there was more to it than the police just rolling up to the gaming places … and walking in and saying, “Hey, you’re all pinched”. They have to get in there, firstly, and then they have to prove who the keeper is. They have to prove he’s getting money from the clients, and the same with the prostitution.’
Lewis says that at the time his force had a handle on the containment of vice. To prosecute prostitutes, he said, police would had to have ‘gone in, taken their pants off and had sex with the female’.
‘Instead of harassing them, for want of a better word, I suppose, [the police would] go around every so often … oh, I don’t know how often, whether it was every fortnight or every whatever … and say, “It’s your turn”,’ says Lewis.
‘Strictly speaking, the girls could have just pleaded not guilty and it would have been up to the police … well, it was a shocking waste of police time and the court’s time and everybody’s time. As it was the government [who] were getting a licence from them … there’s big fines every, say with every fortnight, so … everybody was happy to some considerable degree.’
He says to call the gambling joints ‘casinos’ was a farce. ‘One was a little one mainly to look after Chinese, another little one was to look after Italians, and I think another one looked after the Greeks,’ recalls Lewis. ‘And it wasn’t anybody being exploited, nobody. I’ve never heard anybody ever in the Lebanese [community] saying they were robbed there or they were forced to go there or they were threatened. It was the same with the SP bookies, you know.
‘These were three areas that I really didn’t see as our prime interest. My prime interests were murders, rape, armed robberies, serious home invasion, break-and-enters, the road toll, young missing persons and a whole heap of other things. These other three really hardly ever exercised my mind. And I thought I had a good fellow running it, particularly for the four years that Ron Redmond was there.
‘I thought he had it by the throat because he’d come along to our morning conferences [or ‘prayers’ as they were known] at nine o’clock and say, “Oh, you know, things are going well. They are charging X number of girls from yesterday or last night”. And it all looked good.’
Meanwhile, Geraldo Bellino, mentioned in the terms of reference of the inquiry, issued a statement through his lawyer, Noel Barbi, that he welcomed the forthcoming inquiry so he could clear his and his family’s name. ‘I have sat back and been the subject of innuendo, inference and suggestions,’ Bellino said of the ‘intolerable atmosphere’ that he’d been subjected to since the terms were published.
‘It is the unhappy situation in this country that the media are permitted to make baseless and unfounded allegations without the benefit of facts. I emphatically deny that I have been in any way involved in any bribery or corruption of any police officer in this state or anywhere else. Much has been made of the fact that I have not been prosecuted and the inferences that this is because of my being responsible for the bribery and corruption of police officers.
‘It may occur to any thinking person that I might also not have committed any offences. I say the latter is the truth.’
As the possibilities of a Royal Commission were being canvassed, government members were being quizzed back in their own electorates about the inquiry and the extent of corruption. Mike Ahern, the member for Landsborough on the Sunshine Coast, told a local newspaper that he was pleased that there appeared to be no corruption in his neck of the woods.
But, after that quote was published, Ahern says he got an urgent phone call from a senior Sunshine Coast police officer who he knew well. The officer asked Ahern not to repeat that there was no corruption in the region. ‘He said there was a [local] sergeant here, whose … duty on a Friday afternoon was to go around the brothels and the other places that were being tolerated and collect the money.
‘At three o’clock in the afternoon he’d poke it in an envelope through the wall up at [12 Garfield Drive], the home of Commissioner Lewis. He said that was his duty, that he took a police car, he drove around the whole Sunshine Coast and did the collections, and then at three o’clock it was his duty to drop the envelope through the wall up there. So he said, don’t be misled into thinking it wasn’t going on here.’
The Police Wife
It may have been one of those publishing coincidences, or it may not have, but the July issue of
Vedette
, the journal of the Queensland Police Department, featured a cover story on Lady Hazel Lewis, wife of the Commissioner. The cover photograph for issue number 116 was a warm and moving shot of Lady Lewis crouching down beside Rachel Baguley, age three, the daughter of Constable First Class Fred Baguley, serving at remote Torren Creek, 1503 kilometres north-west of Brisbane and 293 kilometres south-west of Townsville.
Little Rachel, a trifle grumpy in the picture, was showing Lady Lewis, replete in a strand of pearls, her pet chick. The headline of the issue read: KEEPING IN TOUCH.
Inside, Lady Lewis opened up on life as the wife of the Police Commissioner, and family life in general. She told the journal that travelling with her husband throughout Queensland gave her the opportunity to meet with the wives of police officers. ‘I like to see their living conditions and find out if there is any way I can help to make their homes more comfortable, such as following up requests for repair work,’ she said. ‘I like to ensure they have a good stove and the other things that are important to a housewife.’
She said wives who accompanied their husbands on transfer into the country were the ‘unsung heroes’ of the Department. ‘I have found that most police wives take great pride in taking care of their homes, police stations and grounds. You can tell a lot about the people by the way they maintain their home.’
In the end, said Lady Lewis, the most important contribution a police wife could make was to create for their men ‘a warm and loving relationship’. She offered her experience of 35 years’ marriage to Sir Terence. ‘Police officers today, regardless of their rank or station, frequently have to deal with awkward, difficult and heart-rending situations,’ said Lady Lewis. ‘Having that warm, loving relationship to come home to helps them to be good policemen and to carry out their duties.’
She said she was aware of ‘friction’ between young couples when wives placed more importance on their careers than their husband’s. She said women married policemen knowing a transfer could be imminent. ‘They [the wives] must decide whose career is the most important, and usually it is the husband’s,’ philosophised Lady Lewis. ‘In most cases, a wife plans to work a set number of years before starting a family. The husband’s life-time career must be considered.’
Her counsel would probably be needed more than ever in the coming months as Tony Fitzgerald made ready to start his public hearings in earnest on Monday 27 July.
In a state that had, for decades, been plagued with rumours about both political and police corruption to the point where it had become a running gag, passed from one generation to the next, there was a curious optimism about Fitzgerald’s inquiry. For weeks, between the announcement of the inquiry and the advent of formal hearings, the press had at last given its full attention to crime and corruption in Queensland. The inquiry gave it focus. And the reports acted as titillating shorts to the main feature.
On the Saturday before the first witness was called, reporter Phil Dickie revealed that there had been an attempt to bug the offices of the commission of inquiry. ‘There is evidence that an attempt was made to tamper with the commission’s telephone system, although my advice is that it seems it was not breached,’ Tony Fitzgerald said. He added that there was ‘a very real possibility that those with something to hide will seek to create a controversy about the safety of witnesses in the hope that ordinary decent people will be frightened into silence’.