Authors: Matthew Condon
In a loan application document from 1986, Hapeta said he had at least 150 girls working for him. Each brought in about $2000 a week. Tilley admitted that she paid Jack ‘The Bagman’ Herbert about $39,000 a month in protection money. In addition, she gave Harry Burgess $2000 per month. ‘He said something like, “You’ll have to look after me as well, I’m the man in the field”,’ Tilley said in evidence.
Although she found the whole proceeding tedious, commentators deemed her testimony a ‘major breakthrough’ for the inquiry. Tilley told the inquiry that she had seen Jack Herbert when the commission was announced and he had told her it wouldn’t last, that it was a ‘fly by night’ thing. She alleged he told her to keep a low profile and to not answer any questions about the inquiry. ‘He knew everything [happening in the police department], he just knew everything,’ she said.
As Tilley wound up her evidence, it was revealed that her old flame, Hector Hapeta, who had once had so much cash at his disposal it was difficult to know what to spend it on, had gotten a new job in East Brisbane. He was working at the Mad Pom Shop, a bric-a-brac outlet that he in fact once owned. ‘They used to work for me and now I work for them,’ Hapeta said of the owners, surrounded by old pots, jumper leads and used squash racquets.
As for Tilley, she told reporters she would return to the skin trade. It was all she knew.
Calling Jack Reginald Herbert
The Bagman woke early on Wednesday 31 August 1988 as people were stirring over on the site of the World Exposition. Expo 88 was Queensland’s showcase to the world, defying critics who had claimed through history that the state was a backwater, and that Brisbane, its capital, a mere ‘country town’.
Simultaneously, on the north side, in Courtroom 29, Fitzgerald and his staff were steadily peeling back the bark of corruption and exposing the true state of the woodwork. In between the two shows – Expo and Fitzgerald – flowed, as it had done for millennia, the perambulating Brisbane River.
Spectators were also lining up outside the Brisbane District Court, with their cut lunches and tea flasks. That morning, Jack Herbert was taken from his safe house and into a car by his witness protection team. Police checked for bombs before the vehicle left for the city. Herbert was, as ever, impeccably dressed in a white shirt and pale brown suit, which he would describe as ‘well cut’. He was transferred to another vehicle, in Kangaroo Point, which proceeded the short distance into the CBD and into the basement of the court building.
Permanently accompanied by bodyguards, Herbert and his flankers were then led by a court officer into a room behind the witness box. At 2.22 p.m., counsel assisting the commission, Gary Crooke, QC, said firmly: ‘I call Jack Reginald Herbert.’ As expected, the courtroom was packed. Crooke asked Herbert if he had been granted an indemnity. Herbert agreed. ‘This is going to be a long road,’ Crooke said presciently. ‘We are going to start at the beginning.’
While the inquiry had already exposed a roll call of senior police – Harry Burgess, Graeme Parker, Noel Dwyer and Allen Bulger – it was supposed, by osmosis, that Herbert’s testimony would provide the central narrative of Queensland’s sorry story of police corruption. After all, he had been the architect of The Joke. He had run it like a business. It was hoped Herbert would make sense of this monumental saga of greed.
Looking out at the public gallery, Herbert saw some familiar faces. ‘One person I couldn’t help noticing that day was Terry Lewis,’ Herbert reflected in his memoir
The Bagman
. ‘We’d known each other for nearly 30 years and now it had come down to the two of us facing each other in court.
‘I wondered what was going through his head. Terry was a man who liked to know everything about everyone,’ Herbert recalled. ‘Terry Lewis was as guilty as I was and we both knew it. But Terry always thought he was too clever to be caught. That was the difference between us. I knew when the game was up but Terry never did. He didn’t realise that once the inquiry was underway it was beyond anyone’s power to save him.’
Herbert spoke with clarity and precision, and proved he carried a memory as formidable as his old mates Lewis, Murphy and Hallahan. He said he had paid $40 to $50 a month to suspended commissioner Terry Lewis since the 1960s. Herbert said Lewis was often grateful, and quipped: ‘Little fish are sweet’. It was the first direct evidence of corruption levelled at Terry Lewis since the inquiry began.
The Bagman admitted he had been ‘deeply involved’ in corruption for 29 years. He explained that the money to Lewis was initially for Lewis’s friendship with Commissioner Frank Bischof. Lewis was then heading up the Juvenile Aid Bureau.
Continuing with his history lesson, Herbert said he formed a close friendship with Tony Murphy in the late 1950s and they drank together almost daily in the Treasury Hotel, opposite the old CIB headquarters at the corner of Elizabeth and George streets. ‘When Murphy came to the Licensing Branch I was approached by Gordon Hooper [a detective at Licensing] who said, “What about giving money to Murphy?”
‘Murphy and Lewis were the connection with Frank Bischof who had been paying Hooper to protect a game in South Brisbane. The game was run by Tony Robinson. Gerry Bellino was the lookout. I agreed we should include Murphy.’
Herbert said he had met Murphy in the police canteen on the latter’s first day in Licensing and told him there was a ‘Joke’, or corrupt system, going in the office. He said he had money then and there for Murphy, who said back to him, ‘Watch your arm.’
Herbert also alleged that Murphy asked him: “What about including Terry Lewis in The Joke?”
‘We had a meeting and agreed that we would pay Lewis [because of his friendship with Bischof],’ Herbert said. ‘I recall [the] conversation getting around to payments of money with Murphy and Lewis.’
Lewis interjected, declaring in a statement to the inquiry that neither he nor his wife Hazel had been involved in any illegal activities with either Herbert or his wife Peggy.
The evidence of Herbert was electrifying, laying out the history of The Joke and how it worked. How true was it? It didn’t seem to matter. As journalist Don Petersen commented: ‘This is not just a star witness to endemic crime in high and low places. All avenues of inquiry seem to have led back to the man who took his first bribe as a lowly constable in 1959.’
The next day, Herbert outlined a special ‘code’ he had with Lewis in relation to the exchange of corrupt money. ‘See you at No. 1’ meant a meeting at the Crest International bar, down by City Hall and King George Square. No. 2 was the corner of Elizabeth and Albert streets. No. 3 was the bar at the Park Royal, overlooking the Botanic Gardens in Alice Street.
One commentator remarked that Herbert seemed to be enjoying the ‘cleansing’ he was undergoing in the box. But while it may have been cathartic for The Bagman, he was, at a rapid-fire rate, flushing careers and reputations down the sewer. His second day of evidence also included an allegation that Sydney businessman Jack Rooklyn, involved with the Bally poker machine company in the United States, paid Lewis $25,000 to pen an adverse report on the introduction of poker machines. He also fingered former Transport Minister and former police officer Don Lane, saying he had been involved in corruption since the 1960s.
It was enough, even at such an early stage in Herbert’s evidence, for the Ahern government to make a move on Lewis. When Herbert’s evidence to the inquiry made front-page news, Sir Terence received two letters at 12 Garfield Drive on 1 September. Both were from the office of Bill Gunn, Deputy Premier, Minister for Public Works, Main Roads and Expo, and Minister for Police.
Dear Sir Terence,
As you are aware, at yesterday’s sitting of the Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Misconduct by Police [the Fitzgerald Inquiry], former Detective Sergeant Jack Reginald Herbert gave evidence that you corruptly received from him certain moneys over a period of some time.
In my opinion, this conduct of which he has given evidence constitutes misbehaviour within the meaning of Section 6 of the Police Act 1937–1987.
In the circumstances, the Executive Council, in exercise of the Royal Prerogative and all other powers thereunto enabling, and upon my recommendation has today suspended you, without pay, from the office of Commissioner of Police and as a member of the Queensland Police Force.
The second letter stated:
I refer to my letter to you of 1 September 1988 … In the circumstances, I now call upon you to show cause to me in writing within seven (7) days of the date of this letter why you should not be dismissed from the office of Commissioner of Police and as a member of the Queensland Police Force.
Naturally, Lewis, through his solicitors Nicol, Robinson & Kidd, protested the suspension without pay. ‘We have instructions that our client has always discharged his functions as Commissioner of Police of this State in the full terms of the oath of office,’ they retorted.
Gunn wrote Lewis another letter dated 12 September 1988, informing him that Cabinet had given ‘careful consideration’ to his appeal.
It is the decision of Cabinet that, as presently advised, having regard to the contents of your submissions, you not be dismissed but that your suspension without pay remain in force.
You will have ample opportunity in the Inquiry to give evidence and to explain fully your position with respect to not only allegations of corruption which have been made against you but also your administration of the Department and the Police Force …
On the same day Lewis himself then wrote to the Premier, Mike Ahern, from his new three-storey house in Garfield Drive. In short, he was seeking permission to seek employment. ‘I have very limited financial resources and I would be very grateful if this request could receive urgent consideration,’ Lewis wrote.
The former commissioner got a reply from the Premier’s office on 28 September. It was addressed to Sir Terence Lewis, O.B.E., G.M., Q.P.M.
I refer to your letter of 21st September, 1988, seeking approval to your obtaining other employment during the period of your suspension from the position of Commissioner of Police.
Cabinet considered this matter this week and it was decided not to accede to your request at the present time.
Yours faithfully, Mike Ahern
The Money Map
Jack Herbert spent the fourth day of his evidence metaphorically rolling out a huge map of where corrupt money went and to whom. Of Terry Lewis, Herbert said the suspended commissioner received ‘thousands of dollars in corruption payments’, sourced from prostitution, SP bookmaking, illegal casinos and in-line machines, primarily from around Brisbane and the Gold Coast. He went into detail about his dealings with the Hapeta/Tilley group and the Bellino/Conte syndicate. He admitted that he and Lewis together organised senior police transfers that suited The Joke.
Herbert astonished the court once again when he said, with chilling accuracy, that he had paid Lewis a total of $611,650 in graft over a period of eight years. The supreme organiser, he revealed that The Joke was so well run that corrupt Licensing Branch police who left to work in another area of the department were paid a ‘pension’ of $1000 a month. Herbert proceeded to list, down to the dollar, all of the graft money he had paid out and to whom over the years.
The outfall from Herbert’s damning evidence was swift. Lewis was immediately hit with a $665,000 tax bill courtesy of his old friend’s graft allegations.
Lady Lewis, once again, was the one to express her astonishment to the press. She said tax officials had come to Garfield Drive and served them an assessment notice. ‘It [the bill] is only because of Mr Herbert’s allegations – it has nothing to do with his [Sir Terence’s] working period at all,’ she said, as the government was still deciding whether it would sack Lewis as commissioner.
Lady Lewis said Sir Terence wasn’t expecting the tax bill because ‘we’ve never received that sort of money. We’ve put in all our denials, as you know.’ She added: ‘That’s all we’ve got to say at this stage. We’ve just got to seek advice on it all, goodness me.’
Given that Sir Terence was conducting his own defence at the inquiry, it was inevitable that he would cross swords directly with Herbert at some stage. It happened on 20 September.
Lewis cross-examined his old friend for about half an hour.
Lewis: Mr Herbert, could you try telling the truth for a change?
Herbert: I am telling the truth, sir.
Lewis: That is your view.
Lewis went on to ask Herbert to agree that he was one of the greatest liars to ever take to a witness box in Queensland. Herbert did not agree.
Lewis: Can you nominate anybody who you think would be better or worse?
Herbert: I would say you have done your fair share of it, sir.
Herbert later said that Lewis’s new house up on Garfield Drive was in his observation the first real ‘extravagance’ displayed by his old friend. He assured the court that before the building of the Robin Gibson-designed three-level house, Lewis’s previous houses were ‘austere’.
Fitzgerald found it difficult to understand Herbert’s ‘cool’ relationship with Lewis after a friendship of so many years, and, if Herbert was to be believed, one that must have involved a large degree of personal interaction. ‘How can you have a distant relationship with a man you are paying half a million dollars in graft?’ Fitzgerald queried. ‘It’s hardly a position where you had to be respectful because he was a commissioner or a knight or something?’