Authors: Matthew Condon
Herbert responded: ‘I didn’t ask him, “Terry, what are you doing with your money?” and he never asked me. I can only tell the truth. I didn’t ask what he did with his money.’
In fact, Herbert confided in biographer Tom Gilling that he never had a genuine friendship with Lewis. Indeed, he said he disliked him. ‘He’s not my sort of man,’ Herbert said. ‘He didn’t seem to have any compassion for anybody. I didn’t like him, to be personal, and I thought he was really very foolish inviting us to his home, to parties, getting his driver to pick me up in his car … to take me to functions with him.
‘When I got to his house there’s all these bloody big-wigs … and I’d been charged, don’t forget … [over the] Southport [Betting] matter. Everyone knew I was Jack Herbert and yet I was at a party with non-participants in our job … [Lewis said,] “Oh it will be alright, you’ll be right.”’
When it came to answering questions about his other old friend, Tony Murphy, Herbert was curiously forgetful and vague. Fitzgerald said there appeared to be ‘an attempt to deflect questions away from this era’, namely the period when the Rat Pack operated in the late 1950s and through the 1960s and 70s.
Herbert couldn’t explain why he had Murphy’s details in an address book he took with him when he fled to London.
Herbert said he had hardly seen Murphy since the former detective had moved to Amity Point on North Stradbroke Island at the end of 1982 to grow Geraldton Wax flowers. ‘He buried himself on Stradbroke Island for two years after he left the police force,’ says Herbert. (He certainly didn’t tell the commission that he had visited the island with Murphy in the 1960s when Murphy and Barry Maxwell had purchased land at Amity Point.) Herbert simply said Murphy wasn’t aware of his corruption.
Ian Callinan, QC, for the state government, put to Herbert: ‘Murphy was an intelligent, astute policeman who well understood the way criminals and the corruption system operated and he knew you were involved in corruption and yet you solemnly tell this commission he didn’t ask you about your corruption. He must have known what you were doing. It must have been apparent to anyone with Murphy’s sophistication and knowledge that you were on the take again.’
‘I can honestly say he never asked me,’ Herbert replied.
Herbert had spent 13 days on the stand and given 56 hours of testimony. Fitzgerald was not entirely convinced Herbert had told all he knew. One of Herbert’s close friends says he told the inquiry ‘just enough’.
‘Jack never involved anybody who was a friend, ever, in any of his evidence, books, ever, he never incriminated anyone,’ the source says. ‘But Murphy had been a really good friend. Murphy’s kids were friends with his kids. Tony Murphy and Jack were close friends. In Jack’s view, Lewis was a colleague they dealt with and they were wary of.’
As for Lewis, he believes Tony Murphy was never called before the inquiry for a specific reason. Lewis says: ‘Herbert was picked up in London, he said whatever he said, they came back here and they had to change a whole heap of it. One would have thought as soon as Herbert landed at the airport they would bring him into the bloody inquiry to give something … [but] they kept him for nearly six months … so he had [time] to get a story right.
‘This is all hypothesis, but Herbert had an indemnity to say whatever they wanted him to say. If he’d strayed from that … say they called Murphy in and somewhere along the line he’d made a mistake and they’d asked him what did he do in the Licensing [Branch] for the four years that he was there with Herbert? Didn’t he know that Herbert was running The Joke?
‘And if he’d said, “Oh, he could have been” or whatever, he could have destroyed Herbert’s story, which would have then got me off the hook … if they called Murphy it might have ruined their inquiry.’
Peggy
From the outside they appeared to be two well-dressed, middle-aged ladies having coffee and a cake together in one of Brisbane’s older department stores. McDonnell & East, at 414 George Street, had once been the epicentre of the city’s retail trading for much of the twentieth century. In 1965, it opened its award-winning Queensland Room Coffee Lounge.
It was here, in early 1987, that Lady Hazel Lewis allegedly met Peggy Herbert for a catch-up. Peggy told the Fitzgerald Inquiry in evidence on 4 October that at one of these meetings she gave graft money to the suspended commissioner’s wife. She had first telephoned Hazel at police headquarters where the Lewis’s lived, for a peppercorn rent, in the Police Minister’s largely unused apartment. They were set to move into the new house at 12 Garfield Drive in April of 1987.
‘How about coffee?’ Peggy asked.
‘We arranged to meet at McDonnell & East at ten or 11 o’clock,’ Peggy told the inquiry. ‘Jack had parcelled up the $7000 or $8000, which I put in a plastic bag and placed in my handbag.’ She said her husband had told her: ‘Give this to Hazel … make sure you don’t lose it.’
The two friends met and took their seats at a table in the coffee lounge. ‘She [Lady Lewis] left her handbag on the floor,’ Peggy continued. ‘While she was away getting the coffee I dropped the packet of money into her handbag. She knew what it was. She knew why we were meeting there. When she came back with the coffee I said, “I put that in there for Terry.”’
Peggy insisted that they didn’t need to talk about the money. They both knew the intention of the meeting. ‘I did have a little look around each time before I did it,’ Peggy added. ‘Hazel said to me, “Let’s not meet here again, I’ve just seen someone I know.”’
Peggy Herbert said the two of them met again for the same purpose at Jo-Jo’s restaurant in the Queen Street Mall. She said her husband Jack had gone back into corruption in the 1970s because Lewis was by then Commissioner and he would protect both him and Peggy. She alleged her husband reassured her by saying: ‘There’s nothing to worry about. Terry’s at the top. If anything is going on, he’ll hear about it.’
Peggy also said her husband made it clear that when Lewis retired as commissioner the corrupt system would have to end because there would be nobody left to protect them. She went into detail about her family’s 20-year relationship with the Lewises. They had socialised in later years and the Lewises had been invited to the wedding of their daughter Ann in 1975. They also went to the Lewis home in Garfield Drive for dinners and social gatherings.
The Herberts were also friendly with Tony Murphy’s family, she added. ‘Our families were friendly when our children were little,’ she explained. ‘Tony had a big tent at Tweed Heads and the kids would go down and stay with them. I’ve known him over 20 years, I suppose. I knew Mrs Murphy quite well and I knew Tony was in The Joke.’
When Lewis cross-examined Peggy, she said she remembered another incident from the late 1970s when she was working for in-line machine operator Tony Robinson Senior in the Brisbane CBD. She said she had passed an envelope full of what she assumed was cash directly to him in Lennons Hotel.
Lewis retorted: ‘You have no direct knowledge of my involvement in corruption, do you?’
Peggy said she had delivered the envelope on the instructions of her husband.
Lewis denied the meeting ever took place. He also quizzed her about meeting Lady Lewis.
Lewis: I suggest you have never given my wife any money.
Herbert: That’s not correct.
Lewis: I put it to you that you are in fact weaving fact with fiction throughout your evidence to give it a touch of authenticity.
Herbert: That’s not correct.
Hazel Lewis would later recall meeting Peggy Herbert at McDonnell & East in a signed statement. She said the meeting had nothing to do with money. ‘Peggy rang me in the unit in police headquarters and told me either over the phone or later at Mac & East that Jack was working on the house at Jordan Terrace and there was so much noise she wanted to go shopping and was I available for a cup of coffee,’ Hazel Lewis said.
‘I went to Mac & East, had a cup of coffee with Peggy and walked around looking at the store. I doubt we were there together for more than an hour. I don’t recall exactly what we talked about but most likely it was about what they were doing to their house and how our new house at Garfield Drive was going.’
As for the Jo-Jo’s restaurant meeting, Hazel confirmed she had met Peggy there for a coffee and a bite to eat. It was the last time she saw Peggy Herbert. Hazel Lewis said she next read about Jack and Peggy being overseas in the newspaper.
Hazel denied the allegations that she took money from Peggy. ‘I have never put my handbag down and walked away from it, as many years ago I had my purse stolen whilst I was in a cafeteria,’ she stated. ‘It is always my practice to keep it under my arm or over my shoulder.
‘Under no circumstances have I ever had any financial dealings or transactions with either of the Herberts. I have not been party to any arrangements with them or anyone else involving collection or payment of money and have never heard nor participated in any discussion of such a matter.’
From the prostitute and brothel madam Shirley Brifman through to Shirley’s own daughter Mary Anne to the prostitutes Katherine James and Anne Marie Tilley, integral to the story of crime and corruption in Queensland were women. They earned the money that the men exploited. And when they wanted to bring down the whole charade, they did that too.
Retrospective Honesty
The Fitzgerald Inquiry had been running for well over a year, and after the early shock and awe of its revelations, enough time had passed for Queenslanders to digest an apparently dark past, and work out their place in it. A blame game had begun, and it was never more finely, and brutally, enunciated than on the floor of parliament in October 1988.
Wayne Goss, member for Logan and the Leader of the Opposition, felt it prudent to stab some forefingers across the parliamentary chamber. ‘… what one sees is the cancer of corruption across the whole fabric of public administration in this state … yet the present Premier has never once raised his voice or stood up against corruption as it occurred, grew and flourished in this state for years,’ Goss accused.
After Ahern rose to a point of order, Goss continued: ‘But the question I am asking, which was implicit in the initial statement, is: Where was Mr Ahern when the problems were taking root? I am not referring to all the grand claims that have been made about the Fitzgerald Inquiry once he became Premier and once the Fitzgerald Inquiry was already on foot, having been initiated not by himself … but Mr Gunn.
‘There is no such thing as retrospective honesty. The test of honesty, and the test of the Premier, is what he does when he has a choice. The time to do something is when one hears things and sees things and decides to speak up, ask questions, stand for what one believes is right and honest – when there is a choice.’
Goss said the Opposition believed that Ahern could not avoid blame for the corruption identified by the inquiry. He said Ahern was the only National Party representative who had served through the full 19 years of the Bjelke-Petersen premiership. ‘In all that time, is there evidence of Mike Ahern ever raising his voice against corruption in public, in the party room, in parliament or in Cabinet? No!’ said Goss. ‘Not once when this Premier had a choice did he ever speak out or stand up. There is not a single shred of evidence that he ever raised his voice, much less that he ever did anything about what was going on. The public record shows that Mr Ahern sat as a backbencher and later as a minister, blindfolded, gagged and with corks in both ears.’
Goss accused Ahern of using the Fitzgerald Inquiry for political purposes. ‘Mr Ahern claims falsely that his government set up the Fitzgerald Inquiry. He is using Mr Fitzgerald for political purposes to hide the culpability of himself and other members of Cabinet for allowing that corruption to occur and to grow.’
Ahern had done his best following the ousting of Bjelke-Petersen. But the community, and the politicians who represented them, were now at pains to understand a systemic deception so huge that it might take years to unravel, let alone understand.
Cracking the Code
Suspended commissioner Sir Terence Lewis was recalled to the witness box of Courtroom 29 in mid-October, well over a year after his turn as the inquiry’s first witness, and this time he hit some substantial turbulence.
Fitzgerald had begun his inquiry in a pedantically systematic way. He allowed Lewis to explain almost interminably the history of the Queensland Police Force and how it functioned. It was a deliberate ploy to establish context, with the view to exposing cracks inherent in the system itself. In this way, quietly, the inquiry moved from establishing sufficient evidence, to acknowledging there was a problem, to being able to offer solutions. As Patsy Wolfe oversaw proceedings as deputy, Fitzgerald started preparing his systemic responses.
By the time Lewis returned to the box, patience was wearing thin. He attempted to explain the now famous ‘codes’ that he had used to communicate with Jack Herbert. He simply explained that Herbert had been his informant.
It was news to the inquiry. Why hadn’t he explained this before? It flew in the face of an earlier statement lodged by Lewis, in which he claimed he had little of consequence to ever discuss with Herbert.
Fitzgerald: Why didn’t you disclose that you discussed illegalities with him?