Authors: Matthew Condon
‘You get into a very confused position if a minister’s top officers are not to be believed. [Hinze] would not have thought that Lewis himself might have been involved. He would be above suspicion from the minister’s point of view.’
The
Courier-Mail
noted that Bjelke-Petersen, in person before the inquiry, had lost his aura of invincibility. ‘Whether by design or genuine confession, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen emerged towards day’s end as a bit of a mushroom man, allegedly kept in a lofty but dark place and fed a diet of departmental or ministerial droppings,’ it wrote. ‘It did not quite square with his strong-man image, or with his conceded close links with individual members of what came almost to be in years gone by a private army.’
Quentin Dempster took a different view. ‘That ruthless, pig-headed, vicious side of his character was on display and the lawyers, with conspicuous courtesy, led him into areas where he got both feet and both hands on the sticky paper,’ said Dempster.
One usually hard-bitten southern journalist remarked, incredulously: ‘And you’ve been living with this for 20 years?’
In further evidence, Sir Joh said anonymous donors regularly left large sums of money in his office when he was premier, but he said he never got involved in identifying the sources of the money. He said he couldn’t explain one donation of $110,000 in cash. The money was donated to a company called Kaldeal Pty Ltd, which funded National Party candidates chosen by Bjelke-Petersen. In 1986, another $100,000 donation was handed to his secretary by a Singapore businessman.
Commissioner Tony Fitzgerald was confused.
Fiztgerald: What do you say, Sir Joh – that one of your secretaries would come in and say, ‘We’ve just had somebody drop by and leave $50,000 cash but we don’t know who it is?’
Bjelke-Petersen: Sir, honestly, you don’t talk like that, really. Nobody comes in and says, ‘I’ve got $50,000 …’ I have nothing to do with the funds. I do not collect it. I do not sit at the door waiting for people to come in.
Fiztgerald: Obviously you didn’t have to.
In other evidence, Doug Drummond, QC, revealed that Citra Constructions Ltd donated $250,000 to the National Party and soon after was awarded a $2.5 million contract to build the Bundaberg Maternity Hospital. It was also granted rail electrification scheme government contracts worth $59 million.
This was the Queensland way of doing business. The former premier, however, saw little that was wrong with this model. He had not proven to be an explosive witness. Quite the contrary. He was just an old man who had always possessed a peculiar understanding of the Westminster system.
Bob Mulholland, for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, asked if he accepted any responsibility for the level of corruption that had clearly thrived under his leadership. The former premier simply said, no.
One of the more hair-raising exchanges during the commission of inquiry was between barrister Michael Forde and Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. The former premier was asked whether he understood the concept of the separation of powers – the fact that in a democracy the various arms of government (legislative, executive, judicial) must be separate.
Forde began: ‘On many occasions you expressed your support for the democratic processes of the Westminster system of government?’
‘Sure,’ Joh said.
‘In fact,’ Forde went on, ‘when you received your knighthood, the report on you said that you had a strong belief in the concept of parliamentary democracy. Would that be correct?’
‘Yes, the free enterprise system that we have inherited.’
‘… in your understanding of the Westminster system, what to you are the most important aspects of it?’ asked Forde.
‘The right to – well, we know, say and do what we want to do within the law; the freedoms that we have enjoyed in every other respect; faith and beliefs and so on; and the election of government along the system that the Westminster system of course outlines,’ Joh said.
‘… you see, when I asked you about what you understood by the concept of the Westminster system, your view of it was very limited, I’d suggest?’
‘No, it is not very limited,’ Bjelke-Petersen fired back. ‘I have had 41 years’ involvement in the whole system and I was there for ten years in the Opposition. I am probably the only member of parliament who is still alive who has had ten years there at any time in the Opposition.’
‘… can you distinguish between, say, the head of the Health Department and the Commissioner of Police as the head of the department under the Westminster system?’
‘I can tell you the difference. There’s a very big difference as far as actual work is concerned; responsibility is concerned. The health one is a very important one, but it’s not one in which you have to maintain the law and order in a time and period of our history when there’s a very strong attitude towards lawlessness, and the Police Commissioner has a very, very difficult role and an important one.’
Forde continued: ‘This is probably the most important question I will ask you, so be very careful in listening to this.’
‘I am careful all the time.’
‘What do you understand by the doctrine of separation of powers under the Westminster system?’
‘The Westminster system? The stock?’
‘The doctrine of the separation of powers under the Westminster system.’
‘No, I don’t quite know what you’re driving at. The document?’
‘No, I’ll say it again,’ said Forde. ‘What do you understand by the doctrine of the separation of powers under the Westminster system?’
‘I don’t know which doctrine you refer to,’ Joh replied.
‘There’s only one doctrine of the separation of powers.’
‘I believe in it very strongly, and despite what you may say, I believe that we do have a great responsibility to the people who elect us to government. And that’s to maintain their freedom and their rights, and I did that – sought to do it – always.’
‘I’m sure you’re trying to be responsive to the question, but the question related to the doctrine of the separation of powers or the principles …’ said an exasperated Forde.
‘Between the government and the – is it?’
‘No, you tell me what you understand.’
‘Well, the separation of the doctrine that you refer to, in relation to where the government stands, and the rest of the community stands, or where the rest of the instruments of government stand. Is that what – ?’
‘No.’
‘Well, you tell me,’ Joh said, laughing. ‘And I’ll tell you whether you’re right or not. Don’t you know?’
‘See, when you received your knighthood, one of the matters that was suggested in the preamble to why you got your knighthood was that you were a strong believer in historic traditions of parliamentary democracy, that you had implemented many improvements in the parliamentary process, and you had rendered extraordinary and important service to the Crown, etcetera. Now, for many years the Westminster system has functioned, and you repeatedly have said that you are a great believer in the Westminster system?’
‘Yes.’
‘The question is this: Do you have any comprehension at all of the three areas under the Westminster system which must be kept separate in order for parliamentary democracy to function?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Well, what are they?’
‘Well, I think, the system of election; the system; the area of government itself, responsibility to the people …’
Forde says he was given no brief prior to cross-examining Bjelke-Petersen. He was simply told to do his best. He says he was stunned at Bjelke-Petersen’s ignorance of the doctrine. ‘I was interested in the political system and the democratic process. Absolute power corrupts and that’s what was going on in Queensland,’ Forde says. ‘I was more concerned with Joh’s interference with the law enforcement side of things and with the judicial side. If you get your knighthood based upon your understanding and respect for the democratic process in the Westminster system, then it proves that he was a fraud, and knighthoods were often given on fraudulent grounds, particularly under his regime.’
He said Bjelke-Petersen’s lack of understanding of even the basic tenets of the doctrine was breathtaking. ‘I was completely surprised. The reaction was laughter,’ he says. ‘They had rooms with speakers so people not in the courtroom could hear testimony at the inquiry. There was this raucous laughter. I’m told people fell off their seats.’
Fitzgerald formally closed his hearings on 9 December and addressed the court. ‘We have arrived at what is hopefully the conclusion of the public evidence at this inquiry, in what is, fortuitously, a season of festivity and goodwill,’ he stated.
He said there were ‘very real risks’ associated with ‘the period which is about to ensue, both leading up to the presentation of the commission’s report and the time needed thereafter for its implementation’.
‘An even greater risk is that the interval will be filled with attempts by those who fear or resent reform to reassert control, including propaganda aimed at diminishing support for what has occurred and whatever changes are proposed,’ Fitzgerald added.
He adjourned the commission until 10.15 a.m. on Tuesday 7 February 1989. That night, Fitzgerald, Gary Crooke and another lawyer and their wives went out for a celebratory dinner at a restaurant in Brunswick Street, New Farm. One of Fitzgerald’s security detail asked if they needed to be watched.
‘They decided they’d be alright,’ he remembers. ‘That they didn’t need protection on that night. I thought it was silly after they’d had that protection for all that time. Anyway, I spotted an Asian guy who was associated with the Bellinos. I was parked near the Village Twin cinemas. I noticed this Asian bloke. He stood outside the restaurant looking at them. He spent about ten minutes outside.
‘I told them later, and I think they thought I was being dramatic.’
The Opera
In the wake of the conclusion of hearings before the Fitzgerald Inquiry, the afterburn that followed in the vacuum between the end of evidence and the publication of the commissioner’s report and the enactment of his implementations was, as Fitzgerald had partly predicted, tumultuous.
In late December former Rat Pack stalwart Glen Hallahan was reinstated as a chief investigator at the state government’s insurance arm, Suncorp, following his suspension after allegations made against him at the Fitzgerald Inquiry. Suncorp said Hallahan had been reappointed after independent investigations proved that the allegations against him had ‘no basis’. Suncorp prized Hallahan’s work and needed him back.
Premier Mike Ahern however, had other ideas. He responded angrily, telling Suncorp the decision to re-employ Hallahan was unacceptable and had to be overturned immediately. Suncorp chief executive Bernard Rowley could not wait until the Fitzgerald report was handed down in June the following year to get Hallahan back on the books. Ahern was livid. ‘I have spoken to Mr Rowley and told him that the appointment is absolutely, totally, completely not on.’
Meanwhile, it was reported that Lady Hazel Lewis, wife of the suspended police commissioner, was on unemployment benefits and looking for a job. She applied regularly at the Woolworths supermarket just down the hill on Latrobe Terrace in Paddington.
Former transport minister Don ‘Shady’ Lane also resigned from politics. Having admitted before Fitzgerald he had misused his ministerial expenses and mis-stated expenses in his tax returns, he said in his letter of resignation that the campaign of vilification against him was so overwhelming it had become too stressful on his family.
A
Courier-Mail
editorial bid Lane farewell: ‘No longer a member of the National Party, no longer an impost on the public purse, no longer subject to calls for him to do the right thing and go. It has been a long goodbye.’
Lane had joined the Queensland police in 1951, and on his way through the ranks he befriended the likes of Terry Lewis, Glen Hallahan and Jack Herbert. He was one of 89 police represented before the National Hotel inquiry in 1963, and joined the Special Branch in 1967. In June 1971 Lane became a Liberal MP, winning the inner-city seat of Merthyr, before controversially joining the National Party in 1983. He was the long-time Minister for Transport.
As Herbert attested, Lane was The Joke’s direct link to Cabinet. After Graeme Parker’s evidence before Fitzgerald in late 1987, Lane was stood down as minister. He appeared before the commission of inquiry the following year, and denied he received any corrupt monies. (Ultimately, he was charged with misappropriating funds and gaoled.)
On a lighter note, former Licensing Branch officer Nigel Powell, who had done much to ignite the inquiry in the first place, and journalist Margaret Simons, who the commission had employed to help write the actual Fitzgerald Report, penned a comedic work, both for their own amusement and, one would think, as a pressure release.
It was titled
Fitzgerald Inquiry – The Opera
. It starred the ‘Four Little Rats’ – characters called Murphy, Hallahan, Lane and Lewis, as well as Buttons, the Minister for Police, Mother Russ, Father Joh and a man called Fitzgerald. Act one, scene one, featured the ‘rats’.
Four little rats from school are we,