Authors: Matthew Condon
In the end, Siracusa scored $30,000 for the interview, with payment to be made in two instalments and only after publication of the series. Two of the
Courier-Mail
’s most experienced writers – Ken Blanch and Peter Charlton – were assigned the task. ‘Peter Charlton and I spent five days with him in a motel room up in Spring Hill and we … jointly wrote five articles about him, we interviewed him on tape for five days,’ remembers Blanch.
The series – ‘The Lewis Years’ – began publication in the
Courier-Mail
on Monday 6 February 1989. During the interviews Blanch and Charlton weren’t averse to hitting Lewis with some tough questions, particularly Blanch, given he had known Lewis for many years and had had many dealings with him in his early years as a police reporter.
As the Fitzgerald Inquiry had yet to formally conclude, some queries stemmed from recent evidence heard before Tony Fitzgerald. ‘These people and their activities, these people in the Licensing Branch. Their activities have brought your 39-year career unstuck?’ Blanch probed.
‘Well,’ said Lewis, ‘there’s no doubt about that at all and I’ve tried to say and have said many times, I still believe that this Queensland police force is one of the best in the world …’
Lewis grumbled at how his commissioner’s diaries were released to the public during the course of the inquiry. He said even his wife Hazel hadn’t read them. ‘These [the diaries] were more of a personal sort of thing and I put some things in there that you’d never write if you thought anybody would ever see them and I’m absolutely dumbfounded I suppose when they were publicly released,’ Lewis told the reporters.
Blanch continued to press Lewis. ‘Taken all together, they paint a picture of you as, Peter used the word, “sinister” may be a bit strong, but a rather omnipresent powerbroker,’ he said. ‘What do you say about that?’
‘All I can say about it … that they were not written up for anybody to ever read, except me.’
‘But Terry,’ Blanch pressed on, ‘the point I’m making is that apart from whether or not they were ever intended to be read, they were read, and that’s the picture that emerged.’
‘Well, that might be in the view of some people, but, ah, I can only then go back to saying well, they’ll have to judge me as they know me and I can’t think there’d be very many people in the community who would have very many adverse comments to make.’
‘Yeah,’ said Blanch, ‘the point I’m making is that you didn’t see yourself that way?’
‘Well, not in that, no,’ Lewis responded.
Lewis talked about the large quantities of cash found in his safe, his friendships with Angelo Vasta, Eric Pratt and Don Lane, his lack of extravagance over the years, the family home on Garfield Drive, his opinion of various past and current government ministers, and his loathing for former friend Jack Herbert, who he believed had used Lewis’s good name to feather his own nest.
‘I believe that he’s a person who decided to use me some years ago and he’s had ample opportunity … over the years to do so or to contemplate doing so, I should say, and I believe that he’s done so, as I said, to get himself off … a long series of unlawful activities over a period of … 29 or 30 years, and also to help his immediate family. And as has been admitted by him, he’s had no hesitation over the years in fabricating evidence, concocting evidence against people whom he had no … nothing against them whatsoever,’ Lewis said.
Blanch and Charlton finally asked him if he was tempted to tell his own story in a book.
‘Well, perhaps a little bit,’ Lewis responded. ‘I could write some articles or perhaps write a book that might be of interest … I certainly was contacted by a person with experience in the compilation of material for perhaps writing a book … [but] whether we’ll ever get around to doing that, I’m not sure yet.’
Lewis Sacked
At 9.30 a.m. on Wednesday 19 April 1989, the Governor Sir Walter ‘Wally’ Campbell approved a very special piece of legislation. The Bill specifically declared the position of Queensland Commissioner of Police vacant, and allowed former commissioner Terry Lewis to take home his entitlements, including accumulated annual leave – about $65,000.
Premier Mike Ahern then sent Lewis a letter.
I desire to inform you that the attached Bill passed through all stages in Parliament yesterday. The Bill has been assented to and the Act proclaimed today. As a consequence you no longer hold the position of Commissioner of Police.
Arrangements are being made to deal with your superannuation entitlements in the manner prescribed in the Bill. You should contact the Police Superannuation Board in this regard.
As I explained previously, having regard to all the circumstances the Government has decided that this course of action is fair to both yourself and the Government and is in the best interests of the Police Department.
It was over. Lewis was 61 years old.
He didn’t offer comment immediately, but eventually gave a brief interview to the
Courier-Mail
. ‘There have been times when I’ve wondered whether I should keep going,’ he said, clearly implying suicide. ‘I certainly didn’t think I’d make it this far. I think I’m worse off now than I’ve ever been.
‘I think I would find it very difficult to obtain permanent employment because of the uncertainty of matters at the moment.
‘I just don’t know what I’ll do … see what happens.’
Lewis still feels acute bitterness towards Ahern and the way he was removed as police commissioner. ‘… of course you see why I don’t like him [Ahern], he’s the one who refused me permission … I’d been suspended on pay to start with,’ says Lewis. ‘Then suspended without pay and then I applied for permission to work. And he refused that you know, bloody awful.
‘Then what else? Oh, and then he brought the legislation in, they wanted me to resign or do something. And I said no, I won’t, so they brought legislation in to remove me from office.
‘Which [was] all before I was convicted of anything and of course you’ve got no appeal against an Act of Parliament. And I was always under the impression that you’re not supposed to bring an Act of Parliament in for one person. You’re supposed to apply to the population. But anyhow he did it, and got away with it.’
With possible charges pending against Lewis, and Fitzgerald’s report due in less than three months, Lewis stayed quiet. He did not believe he deserved to be charged with anything. He had done no wrong.
It had been a monumental waiting game, or as Quentin Dempster put it, Queensland history had been in ‘suspended animation’ anticipating the delivery of Fitzgerald’s report. He added in his weekly column in the
Sunday Mail
: ‘In his report, we can expect him to not only spell out the enormity of the problem but also how attitudes have contributed to a situation where organised crime and corrupt officials had this state by the throat.
‘With the delivery of the report and associated prosecutions, Queensland is about to enter a historic phase. The history of what has passed is about to be re-written.’
Thus Times Do Shift
Before 9 a.m. on Monday morning, 3 July, hundreds of journalists filed into the Walter Burnett Building on the Royal National Association’s Exhibition campus in Bowen Hills in the city’s inner-north. The building, named after a former RNA president, was to act as a government budget-style lock-up for journalists to receive and skim the Fitzgerald Report before its official release at 2 p.m.
It was an interesting choice of site for the historic launch of the 630-page report. Here, since 1876, the state’s rural and urban dwellers had come together once a year to celebrate the Queensland lifestyle. Here, horses and cattle were trucked into the heart of Brisbane and put on show. For ten days, the perfume of manure emanated from the show site. A part of the annual palette, too, were extravagant displays of fruit and vegetables – a reminder that in years past, the wealth of Queensland rested in its soil. This was a community that survived on the sweat of its farmers. The Ekka was everything that defined Queensland.
On this winter day, Fitzgerald’s report would possibly redefine that original charter. The report itself had been printed at the offices of the government printer – GoPrint – at 371 Vulture Street, Woolloongabba, under heavy security. One GoPrint sales representative remembers the building being guarded inside and out. ‘Once we took the copy in there was 24-hour security around the building,’ he says. ‘Each night, when they finished working on the report, it was locked in the safe under the supervision of officers from the Criminal Justice Commission.’
The release of the report would be a momentous day for some, and a dark one for others. ‘If the city seems somewhat quieter as you travel to work today,’ wrote the
Courier-Mail
’s Mike O’Connor, ‘it will probably be because a good number of folk around town are holding their breath until 2 p.m. … when journalists … will be permitted to start filing stories.’
Don Petersen of the same newspaper was part of the scrummage at the Ekka. ‘For about an hour before yesterday’s release of the report on the most massive corruption inquiry in Queensland’s history, police dogs checked out Brisbane’s RNA showgrounds,’ he said. ‘The dogs were a precaution against the possibility of a bomb in the Walter Burnett building, where about 400 reporters were to be locked up for a preview of the Fitzgerald Report.
‘Coloured marker pens working overtime, scribes from every State and even New Zealand ploughed through pages which will take weeks to digest thoroughly. But most of what they found was predictable: a blueprint for political, judicial, law-enforcement and even electoral reform not likely to be too palatable for those in power – no matter what they say publicly.’
Still, as a narrative, the report was written with consideration given to a general reader rather than lawmakers and government, which made it unique among Royal Commission reports.
‘Wherever possible, this report makes no adverse or favourable findings about individuals,’ Fitzgerald wrote. ‘The most important thing about the evidence before this commission is not the truth or falsity of any particular allegation or the guilt or innocence of any individual … [but] the pattern, nature and scope of the misconduct that has occurred and the lesson it contains for the future.’
Fitzgerald said, ‘When misconduct has become institutionalised, guilt and innocence are not matters of black and white. The entire community must take some responsibility, both for the problem and for its solution.’
Petersen reviewed the report as ‘an occasionally turgid and legalistic common sense guide to slow reform’.
Fitzgerald reserved specific advice in relation to the gerrymander. ‘A government in our political system which achieves office by means other than free and fair elections lacks legitimate political authority over that system,’ the report said. ‘There is a vital need for the existing electoral boundaries to be examined by an open, independent inquiry as a first step in the rehabilitation of social cohesion, public accountability and respect for authority.’
This was a direct challenge to Premier Mike Ahern and his vow to implement Fitzgerald’s recommendations ‘lock, stock and barrel’.
Fitzgerald also had a lot to say about ‘police culture’ in Queensland, and indirectly paid homage to the many men and women who had tried to tell the truth about corruption over the decades and been rewarded with careers destroyed and families shattered.
‘For a long time in the Queensland Police Force, speaking out achieved nothing but hardship, loneliness and fear. Those involved in misconduct were not punished. Those who reported it were,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘Lies, including perjury, are used, both by way of false denials and to attack those who are regarded as a threat.’
He said the force had been ‘debilitated’ by corruption. ‘The situation is compounded by poor organisation and administration, inadequate resources, and insufficiently developed techniques and skills for the task of law enforcement in a modern, complex society,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘Particular responsibility and enthusiasm for the police culture is to be found amongst some members of an elite within the Force, including senior officers, union officials and those with special appointments and functions, particularly detectives and other non-uniformed police.
‘Members of the elite have been the major beneficiaries of the culture which they promote and exploit. Many of those involved are cunning and ruthless, with an intuitive capacity to assess and take advantage of human weakness and motivation which has been honed by experience and an uninhibited willingness to misuse authority and to lie.
‘Some of those who have exerted authority and influence in the Police Force in the last decade have practised and been protected by the police culture for up to 40 years.’
That day Premier Ahern kept to his word and promised ‘swift implementation’ of Fitzgerald’s recommendations. He was uncertain as to whether the gerrymander issue would be resolved before the next state election, due in late 1989, and what the yet to be formed Electoral and Administrative Review Commission would have to say. ‘By agreeing to implement all recommendations, the Ahern government today stands proud,’ he said. ‘The report is a marker and a warning to all governments in Queensland.