by Ray Whitrod
As far as I am aware, no other Australian Police Force has emulated my action, nor has there been any attempt to extend the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Victim Surveys to discover if offences reported by victims are actually recorded in the police database. All we know is that there is a big discrepancy between the number of offences experienced by victims and the number recorded by the police. There has been some research into the reasons why victims do not report crimes to the police, but there is no research that I am aware of that seeks to correlate victims’ actual reports to police with subsequent police records.
When I proposed the gathering of Uniform Crime Statistics at the Police Commissioners’ Conference, the low level of debate clearly indicated that both the commissioners and their advisers, the departmental secretaries, were ill-informed about possible challenges to law and order in the coming years. They were unable to assess which ways of meeting these challenges were best. I had some discussions with General Porter and Brigadier McKinna about how to improve on this situation. We agreed that there was little point in attempting to offer education to the present office-holders, but that there was merit in working on their probable successors. Victoria withdrew from further discussions because Porter was already doing something about it in his force, but he indicated that he would support our proposals. So South Australia and the Commonwealth recommended that there should be a Senior Police Executive Workshop, lasting for four weeks. The workshop would cater for representatives from each state or territory, chosen because they would probably become the next commissioners. McKinna and I were to organise the workshop. The first two weeks would be in Canberra, where participants would listen to such experts as we could muster and discuss with them the coming challenges to law and order. Then there would be one week in Melbourne, looking at what Victoria was already doing, followed by a week in South Australia to examine McKinna’s plans. The conference endorsed the proposal, and planning for the workshop commenced.
I was able to select a panel of experts from the Australian National University whom I knew personally. From listening to lectures during my own courses I knew who could give talks providing the latest advice on their topics to these senior police in a style which would not be boring. I recruited Mick Borrie, George Zubrzycki and Des O’Connor. I put these academics “into the picture” with regard to the purpose of the workshop and was pleased with their response.
They set out on what I now know to be an unwinnable task: to interest these pragmatic deputy police chiefs in an intellectual task: thinking about the future. In retrospect, I realise that the attitude of the deputies was justified and that I was too optimistic. The New South Wales representative was Fred Hanson, who became the next New South Wales police commissioner. Try as my academic friends would to interest him, he sat most of the time looking out of the window He was not the only one — Athol Wedd from Western Australia was similarly uninterested in the proceedings, and there were various others. They had their own priorities, and these were not affected in any way by this attempt to intellectualise the police forces of Australia. In those days, commissionership of a state force offered rich pickings, with little or no possibility of any illegalities being discovered. However, the workshop provided many opportunities for socialising out of hours.
Another strategy I used was the provision of better and longer training for my recruits and the organisation of national workshops to which state officers were invited. I argued for the need for our own permanent school and, with some diligent hunting around, located the vacant quarantine barracks at North Head in Sydney and received Cabinet approval to occupy the site. It was an ancient collection of wooden huts, but with some scheming we managed to make it usable. The school was opened on 10 April 1959, and it fitted in nicely with my vision of creating a Commonwealth Police Force. This had officially come into being in 1957 when assent was finally given by federal Parliament to my draft bill. For several reasons, this act was not proclaimed until April 1960 when I was appointed the new force’s first commissioner.
In just four years, my original plan to transform the discredited CIS and POG into a national law enforcement organisation had made useful progress. I had laboured long over the draft legislation before submitting it for departmental approval. I had backed it with convincing factual detail. I had confided in, and won the support of, significant Gnomes or their principal advisers in an effort to minimise opposition from those federal ministers whose territory might be encroached upon. I had gently explained to senior state police that I was not setting out to create an American-type FBI and had showed them those sections of my draft bill which restricted our activities to purely Commonwealth interests. In this way I hoped to reduce resistance from backbenchers in the federal Parliament who were vulnerable to state lobbying. I am not sure how much success I achieved. Certainly, when the bill was being debated in federal Parliament, all government members supported it, so that it passed with a large majority. But that support may have been due to the discipline of the government’s whip. Since I kept well clear of politicians, I did not pick up any suggestions of concern from government members.
On the other hand, the well-known radicals in the opposition, who were probably still smarting from the outcome of the Royal Commission on Espionage, set out to strongly attack the proposed “creation of a national police force”. They may well have done this purely from Australian Labor Party principles, although socialist philosophies elsewhere favoured a strong, central law enforcement body. My recollection is that the prominent ALP parliamentarians — Evatt, Ward, Cameron and Haylen — were well-briefed on comments by the director of the American FBI, J. Edgar Hoover. Now discredited in the United States, Hoover had not wanted a national police force in his country, since it would have challenged his own empire. As well, the ALP spokesmen were able to correctly describe members of the CIS and POG as not conforming to the standards of state police in physique and training. Much of this detail came from another ALP member, Jim Fraser, who represented the Australian Capital Territory. My suspicion is that Fraser, in turn, was provided with this information by members of the ACT Police Force, who saw themselves as liable to being swallowed up by the proposed new force. With hindsight, it is possible to understand the alarm with which corrupt state police forces and their political allies would have viewed the creation of a national force. At the time, the state forces were the final arbiters of investigation. In Queensland and New South Wales, the top politicians would not have seen a problem in the head of the homicide branch being bent. The head of a homicide branch is a key man in state corruption as he is able to cover up the tracks of underworld, or police, executions. We now know that in the eastern states some informers who were prepared to give evidence about drug traffickers and their connections to the police simply disappeared. I had little understanding then of how some underworld groups might have influenced the policies of political parties.
Mr Eddie Ward, the member for East Sydney, made a strong onslaught on my proposed appointment as the first Commonwealth commissioner, claiming I had already displayed vindictiveness towards Labor, was bitterly opposed to Labor policies and that I was poorly qualified to be given this appointment. Someone, probably also Sydney-based, had fed Ward this material for he was able to go on and announce that I had acquired land at North Head to establish a training centre, and that I had been going through the state police services picking out the best officers and offering them higher salaries. Interestingly, during my years with the CIS and the CPF, I came across traces of association between Sydney CIS staff and key ALP figures. The minister defended me, saying that I had served the state and Commonwealth governments well, and I was now being slandered and defamed. The minister went on to explain again that the new force was concerned only with applying Commonwealth legislation and protecting Commonwealth property. It was not “the secret police” referred to by the opposition.
The bill was not as all-embracing in its provisions as I would have liked. I kept
it as simple and minimal as possible. I had thought about introducing some legislation that would help me overcome problems of corruption but, even in those days, I realised that this might provoke further opposition. I decided to rely upon the lesson I had learnt in ASIO — if I could stimulate my staff to grasp a big enough vision of the important challenges embodied in their appointment, if I could secure their full commitment to achieving that vision, and if I could obtain satisfactory working conditions, the staff might stave off the temptations which were bound to develop.
I remembered that Chief Kelley had managed to achieve a transformation of the Kansas City Force when he was appointed after the exposure of the notorious Prendergast municipal machine, and I realised, too, that it had taken him twelve years to accomplish that transformation. Kelley had then gone on to replace the dubious J. Edgar Hoover as head of the FBI. Over the years, the field staff of the FBI had rightly earned a reputation for being incorruptible. It seemed to me that this was partly due to the prestige of their office, and I wondered how I could raise our reputation, both locally and internationally. Each year the English Home Office awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal to the author of the best article on a police topic which the Home Office selected. It was open to serving officers of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. In international police circles, it was regarded as an accolade of standing. I submitted a paper with a nom de plume, and was delighted to be informed I had won. As far as I know, this was the first time the medal had gone to an Australian policeman. I was presented at Government House with the inscribed medal by the governor general, then Lord Casey. He entertained me to tea and was interested both in my paper and in my plans for a Commonwealth Police Force. I left that meeting feeling that I had recruited a supporter, and a powerful one at that. My paper was then published in the English Police Journal which has a worldwide circulation, and I hoped that this success might contribute to our recognition by other police and associated academics as a modern police force.
The bill had one interesting innovation for a Police Act. It empowered me to recruit at any level. Traditionally state police could only offer recruits appointments at constable level. I needed desperately to bolster my head office staff with officers who had sufficient intelligence to handle some of the new challenges which would face the force.
It was because of this new provision that I was able to recruit Kerry Milte at superintendent level. Professor Stanley Johnson, then head of Melbourne University’s Criminology Unit, recommended Milte who had topped his examinations for a law degree and had then impressed Johnson with the outcome of his postgraduate year in criminology. Milte was tall and well-built and, at the time, aged only about 23 years. He had been raised in the disciplined environment of a Melbourne Fire Brigade station.
Recruiting someone so young at superintendent level raised eyebrows and some opposition, which I overcame. It was only by offering Milte a superintendent’s salary that I could match the money he was being offered by several big law firms. I did not explain to all and sundry that I wanted someone to create a central crime intelligence unit since there wasn’t one nationally or in the states. There was an obvious need for one and Canberra was well-placed to provide a home for it. There was no model for us to use, so I initially set Milte to working on an elementary intelligence section for our own use. Milte proved to be a good choice, although he and my deputy, Jack Davis, a former New South Wales Fraud Squad member with an Honours degree in law, did not hit it off. I think this was purely a clash of personalities, combined maybe with a little jealousy. After I resigned to go elsewhere, Milte also left and went into private practice. Then I heard he had become associated with Senator Lionel Murphy who became federal attorney-general in the Whitlam government. I have little doubt that Milte was the architect of Murphy’s notorious raid on ASIO headquarters in Melbourne in search of concealed files about terrorists.
In 1962, with approval from the Commissioners’ Conference, we were able to introduce a Commissioned Officers’ Course at Manly to which, each year, all states except Victoria would send about two students. I was very careful in selecting staff for the course. The course went well and, as far as I know, continues on in some form today. At the 1966 Commissioners’ Conference, approval was obtained for a sub-committee to be established to investigate the setting up of a National Police Planning and Research Unit, but we made slow progress for a few years until, in 1969,1 was appointed chairman of a committee of representatives from the Commonwealth, Victorian, Queensland and New South Wales forces. We met on a number of occasions in Canberra, and this time Inspector Barlow of the Queensland force gave me considerable support for the concept. The sub-committee agreed that the research unit’s main objectives should be to examine present police practices and procedures in order to provide recommendations on how to increase efficiency and plan for development. We decided that the basic costs should be shared by the Commonwealth and the states, and that each force should provide a liaison officer to cooperate with the unit. We felt it was important not to duplicate or conflict with the National Institute of Criminology. These arrangements were subsequently implemented.
One of the people remaining in my memory from those early Canberra days is the governor general, Sir William Slim. I met him quite a few times and I was most impressed with the man. Slim dealt personally with letters from ordinary Australians that had been written to him as representative of the Queen. Apparently this is an old English custom: when all legal avenues have been exhausted, a citizen may appeal directly to the monarch. In Australia, this means the governor general. Slim read every letter that was sent to him, although his secretary, Murray Tyrrell, would already have dealt with most of them. Many of these appeals to the governor general were made by people who were mentally deranged, and it was often obvious that there would be no point investigating their claims. However, Slim was adamant that before a letter was consigned to file, it was necessary to be convinced that there was no merit in the appeal. So the governor general arranged for any appeals which looked as if they had substance to be sent to me as director of the Commonwealth Investigation Service. As a result of our field inquiries, it became evident that there were some people in the Australian community who would be possible threats to the safety of the Queen when she was in Australia or to the governor general himself. On one occasion, our officers on the gate at Government House intercepted a man who had driven up from Sydney to demand an audience with the governor general. When the guard commander asked the man what time his appointment was, the man indicated that he didn’t need to make an appointment: he was in Canberra to bring the governor general to account. The guards talked to the man quietly and asked him into their office to sit down while they made the necessary arrangements. While they had the man preoccupied, a guard made a surreptitious examination of his car and discovered a loaded rifle and spare rounds of ammunition. The man was taken to see two Commonwealth doctors who certified him as temporarily insane and committed him to Kenmore psychiatric hospital in Sydney. There he soon recovered and was released.
A year later the man again arrived at the Government House gate. Luckily the same guard commander was on duty at the time and he immediately identified the man. Again the man was found to be carrying a rifle and ammunition. He was recommitted to Kenmore where he soon made a full recovery and was released. Our inquiries revealed that the man was a marine engineer whose vessel docked once a year in Sydney. Here the man hired a car, bought a rifle and set off to Canberra because he was convinced that the governor general was not doing a proper job.
It was the existence of people such as the marine engineer who gave us the idea of producing a small loose-leafed photo album carrying pictures and details of people who posed a threat to prominent Australians or visiting overseas VIPs. This Black Book, as it became known, was invaluable during royal visits and during such high-security exercises as the visit of the American president, Lyndon Johnson. Johnson was the first American president to visit Australia and
I remember driving with him in a car with an open roof from the centre of Canberra to Government House. We arrived at a large intersection where a crowd of people were waiting. So thick was the crowd that the car slowed and Johnson, who was a consummate politician, ordered the driver to stop. He stood up and spoke to the people. I noticed a face in the crowd that belonged to one of people depicted in the Black Book. He was the author of a number of very threatening letters which detailed what he would do to visiting VIPs. The man was moving towards Johnson. I tried to get out of the car, but the crowd was so thick that the front door was jammed shut. I tried to get Johnson to sit down, but he wasn’t paying any attention to me — he was enjoying the adulation of the crowd. I saw the man from the Black Book reach up to Johnson, shake him by the hand and say, “Welcome to Australia, Mr President.”