by Ray Whitrod
The cathedral was a fairly humble affair and Virgil had set about raising funds to make it a bit more like a major place of Christian worship. But he had wanted this done in the native style rather than the normal Roman fashion, full of statuary. Virgil had given instructions to the architect to incorporate local New Guinean features into the renovations. So the front of the building had been given an imposing, decorated facade in the Sepik style. Sepik men are known as excellent wood carvers and house designers.
I wasn’t at the unveiling of the front of the cathedral, although I wish I had been because it soon became apparent to the onlookers that the designer had incorporated a number of Sepik totems that had very erotic meanings in the local culture. These were typical of the Sepik buildings, but Virgil had to quickly engage in some diplomatic maneuvering to get them disguised in a way that made them acceptable to the European Christian community.
Virgil was a very learned man. He had a doctorate in divinity from Rome and was well-read in most philosophies. He was able to suggest reading to me that helped me understand some of the local customs and cults — especially the cargo cult belief system which was still prevalent in some parts of New Guinea. Virgil’s assistant was an Irishman who had formerly been a Macquarie Street eye surgeon. He became a priest and had come up to TPNG to work with Virgil and to provide free eye treatment for the natives of the region. The two men worked well together; they were committed people who really had the good of their fellow men at heart. They understood the region far better than many of the civil administrators who still saw TPNG as a sort of de facto Australian colony. I liked the Irishman; he and I got on well together even though we didn’t meet all that often. I think he had gladly sacrificed all the privileges of his Australian practice, but what he did miss, it seemed to me, was a drop of Irish whisky. And since he couldn’t afford whisky on his priest’s pay, this was a longing not often satisfied. About once a quarter I gave a small afternoon tea party to the other departmental heads in Port Moresby at which both tea and grog were served. I always ensured that the whisky bottle was spirited away by Manassa while it still had a fair amount left in it. The next day Manassa would drive down to the “palace” with the bottle wrapped up in brown paper and marked “medical supplies”. And whenever I saw the Irish doctor he always said, with a solemn face and a twinkle in his eye: “That medicine was well applied.”
When Virgil had served ten years in Port Moresby, he retired to Kerema on the south coast of Papua, a place even less pleasant than Port Moresby. He spent most of his remaining years there until ill-health caused him to move to a small unit on the Gold Coast of Queensland. I understand he died a short time ago.
In my working life, both as a policeman and an air force officer, I have been the subject of regular reports on my performance and personality and I suppose that these have all been stored away somewhere. But one report that I have always regarded with a great sense of pleasure was an unexpected tribute by a stranger who described me in a letter he wrote. His name is Kev Roberts and this is what he said:
At about the time of the moon landing, I was one of a handful of Europeans (whites) working in a remote location on the island of Bougainville. Initially, it was my job to wire up a very small diesel generator to light the first half dozen portable accommodation blocks on a coconut plantation called Loloho. Soon, the small workforce was the vanguard for the many hundreds of specialists to follow, where eventually, the quiet little bay would be transformed into a busy shipping port, and the immediate hinterland would be carved into another shape by huge bulldozers. Even small hills were flattened and pushed out over the white sandy beach until the magnificent coral reef that fined the bay was completely and forever covered in debris from the land.
Understandably, despite being forewarned by government that this was to happen, most of the natives were appalled at what was going on. Up until this moment in their lifetime, they were very simple people, not far removed from what we would describe as stoneage, and to see their fishing grounds and other locations destroyed before their very eyes, was unfathomable. Their worst enemy during the previous thousand years would not do such a thing to them, as their land is a common entity that provides life to all. Naturally, they were incited to riot. They had no idea or understanding of the white man’s definition of progress …
This civil unrest attracted attention from many areas, the media included. I happened to be standing near the beach one morning as a bulldozer began the task of flattening a small hill. Angry natives came from everywhere and began shouting at the huge machine to stop its destruction. In desperation, a native woman then broke rank and placed her infant child in the path of the bulldozer in a final attempt at saving the situation. This action was captured by a cameraman and the dramatic photo was published worldwide. It was then that the police force was called upon to be on special alert and the riot squad was flown in from Port Moresby.
At this early stage, a wet canteen had been built on the beach that extended out over the water. From this magnificent position, the yet-undamaged section of the reef could be viewed in all its glory. I happened to be in this little canteen when a very tired and drawn man entered with a few others. I had no idea who they were and assumed them to be media representatives who had just bounced their way up the goat track that stretched all the way along the coastline from the grass airport at Kieta.
One particular man among the newly arrived visitors seemed to be the point of focus of everyone present and they bombarded him with a multitude of questions. From this I deduced that he was probably a politician of sorts as I can’t recall that he was dressed in uniform. He answered each question in a very cool and calm manner, yet at the same time, any fool could see that he needed to rest.
After some time spent watching him converse with the mob, and feeling slightly sorry for him, I approached him and asked him over to the corner of the room on some pretext, probably to view the reef. He immediately accepted as it was an excellent opportunity to rid himself of the henpeckers.
I forget the exact conversation, which lasted for only a few minutes, but I spoke of diving and exploring the immediate area, the size of the crays that I had eaten, and the general beauty of the area. I ensured that the contents of the conversation did not include one snippet of controversy. He immediately relaxed. Within those minutes, I knew that I was speaking to a very genuine human being. A very caring person who seemed to have the empathy of a mother. It was with great surprise when I later learned that he was Papua New Guinea’s Commissioner of Police. His job was not to mould the policy of the new country, his j ob was to police that policy, no matter what the politicians had decided.
Many months afterwards, when I had returned to the big smoke of Port Moresby, I happened to be waiting at an intersection when a large black vehicle pulled up beside my grubby little utility. I noticed that it was a government limo with heavily tinted windows. Suddenly, the rear window wound down to reveal the familiar face of a person who was now dressed in the uniform of the Commissioner of Police. He flashed a huge smile and tipped his cap at me. In surprised recognition, I gave a silly nod in response and seconds later, we parted. In retrospect, after such a brief meeting, many months earlier, only a gentleman would bother to do that. Ray Whitrod was such a gentleman.
A few years later, it transpired that he was far too human and genuine to survive in the corrupt and sordid world of Queensland politics. As a flower soon dies when the earth is fouled, he was cut, packaged and trashed before many Queenslanders could ever get to know him.
While in TPNG, I had a firm thought that I should seek to develop in my Australian colleagues a better understanding of policing problems in the territory. It seemed to me that in the near future TPNG would want to send locals to Sydney or Melbourne police headquarters to train as police experts in such things as fingerprinting or ballistics. If the state commissioners were more aware of the TPNG problems than I had been before my appointment, their responses were likely to be more
favourable. The venue for the Australasian Police Commissioners’ annual conference rotated around among the participant nations. While the TPNG commissioner had attended many of them, he had never before invited his colleagues to the Territory. In my own experience, members had travelled to New Zealand twice but never to Port Moresby. I decided to invite the commissioners to the Territory. I obtained the support of David Hay, the administrator, and then did some lobbying among my Australian colleagues. I had thought that the possible reason for the reluctance of my predecessors to offer to host the conference in TPNG was a lack of confidence in their ability to run such a conference, or just possibly that such a conference might have meant the loss of a “holiday” down south in more pleasant conditions.
As soon as I began to canvass the possibility of a TPNG conference, I ran into strong opposition from the commissioners’ wives and their civilian secretaries. I had known that the host always provided a separate entertainment program for spouses, but since the Whitrods could not afford it, my wife had seldom attended a conference so I knew little about these activities. I had not realised that one of the attractions for the ladies was several days’ shopping at large department stores where discounts had often been arranged. Rather than Port Moresby, which in many ways closely resembled Townsville or Darwin, I had decided that I should offer Mt Hagen as the site for the conference, as this would give maximum exposure to TPNG problems. But I could not arrange suitable shopping — especially when it came to gifts for children and grandchildren. There were native artefacts of course, but these apparently didn’t appeal.
Although I did win over the commissioners and we held the Conference at Mt Hagen, quite a few of the wives did not attend. We had what I assessed as a useful week’s conference in the Highlands, with visits to nearby villages where we were graciously entertained at a “sing-sing”. At the “sing-sing”, the locals performed in splendid head-dresses with mainly only grass skirts below. The benefits of this conference were not apparent during my short stay in TPNG, but I like to think that it did later influence the state commissioners’ favourable responses to requests for the secondment of their senior officers to assist the PNG constabulary after Independence.
I found my more relaxed policing philosophy was contrary to the stiffer views of the kiaps. I was in conflict with their proposal that police should be used to force landholders off their traditional land in Bougainville. I told the administrator that there ought to be a less violent way of achieving their removal and that if the police were to be seen as the protectors of the local people, every avenue that might lead to a peaceful resolution ought to be explored. The kiap approach may well have been correct, but I had trouble accepting it. One of my problems in TPNG was that I had not developed any close working relationships. I was clearly a new arrival and an outsider. To the “old hands”, I was a too-clever academic from the comforts of a Canberra office who had never been on patrol. They thought that I failed to appreciate that the principle of the separation of powers did not and could not exist in many parts of the country simply because of the lack of manpower. I had met the public defender, Peter Lalor, and liked him and his philosophies but our relationship was only in its early stages. As I’ve said, I liked the Catholic archbishop who was dedicated to TPNG and a mature thinker knowledgeable in the TPNG culture, but in only a year we hadn’t yet achieved the deeper mutual understanding and trust that comes with long acquaintance. At about this time, I received a telephone call from John McKinna asking me to consider applying for the commissionership of the Queensland force. The Queensland Police Minister, Max Hodges, flew to TPNG to personally invite me to apply.
I decided that I had little hope of bringing about much improvement on the TPNG front in the next four years. I had suffered several attacks of malaria which Mavis nursed me through; the hot muggy climate was harder on our ageing bodies than I had expected; Mavis was missing contact with our children and grandchildren; we had not made any close friends with Port Moresby residents for our philosophies were not mutual; and I had realised how little I did know about the complex scene. Economists have a concept, opportunity costs, which requires decisions to be based not only upon the benefits of choosing one particular option, but on the loss of benefits if another option is chosen. I was being offered an opportunity to implement a set of recommendations to improve the Queensland Police Force which had the unanimous endorsement of the Queensland Cabinet. This appeared to me to present a better opportunity for real progress than an isolated campaign to prepare TPNG police for Independence Day, especially since my moves were being resisted by a substantial number of influential administrative officials. There would be other benefits: a move south would bring the Whitrods closer to their family, away from malaria and within easier reach of medical specialists and better living conditions. So, after a preliminary refusal and some long talks with Mavis and Kim Beazley Snr, who happened to be in Port Moresby, I accepted the minister’s invitation.
The administrator, David Hay, appreciated my situation and accepted my resignation with a kindly worded regret. I was touched to receive a letter from the secretary of the TPNG Officers of Police Association asking me to reconsider my resignation as his members would very much like me to stay. Before we left, Mavis found a suitable position for Manassa and a safe home for Pepi, our faithful watchdog. When Mavis first told Manassa we were leaving, his eyes filled with tears and he retired to the kitchen and sobbed. Manassa, like Eric Kibuka, obviously regarded Mavis as a two-cow lady.
I now realise that I was a poor choice for the TPNG commissionership. I was not acquainted with local customs and current administrative practices. I was inadequately briefed, mainly because there was no authoritative material on which to base predictions of social change or on which to make decisions about the coming upheaval. The politics of the situation made the Commonwealth feel justified in seeking to grant independence as soon as possible. The reality was best understood by the kiaps, who argued that it was coming too soon. When first asked to help, I had tried to poach a younger police administrator from the states’ forces, but I could not attract anyone in whose capabilities I had faith. I had been it, by default. My predecessor, Bob Cole, had been a man I much admired. He had a fine war record in the TPNG regiment; he had been a senior kiap and was able to hold his own with other senior kiaps, he spoke fluent pidgin and had a most cooperative wife: he was an excellent choice for the job. But Bob Cole was understandably thin on police practices and philosophy, especially for urban areas, and these looked like being trouble spots in the near future. The Coles had decided that they should go south to retirement — and they were younger than Mavis and me. Perhaps a better arrangement might have been to invite Bob to stay on for a year with me in a protracted handover. His TPNG knowledge would have ensured that my London philosophy was modified for local application. In fact, I now think that I was wrong in attempting to introduce these principles, no matter how modified, at that time. Perhaps we could have worked out some kind of variation on the “bastard” Canadian system where the Royal Canadian Mounted Police provide an armed gendarmerie for country areas and a national police centre, while Canadian municipalities appoint their own constables in the English form.
But it is easy to use hindsight to formulate alternative scenarios. As it was, we left Papua New Guinea and I soon found myself at Brisbane airport where Sergeant Ken Hogget met me and drove me into the city. He was a likeable young man. I found out afterwards that he had wangled the job of picking me up, displacing the commissioner’s normal driver. As we approached the City, Ken said: “Commissioner, I don’t know how much you know about the Queensland Police Force, but it’s pretty corrupt.” Not wishing to appear totally naive, I said something about having some idea of the problem.
“Well, it’s pretty bad,” Ken said.
8
In need of reform: Queensland
(1970-1976)
COLIN Dillon called to see me recently when he was passing through Adelaide. I had
waited many years to meet him and to congratulate and thank him for his invaluable evidence at the Fitzgerald Inquiry into police corruption in Queensland. Colin was the only person who responded to Tony Fitzgerald’s plea to members of the Queensland Police to come forward with information about corruption in the Force. Colin had been a sergeant in the now infamous Vice Squad and was in a good position to answer Fitzgerald’s call. Nobody else did. Colin received commendation from Tony Fitzgerald, but since then he has not been promoted. When he went to the top to discover why all of his contemporaries had been promoted while he hadn’t, all he got was a steely stare.
I told Colin that in the mid 1970s, because of certain events, I hadn’t felt safe despite being the top policeman in the state. I had taken to locking my bedroom door at night and keeping a firearm with me. Colin said he had done the same thing after the Fitzgerald Inquiry.
Colin Dillon has been a very good officer and a fine role model for Aboriginal police. He told me how very disappointed his mother was with the stopping of his promotion, but how very proud she is of him. I told Colin that when Mike Ahern took over as premier, I immediately wrote to him asking that there could be some recognition of the great contribution made by those members of the Queensland Police Force who had been prepared to publicly fight corruption in the force and who, as a consequence, had suffered much under the administration of my successor, Terry Lewis. I had mentioned Alec Jeppeson and Basil Hicks as two who had been grievously treated. I received a reply from Ahern saying that the matter would be considered. Nothing has ever eventuated. To this day, there are still many individuals in the Queensland system who are unequal to their responsibilities, who still seek revenge for others’ refusals to be “yes men” or who wish to be seen as supporters of the old and now disgraced political machine. Colin and I talked of these matters for an hour. When he left he said: “I’ve always wanted to shake your hand.” I said: “Let’s keep in touch. I’m glad that you called.” We hugged each other.