by Ray Whitrod
But all this was far in the future when Mavis and I moved to Brisbane in 1970. Mavis hunted out a lovely old home at St Lucia, close to the University of Queensland and to the Police Headquarters where I was to spend a great deal of my time over the next seven years. Again, we were establishing ourselves in a city in which we had no friends or relatives.
I soon became involved in a political struggle with the Police Union and with the premier, principally because I wanted to implement an existing police regulation. This stated that promotion would be by merit. My controversial administration of the force had repercussions for Mavis. We were subjected to a harassment campaign which entailed union-inspired media attacks on me personally. In the press I was said to be ‘destroying the morale of the Force’. It was clear this piece of editorial opinion came from the journalists who report on police matters and rely on their contacts within the force; it was hardly surprising that they ran the union line. We received anonymous telephone calls and unrequested visits at all hours by medicos and taxis. The taxi companies soon got wise and took to ringing us to confirm any request for their services. But we still had to answer the phone at unearthly hours. The heart specialist who said he had been contacted by ‘one of your sergeants’ arrived on our doorstep at 3.00 a.m. expecting to find me incapacitated by a heart attack. I told him I was fine and he went away. Getting rid of the truckload of gravel that was dumped in our driveway was more difficult.
Much of Mavis’s time was spent in supporting me socially and privately. She organised excellent dinner parties for influential guests, she joined me in visiting police cadets on their outings, she once provided a sick bay for a cadet whom we had found ill in the mountains. As well, Mavis soon had to contend with a family problem. The marriage of one of our son’s had broken down and he had brought his son to Queensland. Mavis was asked to go to court to give evidence in the custody trial. Our grandson was placed in his father’s custody and the two of them lived with us for some time, with Mavis providing out-of-school-hours supervision.
Mavis really propped me up at times when I felt beaten. I had few public supporters for my campaign to reduce corruption in the Queensland Police Force. It became increasingly clear that my code of strict honesty did not have general appeal to Queenslanders, and without a community base I could not win. I worked six days a week and on Sundays we drove to the coast and walked along the shore. I have always found the sea a soothing influence and that, coupled with Mavis’s tranquility and wise counsel, would gradually restore my peace of mind. There were two occasions I remember well. When one of my few trusted senior officers, Val Barlow, retired in 1973, I felt lonely and vulnerable and thought of leaving. As we walked along the beach, Mavis gave me fresh hope and so I stayed. Later, when my ministerial protector was transferred by the premier, shutting off any opportunity to present my case to Cabinet, I again became dispirited. There seemed to be no point in continuing the struggle, but again Mavis inspired me to stay. This I did until the premier began overriding my operational control and, amidst some small public dismay, I left office. Later, the Fitzgerald Commission revealed some of the stress we had been subjected to.
When I decided to go to Queensland, I had just assumed that that state was simply another part of Australia, with similar values and customs. I had lived and worked in South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT And while there had been minor variations, I had felt at home in all of them. But Queenslanders are not like other Australians. Certainly, they drive on the left hand side of the road and pay federal taxes, but there are significant differences. There is no Upper House of review; Parliament meets on only a few days for short sessions; the struggle between the Irish mafia and its protestant equivalent is far more pervasive and intense than elsewhere; until quite recently, education had a very low priority; the squattocracy tradition persists; and local media are passive, perhaps as a result of the frequency of “stopper writs”.
I gradually put together an assessment of the hurdles facing me. Most of these were new to me, and few people were keen to declare their allegiance to my cause. It soon became clear that there were three power bases on the sociopolitical scene: the Irish, the anti-Irish and the squattocracy. However, because of my philosophy that a police administrator should maintain strict neutrality, I was not prepared to seek the sponsorship of any of them. This was a position they did not understand, it was apparently a new concept in Queensland. Everyone accepted the slogan “If you are not for us, you are against us”.
I found the Premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, to be a complex character. I had come to Queensland prepared to like him as I had immediately liked the Police Minister, Max Hodges, when Max had come to New Guinea. When I first met Joh, I think we both warmed to each other and elements of that warmth remained in an ambiguous fashion over the next seven years. I’d heard that Joh was a non-smoker, non-drinker, non-gambler and a Sunday school teacher and I thought I had some idea of what his values would be. I found him pleasant enough to talk to, but I was uneasy in his presence. Over the previous twenty years or so, I had spent a fair bit of time professionally and socially with Australian prime ministers and Cabinet ministers. I had got on well with them and was accepted by them as a friendly professional with my own area of expertise. Joh never gave me that professional recognition. He treated me as though I were another of his clerks, there to carry out his instructions while not impeding his plans. I kept trying to get through to him that I had a responsibility to maintain the law, that I had taken an oath to this effect and that I was responsible for my own actions as a constable. I said I would implement any legal instructions given to me by him or by my minister, but how I did this was my decision. Joh sensed, I think, that I would do no more, and perhaps that wasn’t sufficient. Certainly his subsequent relationship with Terry Lewis was quite different.
I have never forgiven Joh for letting me walk blindfolded into the nest of ants that was the Queensland Police Force. Joh must have been well aware of the real state of the Force, but he never gave me any inkling. For example, I knew nothing of the Sir Thomas Hiley exposures until three years after I’d left Queensland. Joh must have known that Hiley had shown almost every police officer in Queensland to be participating in a giant scam, that they were accepting their immediate superiors’ assertions that arresting illegal bookmakers was out of the question. Hiley had revealed that illegal bookmakers in every town in Queensland paid a substantial fee to the local police. The Fitzgerald Inquiry subsequently showed that there was an illegal bookmaker operating quite openly in Kingaroy, Joh’s own town. If the police could be bribed on this scale to turn a blind eye to people committing one sort of offence, why not to other offences as well?
Looking back, Joh’s reaction to me was much the same as my reaction to him. He was meeting a stranger: all he knew about my background was what Max Hodges had told him when putting me forward as a candidate, and his only experience with police commissioners had been with crooked ones. Perhaps he thought I was from the same mould. He did give me some advice at the time which I’ve always remembered, but I’m not sure how it should be interpreted. He said: “Ray, my two years as Police Minister taught me one thing about the Queensland Police Force. It’s a big organisation, it’s like a big bit of complicated machinery. If you lean on it too hard you’ll put it out of kilter.” I don’t know what he meant by that. Did he mean that I was to go slow in introducing the recommendations of John McKinna, the South Australian commissioner who had recently written a report on the Queensland force? If so, it was strange advice — I’d been given the implementation of the McKinna reforms as my main task.
I sometimes wonder what was covered in the Sunday school lessons Joh gave to the children in Kingaroy. I wonder if he ever brought up that biblical principle: you cannot serve both God and Mammon. The children’s parents would have known of the SP bookmaker in Kingaroy, some of the children might have known themselves. Joh, it seems to me, has proved you can do something that the Bible says you c
an’t do. Joh, in my opinion, has served both God and Mammon.
Luckily for me, Joh was not present at the gala picture night that I arranged soon after I arrived in Brisbane. I had discovered that, as commissioner of police, I was automatically the president of the Queensland Police Citizens Youth Welfare Association which ran about fifteen clubs throughout the state. Each club had a police constable as executive officer, but representatives of the community helped run the clubs and provided instructors. I found that the association was short of money and at our first council meeting we discussed ways of raising funds. I suggested that we hold a picture night. I had noticed a newspaper article about the famous actor, Leo McKern — usually known as Rumpole of the Bailey — who was back in Queensland on holiday. His new film, Ryan’s Daughter, had just been released in Melbourne where the Age’s reviewer had found it to be very good. I suggested that the association should arrange an opening night at Brisbane’s leading picture theatre.
We did this and the cinema proprietor agreed that all profits could go to the association. We publicised the event well and had Leo McKern arrive at the cinema in a limousine where he was met by an escort of mounted Police Troopers. There was a packed house. The first part of the program was completed without incident and then Ryan’s Daughter was shown. It was an excellent and very interesting film, but it had a couple of bedroom scenes. These weren’t all that revealing or suggestive by present day standards but, thirty years ago, they were far too advanced for Brisbane. They offended many of the parents with children present in the audience and I understood their concern. Unfortunately, I hadn’t previewed the film; I had only read the review in the Age. The following day I received a number of angry calls from parents. There were complaints on talkback radio and letters to the editor of the Courier-Mail. I had to make a public apology for choosing the film and confess that I had been at fault in not viewing it beforehand. This was a very poor beginning for my stay in Queensland and I’m sure many people thought I was far too liberal. Joh is himself a strong family man and I’m glad he wasn’t present.
I took to keeping out of Joh’s way as much as possible. I was answerable to the police minister, not the premier. But Joh had once been the police minister himself and he retained much of his old interest in the job. This suited the executive of the Police Union, who routinely bypassed Max Hodges and myself, going straight to Joh. Joh believed he had God on his side. I always thought I had God on my side. But Joh also had a majority of influential Queenslanders supporting him. I had far fewer backers. I tried to gather support, but with very little success. I tried the Police Christian Federation, of which there was a strong branch in Queensland, but they were far more interested in personal salvation than in improving the ethical standards of the Police Force. The Police Scouters Branch of which I was a member wasn’t interested in any political activity, and rightly so. The International Police Association, which I strongly supported and which gave me life membership when I left, never concerned itself with the ethical standards of the individual members of the Queensland Force. Mavis and I went to the evening services of a number of churches and spoke at random to members of the congregations, but most of them told us they were perfectly satisfied with the Police Force. They seemed to be unaware that there was so much corruption existing right under their noses. It was not clear to me whether they were simply ignorant or in a state of psychological denial.
I had a strong supporter in Zelman Cowan, the recently arrived Vice Chancellor of the University of Queensland. We were both Mexicans from south of the border and we were both subject to a lot of pressure. Zelman and I became good friends; he would offer me a shoulder to cry on briefly and I would offer him mine. Zelman’s methods of resolving problems were not confrontational. He felt that confrontation was not a very satisfactory way of resolving differences and he had other, perhaps more subtle, tactics. But I was launched on a confrontational encounter with the Police Union and there was no way I could back out of that without losing a great deal of respect. The union was implacably opposed to me. Every idea I produced, they immediately challenged. The union was very much under the control of its full-time civilian secretary, a man named Merv Callaghan who had once been an instructor at the Police Training College. I was told that he had entertained hopes that he might have succeeded Frank Bischof as commissioner. On my first day in office, Callaghan had rung me up full of bonhomie, calling me Ray and asking for my silent number, “in case of emergencies”. I had remained fairly formal, telling him that perhaps the president of union might be given my number, but not the secretary. Callaghan soon began to spend much of his time attacking me through his membership, through the premier and through the media.
A very high percentage of the Queensland Police Force were members of the union and were spread right throughout the state. The titular head of the Police Union was Sergeant Ron Edington. He was a crafty, happy-go-lucky drinker with eleven children. He appeared to me more reasonable and less adamant in his views than Callaghan, so my minister and I went out of our way to establish cordial relations with him. I would invite him to my office for drinks late on Friday evenings. On various occasions I talked to him confidentially about such things as forthcoming promotions and transfers. I was very much aware that, with Queensland being so vast, there could often be family problems associated with a new posting. And since I was not acquainted with most of the members of my new Force, I was ignorant of many domestic details such as the stage of schooling of their children, the occupational demands of their spouses and the state of health of their parents. To minimise the potential adverse consequences of moving members of the force around the state, I used to consult Ron about problems that might arise from particular promotions or transfers. Ron was very helpful; he knew many of the people involved and their family circumstances, so I was able to avoid causing some unnecessary hardship. I had told Ron that these were just confidential chats during which I sought his advice. After several of these meetings, however, I discovered that immediately after leaving me he would telephone the member of the Force whom we had been discussing and tell him that he, the president of the union, had been recommending that particular member’s promotion to me and no doubt the member would be hearing shortly about his new status. When I challenged Ron about this breach of confidentiality, he said that he had his presidential responsibilities. I think he meant that he needed to gain extra kudos so that he could retain the presidency of the union at the next election. He eventually became a millionaire, having struck it lucky with some land purchases.
The Police Union executive was composed of sergeants of various classifications, all of whom had some Irish association; they were known colloquially as the Green Mafia. Outwardly they seemed to be a very cohesive bunch but, like any Irish body, the union was prey to internal friction. So I kept my ear to the ground and picked up a few leads as to who amongst the twelve executive members was on the outer at any one time. Very early on I found that Detective Sergeant John Huey was in poor favour. I checked his file and he had a good record as a detective. He had fallen foul of the union executive because he had married a policewoman while his first wife was dying of cancer. I found out that John Huey and Hilary, his new wife, were having a bad time in one way or another. Both of them had excellent work records. I asked them to see me in my office and suggested to them that they both be posted to a police station between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, in the new neighbourhood of Beenleigh, where a fair amount of crime was being reported. I said I’d transfer John as the detective sergeant and Hilary as his detective constable. I said that this would be an experiment, that as far as I knew the arrangement had never been tried anywhere else, and that I would watch the results with a great deal of interest. John and Hilary went to Beenleigh and did a first-class job. The idea of a husband and wife detective team attracted a lot of attention in the police world. The Australian Embassy in Bangkok even sent me a cutting from a Thai newspaper about John and Hilary. John lost his seat on the ex
ecutive of the union so that he was no longer a voice for me at union meetings, if ever he was, but he and Hilary have produced a lot of useful work. I noticed that some years after I left Queensland, John Huey was assigned the task of investigating some of the suspect activities of Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Hilary and John and I have remained friends: we correspond at Christmas and see each other whenever they come to Adelaide.
Another member of the union executive was Vince Murphy. He was not on the outer at this stage, but he seemed to me to have leadership qualities that would be very useful to me if I could involve him in the reform of the Queensland Police Force. Vince was a tall, well-built man, very capable, easy to get on with — a strong character in his own right. I asked him to come and see me. I told him I was going to form a small, independent unit consisting of a sergeant and eight hand-picked men. I told Vince that the state manager of a large department store had come to see me, complaining about the way his store in Fortitude Valley was losing customers because of disorderly conduct on the streets, drunken driving and the general air of lawlessness that was creeping into the Valley. The manager told me that he had spoken to the inspector of police in Fortitude Valley, who had said that he’d look into the problem. In the ensuing three months, nothing happened and the situation had simply become worse. I told Vince that I’d spoken to my senior officers, who confirmed that there had recently been a number of fatal road accidents involving drunken drivers in the Valley. There were some brothels and a growing number of clubs at which illegal gambling was thought to take place. I explained to Vince that my senior officers were of the opinion that little could be done because it was difficult to gain entry to the clubs whose doors had been reinforced with steel and because it was difficult to prosecute prostitutes and brothel keepers. Under Queensland law, such a prosecution would require hard evidence of sexual activity and the wives of investigating policemen would object to such evidence being obtained. I asked Vince if he could think of an indirect way of resolving the problem. At the time, I was unaware that the state Member for Fortitude Valley was Don “Shady” Lane, a former officer of the Queensland Special Branch. Lane was subsequently convicted and imprisoned. When I had spoken to my senior officers about problems in the Valley, they had seemed to be uninterested in my insistence that they get active. I hadn’t realised then that they knew their inaction had the backing of the state member.