The state of emergency – under the State Transport Acts – gave the government and police infinitely wider powers of civic control and arrest.
The decision naturally disturbed Whitrod. He saw the police not as an arm of government, but an agent for social harmony. He wanted a force that respected civil liberties.
As with his naive discussion over lunch with reporters Ken Blanch and Ron Richards when he first arrived in Brisbane, the confluence of police and politics was anathema to Whitrod. To his detriment, he simply could not grasp the concept.
Unfortunately for Whitrod, too, the powerful Police Union under Edington had its greatest ally in Bjelke-Petersen. The police commissioner, whichever way he turned, was snookered.
Bjelke-Petersen publicly announced the state of emergency on Tuesday 13 July 1971, ahead of the Springboks’ arrival eight days later.
Lewis recorded in his police diary on 13 July: ‘Office at 8.25am. Asst. Comm. Duncan phoned re instruction from Comm. that staff must be made available during Springbok Visit . . . Asst. Comm. Hughes phoned to say that Mr Whitrod has instructed that every male member of the J.A. Bureau is to be available for the 22nd, 24th, 27th and 31st . . . Saw Duncan and Barlow re: Chain of Command.’
Abe Duncan, who was in the middle of his Brifman interviews, wrote in his own diary for that day: ‘With Supt. McMahon left 9.10am and went to Ballymore oval for observations with other police officers re Springbok visit. Saw Det. S. Sgt Lewis re; problems in J.A. Bureau and discussed same with Mr Barlow . . .’
The Springboks’ match against Australia would ultimately be held at the Brisbane Exhibition grounds in Bowen Hills, and not the neighbouring home of Queensland rugby union – Ballymore – for security reasons. In expectation of violence, police erected a chain fence around the oval and its wooden stands.
They were correct in anticipating trouble. The Springboks’ tour through Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney had witnessed scores of anti-apartheid protests and dozens of arrests.
Whitrod himself attended the Sydney match between the Springboks and New South Wales on 10 July and saw demonstrators hurling smoke bombs, fireworks, fruit, beer cans and balloons onto the playing field. About one hundred people were arrested.
In anticipation, hundreds of rural Queensland police descended on Brisbane to help bolster the ranks in the capital. Country police were housed at the Enoggera army barracks, six kilometres north-west of the CBD.
Whitrod addressed the country troops billeted at the barracks. The Police Union would later claim that he insulted the young men, saying to them: ‘If you want to go home to Mummy, put your hand up.’ The union told the press that Whitrod’s attitude was ‘degrading’ and ‘demoralising’. Their attack was further evidence of the ‘sustained bitterness’ from the union that Whitrod had been experiencing from his first day.
On Tuesday 20 July, Lewis, having now toiled for almost a decade behind his desk at the JAB, travelled to the Enoggera army barracks – the temporary headquarters of the Police Department’s anticipated anti-apartheid offensive – for some specialised training in ‘arrest techniques’.
The next day, Lewis was back at the exhibition grounds, as his police diary reads: ‘Addressed briefly by Messrs Whitrod and Hodges. Remained there until 1pm.’
Meanwhile, Premier Bjelke-Petersen secretly called on Ron Edington and made an astonishing proposal to him and the Police Union.
According to Edington, the premier promised that police would ‘not be penalised for any action they take to suppress’ the demonstrators.
‘You stay with me and I’ll stay with you,’ he told Edington. ‘At the present moment you’ve got a claim before the [industrial] court?’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Edington answered.
‘What are you going for?’ Bjelke-Petersen went on. ‘I’ll make sure that you get it.’
Edington was dumbfounded.
‘But how can you interfere with the decision made by the Industrial Court?’
The premier told him not to worry about it.
The Springboks were due to arrive late on the afternoon of Thursday 22 July at Archerfield airport, twelve kilometres south-west of the CBD, and not the major interstate airfield at Eagle Farm. Archerfield was primarily reserved for civil aviation.
That morning, the police fully mobilised. In the theatrette at police headquarters, Duncan attended a briefing on the looming confrontation. The Archerfield arrival strategy was discussed.
Duncan checked on the team’s estimated time of arrival. Their plane had been delayed due to fog in Canberra.
At 3.30 p.m. he then repaired to Wickham Terrace and the Tower Mill Motel – one of the few hotels in the city that would agree to accommodate the Springboks. There he joined almost six hundred uniformed and senior police officers.
Lewis reported to the motel earlier in the day. He wrote: ‘Then took charge of . . . 50 detectives and plain-clothes personnel there, until Commissioned officers arrived later in afternoon.’
By the time the team bus arrived at the hotel at 5.26 p.m., the peaceful and orderly mood was deteriorating.
Duncan recorded in his police diary that at 5.50 p.m. ‘Supt. Barnett, after discussion, directed crowd to move on. After no response, police on duty were directed to move them on . . .’
Whitrod, on the scene, had been contacted by the matron of nearby Holy Spirit hospital, requesting that the noise level be reduced in consideration of the patients.
Many of the police in attendance wore riot helmets and were armed with batons. Undercover police in jeans and leather jackets threaded through the crowd of about two hundred, which had gathered at dusk on the footpath opposite the motel entrance. Among them were Indigenous rights leader Sam Watson and student lawyer and future Queensland premier Peter Beattie.
Whitrod had been installed on a first-floor balcony of the Tower Mill Motel. He was brandishing a loudhailer.
Then the police charged, and the demonstrators scattered. Police at the scene that night recall hearing Whitrod shout ‘hold your ranks’ through the loudhailer, but hundreds of police ploughed forward, herding the protesters down the steep slope of Wickham Park and off a low stone wall with a drop down to Roma Street.
Several protesters were injured, and a handful arrested.
Clifford Crawford, a young police officer at the time of the incident, says in hindsight ‘the commander lost control of the troops’.
Lewis says he was consigned to the side of the motel to ensure that no demonstrators damaged the building. ‘I actually wasn’t out the front of it,’ he recalls. ‘There was this charge, for want of a better word, and Mr Whitrod wasn’t happy about that.’
Later that night after the riot, the Springboks attended a special cocktail and dinner party for 150 guests, hosted by none other than one of Shirley Brifman’s good friends, the Brisbane stockbroker Robin Corrie, at his luxury home at 36 Armagh Street, Clayfield.
Two bus loads of police stood guard outside the house and plain-clothes officers were posted in the garden. Ten of the twenty-five-strong rugby squad attended the soiree.
The press reported: ‘Lineout expert Frik Dupreez, who towered over the beautiful young girls who flocked around him, and hooker Robbie Barnard said they were at ease socially for one of the few times on the tour.’
The footballers said the demonstrators weren’t a problem, just a ‘pain in the neck’. Certainly not enough to cause a headache.
At the party, Corrie was showing off his wife of less than a year – the former Andree Roberts. After an acrimonious split with ex-wife Barbara, Corrie won over the glamorous and vivacious Andree, who knew Corrie well.
She had lived locally and often dropped by the Corrie place, where she met friends, including local journalists, and drank at the opulent poolside bar. Crowds of people often partied at the house w
hen Corrie wasn’t even there.
At least once a fortnight, a small group of detectives gathered at Corrie’s house for spirits and beer.
‘They were always in suits and ties and I thought they were just businessmen,’ a family member recalls. ‘Robin was very good friends with Joh Bjelke-Petersen and often described him as “my most important client”. He also gave stockbroking advice to prostitutes.’
On the night of the party, the slender Andree, staunchly anti–Country Party, tried to get a Courier-Mail photographer to take a picture of the captain of the Springboks with her Indigenous maid and good friend, Lesley. It caused a minor scandal and embarrassed Corrie, who expected Lesley to wait on the footballers. ‘She is not the maid, she is a guest at this party,’ Andree was heard to remark.
Demonstrations continued through the Springboks’ twelve-day Queensland tour.
Elements of the local press praised Whitrod’s leadership during the crisis. The Police Union did not. Predictably, it once again passed a vote of no confidence in the police commissioner. Their assessment? He’d been too soft with the agitators.
Sydney’s Daily Telegraph said criticism of Whitrod’s handling of the situation smacked of the ‘Judas Iscariot’. It argued that the state of emergency was enacted to minimise violence and damage to property, and that Whitrod had ‘tried and successfully achieved this by peaceful means’.
The report added: ‘Certain police factions incensed by the fact they were not allowed to show their prowess at curbing public demonstrations by strong arm tactics, then censure Mr Whitrod for his comparatively peaceful handling of a situation they wanted to turn into a warlike confrontation.’
The Daily Telegraph had hit upon the irony of the situation. Here, Whitrod had faced one of his toughest tests: overweight, a bookworm and an office-bound man dedicated to the rigour of administration, he was on show, in a scenario of actual street policing involving physical force, to hundreds of tough Queensland police officers. To his men. They were always going to find him wanting.
The riot, however, was an epiphany for Bjelke-Petersen. He had shown his leadership by invoking the state of emergency. He had seen at first hand how the force of the police, on behalf of the government, and despite Whitrod’s unease, could be utilised efficiently to quash public unrest. And he understood that, like a good old-fashioned father, if he threatened to punish conservative Queensland’s naughty children, it met with huge voter approval.
On that cold night outside the Tower Mill Motel in Brisbane, the separation of government and police blurred, and Bjelke-Petersen fully recognised its importance as a political weapon.
On the day of the Springboks’ match in Brisbane – Saturday 24 July – a local by-election for the inner-city seat of Merthyr took place amid all the anti-apartheid hoopla.
It was won by former Special Branch officer Don Lane.
The Most Hated Man in the Force
The Brifman investigation gave Police Commissioner Whitrod the perfect excuse to implement what he considered to be a vital component of a reformed police force – a smart and sharp internal investigating unit that would root out corruption within its own ranks.
In addition, Police Minister Hodges had announced a separate investigation into allegations of police graft and corruption on the Gold Coast, centring on massage parlours.
As Abe Duncan continued his painstaking interviews with Brifman, Hodges and Whitrod established the Criminal Intelligence Unit (CIU). It was stationed well away from the maelstrom of police headquarters in the city, in a clutch of rooms at the police college in Laurel Avenue, Chelmer.
The CIU opened its doors for business on 21 September 1971. Both the Brifman and Gold Coast investigations were tasked to the unit.
Detective Inspector Norm Gulbransen was named head of the CIU. Other recruits to the so-called untouchables were Detective Sergeant Basil ‘the Hound’ Hicks, Don Becker, Detective Senior Sergeant Jim Voigt, and Senior Constable Greg Early.
On commencing duties, the staff were handed a document that laid out the aims of the special unit. They were to obtain information regarding all possible systems of graft and corruption to prevent the setting up of ‘crime rings’ or control of crime by ‘crime bosses’ through standover men and other methods, and to protect honest members of the force from the pressure coming from crime bosses and their syndicates.
Days before he even learned about his new job, Hicks was phoned by Tony Murphy and summoned to a meeting. Murphy asked him to come to the first floor of CIB headquarters via the back lift, where he met Hicks, and proceeded to the building’s roof.
According to Hicks, Murphy said, ‘There’s no need for us to be always fighting. Why don’t you join us? There’s nine of us – Terry, Glen, and I are the main three and there’s the other six. If you join us, you will be one of the main ones – there will be me, you, Terry, and Glen.’
‘What about Whitrod?’ Hicks asked.
‘We’ll surround him.’
As to be expected, the Police Union muscled up against the CIU.
Whitrod declared that his Crime Intelligence Unit would concentrate on a few ‘target’ criminals. In reality, it would predominantly monitor the financial status of bent Queensland police – how much were they taking in? How much were they spending above and beyond a regular salary? Whitrod wanted to secure some prostitutes as informants to gauge the level of police corruption.
Greg Early was responsible for clerical duties within the unit and he scraped together equipment and established a records section. They were given three rooms at the college and two unmarked squad cars. Each member was issued a bus pass.
The Department of Works fitted new Yale locks to all doors accessing the CIU’s three rooms.
Early remembers: ‘We got a large combination safe, a safe so big that the floor under the old wooden building had to be reinforced and a crane had to be hired to put the safe in through the front door.’
Early can’t remember Whitrod ever visiting the CIU offices. Little was committed to paper by way of memos or instructions. As far as Early observed, all communication with Whitrod regarding the unit’s activities was largely private and face to face through Gulbransen.
From the outset, the CIU discussed the use of listening devices and other ways to trap the Rat Pack.
Early quickly began to feel the heat.
‘The CIU was despised over its activities and was wrongly credited with being all over the state in a variety of vehicles,’ he says. ‘I soon realised that I was involved in a political minefield and that my popularity as a police officer had gone downhill even further from having worked closely with Mr Whitrod.’
The Police Union instantly branded the CIU a bunch of spies. Murphy, meanwhile, employed the same modus operandi on Gulbransen as he did with witnesses at the National Hotel inquiry. He travelled to Ayr in north Queensland – Gulbransen’s old beat – and sniffed about for dirt.
Whitrod warned the amiable Gulbransen, saying the CIU chief would become ‘one of the most unpopular police officers in Queensland’.
It was a gross understatement.
The Magician Comes Calling Again
Just five kilometres south-west of Robin Corrie’s mansion in Clayfield, Brifman was falling apart in the Wilston safe house, taking tablets to get to sleep.
Within days of the anti-apartheid protests, New South Wales detectives Williams and Paull were due to arrive from Sydney to grill Brifman yet again about her allegations against Police Commissioner Norm Allan, Fred Krahe, and the rest of her criminal milieu.
And to add to her problems, her husband, Sonny, had been charged with false pretences and was due to face a magistrates court in Brisbane.
In late July and early August, Williams and Paull flew to Brisbane to interrogate Brifman. Later that month Brifman herself went to Sydney on a short trip and
was back by 30 August.
Whitrod, meanwhile, didn’t want to wait for the Brifman interviews to be concluded before he started pre-emptive strikes against the Queensland officers mentioned in the records of interview to date.
On Tuesday 31 August, he took the unprecedented move of transferring Detective Murphy from the Licensing Branch to the Juvenile Aid Bureau.
It was a massive humiliation for the famous detective. And it was a message to Lewis. Whitrod had put a detective suspected of corruption, courtesy of the Brifman allegations, in the same little basket as the head of the JAB.
Murphy was understandably livid, cooped up with the ‘bum smackers’ in the office not far from Whitrod’s. He took on no official duties under Lewis.
‘It infuriated Murphy more towards Whitrod,’ Lewis says. ‘[He] hated it. I don’t think he did a day of bloody work.’
Just a few days later, Duncan received an urgent phone call at 10.25 a.m. from a hysterical Shirley Brifman. She was at the Wilston safe house at about 8.30 a.m. when she received another death threat from Sydney gunman John Regan. Sonny, supposedly unaware of the threat, drove Brifman to her sister Marge Chapple’s house in Paddington.
Shirley asked for sedative tablets and her husband gave her two Tuinals, the highly addictive barbiturate depressant, also used in the 1960s and 1970s as a recreational drug called ‘rainbows’, ‘beans’, or ‘jeebs’. She rested while Sonny and Marge left the house. Minutes later, Brifman called Duncan.
In that call she confided that she’d ‘taken some sleeping pills’.
Duncan, Assistant Police Commissioner Val Barlow, and a policewoman headed straight over to the safe house, where they’d agreed to meet. There they found Brifman unconscious under the house. It was yet another overdose.
Three Crooked Kings Page 25