Once Upon a Time in Melbourne by Liam Houlihan

Author:Liam Houlihan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780522867138
Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing

41

WHAT’S HE BUILDING IN THERE?

Steve Bracks

LITTLE changed with the passage of years, despite changed regimes and new premiers. In the wake of the Hodson killings the barons of the garden state did not budge in their opposition to a royal commission. Mullett and the union didn’t want a commission, Bracks and the government didn’t want one, and Nixon, Overland and the force certainly didn’t want one. Some thought the decision making flowed in that order, too. Early on the Monday morning after the discovery of the Hodsons the head of the Premier’s Department called the premier at home to inform him of the grim development. Steve Bracks very briefly entertained the prospect of a royal commission into the police.1 He discussed his options with his coterie of senior ministers—his deputy and his police minister, Andre Haermeyer—who echoed the force’s opposition to a commission, and he spoke to the Attorney-General. Haermeyer made the case publicly that police, particularly anti-corruption taskforces like CEJA, were doing a good job policing the police. Nixon had certainly lanced some boils in the old Drug Squad. And Haermeyer warned that an external corruption commission would just become a wigfest stacked with lawyers. Knowing some in Spring Street would be discussing a royal commission, Victoria Police briefed the Department of Premier and Cabinet that advances being made by Purana getting gangland figures to court would be delayed by a royal commission. It was a persuasive ploy and Bracks promptly scotched any prospect of a commission.

Christine Nixon had her own solution to fight the rot. She had been urging the premier to boost her powers to unilaterally sack police she thought had strayed. Mullett and the union were vehemently opposed to her proposals and Bracks was equivocating. All the while, Paul Dale remained on the books with the Victoria Police. Tired of waiting for new reforms, Nixon put to use, for the first time since their creation five years earlier, existing no confidence powers and issued Paul Dale with a ‘please explain’. She gave him twenty-one days to convince her he shouldn’t be sacked, and then in October gave him the sack. I’m determined to rid Victoria Police of those members who act corruptly or inappropriately, Nixon said. But it was swings and roundabouts for the mallee bull. The day after Nixon put him on notice, the charges he was facing over the Dublin Street drug rip were dropped in the Magistrates’ Court because the key witness against him, Terry Hodson, was no longer around to testify. Dale then appealed his sacking to the Supreme Court and had it successfully overturned on the basis that he had been denied procedural fairness. Having got his job back, Dale then resigned with his entitlements intact.

Many in the community felt that the police could not possibly investigate themselves properly, that they would be bound by ties of mateship, and that they—or their bosses—would be inclined to keep their dirty laundry out of sight. The clarion call of ‘How can you have

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