Networked Knowledge - Whitton Reports

This version of the book has been set-up by Dr Robert N Moles
The Evan Whitton homepage

Can of Worms II

EVAN WHITT0N

Preface

It has been said, and not entirely in jest, that Sydney is the most corrupt city in the western world, except of course for Newark, New Jersey, and Brisbane, Queensland.

Confirmation of Sydney's standing, if such were needed, derives from the fact that the widow of a recent Premier, Sir Robert William Askin, a bank clerk before he went into politics, left an estate of a little under $4 million, and the widow of his Police Commissioner, Frederick John Hanson, left a little under $1.25 million.

It is perhaps less well understood that certain institutions of state in New South Wales have for more than fifteen years been subjected to a process of unprecedented reform. Thus:

The prison system is now seen as a sort of institutional blowfly, harbinger of a Spring of reform. From 1970, it was revealed that warders engaged, as a matter of official policy, in criminal assaults on persons in the care of the State. Disclosures were initially made in Parliament by a Labor MP, Wilfred George Petersen, and by James Frederick Staples (later Mr justice Staples) and a group of Labor lawyers in The Sunday Australian, and later and persistently by the Labor lawyers and The National Times. After six years, the Willis (Liberal) Government instituted a Royal Commission (1976-78) under Justice John Nagle. He recommended reforms involving a quantum leap from the eighteenth century to the twentieth, and Anthony Vinson began their implementation from 1979 to 1981. The process thus took more than ten years, causing the present writer to surmise: There is a God, but it sometimes takes Him five to ten years to get out of the blocks.

Reform of the police force, after a delay of 187 years, was rather more rapid, if largely accidental. After a sustained parliamentary campaign, a Police Commissioner, facing an imminent disclosure in The Bulletin, abruptly resigned in June 1979. Justice Edwin Lusher conducted an inquiry into police administration from 1979 to April 1981. From late in 1983, Police Minister Peter Anderson began to implement Lusher's recommendations for an assault on endemic corruption in the force, and this began to raise a head of steam with the appointment of John Keith Avery as Police Commissioner in August 1984.

The process of reform of the legal system, beginning in 1983, was also relatively rapid. Disclosures on ABC television of criminal activity by magistrates, and in The National Times and The Age of alleged activities by judges, led to a slew of inquiries: Street on Farquhar in 1983, two Senate inquiries on the conduct of a judge in 1984, and Stewart on the Age Tapes in 1985 and 1986. Along with ventilation in The Sydney Morning Herald in 1986 of Anthony Vinson's research on sentencing practices in the New South Wales District Court, these inquiries were factors in the Unsworth (Labor) Government's introduction, despite resistance from some judges, of a package of reforms in October 1986.

On the political front, disclosures in 1983 in The Sun-Herald, The Sunday Telegraph, and The National Times led to a Special Commission of Inquiry, conducted by justice John Slattery in 1983 and 1984, into alleged activities of a recent Cabinet Minister. While Parliament itself was still in need of reform, the mere fact of the inquiry may encourage the politicians to shun the corrupt approach enshrined by Liberal Premier Sir Robert Askin.

Disclosures in The Bulletin in 1980 led to the Costigan Royal Commission (1980-84) on painters and dockers, and thus to the establishment of its successor, The National Crime Authority. These matters were not directly connected with reform in New South Wales, but gave additional impetus to it.

The Wran Government also had a hand in initiating a number of inquiries touching on organised crime itself: Woodward on Drug Trafficking (1977-79), Stewart on Mr Asia (1981-83), and Stewart on the Age Tapes. These however could have little effect until reform of the police force and other institutions (not to mention those still requiring reform, such as the Public Service) was well under way. When the process is complete, it may follow that Sydney's ultimate institution, organised crime, will in time be subject to similar reform.

These events may thus suggest a six-stage blueprint for the process of reform.

1. Dubious activity.
2. Acquisition of data on this activity.
3. Ventilation of the data in the Parliament or the media.
4. A Government initiative to inquire.
5. The inquiry itself, and its recommendations.
6. Implementation to reform.

It may be noted that Parliament, as directly representing the community and so having the privilege of protection from the defamation laws, is the proper forum for ventilation. In practice however it lacks a degree of utility: it is rarely in session; questions on the floor of the House are not answered; questions on notice may not be answered for months, if at all; and backbench members with an interest in reform, such as the Independent MP, John Hatton, are unable to table documents.

By default, ventilation was thus to an extent left to the media. But acquisition of data does not necessarily mean it will be disclosed. The defamation laws may often seem to exist for the protection of rogues in high places; they also offer an excuse for sloth in the media: the peace and safety of the too hard basket beckons; the search for the form of words is suspended. That said, it is clear that persistence by various elements of the media was often the critical factor in the eventual establishment of formal inquiries. In the way of these things, the inquiries tended to open a can of worms undreamed of by the makers of the original disclosures, and so compounded the pressure for reform.

This book grew out of analyses, published in The Sydney Morning Herald in October 1984 and April 1986, of the way institutions in New South Wales grappled over the last decade with these problems of organised crime, corruption and reform.

A major question concerns the role of the Wran Government and its chief executive in the process of reform. The chronology of events may suggest, possibly for reasons of statecraft, priorities, and judgment of the art of the possible, an enthusiasm rather less marked than some may have preferred. To the extent that it proceeded against the chosen priorities of the Government, this would in itself be rather encouraging: it would suggest that community pressure alone may be sufficient, even in a place like the Sydney of Askin and after, to achieve significant reform.

In any event, it is clear that, by contrast with institutions in, say, Queensland, those in New South Wales were still able to respond to problems of corruption, and that, at the end of the Wran decade, prospects for the future in that area were perhaps more hopeful than at any time since Captain Arthur Phillip sailed out of Sydney Heads in 1792, and left the colony to John McArthur and the gangsters of the New South Wales Corps.

Evan Whitton,

Sydney,
7 October 1986.

Revised Edition

For this edition, I have restructured the book and included additional material relating to Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales police, the milieu, and the bureaucracy.

E. W.

October 1987

Top of Page