Back in the ’70s, we used to joke about Queensland being a corrupt, semi-fascist police state run by slimy politicians and crooked cops. These days, it’s Victoria which wears the odious crown of “the Moonlight State”.
The unhinged brutality of the police crackdown during the world’s longest Covid lockdowns – when Victoria police arrested pregnant mothers in their homes, fired rubber bullets at the Shrine of Remembrance, literally cracked skulls in Flinders St Station and smashed and pepper-sprayed old ladies in the street – shocked the world and trashed Victoria police’s reputation. But the rot had been endemic in the force for decades.
There was, for instance, the Red Shirts scandal, where Labor figures ignored police summons with impunity after the government and police leadership intervened. But the Red Shirts scandal was nothing compared to the shocking corruption revealed in the Lawyer X scandal.
A scandal which the Victorian government then spent millions to cover up as long as possible in order to buy time and virtual immunity for crooked cops.
For five years, Victoria Police grabbed every legal weapon it could lay its hands on in an orchestrated campaign of bullying and intimidation to cover up the darkest chapter in its history.
Millions of dollars in public funds were blown by police on Supreme Court injunctions, suppression orders and a myriad other legal games to prevent Victorians finding out about Lawyer X.
The scandal began when lawyer Nicola Gobbo, scion of an impeccably Labor-aligned dynasty of jurists and political figures was identified as the mysterious “Lawyer X”. Interestingly, Gobbo’s first brush with public notoriety came when, as a member of the ALP, Gobbo publicly claimed a Liberal staffer had forged letters purporting to be from Jeff Kennett. Before that, Gobbo, then a law student, was a member of a household busted with 1.4 kilograms of amphetamine worth $82,000 and 350 grams of cannabis.
A good behaviour bond – friends alleged Gobbo’s co-accused took the heat for her – allowed her to join the legal profession. But it was another choice Gobbo made as a law student that laid the groundwork for Lawyer X.
In 1995, two years after the drug bust, Gobbo first registered as a police informant. Ten years later, as a lawyer, Gobbo began to represent key figures in Melbourne’s underworld.
And, as a registered informant, ratting her own clients out to the cops.
The scandal encompasses police from the crooked cops Gobbo gave evidence against, after he was charged, but not convicted, over the murder of another police informant and his partner, to the gangland and drug detectives she informed for. It further reached right up to the then-chief commissioner and a Police Integrity watchdog who also later became chief commissioner.
After Wednesday’s extraordinary report to state parliament by special investigator Geoffrey Nettle – a former High Court judge with an impeccable understanding of criminal law – it’s difficult not to conclude that the cover-up has worked for police.
Reading the scathing report, and the letters exchanged between the OSI and DPP, it becomes clear one of the main excuses Victoria’s top prosecutor, Kerri Judd KC, relies on to not lay charges against police officers is what she refers to as ‘‘the passage of time’’.
In other words, Victoria Police have stonewalled for so long that the prosecutor can get away with handwaving away any prosecutions, as supposedly not “in the public interest”.
“Hypothetically trial would likely proceed some 15-25 years after the events concerned,’’ she states.
The Australian
Never mind that a raft of convictions for murder and drug trafficking, including one of the world’s biggest ecstasy busts, have already been overturned because of Lawyer X’s and Victoria Police’s crooked dealings. Or that multiple mafia figures have appeals in the works.
All just water under the bridge in the crooked, corrupt state of Victoria.