Authors: Matthew Condon
Salad Days at Shalimar
For Jack and Peggy Herbert, life was great in the new year. The corruption network known as The Joke, and commandeered by Herbert with the meticulousness of a forensic accountant, was in full gear. The in-line machines were a cash cow – more lucrative than poker machines – and Herbert, with his brilliant organisational skills, was making the most of it.
In addition, he and Peggy had moved into the splendid pale brick riverfront unit block – Shalimar – at 49 Laidlaw Parade, East Brisbane. Their unit sported excellent views up the reach of the river to the skyline of the CBD, and across the river to Merthyr Park. In their unit, Herbert had a bar – he made sure there was a bar in every property he ever lived in – and he utilised it to the full. Guests were forever in and out of the Herbert pad, including Police Commissioner Terry Lewis and his wife Hazel, and former assistant commissioner Tony Murphy. Friends would join Herbert at his bar around 5 p.m., then head out to a restaurant for dinner around 8 p.m.
As for money coming in – it was everywhere. ‘He often had envelopes full of cash dropped into his locked letterbox at the unit,’ a source says. ‘There was so much he didn’t know what to do with it. He had bundles of it taped in certain places throughout the unit, even underneath the cutlery drawer in the kitchen. He would count the cash and separate it into the bundles that were going to police and others he had to pay off as part of The Joke.
‘But I believe he probably gave away half of what came in for him. He was always giving away money. If he heard that the little old lady across the road was doing it tough, he’d go over and give her $500.
‘He was happy, gregarious, and one of the funniest men you’d ever meet. He was always playing on words … he was very funny.’
And the cash continued to pour in from the Hapeta/Tilley and Bellino/Conte consortiums.
‘You wouldn’t believe the meticulous files he kept on everything,’ the source says. ‘Everything was filed and cross-referenced. Everything went in there. How much came in. Who the money was going to. When and where money was paid, and by whom to whom. It was just incredible. He used to drive his family crazy. He had to have all his shirts facing one way on hangers in the closet. All his shoes lined up. He was absolutely meticulous.’
Herbert was buying and selling properties with abandon, and on significant purchases like, for example, a boat, he would remark: ‘Let The Joke pay for it.’
Herbert regularly made the delivery of illegal monies to corrupt police and politicians like Don ‘Shady’ Lane, the Member for Merthyr. And sometimes Peggy Herbert made the drops. When the social couple weren’t available for the monthly disbursement, a trusted friend would do the job.
‘I made the drop at Lewis’s house at 12 Garfield Drive on a few occasions,’ another source says. ‘I would go to the door and Hazel Lewis would invite me in and I handed her the envelopes.’
According to witnesses, Commissioner Lewis visited Shalimar on several occasions – always in plain clothes – where he allegedly discussed the transfer of police officers to various branches and units within the police department. Lewis was also there when Jack and Peggy Herbert celebrated their thirtieth wedding anniversary.
‘Jack was a party animal – he loved to be around people,’ the source says. ‘He was witty and entertaining. To Jack, everything was a joke.’
Fabrication
The trial against the embattled former detective Lorelle Saunders went ahead in May 1983. The crux of the case was criminal Douglas Mervyn Dodd’s alleged tape recording of Saunders asking him to procure a hitman to kill police officer Allan Lobegeiger. Dodd claimed he made the secret recording in a park on 19 March 1982.
On the fourth day of the trial, however, Crown solicitor Tony Glynn had some extraordinary news to impart to the court. It appeared that the Dodd tape was a fabrication. A Public Defender’s Office solicitor had made an amazing discovery. He studied the background music on Dodd’s tape and found a radio station jingle. Further investigation proved that the jingle had first gone to air on 27 March 1982 – eight days after Dodd said he made the tape. ‘It thus appears that the only explanation is that the tape was certainly not made at the time and in the fashion deposed by Dodd and appears to be quite clearly a fabrication,’ said Glynn.
Justice Shepherdson asked: ‘Well, now, Mr Glynn, where does that leave you?’
‘That leaves the Crown with no case,’ he answered.
Shepherdson directed that Saunders be acquitted. He also directed the Solicitor-General’s office to investigate the fabricated tape and find out who was responsible for it. ‘Putting it bluntly, really, this man Dodd has plainly committed perjury in respect of this tape,’ Justice Shepherdson concluded. ‘I don’t think it is too strong for me to say that … someone, somewhere, has apparently arranged for this man to fabricate a tape recording.
‘I direct that this file, the exhibits and all evidence be referred to the Crown Law authorities for a full and detailed investigation to try to get to the bottom of this whole rather unsatisfactory, sordid affair …’
Ultimately, Dodd was charged with perjury, found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison.
Saunders continued to lobby government and the police department for suitable compensation and was rebuffed, despite then Attorney-General Neville Harper declaring her ‘completely innocent of all charges’.
So, who was behind the Saunders scandal? Had such a grotesque and complicated plot really been developed against her because she had supported Basil Hicks in his quest to get to the truth behind the Katherine James photographs? Could her life and career have been threatened because she had transgressed senior police officers close to Commissioner Lewis?
After Saunders was acquitted, Commissioner Lewis consulted two fellow officers. Quite specifically he wanted to know: Could she be charged departmentally?
Member for Archerfield, Kev ‘Buckets’ Hooper had shouted Saunders’ innocence at every opportunity and condemned corrupt police both to the media and on the floor of parliament – he deemed her acquittal one of the highlights of his career. After the trial he called for an investigation. He wanted to know if Saunders had been framed by police and, if so, why. Was it because she fought against corruption?
Saunders was told she could take any complaints she had to either Lewis or the Police Complaints Tribunal. She would spend much of the next decade fighting subsequent suspensions and threats that she’d be sacked from the force. The saga would spill into the 1990s, as Queensland’s first female detective continued her fight for justice.
The Aphrodisiac of Power
In the lead-up to the 1983 state election, Terrence Anthony ‘Terry’ White, the Liberal cabinet minister, was growing concerned by the stench of political and police corruption. White, a working-class boy from Sandgate who, through sheer tenacity, became a successful pharmacist and businessman, had shown an early interest in politics, working briefly on John F. Kennedy’s 1960 Presidential campaign in the United States. White was a long-term member of the Queensland branch of the Liberal Party before winning the seat of Redcliffe in a by-election in 1979. He was swiftly promoted to the ministry by Liberal leader Dr Llew Edwards in 1980.
‘So, all of a sudden I’m in the Cabinet with these guys,’ White remembers. ‘And prior to that, within the Liberal Party itself was all these allegations flowing, from the Gold Coast in particular, that were raised by [local MPs] Bruce Bishop and Peter White [no relation] who were outstanding state members. They were raising the whole issue of approvals for suspect developers and there were all these allegations about money being siphoned off to Russ Hinze and the National Party and all that sort of stuff.’
White struggled with what he was hearing. How could he prove it?
Malcolm McMillan, who worked as ALP press secretary for Tom Burns, faced a similar dilemma. Because of the power of Bjelke-Petersen and the Nationals, and because of the Opposition’s extended time in the political wilderness, the ALP had to be judge, jury and executioner when it came to matters of corruption. It not only had to present the allegations, but had to have them chiselled in stone to make any sort of headway in parliament and with the electorate. Anything short of that didn’t wash.
White was at a loss as the rumours mounted. ‘There was the story that some Asian bagman arrived at the National Party headquarters with literally $50,000 in a brown paper bag, and thought the Liberal Party Headquarters was the National Party Headquarters. It was really bad, but you couldn’t put your finger on things. It became common knowledge with some developers down [on] the Gold Coast that if you wanted something [a development application to go] through … you obviously saw the government minister at the end of the day.’
In desperation, White and his colleagues reached out to the young National Party member for Landsborough, Mike Ahern. They trusted Ahern and knew he was straight as an arrow. ‘We’re talking to Ahern quietly saying, look, we’ve got to clean this place up or the whole thing is going to go up in smoke,’ recalls White. ‘And, because Ahern was of a similar age to the rest of us, you know, with Angus Innes and Terry Geiger and Ian Prentice – all those sorts of people – they sort of started to work as a team to use the parliamentary process.
‘We needed greater scrutiny and got the estimate committees going … and of course that’s when the divisions occurred in the government because the Liberal Party backbench was doing the job of the Opposition. The Labor Party then was bloody useless, or lazy, or whatever.’
White, too, had been troubled by the fracas the year before, in 1982, over the appointment of the Chief Justice. Indeed, the tension between the government executive and the judiciary had been simmering for over a year. Bjelke-Petersen believed some of the judiciary were not toeing the Party line, and threatened to ‘put the skids under them’.
By the time the new Chief Justice was to be appointed, Bjelke-Petersen was determined to get his man home. That happened to be Justice Dormer (Bob) Andrews. Justice James Douglas was first in the line of seniority to take the position. Justice Andrews was seventh.
Bjelke-Petersen got wind that Douglas voted Labor and that was enough for the Premier’s trusted confidant, Sir Edward Lyons, to swing into action. He began agitating in earnest for Andrews’ appointment to the top job.
White was incredulous. ‘It got to the stage where you had “Top Level” Ted Lyons [a trustee of the National Party who was also a member of the Bjelke-Petersen Foundation, which raised funds for the Party] and [Commissioner] Terry Lewis, they used to have lunch every Friday,’ says White. ‘Anyway, they decided Andrews … was going to get the job whereas Douglas was the recommendation of the Attorney-General [Sam Doumany] and the profession.’
White couldn’t make sense of powerbrokers outside Cabinet making decisions on senior government appointments. It defied all he knew of the democratic process. ‘I was at a TAB function and Ted Lyons was chairman of the TAB and Lewis was there,’ remembers White. ‘And he [Lyons] came up and said, “You fucking Libs are not going to have any say, Andrews is going to be the Chief Justice”.
‘Lewis was in the conversation standing around having drinks. I was a bit of a novice having been in the Ministry only a couple of years. I said: “What do you mean? This is irregular.” And I’m carrying on saying, “Look, you know, it’s got nothing to do with you blokes. It will ultimately be a decision of Cabinet and it will be based on the recommendation of the Attorney-General”.’
In the end the Liberal Ministers made a decision that they would not go along with Joh’s recommendation. ‘With the exception of Lane. It was Don Lane who blabbed out in Cabinet that Douglas was a “Labor stooge”, they were the words that he used, I remember it quite vividly. And we said, “How the hell would you know how Douglas voted?” He said Douglas was overseas and he had a postal vote and somehow or other he [Lane] got hold of it. So Lane was, you know, right in there and none of us ever trusted Lane.’
In the end, the job of Chief Justice went to Wally Campbell. Following that, the appointment of Senior Puisne Judge had to be decided. Again, the Attorney-General recommended Douglas, but Bjelke-Petersen demanded it be Andrews. ‘You got your way with the Chief Justice,’ Bjelke-Petersen reportedly told his Liberal colleagues. ‘Why don’t you give me my way with the second position?’
Seven Liberal ministers declined to support the recommendation. Nevertheless, Andrews was selected. The ‘flying minute’ approving the appointment was taken to Government House and ratified.
The Bar Association did not send a congratulatory telegram, but later made it clear that Andrews had the confidence of the Bar. The Liberal Party State Executive called an emergency meeting over the Chief Justice affair, and narrowly voted to stay in partnership with the National Party. Meanwhile, Bjelke-Petersen and his government were criticised for politicising the judiciary.
The whole affair, however, didn’t sit well with White. He couldn’t believe the Police Commissioner might have a hand in the internal machinations of Cabinet. ‘I’ve got no doubt that Lewis stymied the careers of a lot of people because of his relationship with the Premier,’ reflects White. ‘Not long after I was sworn in my secretary said, “Oh, the Police Commissioner wants to see you.”
‘I thought, what have I done wrong? So, he lobs in the office and it was all about having a cup of tea and just saying, you know, we, the police force, were delighted when the Premier appointed you to Cabinet.