Before I Sleep (23 page)

He'd ask the caller: “Doesn't it run off the main highway and isn't the bit you are worried about near the intersection with Cardinal Street?”

The caller would confirm these details and jones would say, “Well, I think we last paved that section ten years ago.”

The caller would then say: “Yes, it was ten years ago and it's about time you did it again.”

Clem would then say that that particular bit of street had been discussed at council a couple of meetings previously and that an allocation of $5000 had been made in the budget for the work to be done next year. Without fail.

The caller would then thank the Lord Mayor, clearly reassured by the close and informed interest he was taking in her little street.

Ken suggested we emulate Clem Jones. I gave him the go ahead and he contacted the radio station, which was delighted and offered us the spot immediately following the Lord Mayor's. So on the next Tuesday, Ken Hogget, John Dautel and myself went down to the station armed with some books. I talked briefly about how the crime rate was falling in Brisbane and about our mobile patrols and our system for phoning incident reports to headquarters. Then I invited calls. These didn't come in very fast at first, which gave us time to break in our little team, but they soon picked up. People rang in about traffic intersections, about highway patrols, about the strength of police at various stations and such like. No one called to report the operation of an SP bookmaker in their suburb. I tried to get through to the listeners that I was a family man and a grandfather, with a care and concern for the well-being of Queenslanders. I somehow worked into replies to traffic problems personal details indicating that I lived an ordinary life and wasn't an advocate of free love and wild parties. The radio station management congratulated us after the program and invited us back. I appeared on the fortnightly show for some months, silently assisted by Ken and John, but eventually pressure of work meant that we had to give up the program, much to the management's disappointment.

I introduced the concept of management by objectives, using quantifiable data, as a way of assessing our annual outcomes. Once a year the executive heads of the force's branches would meet to check their performance against goals which had been set twelve months previously. If, for example, it was found that the target of decreasing housebreaking by five per cent had not been met, reasons would be sought and remedies proposed. There was a set procedure for communicating these decisions and initiating debate down the line. The branch heads would talk to their inspectors who would talk to their district sergeants who would talk to the rank and file members of the force. I provided a detailed breakdown of this procedure in my annual reports.

After some years I was able to report that all of the McKinna recommendations had been introduced and were being implemented, with the exception of the principle of promotion by merit. I had given the McKinna material my prime attention as Cabinet had requested, but there were other departmental activities that caused me concern. Soon after my arrival I had spent some hours inspecting the Special Branch office and files. Most of the files I examined contained information that was unclassified as to validity, reliability and degree of relevance. I found references which appeared to be purely anecdotal, hearsay or at best third-party reports. The range of people investigated seemed unjustifiably large and selection appeared to be based on the personal judgments of investigators rather than a systematic analysis of any threats.

Obviously the branch had simply grown from small beginnings and was staffed by men who had received little if any training in intelligence duties. Perhaps their calibre can be gauged by the fact that Mr Don (“Shady”) Lane, the now-disgraced ex-MP, had once been a long-time member of it. The staff operated almost autonomously and had frequent access to the premier. It was clear to me that if the premier was receiving the type of information I had found in the files, he could be basing his decisions on unreliable reports. There seemed to be no system of accountability in operation, and no overall supervision by a senior police officer, yet in theory I was responsible for the branch's operations. But since the Special Branch officers were on good terms with the premier, and since any attempt to improve its operation was likely to be a long, drawn-out struggle, I postponed taking action until I had cleared my more immediate objectives.

There were other almost autonomous units: the Pipe Band, the Mounted Cadre and the Water Police. Each had built up a considerable body of public support and any attempt by me to produce a cost—benefit analysis was likely to be met with strenuous opposition from both the Police Union and the media. Yet I had come across disturbing features in each of these bodies and my immediate reaction was to consider the possibility of a community advisory committee which would provide expert advice and propose operational guidelines for them. But again, I could foresee organised resistance from vested interests. Some of these “interests” were in high places. On one of my rare inspections of the Water Police vessels, I came across a very large freezer in the stern of their largest boat. I was curious and was told that this was needed to hold the catch when “X” was out with them. This fishing was a regular duty. “X” wanted the fish for official dinners since his entertainment allowance was pretty thin. When later my wife and I were dinner guests of “X”, we were served fresh fish! He made his point. I postponed my review of the Water Police operations.

When the number of women recruited as police officers had reached about one hundred, I called them together and addressed them in confidence. I was the only male present. I explained that their recruitment had been controversial and that any mistakes they made were likely to be given magnified public coverage. I asked them to be prudent in their behaviour at all times because at the moment they were in the public eye. I told them that they were sworn officers with the same powers and responsibilities as their male colleagues, and that every position in the Force was open to them until it was established that females could not do those particular duties. I told them I planned to have an all-female rape squad and a female traffic car to begin with, perhaps introducing more units like these if the scheme worked satisfactorily.

I explained that the union executive was not in favour of my moves because a male of any rank was traditionally considered senior to any female, regardless of her rank. I suggested that the female police officers might consider attending branch meetings of the union with a view to influencing the union's views. I told them that this talk was just between them and me. Within two hours the police union secretary rang me and was able to describe the details of that confidential meeting with the police women. But generally my policy of recruiting women to up to twelve per cent of the total force strength proved successful.

The 1970s were a time of much student agitation over a number of issues. At the University of Queensland, Zelman Cowan was also having a rough ride. The students invaded his office and refused to leave. He appealed to me and I had police forcibly remove the trespassers. This got me off to a bad start with the students. They began a strike during which they occupied the central quadrangle for several days and disrupted lectures. Zelman again appealed to me and I went to the university and spoke to the ringleaders. The outcome was their challenging me to a public debate, which I accepted. It was held the next evening in a large university hall overflowing with heckling students. It was known that the debate was being televised live by the ABC.

My opponent, a third-year student, an articulate and presentable young woman, outlined the students' side, and then I responded. I remember I started them by saying that my objective was not only to get them to agree to go back to studies but also to agree to my setting up a permanent police station on their campus. They were all aware that in Melbourne a similar situation had been resolved by the police agreeing that the campus was a “no go” area for them and that they would not enter without getting permission to do so. I told the students that, quite recently, I had been a student myself. I knew their problems. At the ANU I'd attended classes while I was Commissioner of Police and had young radicals sitting beside me, lighting up marijuana cigarettes, just to egg me on. I cannot recall all the details of the debate, which was rowdy and full of interjections, and so the exact outcome is only vaguely remembered, but the strike finished at that time. With the consent of the vice-chancellor and the students, I set up a small one-man police office in the university The officer appointed to this task was already a part-time student at the university.

I instructed him to go out of his way to be helpful to students who wanted to report accidents, renew licences, report lost property, arrange driving tests and the like, but otherwise to keep a low profile. The arrangement worked satisfactorily for all concerned until it was discarded by my successor, Terry Lewis, some years later. I was pleased with an invitation to be the patron of the Engineering Students' Society and flattered when they repeated this offer the following year. I was proud of that invitation. I was asked to speak after dinner to the residential colleges and relationships between police and students were good. However, at the time of the Springbok confrontations they rapidly deteriorated.

The South African rugby team had already been the subject of violent confrontations between anti-Apartheid protesters and the police in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. In Brisbane, we managed to provide a secure playing field, but the protesters gathered outside the Tower Mill Hotel where the Springboks were staying. On the second night of the protest, I took charge myself. There must have been about a thousand demonstrators facing six hundred police outside the hotel. Things started to hot up at about a quarter to seven, just as the main television news broadcasts were about to begin. I received a call from the matron of the next-door hospital. She was worried about some surgical operations then in progress. The noise was making the surgeons edgy — would it be possible to quieten things down a bit? I went to the leader of the protesters, a theological student, and explained the problem. I pointed out that the Springboks would still be here on the following night. Couldn't the proceedings be adjourned for twenty-four hours?

“I believe you, Commissioner,” he said. “But my mob won't.”

I suggested he go into the hospital to talk to the matron himself. He did this and on his return addressed the crowd through a megaphone. The situation in the hospital was serious, he said. Come back tomorrow and we'll have another go. Everyone went home.

By the next night I had brought in a large number of country police to reinforce the metropolitan members of the Force. Country police are not used to being tolerant of political protest, especially when it is couched in the terms that some of the protesters were then using in their taunts. We were Nazis and fascists and we ought to go back to Germany. I divided my men into three shifts and rotated them every quarter of an hour. During the half-hour they had away from the front line, the hotel supplied them with sandwiches and tea. As the seven o'clock news approached and things were getting rowdy, I was standing in a room on the first floor of the hotel surveying the scene with a loudspeaker in my hand. A brick was thrown through the window, landing at my feet. I realised that the time for passively absorbing the provocation was past. I spoke to the crowd through the loudspeaker, telling them we were going to clear the street in three minutes and asking them to disperse. Everyone waited for three minutes. The police charged. Some protesters were knocked over; most ran away. The police clearly took the action very seriously. I got the impression that many of the demonstrators were treating the proceedings as a game. As the demonstrators and the pursuing police disappeared down the hill, I used the loudspeaker to recall my men. They didn't hear me.

The next morning I received a visit from Zelman Cowan. He said that the university had had senior academics in the crowd to monitor police behaviour. The general feeling was that I had over-reacted in ordering the street cleared. I put my side of the story to him and I think he half-accepted that I couldn't have stood passively by while the hotel's windows were being broken.