Before I Sleep (25 page)

As for Joh, I have very mixed feelings about that man — very mixed. I'm sure Joh takes his problems to the Lord in prayer, but I wonder if he waits for any answer. Or, if there is an answer, perhaps the reception is very bad. I make this comment because there were times during my seven years when the little team in my office felt up against it. We would retreat to the coffee table in the corner and Ken and Linda, my secretary, and I would sit quietly for a little while and meditate, thinking about the next task, hoping we might get some inspiration about what the next step should be. We must have been getting a different set of celestial signals from Joh, because he would often veto our ideas. As I've said, I didn't see much of Joh during my seven years and on the few occasions I did meet him, we had pleasant conversations. But, from a distance, it seems to me that he treated me rudely, arrogantly and ignorantly. I was the state's police authority, chosen by his government. In practice, I was probably the most experienced and best qualified police commissioner Queensland had ever had. Yet Joh dismissed many of my suggestions out of hand. It was treatment I had never experienced before. In my other appointments, the minister, if he wanted to discuss a matter I was proposing, would ask me to visit him or give him a paper setting out the pros and cons. Such a paper would then be discussed and the minister would let me put my side of the story; he would explain his stance, and I always I felt I had received a fair hearing. As a matter of fact, in the seventeen years I had been in charge of a police force, none of my recommendations had ever been turned down. But in Queensland, while I had a most sympathetic minister in the person of Max Hodges, it was the premier who often made the decisions. And Joh never gave me a chance to explain my reasons for introducing certain changes. Often the first news I had of a reversal of one of my policies was in the pages of the daily newspaper. He merely said: “Mr Whitrod will not be doing that.” Joh never extended me the courtesy of talking about it.

Bjelke-Petersen's own knowledge of police principles and practices was largely confined to stories he would have been told by his police drivers. As for his knowledge of democratic theory, the Fitzgerald Inquiry exposed that as being nil. Joh had never heard of the basic principle of the separation of powers. Yet while he was prepared to dismiss my recommendations out of hand, it is obvious from the evidence of the Fitzgerald Inquiry that he listened — probably open-mouthed — to the lies that Lewis was telling him about me. For instance, Lewis told Joh that I was a staunch member of the ALP. I have never been a member of the ALP nor associated with it. After I had been replaced by Lewis, two of the trustworthy members of the Criminal Intelligence Unit went to Joh with complaints about Lewis. Joh merely listened to them and then transferred the information to Lewis himself.

In 1976 I had spent some time in a Brisbane hospital, pardy because of the stress and partly because of a recurrence of malaria. Mavis had suffered another bout as well.

I had a final showdown with the premier over the forced appointment of Lewis as my deputy, and voluntarily left the force. There was a fair bit of media coverage, with some members of the public raising a petition for me to stay. I didn't have another job to go to but Mavis supported my decision. My superannuation was in a mess because I found that my previous credits were not transferable to the Queensland fund, and I lost considerably over the conversion. This affected our lifestyle in retirement but Mavis never complained about my actions. She truly was a two-cow wife.

On the day I left the Queensland Police Force, the editor of the
Courier-Mail,
wrote in a front-page article entitled “The Last of the Honest Cops” that my minister and I had done our best but we had been naive. At the time, I thought that this was an unfair comment, but as I now look back I recognise the justice of the statement. We really had no chance of bringing reforms to the Queensland Police Force.

In selecting me — an outsider — to be the state's new commissioner, Max had chosen someone who did not have the backing of either the Masons or the Irish, the two dominant social groups. He had chosen someone to occupy a position of authority in a conservative society who was tolerant of Aborigines and other minority groups, who encouraged female participation, someone who was over-educated by local standards and therefore automatically academic in judgment, a male who each day went home for lunch instead of socialising in his club, who was barely of minimum police height and who was a former soccer player in a state which worshiped the big men of Rugby League, who preferred walking along a beach to horse racing or trotting, who had to operate in a society criss-crossed by a network of obligations and prearranged mutual benefits, who thought rationally about police policies and practices instead of parochially, who was not ill at ease and inarticulate when being televised, who had a wife who did not attend fashion shows and fraternise and, perhaps worst of all, who did not blindly accept government directions but examined them for their legal validity and community benefit — all of this in a community largely content with its existing standards of ethical conduct.

If I had given more weight to the failure of Orlando Wilson to reform the Chicago Police Department, of Patrick Murphy to reform the New York Police Department, of Sir Robert Mark to reform New Scotland Yard, I might not have been so confident of being able to achieve a worthwhile outcome with the Queensland Police Department.

As it was, I recruited numerous enthusiastic and idealistic young men and women, many of whom suffered much frustration and severe disappointment in subsequent years. One of my recruits, Jill Bolen, is now a doctoral candidate in New South Wales. She joined the Queensland Police Force in 1973 and served for twenty years, working her way up to the position of chief superintendent of a region on the Gold Coast. This was an admirable feat, since the regime in which she worked was far from sympathetic to the cause of female police officers. In her published Masters thesis, Jill Bolen analyses my years in Queensland and she notes that when I was on leave in 1973 — that is, halfway through my term — Acting Commissioner Barlow highlighted the changes made under my stewardship. These included:

the circulation of a newsletter, the construction of the Academy, reorganisation of the Information Bureau, the rebuilding and restructuring of the police operations centre, the introduction of lunch time conferences at Headquarters, setting a syllabus for police qualifying examinations, the appointment of a panel of markers to permit early notification of results, various aspects of reorganisation, enhanced numbers of women police, changes to uniforms, the formation of the Crime Intelligence Unit, enhanced education and training programs and many others. (Commissioner's Newsletter No 84,11 July 1973 — cited in Bolen, 1997 p. 67)

Jill Bolen notes that many of the extended roles undertaken by women police officers in the Queensland Police Force were “firsts either in Australia or internationally and Whitrod took great pride in trumpeting the achievements to quell criticism of the strategy and to explain local administrative policies in relation to women” (Bolen, 1997 p. 66).

While I was in hospital for a short while in 1975, Norm Gulbransen, as acting commissioner, listed in the newsletter “just some of the real benefits gained by all police from Mr Whitrod's administration during the past five years”. He wrote:

Those which spring quickly to mind are: Increased salaries and allowances (Mr Whitrod gave evidence in support of the Police Union case!); Increase of seven days' recreation leave per year; Granting of seven days' study leave per subject for Police Arts and Sciences studies; Two opportunities per year to sit for police examinations; Provision of an examinations syllabus; Opportunity to gain Senior Constable grade at seven years' service; Extended In-Service Training courses; The Study Assistance Scheme with reimbursement of fees to members who successfully undertake approved courses; Supply of a departmental motor vehicle to each station; Provision of more comfortable and suitable uniforms. (Commissioner's Newsletter No.167,14 Feb 1975)

With hindsight, it is still difficult for me to identify where I went wrong — if, indeed, I did go wrong. Bjelke-Petersen's public farewell comment was that I had done nothing wrong, I had just tried to do too much too quickly I had had ten years — from age fifty-five to sixty-five — to introduce all the McKinna recommendations, recommendations that had been endorsed by Cabinet. I lasted seven years. The only recommendation that I hadn't managed to introduce was promotion by merit, and I had tried long and hard to bring it into practice. But promotion by seniority was ingrained in the whole public service system. This made it doubly hard to introduce it in a single department. There were lots of reasons why members of Queensland's police force would hang on to the notion of seniority. It had many advantages for them. It meant that almost everybody would retire as an inspector or superintendent, and promotion to these ranks would have come in the last twelve to eighteen months of service. The officer could leave the force with some glory and a superannuation payout commensurate with his recently gained rank. I do not know what other strategies or tactics I could have adopted. Perhaps we could have accepted the Police Union's suggestion that we introduce promotion by merit, but with a “grandfather clause” which meant that all serving members would be exempt from the new rules. In practice, this would have divided the force; it would have meant that the force would have had two types of members: those who were winning their promotion by virtue of their skill and dedication, and those who were having it given to them by virtue of their age. But since the older group would be slowly working their way through the higher ranks, these would have been denied the younger group for many years, regardless of their ability.

I have been back to Queensland twice: once to give evidence at the Fitzgerald Inquiry and once to give a paper at a public seminar on the Inquiry. On the first visit, I discovered that fieldwork for the Inquiry was being conducted by an Inspector James Patrick O'Sullivan. He was unknown to me when I was commissioner a few years earlier. He had never come forward to join our little group of corruption fighters, he had never volunteered any information about corruption, but presumably Fitzgerald had good reasons for selecting him. He was later appointed commissioner, probably on the strength of his work for Fitzgerald. I asked some of my former colleagues at the Inquiry if they knew Inspector O'Sullivan — he must have had twenty years' or more experience in the Force. No one knew him at all; he was an unknown quantity. How Fitzgerald had discovered him, I don't know.

It was something of a physical effort to get to Queensland. My health has not been good these last few years and I'm normally confined to home and a walking frame, but I got to Brisbane and was pleased to be able to give evidence. I followed the daily newspaper reports of the Inquiry and was delighted with both the scope and the depth of Fitzgerald's approach. Clearly the Inquiry would not have happened ifjoh had not been absent from the state when the decision was taken to hold it. I was grateful to Fitzgerald for pursuing his objectives as faithfully as he did. The acting premier who instituted the Inquiry, Bill Gunn, deserves a lot of thanks for his perseverance in ensuring that Fitzgerald received all the help he needed.

I have been flattered by the suggestion that perhaps I was Australia's first modern police commissioner, but any impact I may have made on Australian policing was only possible because I was standing on the shoulders of Brigadier McKinna. He showed how even a competent and honest force like the South Australian Police could be much improved simply by utilising managerial techniques already operating elsewhere, by creating innovative programs, and by outstanding leadership. I owe much to him. He was always available when I needed to discuss plans or problems and was most generous in offering me well-considered options and practical aid. He set a personal example in commitment, innovation and integrity, not only to his own members but also to his fellow commissioners as well. Unfortunately, too few of his colleagues interstate recognised or wanted to emulate his strategies. It was his integrity in carrying out his responsibilities that subsequently brought about his too-early retirement. He certainly impressed Max Hodges when Max inspected the South Australian Police Academy at Fort Largs leaving an impression that later resulted in my appointment as commissioner of the Queensland force. McKinna was the first modern Australian police commissioner — I was merely his protégé.