Jacks and Jokers (10 page)

As the government and the opposition settled into their seats in Parliament House before Acting Speaker Bill Hewitt, Minister for Police Tom Newbery rose just after 11 a.m. to read out a ministerial statement on police administration and the former commissioner.

It was going to be a long day.

Newbery wanted to defend himself against allegations Whitrod had made in the press conference and address criticisms of the government. ‘The previous Commissioner of Police was reluctant to recognise my responsibilities,’ Newbery stated. ‘I feel that Mr Whitrod wanted to be a power unto himself – responsible to no one. What Mr Whitrod considers to be political interference is, as I see it, only responsible interest and concern by the government.’

Newbery also addressed Whitrod’s claims that the minister had shredded the official police reports into the Cedar Bay fiasco and had assisted in the extradition to Western Australia of two people arrested at Cedar Bay who were due to give evidence against police charged over that incident.

Newbery meekly defended himself. He said he acted in the best interests of the people of Queensland.

And with that, parliament drifted back into its usual humdrum ebb and flow. Matters discussed included: improved housing conditions for railway employees in far off Hughenden; the reintroduction of free milk for school children; the speed limits for boats on the Brisbane River; and a plague of phasmatid giant stick insects supposedly afflicting a more than 1000-kilometre spread of gum trees in both Queensland and New South Wales.

Then Acting Speaker Hewitt presented a Motion for Adjournment to the house. He announced he had received that morning a letter from Opposition leader Tom Burns, asking that the house adjourn to discuss a matter of urgent public importance.

The letter outlined the following issues: ‘… namely the concern felt by wide sections of the community as a result of statements [made] by the State’s former Police Commissioner, Mr Ray Whitrod, following his forced resignation after six years in that position, which he clearly indicated was forced as a result of political pressure from the premier, Mr Bjelke-Petersen.’

Burns said the debate was necessary following public statements that pointed towards the belief that there was a desire from the Premier to make Queensland’s top law enforcement officer a ‘puppet’. He cited numerous further reasons for the adjournment, including the ‘Girl Bashing Baton Affair’ and the street marches earlier in the year, the Cedar Bay raid, and the truncating of Scotland Yard detectives O’Connell and Fothergill’s investigation into corruption in the police force (from 1975).

‘I believe the citizens of Queensland expect their Police administration to be impartial and free from political pressure and any doubts to the contrary – voiced as they are on this occasion at such a high level – should be urgently debated by this House,’ Burns argued.

Acting Speaker Bill Hewitt, a Liberal but no friend of Bjelke-Petersen and his regime, allowed the debate to progress.

Burns stood again and let fly: ‘Ray Whitrod was politically persecuted by the government. He was hounded by the Premier’s henchmen on the front benches. He was hounded from office by the Premier. The Minister for Police was placed in his position as a stooge for the Premier. He set out ruthlessly to destroy the Police Commissioner.

‘As I say, the Premier has enshrined himself as the political judge and jury not only of the merit of public complaints in police matters but also whether they should be investigated.’

Burns revealed that Minister Newbery had reached a point near the end where he ‘censored’ Whitrod’s newsletters to the troops. ‘Where are we going when top professional people appointed by the government must have even their newsletters censored?’ Burns queried. ‘Senior appointments were made against the Commissioner’s recommendations, and Cabinet took control of normal routine transfers. There are grave allegations of copies of official reports, vital to pending investigations, being destroyed – perhaps burned.

‘It is a tragic, frightening day for this state when a man such as Ray Whitrod would say publicly that political control of the police force, to even a slight degree, resembles Goering’s Gestapo in Nazi Germany.’

A young Bob Katter interjected loudly during Burns’ condemnation. ‘Why was Lewis sent to Charleville? A vendetta! That’s all it was, a vendetta!’

Burns shot back: ‘Honourable members opposite are all now going to make statements about people going to Charleville. Why didn’t they say this before?’

The Opposition leader again cited Nazi Germany. ‘Joh wanted his own Commissioner and his own police,’ Burns went on. ‘This is the sort of government we are going to have. We will have political police who will not be enforcing the law but will be enforcing political decisions.’

Burns was adamant that Queenslanders did not want ‘a squadron of Kingaroy cops, whose operations are dictated by the political objectives of an extremist Premier and an obedient Police Minister’.

Jack Houston, the Labor member for Bulimba since 1957, read an extract from a newspaper article. ‘Unfortunately, in recent years, Cabinet Ministers have regarded the Police Force as just another Government Department – something it can never be while it controls the lives, liberty and safety of every person in the State,’ he quoted.

Houston said it could have come from a newspaper the day before, but that it was in fact published in the Brisbane
Truth
on 24 January 1965, at the height of the Bischof era.

While Lewis and Murphy were not named, again the issue of remote transfers was mentioned.

‘Another thing that has been said is that men were sent to the country because Mr Whitrod was upset with them,’ Houston said. ‘I think it is understood that normally the transfer of commissioned officers is a matter for Cabinet, not simply an order made by the Police Commissioner. That automatically rules out that Mr Lewis was sent to the country because of some feeling held by Mr Whitrod.’

Newbery stood again to defend himself and then Bjelke-Petersen and his lieutenants wiped the floor with Whitrod.

The Premier repeated that Whitrod wanted to be a law unto himself, that he was loathed by the majority of the police force, that he was a ‘figures man’ only interested in statistics and his daily ‘killer’ [kill] sheets. ‘I didn’t sack him,’ Bjelke-Petersen said. ‘He sacked himself.’

Lewis’s friend Don Lane, the member for Merthyr, used the opportunity to present a glowing crib sheet of Lewis’s career. Lane declared: ‘He is a man whose academic qualifications are equal to the job, and equal to those of anyone else available; he is a man who has a depth of police experience in the Criminal Investigation Branch, handling juveniles, and in respect of general police work.

‘He is an innovator – the man who established the Juvenile Aid Bureau; he is a Churchill Fellow who travelled the world on a scholarship and studied Police Forces throughout the world. He is a man whose courage and bravery was recognised by Her Majesty when he was awarded the George Medal a few years ago for disarming a man at Wynnum. I know the man well, and I know he will handle the job to the satisfaction of all Queenslanders. He is a Queenslander; he understands Queenslanders and he understands Queensland policemen; and he will produce the goods.’

Lane dismissed Whitrod’s complaints and reflections offered to the media since his resignation. ‘His clumsy attempts to canonise himself as a saint at this particular time make me sick,’ Lane added.

In the early evening of that Tuesday, after a fiery day in parliament, the new Commissioner farewelled the old at a modest function in the restaurant and bar of the Metropolitan Motor Inn in Leichhardt Street, Spring Hill. A total of eight people, including Whitrod, attended. Among them were judge Sir Mostyn Hanger and Sir Gordon Chalk.

‘I didn’t even want to go to that,’ remembers Lewis. ‘Newbery asked me to come to keep him company. Whitty was all over me like a bloody rash. He would have been very shitty. It would have been a false smile.’

Lewis was photographed at the function with Whitrod and Police Minister Newbery. Lewis wore a dark suit with a floral tie; Whitrod a grey suit with a polka dot tie. In the picture, Whitrod’s face is creased with laughter. Lewis, holding a small beer, is also laughing, but his eyes are not. They look weary at the sight of his predecessor.

The farewell was sufficiently brief enough for Lewis to later meet up with Bill Knox and Don Lane to discuss the government’s wish to ‘suppress SP betting’, and still be home at Garfield Drive by 10 p.m.

Flight

After his humiliating farewell drinks hosted by Tom Newbery and Terry Lewis at the Metropolitan, Ray and Mavis Whitrod wasted no time in getting out of town. Between his formal resignation as Commissioner and his farewell press conference, Whitrod had been offered teaching posts at both La Trobe University in Melbourne and the Australian National University in Canberra.

Whitrod selected Canberra. A daughter still lived there, and it was the place where he’d had many happy years with his family while reforming the Commonwealth Police.

So in early December 1976 Ray and Mavis packed up their house in St Lucia (which they expediently sold to a friend who had always admired it) and headed south in the family car – a dark blue Austin 1800. The former Commissioner’s furniture and voluminous personal files and documentation would follow in a removal van.

The Whitrods took the fastest route possible – the Newell Highway, via Goondiwindi, Coonabarabran, Gilgandra then on to Yass and the Acton campus of the ANU, close to the Canberra CBD.

‘When the removalists’ van was a week overdue … I began to phone the company asking about our furniture,’ Whitrod said. ‘After three weeks, I was told that everything had been burned. On its way to Canberra, the truck had hit the side of a bridge and burst into flames.

‘This was distressing enough, but I had strong doubts that the fire was accidental. I thought of having the matter investigated, but this would have involved using the Queensland police, now under the control of Commissioner Terry Lewis. I hadn’t the heart to even try.’

The Whitrods, still without a home in the national capital, lived for several months in accommodation provided by the university. Meanwhile, Ray taught criminology within the law faculty.

‘He wasn’t bitter,’ his daughter Ruth remembers of that period. ‘People used to ask – “Why isn’t your dad more bitter?” I think his [Baptist] faith had a lot to do with it.’

His son Ian says his father only occasionally spoke to him about what went on during those almost seven years in Queensland. ‘He thought there were some pretty evil forces at work there,’ Ian says. ‘There was a time when he was sleeping with a revolver under his pillow and that upset my mother no end. I think he saw his time up there as unfinished business. He thought he had the backing of the Queensland Government. He didn’t. It was a tough time for him. He said to me that he was certain that Terry Lewis was very crooked.’

The New Boy

Things couldn’t have been better for Lewis. He was back home. He’d seen off Whitrod, his arch rival. And he had the top job.

On the evening of Thursday 2 December, just days after taking up the position of Commissioner of Police, he dropped into the Belfast Hotel to see his old mate Barry Maxwell and have a beer with his friend, Detective Sergeant John Meskell.

‘I just walked in there and saw this well-groomed bloody commissioner with all the regalia,’ recalls bar manager Les Hounslow. ‘It was Lewis. I said, “Shit, what do I call you now?” And he said, “Still Terry”.’

Apart from catching up with old mates, Lewis quickly got a taste of the rarefied life of a top public servant. He was a kid in a lolly shop.

On Sunday 5 December, he enjoyed a Christmas function at the Chinese Club. Two nights later he was back at the Belfast, this time for drinks with Bill Glasson, MP, and Inspector Tony Murphy, who regularly visited Brisbane during his time in distant Longreach, and could now celebrate his old friend’s extraordinary promotion. The day after that Lewis was up at Government House for a function hosted by the Governor, Air Marshal Sir Colin Hannah.

There were more functions at the Belfast, Tattersalls, the Grosvenor and the Park Royal, dinner with his old media pal Ron Richards, and an invitation from entrepreneur Keith Williams to visit his theme park, Sea World, on the Gold Coast and take an aerial flight over the glitter strip with Premier Bjelke-Petersen.

(Lewis would take up that invitation on Saturday 22 January 1977, when, having been in the job for just seven weeks, his family and that of Bjelke-Petersen and Keith Williams gathered together in the sunshine for happy snaps on board Williams’ boat, the MV
Ulysses
. They also took that promised flight in the white, yellow and orange Sea World chopper over the Broadwater and a rapidly expanding Surfers Paradise.)

But despite his delight in being elevated into the top position, Lewis was nervous about how the troops would receive him. He was particularly anxious about the reception he would receive at the regional superintendent’s conference that Whitrod had established, one of which was scheduled just weeks after he started. ‘One, of some consequence, was the one in December … and there was a swearing in, an induction ceremony … [they] were a bit daunting because everybody at that regional superintendent’s conference had been senior to me. So I was at the top of the table actually with a couple of the assistant commissioners and all the others were down the other side of it.’