Nevertheless, defenders of Askin are quick to point out that the claims about him have never been tested in court or even a royal commission. Therefore, doubts remain and, with them, a fuller understanding of the nature of corruption in New South Wales under Askin.

  What is clear, however, is that Askin’s refusal to legalise casinos or to systematically clamp down on their operations resulted in corruption and he allowed organised crime to flourish in his nearly ten years as premier. The centralisation of power in his Liberal Party also made it possible for a small group of organised criminals to maintain close connections with figures at the centre of government.

  The fortunes made from gambling by men such as Galea and McPherson bled into the narcotics trade, which greatly worsened police corruption and organised crime. Ultimately this led to the appointment of three royal commissions: the 1977 investigation by Justice Phillip Woodwood into drug trafficking; the 1980 Australian Royal Commission on the Activities of the Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union, headed by Frank Costigan QC; and the 1981 inquiry into drug trafficking led by Justice Donald Stewart. These uncovered an underworld of violence, fraud, money laundering and other criminal activities.

  Askin’s legacy is twofold. At one level, he affirmed Australia’s egalitarian tradition: he was a working-class boy who ascended to the pinnacle of New South Wales state politics. But at another level, his career exemplifies the emergent links between government, corruption and organised crime during the 1960s and ’70s, and the ease with which it was possible to evade accountability. Ultimately, Askin left the whole sordid mess to his successor Neville Wran.

  The struggle to legalise casinos

  In rusted-on Labor circles, Neville Wran is a hero. Following the decimation of Gough Whitlam’s federal Labor government at the 1975 election, Wran’s win at the 1976 New South Wales poll was a tonic to the party’s supporters. So-called ‘Wran slides’ in 1978 and 1981, followed by a fourth win in 1984, established Wran as one of the party’s most successful leaders. His mix of conservative economic management and politically moderate but nevertheless progressive reforms became a template for future Labor leaders.59

  Like Askin, Wran was an inner-city working-class boy from a struggling Sydney family. A scholarship to the selective Fort Street High School, where he excelled in acting and debating,60 propelled him to Sydney University, where he studied law and supported himself by working as a bookmaker’s runner for the controversial Waterhouse family. Wran went on to a successful career at the New South Wales bar before entering politics in 1970.

  Like Askin, Wran was keen to put his working-class origins behind him, although he was quick to evoke them when it suited his political purposes. A working-class boy with bourgeois sensibilities, Wran was ambitious for success but cynical in his approach to politics. Razortongued, he could also turn on the charm at will. He was highly intelligent but showed poor political judgement on some crucial issues, not least corruption.

  However, Wran had a rare political skill set. In an age increasingly dominated by television, he developed a commanding public image around the slogan ‘Wran’s the man’, and he perfected the TV ‘grab’.61 Tough-minded and competitive, ‘he could charm in public and intimidate in private with equal skill’, journalist Mike Steketee wrote.62 As a ministerial colleague, Rodney Cavalier, noted, Wran knew Sydney inside out.63

  Wran had the memorable nickname ‘Nifty’, the origin of which is revealing of the colourful world he inhabited. It was conferred on him by lawyer Morgan Ryan, who knew Wran from his years practising law; Ryan also had Abe Saffron as a client, as well as a reputation as a ‘Mr Fix-It’ for organised crime.64

  Behind Wran’s electoral success and urbane public image lay a parallel tale of corruption under his administration – proven and alleged. As one observer of New South Wales politics noted in 2014:

  Wran presided over a state in which hundreds of prisoners paid their way out of prison. The police force was routinely corrupt and included detectives who killed people. Court cases were fixed, key judicial figures mixed with organised crime, and corruption in the property, racing and gambling industries was rife and backed by heavies.65

  Dealing with police corruption and organised crime should have been at the top of his agenda as premier. After all, as opposition leader between late 1973 and 1976 Wran had raised allegations of corruption in parliament: he evidently knew, at least in outline, the problem posed by illegal casinos and organised crime. But by the late 1970s it was estimated that $1.4 million (approximately $12 million today) was being paid annually in bribes to senior politicians and police.66

  Wran had a choice: he could legalise casinos, clean up the police and go after the crime bosses, or he could give the appearance of being proactive while doing nothing. Wran chose the latter course, although his motives for inaction remain elusive.

  The obfuscation commenced soon after Wran assumed office in May 1976. He stunned the media with the unexpected announcement that his government proposed to legalise casinos. It came as if ‘a rather large brick’ had dropped from the sky, as Tribune put it.67 The move had not been part of Labor’s pre-election commitments and Wran hadn’t discussed the issue with his cabinet. But he added an important qualifier: he would only introduce legislation sometime in the next three years. In truth, the premier was buying time.68 A risk-averse politician, Wran was only too aware that pursuing the legalisation of casinos meant stirring a hornets’ nest of dangerous vested interests. He also established an inquiry to consider the best means to legalise casinos.

  Establishing a timeframe and setting up an inquiry gave the appearance of a sensible, planned approach to a controversial political issue. In fact, the plan was a recipe for the status quo: illegal casinos would continue operating and there was no parallel attempt to deal with police corruption.

  The inquiry, headed by Edwin Lusher QC, commenced in earnest. Lusher, a dapper, patient and dogged lawyer, heard months of evidence and took notes with a gold pen. The inquiry became a flashpoint in the public debate about casinos, as the churches united to argue against their introduction. So fired up were the clergy that at times they shouted at Lusher in the cramped hearing room or stormed out in high dudgeon.69

  Undeterred, Lusher presented his report to Wran on 13 December 1977. It was a considered attempt to provide a sound policy framework around legalised casinos. He came down in favour of quiet, unobtrusive places that catered to a minority. He also recommended that they be controlled by an independent authority, and that they be limited to gambling and not provide ancillary entertainment. It was a different model to Wrest Point, and the antithesis of how casinos eventually developed across Australia. Not surprisingly, the report was shelved.

  Meanwhile, in making appointments to the police leadership, Wran showed that he had no intention of challenging the prevailing culture: he installed Mervyn Wood as commissioner on 1 January 1977 and Bill Allen as his deputy. The careers of both senior officers had been clouded in allegations over their links to Sydney’s underworld, and both were ultimately forced to resign within a couple of years as allegations became public.

  Wran suffered no serious political fallout from his promotion of two such shady characters to head the New South Wales Police Service, but the issue of police corruption and its links to gambling simmered away.

  Corruption escalates

  In early 1979, nearly three years after making his commitment to legalise casinos in New South Wales, Wran admitted that his government had not drawn up any proposal to do so, and that it had no timetable. The issue was now a ‘low priority’.70

  In 1983 the extent of the penetration of organised crime in society emerged. The Costigan royal commission into corruption in the Painters and Dockers Union was in progress, and counsel assisting the inquiry, Doug Meagher, produced a 213-page report outlining how organised crime extended beyond the union and had become ‘big business’. Senior banking officials, Meagher pointed out, had been corrupted to set up dummy accounts; one or two horse races a day were being fixed; the results of football matches were being arranged beforehand; and police gaming squads had been corrupted to help protect SP bookmakers. Attempts to rein in these rackets, Meagher argued, were a ‘mere flea bite’.71

  In the same year, Justice FX Connor, who had conducted an inquiry into casinos in Victoria (see Chapter 4), gave an address to the National Crime Commission conference about the corruption surrounding SP bookmaking. ‘[I]llegal book making is a multimillion dollar industry run by people who can get up to forty or fifty telephones, and who, if their telephones are closed down, can get them in new premises a week later,’ he said. The profits, he added, were used to finance other organised crime, or entry into legitimate businesses.72

  A full reckoning of the culture of police corruption that assisted the growth of organised crime and that Wran had tolerated had to await the 1995–97 Royal Commission into the New South Wales Police Service. Justice Wood was scathing of the depth and seriousness of the problem. The 1970s and ’80s, he wrote, were a period in which a ‘barbecue set’ of senior CIB officers who had corrupt links to criminals became powerful in the organisation, even after they retired. These officers, Wood found, were skilled at using the media, had access to confidential information and did not expect to be held accountable.73

  What except complicity can explain Wran sitting for ten years atop a culture of corruption and organised crime and doing nothing about it? Writing at the time of Wran’s death in 2014, journalist Michael Pascoe correctly described this inaction as a mystery.74 To some who knew him well, Premier Wran was a chameleon.75

  In failing to deal with corruption, Wran showed his cynical approach to politics. To him, corruption was not an issue because it did not affect ordinary people’s lives, in the way ‘bread and butter issues’ did.76 A naturally risk-averse politician like him could compartmentalise, in order to avoid this threat and concentrate instead on measures within his control.

  In the end, we are no wiser about the course Wran took. The inquiries mounted into organised crime in his era never focused specifically on his actions. But we do know the consequence of Wran’s inaction: crime and corruption flourished on the back of illegal gambling.

  Wran didn’t announce legislation to legalise casinos until 1981, and it was 1983 before he declared a crackdown on police corruption. But nothing changed on either front. Wran resigned as premier and from politics in 1986, and no move was made by his Labor successor, Barrie Unsworth, on the casino question.

  Liberal leader Nick Greiner, who won the 1988 state election, said there would be no casino in New South Wales until there was a guarantee that it would not be corrupted by organised crime. He had a point, as corruption had been a running sore in New South Wales. In Queensland, meanwhile, the entire system of government was corrupt.

  ‘The Moonlight State’

  In early 1987, two journalists began snooping around the brothels, SP bookmakers and illegal casinos in Brisbane’s seedy Fortitude Valley, just north of the CBD. Phil Dickie from Brisbane’s Courier-Mail and Chris Masters from the ABC’s flagship investigative program Four Corners were acting separately on information that Queensland’s police force was widely involved in a protection racket, receiving payments from brothel owners, SP bookmakers and illegal casino operators in return for turning a blind eye to their operations. For years rumours had swirled around Queensland and national politics that the state was rotten to the core.

  Many nights Dickie pedalled around on his bicycle, perching himself in carparks, on rafters and on fire escapes to build up a detailed picture of the ownership of gambling establishments and their links to certain police. He caught glimpses of Geraldo Bellino, rumoured to be a linchpin in the city’s network of organised crime and the owner of illegal casinos. He published a series of articles on the Valley, revealing police involvement – right up the chain of command – in Queensland organised crime.77 Gambling was a key part of the corruption racket that snaked its way right through the power structures of the state.

  When Chris Masters began his explorations, talking to pimps, prostitutes and disgruntled police officers, his inquiries made the ‘brotherhood’ nervous. Masters was aware of being watched and shadowed. But it wasn’t organised crime figures on his trail: it was police. The Australian Federal Police had information that Masters was in danger from rogue Queensland police officers, so the agency discreetly committed resources to ‘keeping a lookout for Chris’.78 Masters’ Four Corners report, titled ‘The Moonlight State’, went to air in May 1987. It documented the extent of police corruption in what has been recognised as ‘an astonishing piece of TV journalism’.79

  The next day, Bjelke-Petersen’s deputy, Bill Gunn, then the acting premier, established an official inquiry into the allegations, appointing lawyer Tony Fitzgerald to head it. The Fitzgerald Inquiry’s report was a turning point in Queensland’s history. The voluminous evidence he collected revealed a toxic stew of corruption, the worst ever documented in Australia, in which criminals had links with senior police, and corrupt police with cabinet ministers. Importantly, Fitzgerald provided a roadmap for reform.

  This is not the place to re-examine the groundbreaking work of Tony Fitzgerald in cleaning up Queensland politics. Our focus remains on the link between corruption and casinos. However, for context, it’s important to understand the origins and dynamics of police corruption in Queensland.

  ‘The Joke’

  Like other Australian states, Queensland had long experienced a level of police corruption accompanying the war on gambling and other ‘vices’. However, in Queensland corruption became more entrenched and was more tolerated, both by police and by governments, than was the case in other states. The difference in Queensland was its long history of authoritarianism, which stemmed from both the Labor Party and the conservative Country Party. Across time and place, authoritarian regimes – even those with a veneer of democracy – have commonly succumbed to corruption to benefit political and personal interests.80

  Observers of Queenslanders’ ready acceptance of right-wing politicians, along with their authoritarian instincts, have referred to the state’s distinctive culture as the ‘Deep North’, drawing a comparison with the reactionary politics of America’s ‘Deep South’.81

  In the ‘sunshine state’, corruption was the norm, especially in country areas. One who took full advantage of this political environment was policeman Frank Bischof, who became police commissioner in 1958. Known as ‘the Big Fella’, Bischof had honed his skills for graft and making a quid since joining the force back in 1925. He exerted authority in a police force prone to unquestioned obedience. Most officers who joined the force in the 1930s and were still there decades later had little more than a primary school education, were primarily drawn from country areas and were typically the sons of police officers.82

  Gathering around him like-minded young acolytes, Bischof institutionalised corruption. In particular, he mentored three notable recruits: Glendon Hallahan, Anthony Murphy and Terry Lewis. Developing a close brotherhood, the three young recruits not only became Bischof’s ‘bagmen’ but also acted as praetorian guards to protect the system of kickbacks, which they euphemistically called ‘the Joke’. They referred to themselves as ‘the Rat Pack’. Together, Bischof and his men cemented police relations with criminal groups.83

  As they rose through the ranks, Bischof’s acolytes developed the ruthlessness needed to protect the Joke. The strongly built Tony Murphy ‘struck fear into the hearts of those who crossed him’, as Tony Koch wrote.84 Murphy became the de facto leader of the Rat Pack after Bischof’s retirement in 1970 due to mental health issues.85

  Glen Hallahan was similarly ruthless. As his career unfolded, he became a ‘gun’ detective, solving some of the state’s highest-profile crimes, but his success masked a sociopathic character. In one case, he fabricated evidence against an alleged murderer that sent the innocent man to the gallows.86 Hallahan was charming, had polished manners and was always impeccably dressed, but he was also prone to violent behaviour.87

  Terry Lewis was just as duplicitous, if more understated. Raised in a working-class family, he left school at the age of 12 and drifted between employers before joining the police force at 20. Described as a ‘born liar’, he was the weakest member of the Rat Pack; as Matt Condon and Mark McKenna have written, he simply fell for the trappings of high office.88

  The fortunes of the Rat Pack improved markedly in 1959 with the arrival of Jack Herbert in the Licensing Branch, which regulated the various ‘vice’ trades. Having survived a childhood in a London slum, Herbert had arrived in Australia as a young adult and spent nine years in the Queensland Police Force.89 Although he hadn’t shown any propensity for corruption before joining the Licensing Branch, he immediately saw an opportunity unfold before his eyes. His imagination was fired by the thought of extending the system of kickbacks and he quickly became the central figure running the Joke, and a longstanding colleague and friend of Terry Lewis.90

  In all, Herbert estimated that across his 20-year career as bagman he collected and distributed over $3 million in bribes, $600 000 of which, he said, he paid to Terry Lewis, while also pocketing $1 million for himself.91

  Through the 1960s and early 1970s, the Joke purred along like a Harley-Davidson motorbike. Non-participating police were dubbed ‘the enemy’ and at times were verbally intimidated.92 Honest cops left the force, and some felt compelled to leave the state, which only reinforced the corrupt culture of policing in Queensland. Hundreds of careers were ruined.93

  Indeed, from 1968, the Joke was elevated into a system for entrenching authoritarian government in Queensland. In that year, the epitome of a strongman leader, Johannes Bjelke-Petersen, became premier. The poorly educated peanut farmer, who had been nurtured in the fundamentalist dogma of the Lutheran church and in the economics of development-at-all-costs, Bjelke-Petersen was driven by his vision of a God-fearing, morally conservative and conformist society.94 For two decades he held the state’s dispersed country population in his thrall. Some have described his approach as dictatorial. Journalist and author Evan Whitton labelled him ‘the Hillbilly Dictator’.95