INTO THE MIRE OF BENT COPS, DRUGS AND GANG MURDER

The man leading Victoria's attack on police corruption sounds confident -
so far. Malcolm Brown reports.

One thing George Brouwer already knows about the Victorian police force is
that the rot set in a long time ago.

The state's Ombudsman, who this week also became its supremo in the fight
against police corruption, has acknowledged that the root of the problem
stretches back to the 1970s, when the Beach inquiry into police corruption
did not secure a single conviction.

This year gangland violence - normally accepted by most people as
inevitable, but unrelated to them - has become so blatant that it has
Melbourne transfixed.

The killing of 27 gangsters in Victoria in six years is one thing. But when
the murders are related to corruption, with the possibility that some might
be paybacks for suspected co-operation with police internal affairs, it is
a different story.

A turning point in the history of the relationship between police and the
underworld may have been the decision by Victoria Police in 1992 to sell
commercially available chemicals to criminals for the manufacture of
amphetamines and other drugs.AdvertisementAdvertisement

This was meant to allow police to follow the progress of the ingredients
all the way to the clandestine laboratories. In 1995 the Chemical Diversion
Desk was established to handle these practices.

In May last year the acting ombudsman, Robert Seamer, reported that the
pseudoephedrine involved in these transactions was being bought by police
for $170 a kilogram. But on the blackmarket the return was no less than
$10,000 a kilogram.

The operations of the Chemical Diversion Desk continued but became
noticeable for a lack of "adequate administrative responsibility and
accountability".

Mr Seamer's report said the adoption of controlled chemical deliveries had
proved "an unmitigated and foreseeable disaster". The Drug Squad had
expanded the role of the Chemical Diversion Desk from the provision of
chemicals to criminals so that it included selling trafficable quantities
of pseudoephedrine, or speed.

He said: "The scale and complexity of many of these transactions uncovered
is beyond belief ... In the course of these transactions the Drug Squad
accumulated substantial profits."

Christine Nixon, soon after becoming the state's chief commissioner of
police in 2001, did what police administrations have done the world over -
revamped drug law enforcement by establishing a new, clean, accountable
body. The new body was called the Major Drug Investigation Division and
replaced the Drug Squad, which had overseen the Chemical Diversion Desk.

Until September 27 last year the division appeared to be living up to its
promise. Then there was a disaster. A member of the division, Senior
Detective Dave Miechel, together with this informant, Terrence Hodson, were
arrested trying to steal $1.3 million worth of drugs from a property.
Another police officer, Paul Noel Dale, was later charged with conspiracy.

That was at least discomforting. Then on May 15 this year Hodson and his
wife Christine were shot dead in their Melbourne home.

That was followed by a news report that a confidential police document
naming Mr Hodson as an informer had been circulating in the underworld for
weeks.

The question was whether any informers were safe, whether the
confidentiality of any information the police had could ever be assured.

The murder of Mr Hodson and his wife was not just a gangland killing, but a
spit in the face to the community.

In Victoria there has been no investigation of police corruption since the
Beach inquiry of 1975-76, which recommended 55 officers for prosecution.
Forty-two were prosecuted, none convicted.

The Victorian Government has responded grudgingly and without resolution to
the public's demands that decisive action be taken now.

Colleen Lewis, associate professor of criminal justice and criminology at
Monash University, says decisions have been made "on the gallop".

In his public presentation of himself this week, George Brouwer, 62, an
Indonesian-born career public servant, has been feisty and confident.

A former head of the Cabinet Office in the Department of Prime Minister and
Cabinet, he quickly rejected suggestions that he lacked hard-edged
professionalism, or that his office was inappropriate for the role.

He "would not deny" a connection between the spate of gangland murders and
police corruption. Or that police, possibly generations of them, had got
away with corruption in the past. Or that corrupt police had continued to
serve because the evidence against them had not come up to appropriate
levels of certainty.

However, he did not see the need for a fully fledged royal commission or
similar dedicated inquiry, as had happened in other states, and which he
saw as too expensive, devastating to morale and unsuccessful in producing
large numbers of convictions.

"If you want a ritual cleansing, well and good," he said. "What it produces
is a question mark. It would also have the effect of cutting short what is
on trial now. If you talk about a holistic approach to police corruption,
we are now not just reactive but with new powers we are proactive."

Having decided to hand the matter to the Ombudsman's office, the Government
announced a $1 million increase in its budget this year to $4.5million. Now
it has added another $10 million, promised 100 extra staff and a range of
new powers, such as compelling witnesses to answer, seizing documents,
permitting the assumption of false identities in sting operations and the
right to tap telephones.

In response to the criticism that the Government should establish a royal
commission, Mr Brouwer said he was now a "standing royal commission" with
resources "similar to the [NSW] Police Integrity Commission".

He would be working with Ms Nixon, who is seemingly untouched by the
scandals because she is relatively new to Victoria and has embraced the
reform agenda. On Thursday when she said there was "more to come" her
comment echoed thunder.

It looks impressive enough. But in NSW apparent attempts to clean up police
corruption paled into insignificance when compared with the revelations of
the Wood royal commission.

Dr Lewis said yesterday that the Government of Steve Bracks, like most
governments, did not want a royal commission.

"They don't like them because they lose control of the levers," she said.
She thought a process similar to the Fitzgerald inquiry in Queensland was
necessary.

That would be preferable to the system in NSW, where there were a number of
different authorities investigating police corruption.

Mr Brouwer has appointed Tony Fitzgerald to investigate the apparent
leaking of the Hodson document to the underworld. But the open-ended nature
of the appointment is seen as significant, and an inquirer of Mr
Fitzgerald's capacity could lead it anywhere.