What Queensland MPs said about the landmark Fitzgerald report 30 years ago

10.07pm: Leader of the house Brian Austin has moved to adjourn the debate but Labor is not happy.

That's a wrap, Queensland Parliament is shutting down for the night.Credit: Robert Rough

Leader of the opposition Wayne Goss wants to know when the debate will be resumed and says the House should sit next week to pass legislation to set up the electoral commission.

The government has won a divide and that's it for the debate of the Fitzgerald report tonight.

The Parliament moved on to a bill to continue the commission of inquiry before adjourning at 11.08pm.

Thanks for joining us! It looks like Queensland will be changed forever. 

Mr Gygar says he was taken aback by recommendations from Mr Fitzgerald that the police diving unit and bomb squad be civilianised.

Police divers in 1972.Credit: Victor Colin Sumner/ Fairfax Media

But he has since come around.

"When one thinks of it, divers are divers. They are not going to have to arrest anybody 30 feet down instantaneously," he says.

"Members of bomb squads are experts in explosive ordnance.

"They are not going to go out to arrest the bomb; they are there to defuse it."

Mr Gygar says if the police force is to boost its numbers, those positions must be civilianised.

9.37pm: Liberal MP Terry Gygar says he fought with former premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen, or as he has just called him, "the old devil", tooth and nail for 13 years.

Liberal MP Terry Gygar reckons he is the only MP who has had a chair thrown at him by a premier.Credit: Source unknown

"I think I still stand as the only member of this Parliament who has had the premier physically stand up and pelt a chair at him across a room, coupled with the accusation that I am a dangerous communist," he says.

"Mind you, it was the same week that Mr Burns said that I was to the right of Genghis Khan.

"I figured that, with that sort of criticism, I must be doing fairly well."

Nationals MP Tony Burreket says he supports a "good, hard look at the present electoral system" but he is worried a review of electoral boundaries will hurt northern and western Queensland.

"The zonal system, which was established by the Labor Party, was designed to protect the interests of people out west, that minority group who make this state tick over," he says.

"Where does the wealth of Queensland come from? The mineral and rural wealth comes from western and northern Queensland.

"If the one vote, one value system is introduced, our voices in the north will be wiped out."

9.07pm: Deputy opposition leader Tom Burns is describing the best political cartoon he's seen in years.

Mike Ahern leaving a cabinet meeting at the Executive Building.Credit: Mike Larder

It has Premier Mike Ahern at one end of a table with "corks in his ears, wearing a blindfold and the slab over his mouth".

"At the other end of the table in a police uniform is Russ Hinze wearing dark glasses, Joh with the hat and corks, and prostitutes and massage parlours and casino lights all around.

"Poor old Mike was sitting at the end of the table with the plugs in his ears because he saw nothing and he knew nothing, all the way through 20 years as a government whip and as a minister of the crown."

7.52pm: Labor's Bill Eaton is telling a story about going to the airport early one morning in a taxi, and seeing a big group of people coming out of a building.

Journalist Phil Dickie investigated the goings on in the Valley.Credit: Fairfax Media

"I said to the taxi driver, 'Oh, they must be going home late from a party'.

"He said, 'Oh no, that's one of those gambling casinos that don't exist.'"

Mr Eaton says apparently "everyone in Brisbane" knew where the casinos were but ministers denied their existence.

"Now the government is having to acknowledge that these casinos and brothels did exist and is saying that it was too hard to get the evidence," he says.

"I believe that is an indictment of the government and shows complacency and its inability to properly govern the state of Queensland."

7.30pm: Nationals MP Howard Hobbs says Commissioner Tony Fitzgerald made scant reference to pornography in his report.

"I have here some documentation that is available through some music shops throughout this state," he says, tabling some documents.

"They are examples of the types of things that Mr Fitzgerald should have been addressing.

"They are absolutely vulgar."

(Mr Hobbs has tabled copies of lyrics of pop songs)

"If the honourable member looks at the articles, he will find that they are disgusting," he says.

"They are all to do with prostitution and pornography."

Mr White has called for an investigation into phone tapping, saying he was told by Telecom in 1983 that his phones were being tapped.

A phone tapping device, depicted in December 1987.Credit: Fairfax Media

"Frankly, I do not know whether my phones were tapped," he says.

"I was told and warned that they were.

"During the election campaign, my phones made all sorts of funny noises, which remarkably disappeared after the election.

"It makes one really wonder."

5.29pm: Liberal MP Terry White says the Fitzgerald report's recommendations have highlighted the failure of the Queensland version of the Westminster system.

"We all have to accept that the Westminster system has failed, particularly in a modern society," he says.

"The structural changes suggested are meticulous about the existence of checks and balances, but no more so than in the creation of the new commissions and parliamentary committees."

Mr White says it's important to introduce a register of political donations immediately. 

"I firmly believe now that things are so bad in Queensland that the sooner we move to public funding, the better," he says.

4.59pm: Nationals MP Gordon Simpson says tipping can even be a form of corruption.

Tony Fitzgerald - days after his landmark report was handed down.Credit: Peter O'Halloran

"It is not widespread in Australia; I hope it never will be," he says.

"In overseas countries where tipping is widespread, people may not realise that they are paying money for favours but that is what they are doing.

"They regard it as small-time corruption and do not worry about it.

"The local policeman goes to the local pub, asks for a six-pack and does not pay for it.

"People might say, 'That is not a big deal, it is only a six-pack.'

"I do not believe that is the case.

"Whether the amount involved is small or large, the practice is wrong.

"It progresses from there into the big time of organised crime."