Daughter warned off 'evil, manipulative' druggie dad

THE daughter of an “evil, manipulative man” who grew one of Queensland’s largest marijuana plantations raised $150,000 towards her father’s legal defence.

THE daughter of an "evil, manipulative man" who grew one of Queensland's largest marijuana plantations raised $150,000 towards her father's legal defence through a market stall at Nimbin.

Rosemary Gardner, 35, set up a stall to raise money for Michael Bennett Gardner, also known as Dozer, who would regularly send more than 270kg of the drug for manicuring and sometimes on-selling in the Northern Rivers region.

On one occasion her father, who was jailed in 2012 for 13 years for the huge production at Inglewood, told her who owed him money and sent her to collect.

On another, Rosemary set up the stall knowing those who owed her father money would come forward to repay their debts.

Crown prosecutor David Meredith told Brisbane Supreme Court the $150,000 she raised under the legal defence guise would have been considerably less than her father was owed.

He said Rosemary had also hidden $50,000 cash that her father given her when anticipating his arrest and recovered $70,000 from the southern Darling Downs property after her father's arrest.

Mr Meredith said she destroyed a video her brother made of the operation which involved Gardner recruiting his young family, children aged 11-14, to plant seedlings and tend to thousands of plants when they should have been at school

A heavily pregnant Rosemary, now a mother of four, was instrumental in gathering the Gardner family for a get-together to plant those 10,000 marijuana seedlings in late 2007.

She would regularly help with manicuring, packaging and preparing the cut plants for sale on weekends, getting $100 for half a kilo.

"The principal criminality was the holding and collecting of money," Mr Meredith said.

"She knew it was the proceeds of cannabis (production)."

When police raided the property in 2008, they found 22,000 live marijuana plants and 3.59 tonnes dried.

The black market value amounted to almost $70 million.

Justice Ros Atkinson sentenced Rosemary to four years jail, but wholly suspended the sentence for five years.

She told Rosemary she had to stay free of her father once he was released from jail so she could avoid his control again in the future.

Ms Atkinson said Gardner was a dominating, evil, manipulative man whose actions had a detrimental effect on all his children.

Defence barrister Alastair McDougall said his client had an horrendously tragic upbringing but had still worked all her adult life.

He said she was extremely concerned about leaving her four children in the hands of their father because she already had to intervene when he had them on weekends.