Opinion: Courier-Mail’s role in Fitzgerald inquiry must not be overlooked

THE landmark Fitzgerald inquiry just celebrated a milestone anniversary, but some of those responsible for bringing it about have been overlooked.

• Where are key figures?
• Fitzgerald era in pictures
• We must remain vigilant

QUEENSLAND history is now and forever divided, not only in time but also in cultural attitudes.

There’s the time before the Fitzgerald inquiry, when decades-old corruption under both Labor and conservative governments made the state a backwater laughing stock.

And there’s the three decades since 1989, when Tony Fitzgerald QC handed down a blueprint into how a shadowy Sunshine State could be cleaned up once and for all.

It’s a pun on that state moniker that inspired the title of one of the most important examples of broadcast journalism in Australian history.

Thirty years ago last month, ABC’s Four Corners program aired The Moonlight State – reporter Chris Masters’ landmark investigation into police corruption.

The day after broadcast, police minister Bill Gunn – acting as premier while Joh Bjelke-Petersen toured the country on a “Joh For PM” jaunt – commissioned a full and independent inquiry.

Phil Dickie’s reporting was critical to exposing corruption in Queensland.

Imagined to sit for a few weeks, the Fitzgerald inquiry endured two years, broadened its brief to include political corruption, saw a police commissioner and cabinet ministers jailed and a government eventually defeated.

More importantly, the rickety old system of unchecked power and a rorted voting system that cultivated corruption also passed into history.

The received wisdom – repeated in Monday’s Four Corners episode, Breaking the Brotherhood, that explored the brave police who exposed corrupt cops – is that The Moonlight State was sparked by information from Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence analyst Peter Vassallo who, in turn, received tip-offs from honest undercover cop Jim Slade – a man corrupt police failed to lure into “The Joke” of police pay-offs from protected criminals.

There’s no doubt the information Vassallo and Slade gave Masters was crucial.

And information from other intrepid police – such as Sgt Col Dillon and (later Labor MP) Peter Pyke, whose careers (and perhaps lives) were imperilled – must also be acknowledged.

But a huge piece missing from the Four Corners puzzle this week is the role played by The Courier-Mail, which broke ground on police corruption months before the ABC did.

Phil Dickie with his book The Road to Fitzgerald and Beyond.

In 1986, editor Greg Chamberlin and chief of staff Bob Gordon sat down with investigative reporter Phil Dickie to discuss his probe into long-suspected illegal brothels and casinos in Brisbane’s then-grimy Fortitude Valley – dens of iniquity famously denied by former police minister Russ Hinze.

Indeed, Courier-Mail cartoonists Alan Moir and Sean Leahy, whose brilliant satire also raised public awareness, lampooned an apparently “blind” Hinze.

And The Courier-Mail’s Matt Condon, author of the Three Crooked Kings trilogy, is more than a journalist; he’s the definitive chronicler of our state’s darkest years.

Ultimately, Dickie’s reports between 1986 and 1987 found tomes of evidence of inappropriate relationships between police and Brisbane brothel owners and his reports saw himself, Chamberlin and others incur the wrath of crims and crooked cops.

The fact Courier-Mail staff continued investigating despite personal intimidation, and the paper persevered in the face of a record number of writs – 17 – aimed at silencing it, speaks volumes about this newspaper’s commitment to public accountability.

Queensland owes a huge debt to some very humble journos. We thank you.

Dr Paul Williams is a Brisbane-based political scientist

Fitzgerald years in pictures

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