Fitzgerald inquiry: Former premier Mike Ahern says many aspects still not exposed

QUEENSLAND’S era of sin and corruption still has more secrets to give up, according to the man who led Queensland during the height of the Fitzgerald inquiry.

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QUEENSLAND’S era of sin and corruption still has more secrets to give up, according to the man who led Queensland during the height of the Fitzgerald inquiry.

Former premier Mike Ahern, who took over from the disgraced Joh Bjelke-Petersen in 1987, said the stories of sleaze and gambling that titillated Australia after being exposed in The Courier-Mail actually masked even more dangerous criminality.

“The major issue that Fitzgerald was targeting was not Bubbles Bathhouse and those more interesting things but the issue was the much bigger and nastier agenda of the drug trade,” Mr Ahern said.

He said many aspects of that dark era had not been properly explained.

“I’m not sure that it’s all been exposed fully yet,” he said.

Former Queensland Premier Mike Ahearn.

He pointed to the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub firebombing in 1973, which killed 15 people, saying he believed the real bombers were “not the ones who did the time”.

“I think there’s more to know about that,” he said.

James Richard Finch and John Andrew Stuart were both found guilty of the firebombing and sentenced to life in prison.

Mr Ahern said the Fitzgerald report had ultimately changed the attitude of the entire state towards government, police, and the extent of criminal relationships.

Fitzgerald years in pictures

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“Fitzgerald was a real watershed, it changed a lot of thinking in the Queensland community about what politics was and what it should be,” he said.

But while the thinking undoubtedly changed, some things in Fortitude Valley — an area that has reinvented itself from ‘Sin City’ to a breakthrough music and entertainment district, to the site of some of Brisbane's first warehouse redevelopments, to a thriving restaurant hotspot — have not changed all that much.

Bubbles Bathhouse, once the centre of Geraldo Bellino’s vice network and the most famous illegal casino in Brisbane, is now operating as a restaurant called Les Bubbles.

Owner Damian Griffiths has embraced the property’s history, dotting the walls with photos of the era, including one of Geraldo Bellino in a bubble-filled spa.

A neon sign above the bar says: “We regret to inform you we are no longer a brothel”.

“We get a lot of customers in their 60s who say ‘don’t tell the wife, but we’ve been in here before’,” he said.

Owner of Le Bubbles Damian Griffiths.

Deeper in the Valley, the formerly pulsating Manhattan nightclub houses a shuttered furniture shop.

Next door is the Valley Fiveways building at the corner of Brunswick St and Barry Pde. It was called the Sin Triangle, with a brothel, porn shop and tattoo parlour.

The Bunnies “male relaxation centre” operated upstairs. Today, the Den Adult shop takes out the building’s entire bottom floor. Opposite, next to the Netherworld Pub, is a massage parlour advertising itself as a “relaxation centre” with a massage costing $65 for one hour.

Netherworld owner James Angliss said locals called a corridor of strip clubs, massage parlours and adult shops down Brunswick St the “badlands”.

“But it’s still pretty mild,” he said. “The people down there only tend to fight among themselves.”

Fortitude Valley then and now

The old fiveways snack bar is now The Den adult shop, at the corner of Brunswick St and St Pauls Terrace, Fortitude Valley:

Bubbles at 144 Wickham St, Fortitude Valley:

Whistleblower Nigel Powell outside the Manhattan nightclub in Brunswick St: