The Snitch: Survey shows lawyers unhappy in the prosecutor’s office

Why are Sally Dowlings’ troops unhappy at the ODPP? How did Ben Roberts-Smith’s lawyers handle the loss in his defamation trial? And which Kings Cross character died recently? The Snitch is here.

All is not well inside the kingdom of Sally Dowling SC, which is also known as the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Snitch has been leaked a copy of the ODPP’s “People Matter” employee survey, in which lawyers working at the state’s prosecuting authority shared their thoughts on the state of their workplace.

It’s a grinding process putting criminals in jail, and the results of the survey show the troops are restless. Almost every category was worse compared to when the survey was taken in 2021.

The big finding was that only 27 per cent of respondents said they did not feel burnt out by their workload. Almost half (49 per cent) said they felt burnt out by the amount of hours they were putting in.

Another concerning result related to a perceived lack of “action” taken by senior management in response to surveys, just like this one. In response to the question “I am confident my organisation will act on the results of this survey”, only 37 per cent of respondents said “yes”, which was a 12 per cent drop from the 2021 survey.

Sally Dowling SC.

Also included on the low-score list was that only 34 per cent agreed they had enough time to do their work, while only 36 per cent thought senior managers listened to employees.

On the positive side, 92 per cent of respondents supported the ODPP’s ethics and values.

In answer to the question of whether “people in my work group treat each other with respect”, 85 per cent said “yes”.

The least improved question from the 2021 survey related to pay. Only 47 per cent agreed they were “paid fairly for the work I do”, a 21 per cent drop from 2021.

OTHER BIG LOSS

You have to give it to Ben Roberts-Smith’s barrister Arthur Moses SC.

After the verdict for the Victoria Cross winner’s defamation trial of the century in the Federal Court, Moses didn’t get to hit the couch with some comfort food. Instead, given his role of head of chambers for New Chambers, he had to front up and give a speech for an annual event.

Barrister Arthur Moses SC.)

We’re told by someone there Moses opened by saying: “Well, we may as well talk about the elephant in the room. There has been a devastating loss suffered – NSW lost to Queensland.”

Pause for laughter and he continued: “It goes to show nothing good comes out of Adelaide.” This was a reference to the State of Origin match in Adelaide, right?

While it would not have been his intention, keen watchers of the case will be aware the judge who presided over the trial was Justice Anthony Besanko, who comes from Adelaide.

UNDERBELLY DEATH

Jimmy Locchi, one of the more colourful figures of the Kings Cross Golden Mile era, has died. Known as the “Loch-ness Monster”, Locchi was a contemporary of crims such as Neddy Smith, and was a prostitute-runner and developed an innovative way to sell drugs.

We’re told the method was called “Locchi’s Window” – he rented ground-floor apartments and put bars on the windows. They also had to be in a block that had an intercom and security door that was unlocked by a buzzer in each apartment.

The drug buyer would ring, deposit cash through the bars and be handed the drugs. Criminal lawyer Peter Katsoolis recalled his interactions with Locchi, who was a client when he was a junior lawyer.

“‘Chops in the pan’ – that was an expression Locci always used and I still use it to this day,” he said. “He would walk into the office with (hard) copies of his the judgments for the cases (Locchi had been a defendant in). He would give them to me to read.

“He’d say ‘Make sure you have chops in the pan’, which meant make sure you get paid money upfront before acting in a case. He was given me some fatherly advice and I’ve used that expression for the past 20 years.”

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