Lawyer X: Victoria Police apology years in the making
When Victoria Police finally issused an unconditional apology over the Lawyer X scandal, it had been years in the making, write Patrick Carlyon and Anthony Dowsley.
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Victoria Police issued an unconditional apology at 6.23pm on Tuesday.
Call it a “desperate times, desperate measures” approach to media spin.
“Our failure at that time to ensure that these circumstances were identified and disclosed was also a significant and missed opportunity to right a wrong,” a statement said.
“Victoria Police apologises to the courts whose processes were impacted by what occurred, and to the community for breaching its trust.”
Yet the statement overlooked the many inconvenient provisional recommendations of the Lawyer X royal commission, such as a prospective misconduct finding against former chief commissioner Simon Overland, and a pointed dressing down of another former chief commissioner, Graham Ashton.
Ashton has used the “desperate times, desperate measures” rhetoric in defending the police’s use of Gobbo.
In doing so, yesterday’s key recommendations to the Lawyer X royal commission assert that he “expressed the view that the ‘pub test’ is a more acceptable standard of police conduct” than the rule of law.
Victoria Police knew it had massive legal issues when another former chief commissioner, Neil Comrie, told police command that the Gobbo/police relationship “may have potentially interfered with the right of a fair trial for those concerned”.
There it was, a time to seek to make amends, and to say sorry, in 2012.
Yet the police resisted every court challenge to telling the truth, including fighting a five-year battle against the Herald Sun as it sought to lift the lid on Victoria’s biggest legal scandal.
The force’s legal wrangling delayed the very release of yesterday’s royal commission findings, and it has hampered every legal effort to expose their wrongdoing.
Yes, Victoria Police has breached Victoria’s trust, not just for the unethical use of Nicola Gobbo, but for the taxpayer-funded campaign to hide its conduct.
The force didn’t miss an “opportunity”, it perpetuated a “systemic” scandal. It didn’t commit a “failure”, it had a wholesale disregard for the law.
Victoria Police may be sorry. But how sorry? In its official response to yesterday’s recommendations, it said the findings were “an incomplete and, at times, fundamentally inaccurate view”.
Elton John was right. Sorry seems to be the hardest word.
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LAWYER X: INSIDE AUSTRALIA’S BIGGEST GANGLAND SCANDAL
* Explosive new revelations and exclusive extracts from gripping new book Lawyer X, by Anthony Dowsley and Patrick Carlyon, only in the Herald Sun and heraldsun.com.au this weekend
* Lawyer X, the story of how one woman played off police and criminals, is published by HarperCollins Australia on September 7. Pre-order your copy now at Booktopia
* Live online Q&A with Dowsley and Carlyon, hosted by Sky News’ Peter Stefanovic, on their battle to expose the truth. Send questions to ask.lawyerx@news.com.au and watch at facebook.com/heraldsun or facebook.com/TrueCrimeAustralia at 6.30pm AEST, September 9
* Watch Peter Stefanovic’s compelling two-part documentary Lawyer X: The Untold Story on Sky News at 8pm AEST, September 12 and 19
Originally published as Lawyer X: Victoria Police apology years in the making
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