Lawyer X childcare centre gong: Police informer received Premier’s volunteer award

The gangland barrister who sparked Australia’s greatest legal scandal will be unmasked today. We can reveal that Lawyer X is an “outcast” from her prominent Melbourne family and, just weeks before a royal commission was ordered into her informing, she received a Premier’s volunteer award for saving a childcare centre.

Weeks before the State Government called a royal commission into the scandal over Lawyer X, the barrister received a Premier’s volunteer award for saving a childcare centre.

It can also be revealed the lawyer whom police recruited to inform on gangland clients, possibly tainting dozens of convictions against the ­nation’s worst drug lords and killers, is an “outcast” from her prominent Melbourne family.

Even as the High Court was concluding last year that the one-time high-flyer had committed “atrocious” breaches of her obligations as a lawyer, she was being celebrated at Government House for “skilled and selfless leadership” in saving a Brighton childcare centre.

CLICK HERE TO RECAP LAWYER X COVERAGE SO FAR

The citation for Lawyer X, also a committee president at a nearby kindergarten, read: “Practical and passionate, (she) has created a true community hub for successive generations of children and families.”

The barrister will be named at 4.15 this afternoon.

Today, the Herald Sun can reveal:

A ROYAL commission is expected to explore the knowledge and possible involvement of the Office of Public Prosecutions in using Lawyer X;

SENIOR police say the OPP was “in lock-step” with force decisions to use Lawyer X in behaviour called “reprehensible” by the High Court; and

THE Victorian Government Solicitor’s Office is expected to face intense scrutiny over whether it gave advice on using Lawyer X.

The royal commission is due to begin hearing public evidence later this month.

Lawyer X’s police handlers have engaged former County Court judge Geoffrey Chettle to defend them before the commission, if they are allowed to be heard. It is understood they will allege they always sought legal advice about their use of Lawyer X.

“If they think we were doing something in isolation, they’re dreaming,” a source said.

“There are moments in time when you think, ‘Wow, could someone think this is conspiracy to pervert, or something else like that?’ And we would go get advice. If they think we went rogue somewhere, well, it was all covered.”

Most parents of children at the childcare centre Lawyer X saved — many of whom are in Melbourne’s most affluent circles — are understood to have had no idea of her double life.

Members of her well-known and highly regarded family are said to be “deeply embarrassed” and “distressed” and have disowned her for bringing shame to their name.

Fellow students at the elite girls’ college and the university she attended described Lawyer X as having been someone who constantly placed herself at the centre of big events.

It is five years since the Herald Sun revealed a barrister, whom we identified then only as Lawyer X, was informing on her clients to police.

Police immediately sought to shut the story down, winning suppression orders preventing the paper from naming her and then from reporting most aspects of the scandal.

But late last year the High Court finally ordered the lifting of unprecedented suppression orders so the Director of Public Prosecutions could advise Lawyer X’s convicted clients, in writing, that their cases might have been compromised. This prompted a royal commission into the police force’s use of informers.

But a suppression order on Lawyer X’s identity remained in force, until 4.15pm today.

Lawyer X has boasted in secret hearings to having produced more than 5500 informer reports, many on her clients. Royal commission chair Margaret McMurdo said it was “essential” anyone who had dealings with Lawyer X make submissions.

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