Lawyer X: Police attempt to close doors on witnesses
Victoria Police has failed in its bid to have potentially damning commission hearings moved behind closed doors, as the $27 million Lawyer X royal commission continues.
Law & Order
Don't miss out on the headlines from Law & Order. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Victoria Police has attempted to shut the public and media out of the Lawyer X royal commission.
The force sought to have potentially damning commission hearings dealing with protected witnesses’ evidence moved behind closed doors.
If successful, the application would have seen the media and public shut out of the $27 million inquiry for months, just as it was to hear from a series of police witnesses who dealt with Nicola Gobbo from 2005 to 2009, when she was acting as a gangland barrister but was also a secret police informer.
But the media has been allowed to hear the evidence under strict reporting conditions.
The upcoming evidence is subject to a myriad suppression orders left over from Melbourne’s gangland war era, with some dating back more than 15 years.
The Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants was established in December 2018 after the High Court lifted a series of court orders police had got to keep Gobbo’s informing under wraps.
The High Court found Victoria Police conduct in the Lawyer X saga was “reprehensible” and may have led to a breach of its duty to the public.
This afternoon, while in public hearings, the commission heard again from controversial former police detective Paul Dale.
The inquiry was told Mr Dale, while he was behind bars accused of a drug house burglary, wanted Gobbo to get in contact with underworld kingpins Carl Williams and Tony Mokbel.
Counsel assisting the commission Chris Winneke said Gobbo had made notes after a visit to Mr Dale in Port Phillip prison that the wanted her to speak to Williams.
Gobbo also recorded Mr Dale had asked her to get a message to Tony Mokbel.
But Mr Dale told the commission he could not recall ever asking Gobbo to do that.
Mr Dale had been remanded in jail after being charged in relation to the burglary of a Mokbel drug house in 2003.
Mr Dale was implicated in the burglary after his informer Terry Hodson gave a statement to anti-corruption police.
Hodson and his wife Christine were killed eight months later.
The commission heard that it was during the prison visit that Gobbo also took legal notes from Mr Dale about the burglary case, which she passed on to police three years later in 2007.
Police suspected Mr Dale was involved in the Hodsons’ murders, which he was charged over in 2009, but the case was dropped in 2010 after Carl Williams was bashed to death in prison.
Williams was assisting police in relation to Mr Dale’s case.
Mr Dale told the commission that after he was charged with the 2003 burglary, he was barred from talking to other members of Victoria Police and Gobbo became a confidante.
“My whole circle of friends my whole life involved police members, from the moment I was charged with serious offences that safety net was cut off and I was put adrift, Nicola was there to support me,” he said.