He would own you, as Lionel Murphy found out.

“Murphy is a, you probably know, Murphy’s Abe’s man, that’s for sure,” one of Saffron’s associates James West told the National Crime Authority, the elite body which in the 1980s and ’90s led Australia’s fight against organised crime.

“I think Abe pays him and that’s it,” West said.

The cost to Murphy of his dodgy friendship was high in terms of his reputation, but it came with benefits of the scantily-clad kind.

Among the 4000 pages of sensational documents released in the Senate on Thursday — the so-called Lionel Murphy papers — is evidence that as least as far back as the 1970s, Murphy was close to the “boss of the Cross”, the king of Sydney’s underbelly and one of the city’s most successful organised crime figures, Abraham Gilbert “Abe” Saffron.

Born in 1919, Saffron, who became known as “Mr Sin”, was a ruthless crook whose fortune began with the sly grog trade.

It should be inconceivable that at the time he was Australia’s top law officer, the federal attorney-general, Murphy dined with one of the country’s most notorious crooks, but he was seen among diners at the tables of Saffron’s “headquarters”, Lodge 44, the motel he owned in Edgecliff.

There are allegations the top Labor politician was a silent partner in one of Saffron’s best-known Kings Cross brothels, owning 5 per cent of shares in the managing company of the Venus Room, and enjoyed the sexual favours of prostitutes in an apartment Saffron kept for him close by.

Murphy’s inability to say “no” put Saffron at the centre of a powerful, if seedy, network of influence, a web of corrupt cops and crooked politicians.

It was Sydney in the ’70s and early 1980s. A stinking dirty mess.

Problems with illegal gambling dens when the cops you were paying let you down? Have a word with Murphy. Want the lease over Luna Park? Ring Murphy, he will have a chat with then-NSW premier Neville “Nifty” Wran.

History has pussy-footed around whether or not Murphy was corrupt. There is evidence in these documents that he was.

The papers stem from a parliamentary commission of inquiry reluctantly set up by then-prime minister Bob Hawke in 1986 after Murphy was acquitted of attempting to pervert the course of justice. It had been alleged that Murphy tried to influence the then-chief magistrate Clarrie Briese to have criminal charges against his “little mate”, solicitor Morgan Ryan, dropped.

A year earlier, Murphy had been cleared of trying to get District Court judge Paul Flannery to take the charges away from a jury.

Murphy remained a polarising figure. He established no-fault divorce, set up the Family Court and national Legal Aid.

His High Court colleagues no longer wanted to sit with him but Justice Michael Kirby, then the president of the NSW Court of Appeal, gave a character evidence for him at his first trial. Bob Hawke made sure Murphy’s legal bills were covered.

In July 1986, one of the commission’s investigators, Andrew Phelan, sat down with superintendent Ken Drew, chief of staff to the then-NSW police commissioner John Avery, and another three officers, to garner intelligence and evidence for the commission. There is no suggestion that Kirby, Hawke or any of the officers were corrupt.

The discussion of the officers sheds light on how high the webs of influence spread. Phelan was told that “no link between Saffron and His Honour had come to light” other than what Saffron’s right-hand man, the former theatrical producer James McCartney Anderson, had told them. Phelan was told he would be able to talk to detectives who might know more.

“We were told that the former head of the vice squad Ernie (“the good”) Shepherd may be able to tell us something about suggestions that Saffron procured females for His Honour,” Phelan reported. “We were told that the vice squad had been conducting an investigation into allegations that Filipino girls were imported under a racket involving Morgan Ryan, to work as prostitutes in the Venus Room.”

It was a racket Murphy was also alleged to have been involved in.

“I thought I would stir up the waters by asking whether it had ever been explained why, when the NSW Police were tapping a large number of known and suspected criminals in Sydney, no one bothered to tap Saffron’s phone,” Phelan reported. “There was mumbling by police and I get the impression something very suspicious occurred at senior levels within the NSW Police Force to prevent a tap on Saffron’s phone.”

Another of Murphy’s mates was a former police commissioner Merv Wood.

In March 1986, the parliamentary commission wrote to Murphy with a list of questions. One of them involved a neighbour of Murphy’s at Darling Point, Robert Yuen, who ran an illegal casino in Sydney’s Chinatown.

Ryan had been caught on tape discussing with Murphy Yuen’s problems over money Yuen had paid to detective chief superintendent Patrick John Watson — but the police were still giving him grief.

The commission said: “(Yuen) had approached Ryan for assistance to get the police off his back and, apparently independently of Ryan, made contact with someone of influence in the block of flats in which he lived. The folder will show that Yuen lived in the same block of flats as Murphy.“

Murphy served as attorney-general in both Whitlam governments. He was appointed to the High Court in February 1975 and served there until his death in October 1986.

Had he lived, he may have escaped censure — at least for sleeping with prostitutes. The commission noted: “It is debatable whether this would amount to (judicial) misbehaviour.

“For what it is worth, our view is that it would fall short of such.”

Saffron died in 2006. Ryan could not be contacted for comment yesterday.

Bob Hawke declined to comment.