‘Radioactive’ Gobbo continues to burn everything she touches
The latest revelation in the Lawyer X scandal raises questions on whether the secret abuse of police power may also be the secret abuse of political and judicial power.
Opinion
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Nicola Gobbo was once described as “radioactive”. She burnt everything she touched.
There are few clearer examples than the revelation that former police minister Bob Cameron approved a massive payout to her in 2010.
The Gobbo conundrum was thrown at Mr Cameron, which might explain his apparent response to her $2.88 million payout at the time.
We don’t know what Mr Cameron was told by police at the time. He may not have known the payment served as hush money for a police informer. We cannot say for certain if any members of the then Brumby government knew that Gobbo the defence barrister was also a secret police agent in a relationship described by the High Court as “reprehensible”.
Mr Cameron’s proximity opens the scandal to new possibilities. For the Gobbo secret was not contained to the highest levels of Victoria Police.
The secret abuse of police power may also be the secret abuse of political and judicial power.
The story of Mr Cameron raises simple questions. Who knew? And why didn’t those who did know do anything about it?
The Herald Sun believes that the Commonwealth Office of Public Prosecutions (OPP) was made aware of Gobbo’s unethical behaviour in 2011.
Rumours persist that elements within Victoria’s OPP were aware of questionable behaviours four years or more before then director John Champion took legal steps to reveal the subterfuge in 2015.
Some figures are disappointed by the Lawyer X royal commission’s terms of reference. The exploration should be broader, they say, in arguing that the police should not wear all the blame for a secret that leached beyond police headquarters.
Only now are such questions becoming clearer.
The devil of the Lawyer X scandal has long laid dormant in the detail of almost ancient scribblings in police officer diaries.
The royal commission has peeled layers of the saga, only to expose more layers. The more you know, it seemed, the more you know you don’t know.
Yet clarity beckons before Christmas. Three police chiefs, including Simon Overland and current head Graham Ashton, are expected to give evidence. Overland and Ashton both had proximity to Gobbo at the peak of her informing.
Assistant commissioner Luke Cornelius will give evidence, too. Cornelius, Ashton and Overland sat on the steering committees of murder investigations that improperly used Gobbo as a secret police informer.
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The evidence of Findlay McRae, the head of police legal services, will be illuminating. McRae is expected to know who knew what, and when?
Overland’s deputy, Sir Ken Jones, whose phone was tapped, is likely to expound on the police culture at the time. Sir Ken, it is believed, was blindsided by Gobbo’s use as an informer. It is believed he railed against her use after becoming aware of it many years before a succession of courts passed condemnatory judgment on the police practice.
Eminent members of the judiciary may be among the unnamed feeling uncomfortable.
The new Gobbo questions draw them in, too. If the Gobbo grenade was tossed the way of prosecutors or politicians, its radioactive residue will soon be felt.