Dramatic stance shows why DPP must act on Lawyer X

As a desperate tactic driven by frustration, it deserves to break through. Victoria’s Lawyer X special investigator, Geoffrey Nettle KC, who served on the High Court for five years and who has an impeccable understanding of criminal law, has called on the Victorian parliament to abolish his office. Mr Nettle spoke up in a dramatic report on Wednesday, citing inertia and failure by the state’s Director of Public Prosecutions to lay charges against key figures in the long-running Nicola Gobbo-Victoria Police saga. The state’s justice system has languished in disrepute over the scandal for years, which has cost taxpayers $125m. The saga began during Melbourne’s gangland wars in the 1990s and early 2000s, when as many as 36 people were killed.

As Victoria Police struggled, its senior ranks were so incompetent, evidently, that they agreed to a deal in which barrister Ms Gobbo, who represented many gangland figures, turned supergrass on clients such as convicted drug lord Tony Mokbel and murdered gang-war boss Carl Williams.

It did not occur to police, evidently, that Ms Gobbo informing on such criminals could imperil convictions against them. In 2019, Margaret McMurdo, leading the Lawyer X royal commission, noted that Victoria Police had probably wasted years of work and millions of dollars by using Ms Gobbo as an informant. “The time and effort expended and paid for by the taxpayer may be for nothing,” the commissioner said.

Several arduous years on, Mr Nettle believes the chances of DPP Kerri Judd KC approving any brief of evidence that the Office of the Special Investigator might submit are “effectively nil”. In a report tabled on Wednesday, he said: “I advised the Attorney-General that, in those circumstances, any further investigation of relevant offences by OSI appeared to me to be a waste of time and resources and I believed the appropriate course was to recommend to parliament that OSI be wound up.”

Mr Nettle has repeatedly raised concerns with Ms Judd and Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes. Political interference must be avoided and independence of process maintained, but the government also must ensure the justice system functions.

The OSI was created by the Lawyer X royal commission to investigate laying criminal charges against key players but it was not empowered to lay charges; it needs the DPP to do so on its behalf. Perhaps that is the key to a way forward.

Opposition legal affairs spokesman Michael O’Brien wants the OSI given the same powers to bring charges as the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission. “There’s no doubt from this report that if the OSI had those powers, people would be charged today with serious offences: conspiring to pervert the course of justice, perjury and potentially a range of other offences,” he said.

Mr Nettle’s report shows the groundwork for prosecutions is done. In one case, the evidence “would sustain a charge against at least one senior police officer of misconduct in public office committed by knowingly failing to report, investigate and prosecute offences of attempt to pervert the course of justice”. The OSI also had compiled a brief of evidence against one individual over a perjury charge but the DPP refused to prosecute the case. In January last year, the OSI identified eight other matters it believed warranted prosecution. It compiled a 5000-page brief of evidence, saying ‘‘each of those eight matters concerned multiple suspected offenders in relation to a range of facts traversing a period of more than nine years”.

The Victorian public deserves a resolution to this matter. Letters attached to Mr Nettle’s tabled report show Ms Judd cites “the passage of time” that “will undoubtedly have a significant bearing on the prospects of conviction” as a reason she has not laid charges. That is a weak argument and all the more reason to get on with doing so before more time is wasted.

Victoria Police, in a desperate bid to keep their corruption secret, squandered millions of dollars trying to force Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper, then edited by Damon Johnston, The Australian’s Victorian editor when it broke the Lawyer X story in March 2014, to bury it. Caving in to the pressure would have been to the detriment of public interest. The paper persevered because the public had a right to know. The public now has the right to see it is pursued and justice done. Mr Nettle’s clarion call can only help.