Lawyer X in court: Nicola Gobbo returns to haunt Victoria Police

Nicola Gobbo pictured with gangland boss Carl Williams, right, and underworld hitman Andrew ‘Benji’ Veniamin.

A voice from Victoria Police’s darkest past has returned to haunt the force.

Somewhat fittingly, that voice was heard loud and clear (aside from some technical issues) in a wood-panelled court in the old High Court Building in the heart of Melbourne’s legal world.

The disembodied voice, of course, belonged to Nicola Gobbo; equally well known as Lawyer X, the gangland barrister turned police spy who became the notorious star of the greatest legal scandal in the history of Victoria.

Only Justice Melinda Richards and the trial lawyers could see Gobbo, who appeared via video link. Fears for her safety, and to keep her surgically altered appearance secret, meant everyone else in Court 3 could only hear what the former gangland barrister had to say in her pursuit of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded damages from police.

Gobbo is suing Victoria Police.

After a quick overview of her teenage years as a somewhat awkward and underperforming schoolgirl who did odd jobs, including a paper round, working at Pizza Hut and the MCG, Gobbo told of her miraculous Year 12 results that allowed her to get a first-round offer into law at the prestigious University of Melbourne.

She didn’t go out much as a high school student, but this changed in her later teen years, and at one point a close friend became obsessed with a Collingwood footballer – Gobbo likened it to “stalking” – and they would go clubbing wherever he was.

She recalled her first serious boyfriend, a relationship that led to her arrest in the early 1990s on drugs charges. She was slapped with a good behaviour bond without conviction. But she told the court she had learned a “salutary lesson”.

From there, the court was taken on a whirlwind trip through her early legal career and her turbocharged rise to being a barrister representing the biggest names in Melbourne’s savage gang war that would claim about 30 lives.

Gangland boss Tony Mokbel with Gobbo.

All the big names got a mention; Tony Mokbel, Carl Williams, Andrew ‘Benji’ Veniamin and Lewis Moran among them in what was like a true-crime podcast for those of us who couldn't see Gobbo.

As entertaining as this evidence was (including what she said was a casual sexual relationship with a police officer), much of Wednesday’s evidence was really little more than a sideshow to the serious business this court case will have to deal with: the actions of senior serving and former police officers who recruited Gobbo to spy on her clients.

As Australia’s High Court found, Gobbo’s conduct was a “fundamental and appalling” breach, while police engaged in “reprehensible conduct in knowingly encouraging her” and “atrocious breaches of the sworn duties imposed on every police officer”.

Gobbo receives an award at Government House in 2018. Picture: Ian Currie

It’s unfortunate it is taking a civil action from one of the guilty parties to the Lawyer X scandal to revisit secrets that must be exposed. Ideally, this would have spun out of criminal trials of Gobbo and police commanders. But in an oh-so-Victorian twist, the Office of the Special Investigator was abolished after the Office of Public Prosecutions refused to charge anyone.

It’s worth remembering that despite a bill of more than $125m and a decade of probes, not a single police officer was charged with an offence. In fact, several remain in their top jobs. This lack of action is as big an outrage as the original decision to recruit Gobbo.

Gobbo has already pocketed almost $3m in compensation from Victorian taxpayers, paid in 2010. Now, she’s come back for more – a lot more.

The prospect of Gobbo pocketing millions from taxpayers for a scandal she helped create is galling. But if it finally holds Victoria Police accountable for their actions, then maybe it’s a price that has to be paid.