David Landa and school didn’t get on, but he still made his mark

Another of the Landa lawyer clan, David Landa steered a different course to become the nuisance ombudsman that his state needed.

David Evatt Landa, one time lawyer and later NSW State ombudsman.

OBITUARY

David Evatt Landa
NSW politician. Born October 11, 1934; died November 21, aged 87.

The name Landa has a long resonance in legal and Labor circles in NSW. Abe Landa held numerous ministries during the 1950s and ’60s; Paul was a high-flying attorney-general in ’70s.

David Landa, the son of Abe and cousin of Paul, became instead a burr beneath the saddle of governments, a seven-year stint as NSW ombudsman capping off an eclectic career that ranged from defending murderers to scrutinising greyhounds.

Landa was born into the law, ­in so far as his father had dedicated 30 years to building a firm specialising in workers’ compensation, while his godfather was jurist and politician HV Evatt, a family friend. He was not, however, a natural scholar, suffering what in hindsight he suspected was a species of attention deficit disorder, and he left Sydney’s Scots College in 1952, in his words, “unable to spell, writing appallingly and having only very basic numeric skills”.

He twice failed first-year law, and scrabbled his way to the Bar via the admission board.

This did not prevent him having a client list in which Abe Saffron was only averagely colourful. There was also Sammy Lee, impresario of the Kings Cross all-male cabaret Les Girls; William Macdonald, a serial killer known as The Mutilator; and constables Terry Swift and Peter Abel, both of whom he got off a charge of culpability in the 1972 death of a vagrant called Jose Bilbao.

This last case left Landa with profoundly mixed feelings. When later he saw David Williamson’s The Removalist, a play dealing with police brutality, he could not sit through the climax and left.

Still, Landa emerged from his 26 years of practice with a fund of anecdotes, such as briefing John Kerr QC, who was smugly pleased with what he felt was some particularly spellbinding advocacy only to realise that the jurors had been transfixed by his fly being undone, and fraternising with the ebullient property developer Paul Strasser.

One day, Landa recalled, Strasser pressed him on a matter near his heart. “David,” said the entrepreneur, “how much does it cost to buy a knighthood in Australia?”

Landa was slightly appalled and pooh-poohed the notion.

“Of course you can (buy a knighthood),” Strasser scoffed. “Peter Abeles paid £10,000 for his. I want to pay less than Peter to prove I am smarter than him.”

Strasser had the last word when he was knighted in 1973.

Landa was accustomed to the overlap of the personal and political. His father, having devoted a lifetime to Labor causes, was drummed from the party for accepting the job of NSW agent-­general in London from Robert Askin; their firm lost a great proportion of their work; “Labor people,” he realised, “were great haters with long memories.”

Yet, a mild man with a love of literature and a self-deprecating sense of humour, he himself developed no enmities and regained caste by good works, including multiple terms as mayor of Hunters Hill.

Starting with a cleaner whom he learned was a former South Vietnamese military officer, Landa also became a tireless helper of Indochinese refugees in the ’80s, to the extent of serving as president of the Indo-China Refugee Association and national secretary of the aid agency Austcare.

This brought him in contact with Labor premier Barrie Unsworth, who in November 1988 appointed him George Masterman’s successor as ombudsman out of 28 candidates.

These were the years leading up to the Wood royal commission when a lot of the role was grappling with dirty cops and their defenders. Two-thirds of the ­ombudsman’s resources ended up being devoted to complaints against them.

Landa struck an important blow in the oversight of police in NSW by successfully advocating for abolition of the hidebound Police Board and resisting the obdurate Police Association.

The ombudsman’s office regularly disinterred evidence of general deviousness, sexual harass­ment and racism in the ranks, incurring the ire of police commissioner Tony Lauer and police minister Terry Griffiths, although the force developed such respect for their former scourge that the union hired Landa as a consultant during the royal commission.

After three years as chief magistrate of NSW’s Local Courts, Landa also organised an inquiry into ticketing irregularities at the Sydney Olympics, then became integrity auditor at Greyhound Racing NSW – a job he quit when, presciently, he realised the government was not interested in cleaning up the sport.

Landa spied 20-year-old Valerie Levitt at a dance at the Trocadero in May 1961. They were married by the end of the year and, uncommonly devoted, raised three daughters and a son. She predeceased him by 18 months.

Reading was a solace for his loss. He was found dead in bed, Kindle resting on his chest.