Ex-top cop Simon Overland denies he was ‘reckless and cavalier’

Simon Overland has defended his conduct throughout the Lawyer X fiasco.

Former Victoria Police chief commissioner Simon Overland. Picture: AAP

Former Victoria Police chief commissioner Simon Overland has defended his conduct throughout the Lawyer X fiasco, insisting that for him to have acted unlawfully would have been “reckless and cavalier in the extreme”.

Appearing at the royal commission into the management of police informants, he strenuously rejected a suggestion put to him that he had allowed lawyer-turned-informant Nicola Gobbo to be handled in an unlawful, inappropriate or unethical way.

Mr Overland, who during that period was assistant commissioner of crime, said if he believed he had something to hide, he would not have exposed himself by calling Ms Gobbo as a witness in the murder case against former detective Paul Dale.

“I would have had to have been reckless and cavalier in the extreme to do some of the things I subsequently did if I had actually knowingly engaged in that sort of behaviour,” he said.

“Because I always understood the risks and, in the end, I did make a decision to call her as a witness knowing everything that would flow from that.”

Mr Dale, who had sexual ­encounters with Ms Gobbo, worked in Victoria Police’s drug squad during the so-called gangland wars.

He was charged with the 2004 execution-style murder of Terrence and Christine Hodson but Victoria Police dropped the case in 2010 after the jailhouse killing of underworld kingpin Carl Will­iams, who had claimed that he was a go-between for Mr Dale and hitman Rodney Collins.

Ms Gobbo, who has been ­ordered to give evidence at the royal commission in February, was a high-profile criminal defence barrister who represented underworld heavies such as Tony Mokbel at the height of Melbourne’s gangland wars.

She was also ratting on her ­clients to Victoria Police and in 2009 moved from being a police informer to a witness in the murder case against Mr Dale, but never appeared.

Mr Overland said he had been looking for ways to ease Ms Gobbo out of Victoria Police, with the barrister becoming increasingly difficult to control.

“I think always throughout one of the difficulties we faced … in managing her was not having her leave the organisation in an uncontrolled way,” Mr Overland said.

“Because that was likely to lead to very bad consequences for her, and then the attendant ­controversy surrounding that … and undoubted criticism of ­Victoria Police for the way we’d managed her.”

Ms Gobbo successfully sued Victoria Police in 2010, just a year after agreeing to appear as a witness against Mr Dale.

She was awarded millions of dollars and is now living in hiding.