Allegations Neville Wran involved in Luna Park fire are condemned

Former chairman David Hill has slammed the ABC for implicating former NSW Premier Neville Wran in the cover-up of the investigation of the Luna Park ghost train fire.

Neville Wran.

Former ABC chairman and managing director David Hill has slammed the ABC for implicating former NSW Premier Neville Wran in the cover-up of the investigation of the Luna Park ghost train fire and alleging a social relationship with Sydney gangster Abe Saffron.

Mr Hill, who ran the ministerial advisory unit in the Wran government and the State Rail Authority, said the documentary Exposed: The Ghost Train Fire should never have been broadcast with those slanderous assertions.

“I am loathed to criticise the ABC but I think this constitutes sloppy journalism,” Mr Hill told The Weekend Australian. “Making these sorts of extremely damaging allegations I just find are unacceptable. I never saw anything that Wran ever did that would even suggest any merit or credibility for these claims.”

Mr Hill, chairman and managing director of the ABC from 1986 to 1995, said the documentary breached the national broadcaster’s editorial guidelines. He said the claims were “preposterous” with no credible evidence to back them up.

“I don’t think this could possibly have satisfied its own guidelines,” he said. “I’m disappointed in the ABC for airing these allegations, comfortable in the knowledge that dead people aren’t there to defend themselves or sue for defamation. It does not mean that because people are dead that the normal journalistic rules shouldn’t apply.”

Rosemary Opitz, an employee of Saffron, claims in the documentary that the premier and the mobster were “really pally” and had regular drinks together.

Former premiers Bob Carr and Barrie Unsworth, who served as ministers in the Wran government, also strongly rebuked the ABC for alleging Wran was corrupt and had social links with Saffron.

“It is absolutely inconceivable that Wran would have attended on Saffron, sipping drinks in the home of Sydney’s celebrity crime lord,” Mr Carr said. “The ABC produced only one witness – and she was a long-term employee of Saffron! She had a vested interest in making her boss look like he enjoyed mainstream acceptance. How has she become a credible witness indicting Wran?”

“The involvement of Wran (in the Luna Park fire) I find hard to believe,” Mr Unsworth said. “I doubt very much whether Wran would mix socially with Saffron. Wran was very careful in everything he did. Knowing Wran and his character, I very much doubt that he would do that.”

Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also told The Weekend Australian that Wran was scrupulous and honest and, as his business partner from 1986 to 1997, never had any reason to question his integrity.

“I found him always to be very truthful and he took pains to be so – in other words like the good lawyer he was he was careful not to get his facts or his numbers wrong,” Mr Turnbull said. “I trusted him completely and he never gave me the slightest cause to question my judgment in doing so.”

“When Nick Greiner came into government in 1988, they set up ICAC with a very express purpose of uncovering the corruption which so many Liberals believed Wran was guilty of. As you know, ICAC never even framed a coherent (or indeed incoherent) allegation against Wran. The only premiers to be brought down by ICAC were, ironically, both Liberals.”

The ABC implicates Wran in a cover-up over the 1979 ghost train fire, allegedly ordered by Saffron, which killed six children and one adult. They further claim that an “explosive allegation” is “confirmed” that “Saffron conspired with High Court judge Lionel Murphy and NSW premier Neville Wran to win the Luna Park lease after the fire.” The documentary argues the cover-up “went right to the top”.

This Saffron-Murphy-Wran allegation is based on the Age Tapes – illegal phone tapping by NSW police – which has been discredited by judicial and parliamentary inquiries. The then director of public prosecutions, Ian Temby, and solicitor-general, Mary Gaudron, said the tapes and transcripts could not be authenticated.

No Age Tapes material was produced by the ABC to support the claim about a Saffron-Murphy-Wran link to the Luna Park lease made by former policeman, Paul Egge. The Stewart royal commission into the tapes doubted the “reliability” of the tape summaries and the “evidence” of Mr Egge.

“I fell out of my chair laughing when two former police said they heard tapes of phone conversations of Wran conspiring with Murphy and can’t produce them because they destroyed them,” Mr Carr said. “Totally unbelievable.”