For so many years, Nicola Gobbo has been the Victoria Police landmine that keeps tripping.
Long after the last corpse of the gangland war was buried, the Victorian criminal justice system is again in disgrace and Gobbo’s name is at the heart of it all.
It is hard to remember a more sustained period of catastrophic failures of the police, judicial and political systems in one state over such a condensed period in modern Australia.
Counsel assisting Chris Winneke’s report signals just the latest blow to the administration of justice and good governance in Victoria.
First came the deeply flawed prosecution of George Pell, then the porous hotel quarantine system and now the systemic failures of police over Lawyer X.
It was suspected Winneke would head down this road but seeing it in black type just reinforces the extent of the police failures in the drive to end the gangland war.
The royal commission will not make public findings against individuals and the law but it’s easy enough to join the dots and imagine some of the bigger names in Australian policing being under deeply unwelcome pressure.
One mooted offence, misconduct in public office, carries a maximum penalty of 10 years’ jail.
Then there is perversion of the course of justice and aiding and abetting Gobbo to obtain property by deception.
We know counsel assisting’s work is only a guide to what might be, but his words matter.
It is fair to conclude that Winneke believes some current and former officers could be guilty of a myriad f crimes that led to people being wrongly jailed.
In essence, the use of Gobbo, known widely as Lawyer X, was a means to the ends of stopping the bullets but it was also a corrupt strategy with catastrophic consequences.
It is not possible from the nature of the submissions to definitively single out officers but it’s a good guess that former police commissioner Simon Overland is unhappy with the Lawyer X process.
Winneke shot at the immediate past police chief in Graham Ashton, savaging his response to High Court criticism and some of his evidence to the commission.
The net effect of police using Gobbo for these purposes is to bring disgrace on what was once considered the greatest police outfit this side of London.
That reputation will take decades — if ever — to restore.
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