Victoria Police the blunt instrument of a looming police state

That Victoria Police now operates under states of emergency provides them with extraordinary powers in a dangerous time.

Victoria Police have been granted extraordinary powers during the pandemic. Picture: AFP

I was genuinely bemused by the expressions of shock over the treatment of Zoe Buhler. The arrest and search of her Ballarat home was a gross overreach but do we not by now understand the nature of the beast that is the Victoria Police Force?

VicPol has been a paramilitary force for almost 170 years. Scaring the bejesus out of people is meat and drink for them.

Eminent jurists across the nation from former Chief Justice of the High Court Murray Gleeson down expressed their concern with the manner of Buhler’s arrest. If she was to be charged, then it could easily have been handled by summons.

James Timmins and Zoe Lee Buhler.

It was astonishing to see the reaction on social media, too. There was plenty of condemnation of the cops and the Andrews government but here and there were expressions of support for an over the top arrest of an individual who had made a Facebook post.

This was proof if it were needed that a large number of Australians bound by dismal partisan affiliations, love the smell of the jackboot. Ah, that lovely cheap leather smell.

The video shot by Ms Buhler’s partner featured some amusing clangers. In filming the search warrant, Buhler’s partner inadvertently doxxed himself revealing their address. D’oh.

Buhler was invariably described as a pregnant mum of two, which she certainly is but there was other information available about her that was either not sought or ignored.

Bear in mind that journalists had access to Buhler’s social media only until late yesterday after she was formally charged. Right up there on the front of her Facebook page Buhler declares herself ‘a witch’ and on August 20 posted a bizarre anti-vaccination message. “I won’t be raped with a needle,” the pregnant mother of two declared, “Say no to mandatory vaccination.”

The point is that no matter what you make of her beliefs, Buhler is entitled to the same freedoms, the same processes and the same legal protections as the rest of us. That’s the most crucial element of civil liberties. We have to be resolute in the fight for the rights of all people, including those we fundamentally disagree with.

The greater problem is those rights and legal protections are disappearing as we speak, rationalised away not just by a pandemic but diminished by vague calls for national security.

I can safely say that in the normal course of events there is little contact between government and law enforcement. Nor should there be. But in these unusual times, with states of disaster and emergency declared in Victoria, how can we be satisfied that the government is not urging police to go hard on certain operational matters?

The Victorian Police and Emergency Services Minister, Lisa Neville needs to answer that question today. VicPol needs to offer better explanations for their behaviour than they have to date.

There was some babble a few years ago, suggesting VicPol had gone soft. It couldn’t be further from the truth.

It is the only police force in Australia that has gone on strike. It happened almost a century ago, but valuable lessons were learned which stand today. While the strike is cast almost in the folkloric as a battle for pay and conditions, it was a brawl between a government who wanted to appoint internal affairs officers to root out police corruption and VicPol who would truck no interference.

What was learned then and remains the case today is that if VicPol wants to pick a fight, woe betide anyone who pops the gloves on and joins them in the ring.

The other arguably more interesting lesson is that in the absence of law enforcement how long would it take for society to collapse into chaos, lawlessness and anarchy? If the Victorian Police Strike of 1927 is anything to go by, the answer is about eight hours.

While I was researching Unholy Trinity, I spoke with many former VicPol detectives. It felt I had been given the keys to a door that otherwise remained firmly locked. There were so many stories of corruption, so many insider accounts of misconduct told as grim anecdotes and expressions of regret.

I was given a whistle blower’s account of an extortion racket in the 1960s run by senior police including the then head of Homicide, Detective Inspector Jack Ford who stood over a clique of obstetricians and other backyard abortionists, permitting them to ply their illegal trade provided they paid Ford and others cash on the knocker.

As corruption goes, it was about as wicked as it gets.

We could say that was all a long time ago but from Ned Kelly to Nicola Gobbo, the Victoria Police Force has always been a blunt instrument. As an institution it has shown itself to be incapable of self-examination. It operates in secret with little real oversight and is essentially answerable to no one.

That it does so now under government mandated states of emergency provides them with extraordinary powers in an extraordinarily dangerous time and builds the framework for a police state looming before our eyes.