Copping it sweet not Nixon's style

THE former police commissioner casts the net of responsibility far and wide.

Christine Nixon

ONE wonders whether former Victoria Police chief commissioner Christine Nixon was being ironic when she chose to call her autobiography Fair Cop.

Throughout her new book, almost all of the criticism that she bore during seven years as police chief and later at the Black Saturday bushfires royal commission has been, in her eyes, an unfair cop.

Her tale is not so much a life story as it is an embittered account of who wronged her and why during the course of her turbulent career.

Nixon spends much of her 388-page tome, co-written by The Age journalist Jo Chandler, taking shots at those who she says had agendas against her. These include "rats" within her police force, the media, sexists, "fattists", her lawyers and even the royal commission itself, which she likens to "the worst kind of kangaroo court".

It's an extraordinary and unseemly spray even by the self-serving standards of many autobiographies.

As such, it is only likely to fuel the perception among many that while Nixon, who was police chief from 2001 to 2009, is happy to celebrate her substantial achievements, she is still unable to assume responsibility for her failures.

Nixon devotes a large chunk of the book to the controversy that surrounded her misleading testimony to the bushfire royal commission and the revelation that she had gone out to dinner with friends on the evening of Black Saturday, as the fires were raging.

She says that the subsequent storm of criticism she received "consumed my life, and threatened to consume my reputation, all I had worked for".

Yet Nixon chooses to interpret this criticism as a function of a deliberate media agenda against her, rather than as a result of breathtakingly poor judgment by a police chief at the height of the nation's worst natural disaster.

In her book she shows little contrition for her actions beyond brief expressions of remorse.

"Yes, there were things I regretted, things I would do differently if given the gift of time back. But I did not fail my own test of integrity . . . do I wish I had done more, done better? Absolutely."

Nixon says she is still surprised by the "seismic repercussions" from her decision to leave the bushfire command headquarters to have what she describes as a "quick dinner" with friends on the early evening of Black Saturday.

"The level of passion and invective stirred by that meal was astonishing. Even with the passage of time it seems surreal."

Nixon says the media, especially the Herald Sun, fuelled the community backlash against her. She claims the paper was conducting a concerted and organised campaign to destroy her.

"In the wake of the royal commission, I was informed by sources in government that the Herald Sun had told them unequivocally that they would see me brought down, the attacks would continue until I quit or was sacked," she writes.

"My pursuit also became a matter of editorial ego -- the prize would be my scalp."

There is no doubt the scrutiny the media placed on Nixon at the time of the royal commission was intense, but it was spread across all media outlets, including the ABC and Fairfax.

Nixon's account fails to understand that a police chief eating out with friends rather than being on duty in the disaster management centre on the worst night in Victoria's history was a huge and genuine news story that would rightly be pursued vigorously by all media organisations.

The news value of the story was only amplified by the fact that, during her initial testimony to the royal commission, Nixon had failed to make clear her movements on the evening of Black Saturday, causing her to be recalled for further questioning.

Nixon's desire to blame the media for trashing her reputation ignores the fact the royal commission itself made damning findings against her.

The commission concluded: "It is not satisfactory that at this time -- when she was aware of the potential for disaster and, in fact, while the magnitude of the disaster was becoming apparent with the confirmation of fatalities -- Ms Nixon was absent . . . and did not take action to inform herself."

Herald Sun editor Simon Pristel says that by trying to blame the media, Nixon is trying to evade personal responsibility.

"The only person who has destroyed Christine Nixon's career is Christine Nixon; the moment she decided not to reveal the full truth to the royal commission and decided to go out to dinner that night and spend the time with friends and not take charge of the state in the moment of its dire need," Pristel says.

State opposition police spokesman James Merlino rejects Nixon's attacks on News Limited, saying he believes there is a healthy news environment in Victoria.

"It's certainly not the view I hold or the opposition holds that there was a campaign to get Christine," Merlino says.

In an interview with The Age this week, Nixon expanded her attack on News Limited newspapers, claiming they had been instrumental in bringing down her successor Simon Overland, who resigned in June after only two years in the job. It is a curious claim given that in her book Nixon links Overland's downfall to the election of the Baillieu government.

In the book she says Overland was on a "slippery slope" after Ted Baillieu's victory because he was seen to be connected to the previous Brumby government.

This week, Nixon claimed News turned against Overland after he criticised The Australian in August 2009 for publishing details of a Melbourne terrorism raid on the morning of the raid, despite the newspaper having received approval to publish the story from the Australian Federal Police.

The Australian's editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell says: "Christine Nixon misses the point about The Australian and commissioner Overland.

"Overland's deputy sat on the oversight committee of operation Neath, and Overland knew all along about the deal between the paper and the AFP and that the AFP and its oversight body were happy that the paper had complied with that arrangement.

"It was only in dealing with the Office of Police Integrity in subsequent months that I realised I was dealing with a body that could not lie straight in bed and a commissioner who played the media game much harder than commissioners in Brisbane or Sydney.

"Everything we reported subsequently, via five-times Walkley Award winner Hedley Thomas, was motivated by no more than a desire to show Victorians just how Simon Overland and [OPI director] Michael Strong operate, and how they manipulate certain media favourites to avoid real scrutiny of Victorian policing."

Nixon claims in her book that the anger directed against her during the royal commission was fuelled by former police colleagues who saw the controversy as a chance to even old scores.

"I was deeply suspicious by this time that much of the fury being whipped up around me was contrived, fuelled by individuals with agendas utterly unrelated to events on Black Saturday but determined to capitalise on them."

She says her attempts to reform police culture, shut down the drug squad and the armed offenders squad and implement a new crime-management model had left a legacy of enemies with long memories.

Had she not taken an aggressive approach to reform she says she "would not have been pursued and vilified with the same enthusiasm", during the aftermath of Black Saturday.

Nixon takes aim at what she believes were cheap shots taken against her at the time about her sex and weight.

She says these attacks are particularly disappointing because during her time as police chief, the question of gender was not a troublesome issue and, at times, worked to her advantage.

"Because no one knew quite how a female police chief was expected to behave, I could set my own template."

But she says gender issues re-emerged during the royal commission "as a powerful subtext within some of the commentary on my character and performance".

"There was a lot of play, directly and inferred, on the idea of a larger woman eating, leading to 'fattist' commentary, for want of a better word, as well as a feminist one."

But the most remarkable attack that Nixon makes in the book is against the royal commission, which she says was more a witch hunt for scapegoats than a search for the truth.

"My character, my professionalism, my reputation were under assault," she writes.

"The commission by this stage seemed to be more a search for the guilty than for the truth."

She likens her savage cross-examination by counsel assisting the commission, Rachel Doyle QC, to a public flogging and the commission itself as "the worst kind of kangaroo court".

Nixon makes it clear in her book that she has a disdain for all royal commissions and was "ambivalent" about whether one should be set up to examine the 2009 Black Saturday fires that claimed 173 lives.

She reveals she was so opposed to the establishment of a royal commission into links between the underworld and corrupt police that she threatened to resign over the issue.

Nixon denies that she took too long to join the dots and connect police with the underworld.

"My answer was as always; it was a question of evidence. When that came, the answer changed accordingly.

"Was I wrong? Acting on what we knew at the time, no."

As chief commissioner Nixon, who was from NSW, says she was made to feel like an outsider, an interloper, by a clique of hardened old-school cops who were fiercely resistant to the introduction of a more modern, progressive style of policing.

"The old detective culture was about power and connections, pubs and clubs," she writes. "They had an aura, those blokes. They consorted to get much of their intelligence, acquiring a swagger, a sense that the might be just a bit dangerous.

"I think [the gangland taskforce] Purana helped create a new kind of detective hero -- meticulous, methodical, fair, ruthless -- and operating in the light of day.

She makes it clear that Overland, who headed Purana, was

her torchbearer for this style of policing.

Nixon admits she felt shocked and betrayed by revelations that her assistant commissioner Noel Ashby and media chief Steve Linnell had been caught on OPI telephone intercepts undermining her and allegedly leaking confidential information.

She also chronicles her bitter rift with then police union chief Paul Mullett, who became one of her most vigorous critics.

Despite these events, it is clear that Nixon sees the fallout from her actions on Black Saturday as posing the greatest threat to her legacy.

"I hope that my whole story, my whole career and contribution to public life will not forever be defined by this chapter," she writes.

The question Nixon's critics will ask is whether she has used this book to try to extract revenge on her perceived critics, rather than to accept responsibility for the choices she made during Victoria's darkest hours.