Murphy made mistakes but brought change

Illustration: Sturt Krygsman

The code of loyalty into which I was born has almost disappeared. In my case it was straight out of my Irish-Catholic heritage. My father placed a huge amount of his very being on its practice. “Even a dog can be loyal,” he would say. You would know who your friends were: they were the ones who would vote for you when you were wrong.

Within the NSW right of the Labor Party, loyalty was paramount and disloyalty was punished harshly. It was a time when Catholics and Masons fought tooth and nail over jobs in the police and the public service. Catholics in the union movement were at the forefront of the battle with communism. If they stuck together they could be a formidable force; if they split they were sitting ducks for the enemies, real or imagined, by whom they believed they were surrounded.

When dramas about Lionel Murphy began, I was somewhat conflicted. As my dad would have said: “He may be an arsehole, but he’s our arsehole”. The code into which I had been born dictated that I do all I could to run interference for Murphy. This was not easy given that he had been a ruthless leader on the left who had spent half a lifetime trying to shut down the NSW right.

There was, though, another reason to support him: Neville Wran was a fanatical supporter of his great friend Lionel. He badgered me almost daily to keep Bob Hawke on track, and it did not matter to Neville that ever more serious allegations kept appearing. There was never a better practitioner of that code of loyalty.

Murphy had one big problem. He had some very bad friends who were not merely destined but determined to cause his reputation to suffer. In the 1970s, his “little mate”, solicitor Morgan Ryan, was too well known as a fixer when highly questionable deals were going down. He was a ne’er-do-well with friends in high and low places. The phrase “colourful racing identity”, then in vogue, was a pretty accurate description.

Murphy seemed blind to the many problems connected with Ryan. Given that Murphy had quite a reputation for talking indiscreetly when inebriated, stories about Ryan were way too well known. For the record, I was fortunate enough to never meet Ryan, Abe Saffron or Murray Farquhar.

Murphy’s two criminal trials took much out of him. I saw him only a few times during that period, but the sparkle had gone. History shows he was finally acquitted of all charges despite the furore and the fury that followed him. He was given the benefit of the doubt — nothing revealed yesterday can alter that.

Murphy must have known crime figure Saffron was a close associate of Ryan. The judge should have told Ryan to move away from Saffron or lose the relationship they had enjoyed. He didn’t, and left himself open to character assassination. We will never know if any effort was made to assist Saffron because those allegations were never tested.

The criticisms by Lionel’s son Cameron Murphy seem to have merit. If you set up an investigation, smothered by secrecy and using parliamentary privilege, you allow every nutter with a grudge or grievance to crawl out from whatever rock they’ve been under to do their worst.

We are told the judge had a safety deposit box in Zurich with Gough Whitlam, the key to which box resided with another minister’s well-known assistant. Given Whitlam trusted Murphy only as far as he could throw him and was never a fan of that aide, this seems far-fetched. There is even an accusation that Murphy was part of a Soviet spy ring. Is history really helped when this sort of rubbish can be read decades later?

What was nonsense then is nonsense now. Murphy’s last years were a nightmare that, three decades on, persists for his family.

As attorney-general in the Hawke government, Gareth Evans seemed to have some sympathy for Murphy, but like the PM he served, there was bound to be a limit to how far their protection would extend. When Tasmanian senator Michael Tate turned against Murphy when he sat on a parliamentary committee, I gave him a huge serve. The lack of loyalty to the party, as I saw it at the time, enraged me. In retrospect, I would like to apologise to him. As I understand it, he is now a parish priest in Hobart and I would have to concede that finding Murphy to be a perfect citizen would have been quite a stretch.

Hawke called me to his office with Evans to discuss the outcome for Murphy. They had obviously decided that the jig was up before I arrived; no rearguard defence could prevent yet another inquiry.

Murphy’s position was becoming untenable and he knew it. Fellow judges no longer wanted to sit with him. After meeting Hawke and Evans, I was delegated to inform the judge. I walked out the front door of Parliament House and headed to that majestic High Court building on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin.

A television cameraman was waiting outside on the off chance someone like me might turn up. He got the shots he wanted and I got to deliver the bad news.

I don’t believe it came as a surprise to him. For the first time the great man looked defeated. He was never my friend, always a factional opponent, but I didn’t feel he deserved what he got then, or what he is getting now.

His enemies will be salivating at all this salacious gossip.

But I will always remember Murphy for having a go. Even when wrong, like when he raided ASIO, he had a certain dignity. And we should all thank him for no-fault divorce, a lasting legacy that has assisted millions to escape unnecessary misery.