By Bill Mason
BRISBANE — The Criminal Justice Commission, under serious attack from the Queensland Coalition government on several fronts, has struck back with the establishment of a public inquiry into allegations of police involvement in large-scale drug dealing in the state's north.
Former Supreme Court judge Bill Carter, who is heading the CJC inquiry, explained that the hearings would "identify and prosecute police officers alleged to have been involved in the drug trade", including the alleged protection of drug dealers by experienced police of relatively high rank.
Foremost in the sensational revelations so far are allegations that police were in involved in the theft and sale of a $100,000 marijuana haul from Finch Hatton police station, 60 km west of Mackay.
On January 15, CJC officers raided the Cannonvale police station in the Whitsunday area, among a number of premises nearby. The CJC has reportedly bugged conversations involving corrupt police, including video evidence of drug dealings.
As Brisbane Courier-Mail contributing editor David Solomon pointed out in a feature headed "Showdown" in the January 18 issue, "The Coalition government appears set to suffer another bad — perhaps worse [than 1996] — year at the hands of the CJC".
Just before Christmas, the government breathed a sigh of relief when the CJC's truncated Carruthers inquiry — crippled by the earlier resignation of inquiry chief Kenneth Carruthers, claiming the state government had interfered with his work — was forced to publish a report letting Premier Rob Borbidge and police minister Russell Cooper off the hook over the infamous police memorandum of understanding prior to the 1996 Mundingburra by-election.
Borbidge launched a broadside against the CJC, accusing it of carrying out a "massive political vendetta" against the government. CJC chairperson Frank Clair replied on December 23, accusing the premier and senior ministers of having made "false and defamatory [statements], in contempt of the commission itself".
Then, the joint head of the state government's own commission of inquiry into the future of the CJC, Kevin Ryan QC, accused the CJC of "almost complete non-cooperation" with his inquiry, which could lead to unsatisfactory recommendations about the organisation.
CJC representatives later claimed that commission staff had too many crime-fighting tasks to devote time to meeting the inquiry's demands. CJC official misconduct division director Mark Le Grand told the inquiry on January 24 that the closure of the CJC would almost certainly lead to a rise in official corruption and the return of a culture where crooked police were protected. A recommendation to abolish the CJC is certainly what the Borbidge government is hoping for, and probably expecting, from its puppet inquiry.
The problem, as Solomon explains, is that the government will now be embarrassed by a procession of corrupt cops parading before the Carter commission, testifying to the value and necessity of the CJC's role. Every revelation by the CJC investigators is a further blow against the credibility of a wobbly government.
Despite many justifiable criticisms of the CJC's failings over the years, it remains a substantial obstacle to the government and police's corrupt use of power. Any move to destroy the commission should be resisted by the public.