All Fall Down (33 page)

The second major event of that day was the resignation of Allen Callaghan as Under Secretary of the Department of Arts, National Parks and Sport would not disclose why he had tendered his resignation. Minister Peter McKechnie refused to comment. At the same time, Fraud Squad police began interviewing Mrs X – Callaghan’s wife, Judith.

Ultimately, Callaghan’s letter of resignation was leaked to the press. He alleged that he quit because ‘certain events involving my wife have made my position untenable and I consider it incumbent on me to act in the best interests of the public service’.

He then stressed to the press that there was no connection between his decision and the Auditor-General’s investigation. He pointed the finger at government leaks that raised serious questions about public administration in Queensland. He hinted that he and his wife had been tried by media, not a court of law.

He then did what most thought was unthinkable – he had a go at his old boss and friend, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, saying that the Premier was living in fairyland if he wasn’t aware of the leaks and the damage they were causing.

Nev Warburton said Callaghan’s resignation only made the ‘public funds affair’ even more serious. ‘I have said from the beginning that this issue had explosive political ramifications,’ he said. ‘I don’t think anyone would disagree that Mr Callaghan’s resignation falls into that category. It must be kept in mind that Mr Callaghan is not just another State Government employee. Apart from being one of Queensland’s most senior public servants, he was also one of the Premier’s closest advisors.’

This was a turning point for the government. Liberal Party State President John Moore said the Callaghan affair had ‘shattered the National Party’s aura of unity’.

Wheels turned swiftly. On Wednesday 5 February, Commissioner Lewis was telephoned by his old friend, former assistant commissioner Tony Murphy, who discussed ‘re daughter appln. to join Police and G[len] Hallahan emp[loyment] at SGIO [the State Government Insurance Office]’. (Incredibly, Hallahan, former detective and one of the original members of the fabled Rat Pack from the late 1950s and into the 1960s, had secured a position as a senior insurance fraud investigator with the financial institution.)

Lewis was also advised by Detective Inspector Plint that interviews with Judith Callaghan had been completed. His diary further recorded: ‘… $44,000 deficiency, she and Allen owe $300,000 with repayments of $3500 per month’.

On the Friday, Lewis noted: ‘… charge to be preferred against J. Callaghan’. She was due to appear in court on 25 February. That morning, Lewis also had a meeting with an old mate, Glendon Patrick Hallahan. Lewis’s diary recorded: ‘Conf[erence] with G. Hallahan, SGIO, and 5 Senior officers re liaison and cooperation.’ More than a decade after he resigned from the force, Hallahan was back ‘liaising’ with the Police Commissioner. It had been a long time since they’d worked together in the Consorting Squad in the late 1950s, checking brothels and visiting the city’s darker saloons looking for trouble. And it had been an age since they disarmed the crazed German gunman Gunther Bahnemann over in the bayside suburb of Lota in 1959, and been awarded the George Medal for Bravery for their efforts.

Lewis was back in the office on Saturday 8 February, where he read the Auditor-General’s report into Allen Callaghan and the Queensland Film Corporation. The following Monday, Lewis phoned Callaghan ‘and expressed sorrow at his present situation’. That same day, Lewis issued a press release about the matter, saying it would take the Fraud Squad several weeks to assess the Auditor-General’s report into the Allen Callaghan affair. Meanwhile, the scandal had gone national. In Federal Parliament, Finance Minister Senator Peter Walsh was asked if he was aware of the ‘alleged misappropriation of massive amounts of public funds by two close personal and political friends of the Premier’.

Walsh responded: ‘… it’s a matter of history that the Premier of Queensland has surrounded himself for many years with close advisors who either are, or ought to be, in gaol.’

Collusion

Judith Callaghan, the now notorious ‘Mrs X’, was charged on 25 February with misappropriating $44,188.19 in government funds. She appeared in Brisbane Magistrates Court Number One.

Callaghan, 35, the former head of the Queensland Day Committee, said nothing during the brief hearing. She was remanded on bail to 6 June – ironically, Queensland Day. Two days later, her husband Allen was served a summons that he ‘dishonestly applied to his own use and the use of other persons $17,362.31, the property of the Queensland Film Corporation’.

Opposition Leader Nev Warburton, who made hay against the government with the Callaghan affair, claimed there had been collusion between police and the Queensland government over the charging of Callaghan. He believed the ‘rush’ to lay charges was an attempt to stop the ALP from pressing the government on the matter.

Journalist Quentin Dempster had earlier reported in the Brisbane
Telegraph
that according to sources ‘a prominent Queens Counsel alerted the Opposition Leader, Mr Warburton, to the significance of the hasty summons charge still to be served on … Mr Allen Callaghan’.

Callaghan’s solicitor, Pat Nolan, also reportedly stated that it was ‘most unusual’ that Callaghan be charged without having been interviewed by police.

Dempster wrote: ‘He [Warburton] said it appeared the Government was guilty of expediting criminal proceedings against Mr Callaghan in a calculated move to prevent further questions being raised over the public funds scandal.’

Only a couple of weeks later, on 18 March, the highly anticipated inquest into the death of Hendricus (Hank) Coblens, 32, state government auditor, went ahead in the Cleveland Magistrates Court, east of the CBD.

The body of Coblens had been discovered in his car in the Cleveland area, giving logic to holding the inquest in the nearest courthouse. But workmates of Coblens read something different into the assignation of the Cleveland courthouse. Some suggested the remote location, out of sight and mind of the major courts in Brisbane city, may have been selected to minimise attention to the case.

For all intents and purposes, it was a strange and sad purveying of a life that began in the Netherlands in 1953 and had shown so much promise in Brisbane, Queensland. Hank, along with his parents, father Hermanus, mother Jacoba, and older brother Nicolaas, had migrated to Australia in 1956 aboard the former luxury ocean liner and troop ship, the diesel-powered
Johan Van Oldenbarnevelt
.

The life and death of Coblens was discussed in the small and stuffy Cleveland courthouse – a rectangular-shaped, flat-roofed building in Passage Street. The Cleveland coroner, Mr P. Fitzpatrick SM, opened the inquest by quickly restricting publication of proceedings. The prohibition order was asked for by barrister D.R. Horton, who represented Coblens’ closest family.

Before a packed media, Fitzpatrick granted the prohibition. Ruling under Section 30 of the Coroner’s Act, he explained that the publication of evidence and facts not pertaining to the inquest interfered with the course of justice.

A lawyer for Brisbane’s three free-to-air television stations argued there was a public interest in understanding the link between Coblens and Judith Callaghan – the object of Coblens’ audit. However, Fitzpatrick stood firm, saying the barrister had yet to hear the evidence regarding a man facing charges of ‘considerable magnitude’ before the courts ‘which has a far more direct connection with this inquest’. (This was Bevan Lloyd Whip, former executive officer for the Queensland Dairymen’s Organisation, who was facing almost 200 charges of misappropriating more than $500,000, and whose outfit had also been audited by Coblens.)

In a case that was anticipated to last a single day, the first day evaporated in legal argument over what the public could and could not know. The next day, Coblens’ co-workers from the Auditor-General’s Department, including Ross Goodhew and Pat Gallagher, were called to give evidence. ‘He was under pressure to do the right thing, to comply to save his job,’ remembers Pat Gallagher. It was an area touched on during the inquest. Goodhew confirmed that it was well known among their colleagues that the Premier’s Department was a sensitive one to audit.

Neither Judith nor Allen Callaghan were called as witnesses.

In the end, Mr Fitzpatrick concluded that an auditing mistake, allegedly made by Coblens in relation to the Queensland Dairymen’s Organisation State Council, had ‘weighed heavily’ on the deceased. ‘And,’ Fitzpatrick concluded, ‘in his state of sensitiveness and quest for perfection sadly brought about a conviction in his mind that he could not live with the situation and its consequences as he saw them.’

But was it enough to take his own life, in the middle of an extremely controversial audit involving the Premier’s Department?

Coroner Fitzpatrick found there was no evidence of criminal action or negligence by any person, and that no person should be committed for trial on any charge. He duly closed the inquest.

Confidential

It took some months, but there was finally some public debate over Des Sturgess’s report on child sexual abuse and other unsavoury topics, such as pornography and prostitution. It was just enough to stir the interest of the new Police Minister, Deputy Premier Bill Gunn. Minister for Justice and Attorney-General, Nev Harper, had sought comments on the report from Bill Glasson in the dying days of his Police Ministership. Now Harper was asking Gunn.

Gunn informed the Attorney-General that Police Commissioner Lewis had assigned two senior officers to go through the Sturgess Report, assess the contents that were relevant to the police department, and report back. The two men were Detective Inspectors B. Webb and R. Dargusch. They had completed their ‘Strictly Confidential’ report by the end of April 1986. They quickly examined, in the report, the allegation from Sturgess that men prominently involved in prostitution in south-east Queensland had not suffered much prosecution in recent years. The two detective inspectors identified those men as Hector Hapeta, Geraldo Bellino, Vittorio Conte and Geoff Crocker.

They listed the various charges on Hapeta’s record, including possession of an unlicensed concealable firearm, drink driving and obscene language. ‘It is obvious from the records that he is one of the principal controllers of prostitution in Brisbane and the Gold Coast,’ the police report said. ‘His associates are generally regarded as the human garbage of the community.’

Next on the list was Gerry Bellino. Their investigations revealed he had last been before the courts on 6 February 1978, charged with keeping a common gaming house. ‘Bellino has been associated with numerous Night Clubs and Gambling Premises in Brisbane, and has also been associated with prostitution,’ they concluded. ‘He is the co-owner of the building at 142 Wickham Street, Fortitude Valley, with Vittorio Conte.’ Conte was last before the courts in 1979.

The detective inspectors also identified Anne Marie Tilley. ‘She first came under the notice of police on 8.2.72 when she appeared in the Minda Children’s Court [in Sydney] charged with being Exposed to Moral Danger,’ the report said. ‘Since that time, she has incurred 27 convictions for Loiter for Prostitution in the State of New South Wales. She was last convicted at Brisbane Magistrates Court on the 9th November, 1984 for driving a motor vehicle while her blood alcohol content was .08. She is still actively engaged in prostitution in this State.’

The thorough report also listed 14 massage parlours and their respective owners. Here was proof that, more than a year before a
Four Corners
investigative report into the Queensland vice scene and its corrupt links with police, which would lead to a Royal Commission that would mention the likes of Hapeta, Bellino and Conte in its terms of reference, the main players were already known to Police Commissioner Lewis.

Reach for the Sky

In May 1986, Queenslanders awoke to a curious page-one story in the
Courier-Mail
. The headline read: BRISBANE TO GET ONE OF THE WORLD’S TALLEST SKYSCRAPERS.

Written by political reporter Peter Morley, the article outlined the proposal for a $400 million inner-city redevelopment, one of the tallest buildings in the world, which had been approved by the state government. In reality, a quixotic project was nothing new for Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. His leadership was littered with them. And he famously measured the strength of the Queensland economy by counting the construction cranes hovering over the Brisbane CBD. But a downtown building that was within reach of the famous Sears Tower in Chicago at 443 metres and 110-storeys? This was Queensland – reach for the sky.

The report stated: ‘The developer is Mr John Minuzzo whose Mainsel Investments group plans to complete the project within four years.’

Sir Joh said excitedly, ‘It’s a huge one.’

While the Premier was not ordinarily recognised as a sentimental person, he must have felt at least some sort of distant twinge at the prospect of the demolition of the old Canberra Temperance Hotel, which sat on the site of the prospective tower. For it was there, in Brisbane’s famous ‘dry’ hotel, that Sir Joh and his new bride Florence had their wedding reception after being married in the Valley Presbyterian Church on Saturday 31 May 1952.

The Canberra had been officially opened in July 1929 by local businessman George Marchant, the ‘soft drink king of Australia’, who had made a fortune manufacturing hop beer, soft drinks and cordials, and patenting an extremely lucrative bottling machine. As part of the opening ceremony, Marchant said solemnly: ‘I pray that the opening of these doors may be the opening of a way that will lead to the total abolition of liquor bars in all residential hotels. Alcohol has caused no end of misery to our young people, who are taken to hotels, and acquire the drinking habit, to the ruination of their health and the wrecking of their homes.’