Before I Sleep (21 page)

Gordon Chalk was eventually eased out of Cabinet and, with his going, Max's political standing began to drop.

There was another decision of mine that put me offside with a number of my contemporaries — and not only in the Police Department but in other government departments as well. One of the perks of being a branch head or deputy was that you were provided with a car and a driver. Certainly there are times when a police commissioner needs a driver: for attending a ceremonial parade or similar formal occasion. But I was attempting to increase the output of the Police Department and it seemed to me that I would get better results if I drove myself about and allowed Slim, my driver, to get on with normal policing. Mavis also had her own car which we would use for personal shopping trips and the like, thus saving the taxpayer the cost of official transport. This ran afoul of the practices of other branch heads who exploited their official car and driver to the full. My predecessor would employ Slim to take his wife shopping in the afternoons. I know that some sergeants in suburban stations used to be driven home at lunchtime in the station car. It seemed to me that this was an extravagant practice that we could well do without. And then one day the minister said to me, with a note of triumph in his voice: “Ray, I've got your home phone switched over so that now the bill will be paid in full by the Department.” This was also a bit of a problem for me because I didn't feel that the taxpayer should be responsible for meeting the cost of calls between the Whitrods and their interstate children. And so I kept the number of family calls to a minimum and other private calls I would not put through from the home phone at all. I suspected that there was a fair bit of Police Association business conducted long distance between the association's secretary in Brisbane and places like Cairns, Mt Isa and Thursday Island, all on departmental phones. I suspected that the department's phone bill could be cut as much as a quarter or a third if I could cut out private calls. But this is a very difficult thing to achieve. I thought about it for some time, but never really solved the problem. I did think at one time that I might ask the Postmaster General's Department for a list of the calls made on trunk lines from the Police Department, but it seemed to me that I had enough conflict on my plate as it was without inviting more by tackling this issue. At any rate, it appears that it was a general practice in the Queensland public service that people used official phones for private business, regarding this as part of their legitimate reward.

Once Gordon Chalk had been neutralised, Joh started to respond more openly to the approaches of the Police Union executive. Joh's political strength came not only from National Party ranks, but from the community as a whole. He regularly proclaimed the slogan of rural culture: that the place for women is in the three K's. These were kirk, kitchen and kinder (children). He was known as a committed Christian and in this way secured the allegiance of the various clergy and their flocks. Perhaps they shared his view of scripture: that possession of material wealth is evidence of God's approval of one's actions. In a rural culture, these “flocks” — and indeed the community at large — tend to be under educated. If government policies are difficult to understand, the leader can say reassuringly: “Just leave it to me. You don't have to worry your heads about that.” Joh said that continuously. This reassured not only the people at large, but also Joh's “chooks”. These were the full-time, supposedly hard-boiled, journalists assigned to the Queensland parliament. They, in turn, fed the newspapers, radio stations and television broadcasters with the premier's cheery assurances that everything was being looked after.

The media never referred to the fundamental contradiction of my position: that I was being criticised by the government for introducing the reforms the government itself had asked for. I endured adverse publicity in the media for the whole of my time in Queensland. The sole exception was the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). The ABC provided me with an unbiased channel to the people of Queensland, mainly through sessions chaired by the late Andrew Olley. I would appear sometimes three times a week to explain my actions to the community as a whole and seek their support, but with little apparent result. Some years after I left, Andrew had the satisfaction of launching the move which led to the appointment of Tony Fitzgerald to inquire into corruption in the force.

There were other elements of the prevailing “rural culture” which affected my reforms. The literature suggests that these types of societies frequently have “squires” who prosper greatly in that environment, and Queensland had a large number of prosperous men who were so benefiting. They were quite satisfied with the status quo and they opposed attempts of any kind to alter the current arrangements. They were politically significant and shared the premier's views on most matters. Besides the well-to-do rural folk, there were urban businessmen who were exploiting legitimate opportunities for expansion under favorable government regulations. But as well as legitimate activities, there were questionable ones which involved the dubious transfer of money. As it was, the Queensland Police Force's detectives did not have the specialised skills necessary for bringing these white-collar criminals to court, even if they had chosen to investigate. To achieve results, Tony Fitzgerald needed a highly qualified team of accountants and lawyers as well as police investigators with special powers.

Rural cultures encourage a degree of supineness in their communities. After I left Queensland, I noted an absence of public comment about claims by my successor, Terry Lewis, that the crime clear-up rate had suddenly increased. Lewis was happy to make this claim despite having personally dispensed with the services of an independent auditor. There were able statisticians and social scientists in Queensland at the time, but they refrained from making any public observations. I have wondered why.

Soon after I started in Queensland, I noted the absence of an adequate filter to separate the knowledgeable from the ignorant members of the Force. In most police forces, this filter is provided by promotional examinations, but in Queensland the pass rate was a puzzling ninety per cent. I investigated this wonderful success rate and discovered that the exam papers were always sent out to police stations and kept there overnight before being presented to the candidates the next morning. McKinna had recommended changes to this system. I installed an independent examiners' panel, and introduced a different syllabus for each rank. I arranged for all papers to be delivered to central examination centres on the morning of the exam. The pass rate dropped to around fifty per cent.

I also noted that police briefs for prosecution showed a comparatively poor knowledge of English. I did a sample survey and found that most of the members of the Force, especially the older ones in the supervisory ranks, had left school with only a primary level education. Some had completed an extra year, leaving when they turned fourteen. Only a few members had managed to obtain an Intermediate level certificate. Modern police work requires a higher level of education than that, so I arranged with the Education Department to provide classes in literacy and basic arithmetic similar to the ones they gave to bricklayers' and carpenters' apprentices. I invited members of the Force to apply to attend these classes in departmental time. As a further inducement, I said I would grant them an extra week's leave for every subject they sat. For those who qualified there would be accelerated promotion. The Police Union executive objected. They bypassed both me and the Police Minister and took their complaint directly to the premier, who was pleased to grant them an interview. As a result, and without any consultation with myself or my minister, the premier made a public announcement that the Queensland people did not require their police to be Rhodes scholars. The media gave much coverage to Joh's rebuke. Again, there was a complete absence of comment by academics, lawyers, judges and teachers. The premier's avowed anti-intellectualism was rewarded some years later by an honorary doctorate conferred on him by the University of Queensland.

One other way I tried to raise educational standards in the force was by opening the field to women (who were usually better qualified than the men). In order to reduce Joh's hostility to any new plans I might have, I often camouflaged them by saying they were based on the approved McKinna recommendations. Most were; some were closely related; but it would have been difficult to establish the relationship with some of them. The truth is that the large-scale introduction of women into the Queensland force bore little relation to the South Australian model that McKinna had proposed. In South Australia, female police officers had very restricted roles. My program called for a tremendous change, both in terms of numbers and in the range of duties and responsibilities. I arranged that, in Queensland, female recruits completed the same introductory course at the academy as the men before being sworn in. They were then rostered for their twelve-month probationary period for a complete range of duties, both in suburban stations for general training and mobile patrols for street work. On completion of this training, they were posted to fill a whole range of police duties. They joined the Traffic Branch where they took on point duty at busy intersections. They worked in mobile units, including an all-woman traffic car. They participated in school liaison teams, controlled the desk in the operations room and performed beat duty on all shifts. Under the supervision of a male sergeant, we established a rape reporting centre run by female officers. Women officers became part of the mounted troop, cleaning out stables, exercising the horses and taking part in ceremonial displays. They became qualified searchers in the fingerprint department. They contributed as full members to the planning and research section. They became plainclothes officers in the drug and criminal investigation sections. They qualified as scene-of-crime officers. They joined the police pipe band. They became instructors at the academy. They joined the water police unit and the public order squad. They searched and escorted female prisoners and generally carried out all the duties of a constable of police. Most of these duties had not been undertaken by women in Australia's police forces before and accordingly, these female officers in Queensland aroused much interest. The results of these innovations varied, as might be expected, ranging from average to very good. At this time, Queensland did not have its own detective training school. Potential detectives were sent to Melbourne for training since the Victorian course was regarded as the best in Australia and was used by quite a few other states. When Hilary Huey went to Melbourne, she topped the course with the highest marks of any candidate.

During the six years when women were coming into full play in the force, there was only one charge laid against a civilian for assaulting a female officer. During the 1974 demonstrations in Brisbane, a plot was hatched to bring discredit on the police by causing male constables to use excessive force in ejecting female demonstrators from a government building. I sent in a squad of women police officers who very quickly resolved the situation. In the next day's
Courier-Mail,
the demonstrators claimed that I had been “unfair” in using female officers to remove female demonstrators.

One regret that I do have about my increased intake of women recruits is that I failed to attract Aboriginal women to the force. Despite strenuous attempts to recruit Aboriginal girls, only four applied and none of these survived the twelve-month training period. One of the four came from Thursday Island, another from Townsville and, being unused to big city life, they rapidly became lonely. One young woman left because she was offered a better job and the fourth was found to be pregnant a month before she was due to be sworn in. At that time there was no provision for retaining pregnant constables.

I have often wondered what happened to the women who joined the force in those days. In 1989 I received a letter from one of the first women cadets. She wrote:

I have come to the realisation that what attracted me to policing was your vision. I shared that vision and believed that I could contribute towards it becoming a reality. Since you resigned there has been no visionary to replace you. As I look around for another employer I have actively sought out another leader with a vision. It seems possible that I might have found another in the Director of Accident Prevention. I wish you well and thank you.

A. Lidgar

Although the increased numbers of women meant an increase in educational standards, the really major step I made in this direction was a cadet intake of very selected secondary school students. When I arrived in Brisbane, Max Hodges had told me that there had been some talk of establishing a Police Training College similar to the one McKinna had in Adelaide, but so far nothing much had come of it. I suggested that we needed to attract some young, intelligent people and that we needed to interest them in a police career. Max agreed and we built the academy where we offered cadetships to secondary school students, both boys and girls, who had successfully completed the Intermediate Certificate and were planning to proceed to the Matriculation Certificate. We offered them residential accommodation for the two years of schooling required, plus an allowance of $5000 a year. Those who wished to stay on after matriculation were offered a third year of specialised police training, so that when they entered the police force they would be well-educated and have a sound background in police matters. We attracted quite a number of applicants, mainly from high schools in country areas where there was less opportunity for completing the final years of secondary school while still living at home.

We selected twenty of the best applicants and got some really high quality recruits. They lived at the academy where we provided teachers who joined our staff from other high schools and colleges. We offered these teachers a small wage increase and were able to employ some very competent and experienced people. The academy was provided with laboratories, a library and other necessary equipment. For the position of principal, we were able to recruit Harry Alsopp, who had been the deputy head of a leading boys' college in Brisbane. I had met Harry through Baptist circles and thought that he could fill the position very well, which he did. I tried to develop an atmosphere at the academy which emphasised the independence of individual constables, so that the cadets realised they would not be like soldiers acting under orders, but would be required to use their own initiative and sense of responsibility when out in the front line, whether this was street duty or criminal investigation. Initially the cadets didn't attend parades or march around the academy in squads. I tried to emulate a university environment. However, after about four or five months the cadets themselves developed a liking for a more disciplined approach and they, of their own accord, developed some drill ceremonies which they executed with a great deal of pleasure and smartness.