The Courier-Mail, 14th July 1999
by Michael Ware
Introductory comments:
"DANCING AROUND THE SHREDDING MAYPOLE."
The Courier-Mail's article "A Shred of Evidence" conjures up some fascinating pictures. Dancing around the maypole comes quickly to mind.
Anyone who has taken to time to read the material knows that the shredding itself has never been thoroughly or independently investigated. The Courier-Mail has known that for some considerable time, and at long last has stated the obvious. But history should never be forgotten or rewritten.The one investigation that came close to being in anyway fair dinkum, namely by Messrs Morris QC and Howard, was criticised by The Courier-Mail when the Borbidge Government appointed them in May 1996. It was considered a waste of time and money.
Those barristers found serious "open to conclude" criminal conduct in their report and recommended an immediate open inquiry. In one of the most intriguing lost opportunities in Australian political history, the Borbidge Government did not act. It went to sleep.
There is obviously a considerable battle being waged in the media. There are those who want to perpetuate the myth and others who want to see the truth revealed. A great deal hangs in the balance.
Let's have the whole sordid truth. Certainly the members of Cabinet (five of whom are currently serving in the Beattie Government) who took that crazy decision must be questioned under oath and, if necessary, held accountable; but what about others in our system of government who failed to act when evidence was put under their noses.
The whole truth must be faced before Queensland can put this vast scandal securely to bed in our history books. What did the police do? What did the Office of Crown Law do? What did the Attorney-General do? What did the CJC do? What did the FOI Commissioner do? What did the Senate do? What did the Queensland Parliament do? The list goes on. There is something very wrong here. The shredding has put our entire system of government on trial.
So The Courier-Mail has now stated the obvious. Good on it. It is moving in the right direction, but it has some distance yet to go.
It should be noted that on 10 June 1999 the Parliament, on the casting vote (43-42) of Mr Wellington, the Independent MP who promised Queensland that he would hold the Beattie Government to account on matters of impropriety (and who has firsthand knowledge of these matters) and who presumably can read The Courier-Mail, allowed Premier Beattie to peddle false and misleading statements on Parliament. He saved the Government's fate. It appears that the Beattie Government (albeit by a majority of one) wants to live and perpetuate the lie that the shredding has been investigated thoroughly.
It is kidding no one except those who want to believe in myths for their own benefit. As for Mr Wellington, his contribution to integrity in government over this affair is well assured.
Whatever virtues Mr Beattie may claim his government possesses, it possesses none without a recognition of the truth.
We know that the ribbons binding people in high places and agencies to the shredding Maypole are firmly fixed. It is too late to move them. They are getting shorter and shorter. Inevitably the truth will be in their very nostrils. It is waiting at the end of the ribbons. Dance away...dance away...
With respect to the article below Ware's statement that: "However, this didn't come to light until The Courier-Mail unearthed it last year, sparking an immediate outcry and creating a special area of hearings for the recently completed Forde inquiry" is damning on The Courier-Mail. The document (which you can download and print from the above link) reveals that The Courier-Mail had all the evidence last year thanks to Kevin Lindeberg. A document which highlights the need for an inquiry into the shredding. A point which was totally ignored by this Labor paper.
So why this article? Quite simply put the the heat is getting too hot in the kitchen and the lies of the Labor elite (including Premier Peter Beattie) are now starting to scald the bodgy reputation of The Courier-Mail in the eyes of those who still do not realise what a dishonest, trashy joke of a newspaper this Murdoch entity is.
And here is another bit of classic self-ingratiation by this trashy paper: "How many tried to find out what all the fuss was about, by speaking to the staff? None. How many have been to the John Oxley Centre? None. (Just for the record the Courier-Mail did all these things.)".
The reason Shreddergate has continued so long and why one young Aboriginal has died by suicide in John Oxley late last year was because The Courier-Mail was playing politics and protecting its own - the Laboral factions.
The article starts below this line:
Many people in politics - primarily in the Labor party - moan long and loud whenever the much-maligned Heiner enquiry is mentioned.
Indeed, they squirm at the very utterance of its name and make a face as if to say: how could you even bring this up?
Why they do this, I don't know.
But their problem is that it does keep coming up: again and again and again.
There are several reasons for this, but one of them is that it's hard to find anyone who can get the story straight. So many people make so many mistakes when talking about the Heiner inquiry that the mistakes invariably lead to more confusion, more argument.
And I don't know why because, at it's heart, it's a very simple affair.
But for those of you who have not been following (and I believe that I am now talking to the vast majority), this is the story: the inquiry was a departmental investigation by retired magistrate Noel Heiner set up in 1989.
Its job was to examine staff concerns about management and allegations of abuse at Brisbane's John Oxley Youth Detention Centre, a facility for young offenders aged between about 12 and 17.
However, within a couple of weeks, a legal hiccup was discovered about the level of protection against defamation thought to be on offer for witnesses. So the inquiry was abandoned in early 1990.
Instead of fixing the problem or starting again, the Goss Labor government of the day simply shredded the evidence, including that of mistreatment of the children, and transferred the manager.
Since then it's been a political game of cat-and-mouse.
What essentially is at issue here is whether the circumstances surrounding the shredding of the Heiner evidence in 1990 were legal.
If they were, then it's time to forget the whole sordid tale. If they're not, then it's time to start locking some people up - from the bureaucrats to the politicians.
The trouble is, we just don't know which way to go. No one's ever got to the bottom of it. No one has ever, really, investigated it.
Yet there's a proliferation of people who will, quite erroneously, tell you differently. People ranging from colleagues of the Labor ministers under the gun for having been party to the decision to shred, to supposedly savvy media-types who say the shredding's been investigated to death.
It's been done time and again, by a host of agencies, they say. The only tricky part with those sentiments is that they're not true.
Actually, a man whose life has been embroiled in the affair since 1990, former union representative Kevin Lindeberg, is currently trying to bring Premier Peter Beattie to task over this very issue.
And he's gone to the Speaker of Parliament to stake his claim.
This latest mini-battle stems from Beattie's statements to Parliament listing nine or ten bodies whom he said had made "inquiries" into the shredding.
But of all the agencies mentioned - from police to Criminal Justice Commission to Auditor-General, among others - none of them had, at any given moment, all of the necessary ingredients to seek the truth of the shredding: the free rein, the power and the jurisdiction.
They've all been hamstrung.
If, in fact, the shredding had been properly investigated by anyone, surely it would have been discovered that the witness testimony that was destroyed had revealed the illegal handcuffing and drugging of child inmates.
I repeat, the illegal handcuffing of children.
However, this didn't come to light until The Courier-Mail unearthed it last year, sparking an immediate outcry and creating a special area of hearings for the recently completed Forde inquiry.
But, strangely enough, one of the agencies we've been told that had made "inquiries" into the shredding, the 1995 Senate Select Committee on Unresolved Whistleblower Cases, was discreetly given rock-solid proof of the abuse.
Proff produced, no less, by the Labor state government itself.
Why? Who knows. But a document detailing the handcuffing was buried amidst a mass of material sent to the committee. If the committee had actually been empowered to evince the truth of the shredding, and the government wanted it found, wouldn't the heinous abuse have come out?
Equally, if any of the agencies had really been able to look at the shredding to see if it had been legal, wouldn't they have stumbled on it themselves?
Of those agencies who made "inquiries", how many spoke to the Cabinet ministers who made the fateful decision to shred? None.
How many tried to find out what all the fuss was about, by speaking to the staff? None. How many have been to the John Oxley Centre? None. (Just for the record the Courier-Mail did all these things.)
So, if someone tries to tell you that the Heiner issue or the shredding of the Heiner documents has been investigated, you can laugh them away. But, before we put the whole saga to bed, the sole question that remains is not why we should reinvestigate this hoary old chestnut. Rather, do we actually want the answers that we've never sought?