Corruption claims in Aust.

Press, 8 March 1984, Page 11

Corruption claims in Aust.

By

NZPA staff

correspondent CHRIS PETERS

Sydney The muck has hit the fan with a vengeance this week as Australian conservative politicians from Canberra to Brisbane take up the latest corruption allegations to hit New South Wales.

The New South Wales state election campaign in the heartland of the Australian Labour movement is only three days old, and the row over what have been called the “Age Tapes” has blossomed into a national battle. The New South Wales Parliament is prorogued because of the coming election, and the corruption fight has switched to the Federal Parliament in Canberra for a frantic week of mud-slinging before that body goes into a two-week recess tomorrow.

But with Andrew Peacock’s Opposition doing everything but naming the judge who has become the centre of the row, a Queensland state politician waded in on Tuesday and ended the phoney war by naming names and all but removing the battle from the state to the federal level. A former Labour Attor-ney-General, Lionel Murphy, has been named, along with a former Labour Party power-broker, John Ducker, and a Sydney solicitor, Morgan Ryan, as being connected with the tapes which allege a range of improper activities.

The row began in Melbourne on February 2 when' “The Age” newspaper published articles that it said had been based on transcripts of bugged telephone conversations between several well-known figures. The transcripts included

material alleging that a New South Wales public servant had received a sAustso,ooo bribe, that a judge and a solicitor had arranged a Government appointment for a friend of the solicitor’s, police corruption concerning illegal casino operators, and a discussion between a judge and a solicitor about organising a court case against a former Liberal Minister. The tapes are said to have come from the New South Wales police. The material had been provided by a journalist, Bob Bottom, but the original “Age” report was not used by its sister paper, “The Sydney Morning Herald” because it was not satisfied that the material was authentic.

The weekly “National Times” did, however, use transcripts apparently gained from another source. The Opposition in Sydney and Canberra seized on the reports with glee and were incensed that the Federal Attorney-General, Senator Gareth Evans, refused to call a special inquiry. The heat was particularly on the as-yet unnamed judge, but Mr Evans told Parliament that since the transcripts had revealed no wrongdoing there would be no Government action. And he refused to name the judge because, he said, doing so would subject him to attack and innuendo when nothing in the taped conversations had showed any illegal activity. For the same reason Mr Peacock and his colleagues baulked at revealing the judge’s name for fear that the action would backfire politically. The identities of the people named in the tapes had already become widely

known in Canberra circles, and on Monday a Liberal member of Parliament, Steele Hall, said that the judge had been the Federal Attorney-General in 1974. He did not give the name but a check with any reference book showed that the man was Mr Murphy.

Such niceties were too much for Queensland’s Transport Minister, Mr Don Lane, who on Monday named Messrs Murphy, Ducker, and Ryan in the Brisbane Parliament, and also said that it was time Mr Peacock “learned to abandon his preoccupation with' fostering a modern Hollywood image of a gentleman and get on with the job of being Opposition Leader.”

He was followed on Tuesday night by a fellow National Party member, a back-bencher, Doug Jennings, who said that Elice investigations had ked Mr Murphy’s name with drug traffickers, murderers, the disappearance of an anti-drugs campaigner, Donald Mackay, and with the “Mr Asia” drugs syndicate. .

The row over “The Age” tapes was the last straw for the New South Wales Premier, Mr Neville Wran, who, after a week of deliberation, called a snap election on Sunday, declaring that the continuing corruption allegations had made government impossible. His action shut down the state Parliament and robbed the state Opposition of the platform of privilege it needed to pursue its allegations, so the action switched to the Federal Parliament.

The Opposition and the Queensland Government have latched on to the

Murphy aspect of the tapes, seeing the greatest opportunity to do the most political damage to Labour, elevating the corruption row to a Federal level and leaving the New South Wales election campaign to roll along quietly on its own. “Nifty” Wran has a lot of political fat to lose before the state Opposition parties can even come close to sending him packing from his Parliamentary office in Macquarie Street, Sydney. He has a 22-seat majority, and it will take a 10 per cent swing to unseat him. Labour holds 69 seats, the Liberal-National coalition 26, and the Independents four, and analysts predict that at worst Labour will lose 10 seats. In the 1981 election Labour won 55.7 per cent of the vote and the coalition 38.8 per cent, the second “Wranslide” election in a row.

The latest opinion poll, K- "shed yesterday, gave ur 54 per cent of the vote and the coalition 38 per cent, and predicted that if

an election had been held when the poll was taken at the end of February it would have been “Wranslide” number three.

Mr Wran’s own popularity has slipped a little in the latest poll, but he already has plans to bring in the Prime Minister, Mr Bob Hawke, who will throw his overwhelming popularity behind the Labour Party’s Federal president

Mr Wran plans to fight this election on his Government’s record, rather than merely concentrate on the corruption rows that have brought the state election forward six months. He believes that the people of New South Wales have got sick and tired of the talk of corruption which has dogged the state since the mid-1960s and which also covers several Liberal administrations.

In three days the promises have flowed thick and fast. Both sides opened their campaigns pledging a commission to investigate corruption in the state, then moved- on to more traditional issues such as transport. Mr Wran promises to upgrade rail- services. The Opposition Leader, Mr Nick Greiner pledged a better deal for motorists.

The Hungarian-born Mr Greiner, aged 37, has already admitted that his coalition is six months short of preparation for an election, and freely concedes that he will have an enormous task to topple Mr Wran. But the deciding question, confirmed by snap polls conducted by television and radio, will be how much the corruption issue will come home to roost, and how much fat it will ultimately force Mr Wran to shed.