The Cedar Bay Alliance
By John Jiggens
On the morning of 29 August 1976, the inhabitants of the hippy
colony at Cedar Bay in far North Queensland were awoken by the
WHAP-WHAP-WHAP of a helicopter circling. As it dropped off a few
policemen at the beach, they watched. It left, only to return
again, and again, and again
. . . All that morning the chopper kept bringing the coppers
in.
In the camp, people began stirring. As they ate a hurried breakfast,
the first police group arrived, cutting through the bush along
the bottom of the vegetable garden. The police hurried through
the camp, pausing for a few moments to chop down the clothes line
and Allen’s tent with their machetes. When challenged they
said: ‘We’re looking for marijuana plants!’
1
Shortly after another group of police arrived and began searching
the hut for marijuana. They started ripping up the food supplies.
They threw everything, bags of rice, packets of tea, packets of
soup, cans of vegetable, packets of flour — about three
months supply of food — on the floor. They bored holes in
their water containers. They then started a fire. When the amazed
residents asked them what they were doing, ‘Looking for
marijuana seeds!’ was what they replied.
The police were firing guns everywhere. They were like cowboys
shooting up a town. Candy Smith remembered fearing that her friends
were being killed. Suddenly Lee, one of the young men, made a
break. The cops stood around dumbfounded. Finally they ran after
him. He ran through the bush to his hut, only to discover that
the police had set it alight. They caught him trying to put the
fire out. The police called him a ‘dole-bludger’ and
threatened to kill him if he tried to escape again. 2
Meanwhile, the others made no attempt to escape. Beside the helicopter,
a light aircraft, a Customs launch and the navy patrol boat HMAS
Bayonet were involved in the raid on Cedar Bay. More than 30 police,
as well as Narcotics Bureau and Customs agents, took part. The
Task Force assembled to attack Cedar Bay was certainly impressive.
Against it, the dozen or so young people who were the commune
of Cedar Bay stood no chance. They felt cowed and completely defeated
by these big, trigger-happy police. They were marched off to the
beach and handcuffed together around trees.
Because she only had shorts on, Candy asked if she could go back
to the camp to get something warm. She walked back with one of
the police only to see her hut was already on fire and all her
possessions, her dresses and clothes, everything she owned was
going up in smoke! She ran into the flames to salvage what she
could. As this frantic young woman tried desperately to save her
few possessions from the fire, the police stood around laughing.
The burning hut started caving in, so they dragged her from the
fire, all the while laughing hysterically like mad men.
Back at the beach, the police had rounded up more hippies. Candy’s
friend, Sandy, and another friend, Michael Lennon, were there.
They saw Candy was crying and she told them that the coppers had
burnt all her possessions, everything. Michael Lennon gently asked
the police why they were hurting them in this way. He was pushed
to the ground and told to shut his mouth or else. He asked why
they were being held and was given the same treatment again.3
The helicopter came and took the two women — Candy and Sandy
— away. The young men were brought back to Cooktown by the
patrol boat. The raiding police stayed behind and celebrated with
a wild party, using the helicopter this time to fly in their alcohol
supplies.4
At Cooktown the two young women were interrogated by a policeman
who said he could charge them with several things such as being
on Crown land, but he was going to be easy with them and put them
down as vagrants. And, since the police had recently burned down
their houses, vagrants is what they were. When Candy protested
that she had a bankbook, the policewoman who had taken her possessions
said that as far as she was concerned Candy didn’t have
a bankbook. She told Candy she could pick her bankbook up after
court.
Candy was placed in a padded cell. The police sergeant threatened
to keep them in jail for a week if they pleaded not guilty. He
made insinuations to the young women all night. He said he would
be paying their cells a visit later on ‘to keep you sluts
happy and warm’.5
Next day in court, Candy was amazed at the lies of the police.
“Things like I was sleeping on a mat on the floor in filthy
conditions. I took great pride in the cleanliness of our home.”
However, completely cowed by the police threats, she (like the
other nine Cedar bay defendants) pleaded guilty to vagrancy. Because
the local Cooktown magistrate was on holidays, the police illegally
got his clerk to stand in. Not qualified to preside, the magistrate’s
clerk added to the farce that was Queensland justice by continually
asking the police prosecutor what sentences he should give.
Although Cedar Bay is 2000 kms north of Brisbane, the story of
the Cedar bay raid was broken by Brisbane’s alternative
radio station 4ZZZ, who had a reporter, Steve Gray, in Cairns.
The 4ZZZ report alerted the ABC in Brisbane who sent reporter
Andrew Olle to Cedar Bay. His vivid report on This Day Tonight
(TDT), showing the burnt houses and the machetied fruit trees,
made Cedar Bay a national story.
Many people were aghast at the police action. Criminologist Paul
Wilson described the Cedar Bay raid as ‘a waste of time
resources and money’. He described the anti-drugs operation
as like an old American film script, and said the raid achieved
little of benefit to the community:
With five unresolved rapes, three unsolved murders and muggings
on the increase in Brisbane and all the provincial cities, it
seems extraordinary that they can use 30 men, planes, a helicopter,
and ships to catch a few hippies for smoking cannabis - and then
charge others with vagrancy. How can they be vagrants when they
are living in a commune miles from any other civilisation?6
Dr Wilson said the raid was against the hippies and their lifestyle.
‘The police wanted to demonstrate that they are hard on
cannabis, even if police in other states are not’, he said.
The Lockyer By-Election
Meanwhile in the Brisbane Valley, the campaign for the crucial
Lockyer by-election was under way. In her study of the Lockyer
by-election, Margaret Cribb argues that the by-election was ‘an
out-of-town tryout’ for Bjelke-Petersen and the Nationals.
For some months, the premier and the government had been taking
a strong and unrelenting stand on the questions of law and order
and drugs. In the past, Premier Bjelke-Petersen had campaigned
successfully against the Whitlam government, and now with Whitlam
gone, Bjelke-Petersen needed a political make-over. The feared
enemy of the Southern Socialists was about to transform himself
into a drug war warrior. Law and order and the War on Drugs were
to be the new political agenda in Queensland.7
So the Cedar Bay raid proved a happy coincidence for Bjelke-Petersen,
who immediately went on the offensive, supporting the police,
and announcing that his Cabinet wanted life term for drug pushers.
(An idea embraced by The Courier Mail with this logic: ‘Harsh
as it may seem, the State Government’s proposal that courts
be given the power to jail pushers of hard drugs for life is justified.
An organised pusher of hard drugs can become a mass murderer,
killing many of his victims indirectly.’) 8
Bjelke-Petersen’s message was loud and clear: it was War
on Drugs and drug users in Queensland. He said he had directed
the Queensland police to bring drug pushers before the court.
The Queensland government will not tolerate drug pushers, drug
cultures, or those who flippantly promote the use of illegal drugs
as harmless or therapeutic. The time for toleration of drugs is
long past, especially among students and teachers. My government
has taken this stand in response to a rising tide of unrest among
parents and the responsible sections of society. We’ll intensify
our efforts to locate illegal drug cultivations and increase police
surveillance in co-operation with appropriate Commonwealth agencies.
I can assure all Queenslanders that this state will be no haven
for illegal drug users, pushers and promoters.9
Supporting the Premier, the recently appointed Police Minister,
Tom Newbery said he would take a hard line on drug offenders too.
He said police raids on drug areas were fully justified. ‘I
don’t think we can do enough to clamp down on these people.’
Questioned about the cost of the raid, Newbery declared proudly
that he was ‘tough on drugs’:
The cost was not really important. What was important was the
stopping of a flourishing market in North Queensland. I have always
been known as a tough minister and I intend to be tougher on these
people.10
Asked whether the force used may have been excessive, Mr Newbery
said the police action at Cedar Bay would act as a deterrent.11
In Queensland Parliament, opposition Police spokesman, Keith Wright,
called for an inquiry into the police actions. He accused the
police of adopting storm-trooper tactics. The actions of the police
were ‘over-zealous, irresponsible and loutish’, he
said. No one could condone what happened after the initial raid
on August 29. ‘I have seen photographic evidence that demonstrates
a complete lack of respect for individuals and their property,’
he said. ‘Homes were burnt down and children’s clothing
and food piled in a heap and ignited with kerosene. Dozens of
fruit trees were chopped down, a water tank was shot up, and shots
fired indiscriminately into the scrub.’ 12
Mr Wright said that the Attorney-General should conduct an inquiry
into the raid. He had been advised by senior counsel that various
sections of the criminal code were breached. It appeared that
property was wilfully destroyed and the area ravaged.
The state has a responsibility to protect citizens irrespective
of their philosophies. It has a responsibility to clear the good
name of the police. The drug traffic must be stamped out. But
Cedar Bay can not be smoothed over by a Ministerial statement.
There needs to be an investigation.13
Premier Bjelke-Petersen fought back with a strident attack on
the residents of Cedar Bay and their supporters. It was, he said,
all a conspiracy by people who wanted to discredit the police
and legalise marijuana. He claimed that the residents may have
fabricated evidence to embarrass the police, and that the trees
allegedly cut down by police might have been cut down for TV camera
crews.14
Police Minister Newbery backed Bjelke-Petersen claiming there
was an obvious campaign by drug pushers (again that term) and
vested interests to discredit police anti-drug actions. There
had been loud allegations and accusations, he said. All were based
on unsworn and unsubstantiated allegations by unnamed people who
had much to gain by discrediting the police. Describing the residents
of Cedar Bay as ‘undesirables living in squalor’,
Mr Newbery gave his full support to police actions ‘to stamp
out evil’.
There will be no haven for the pushers and users of illegal drugs
in this state. There will be no haven in North Queensland where
people can disregard the law. There will be no pockets of isolated
jungle, where they can grow and use illegal drugs.15
Newbery used Parliament to attack the TDT program on Cedar Bay,
claiming it was blatantly biased because it did not mention that
the police had seized marijuana plants, and that it was a series
of slurs on police integrity. ‘I understand that some police
officers who took part in the raid are considering legal actions
against the program as a result of unsubstantiated claims,’
Newbery said.
On this last matter, Mr Newbery was correct. A writ was served
on the ABC almost immediately. After that, the Speaker ruled that
Cedar Bay could not be debated in State parliament on the very
dubious legal grounds that the discussion was now sub judice.16
‘We want to know who authorised this destruction because
of the question of conspiracy,’ Opposition leader, Keith
Wright, had asked in Parliament. The man playing political football
with the issue, Premier Bjelke-Petersen, had been in Cairns the
week before the raid, and was the obvious candidate. Bjelke-Petersen
denied ordering Cedar Bay, but quickly stopped the debate in Parliament.
However, he continued to kick the ‘drugs’ football
all over the Lockyer electorate.
Speaking at the Gatton School of Arts during the launch of the
National Party’s campaign for Lockyer Mr Bjelke-Petersen
declared:
"Queenslanders like firm, decisive leadership and policies
and the National Party provides it. Being a leader brings you
in for every accusation, every smear, every attempt to belittle
you that your opponents can muster.
The Queensland government’s attitude on drugs is clear-cut
— we’ll not tolerate them. We’ll not tolerate
attempts by teachers or anyone else to peddle a pro-drug attitude.
When your ALP candidate speaks, ask him point blank does he support
the legalisation of marijuana and other drugs.
The ALP always stands up for the drug pushers, the lawbreakers,
the demonstrator and the radicals against the community’s
rights, the rights of the police and your rights and my rights."17
In its spirit of zero-tolerance and ‘total war’ Bjelke-Petersen’s
speech was pure Nixon; even Bjelke-Petersen’s list of enemies
‘the drug pushers, the lawbreakers, the demonstrator and
the radicals’ resembles the famous Nixonite hate list of
‘the young, the poor and the black’. He was signalling
that the ‘rights’ of these ‘drug pushers’
and ‘lawbreakers’ — the democratic rights of
protest which had made possible opposition to conscription and
the Vietnam War — were about to disappear.
The Last Honest Cop
Although Bjelke-Petersen was able to gag Parliament, he could
not contain the widespread sense of outrage and unease in the
broader Queensland community about the police actions at Cedar
Bay. The inhabitants of Cedar Bay were to find a powerful supporter
in Police Commissioner Ray Whitrod. Although under continual pressure
from Bjelke-Petersen, Whitrod believed such serious charges against
police had to be investigated, and defied Bjelke-Petersen by ordering
an internal police investigation.
Ray Whitrod had become Queensland’s Police Commissioner
in 1971. A dignified, intelligent and honest man, he brought extensive
experience and impressive qualifications to his appointment to
head the Queensland Police. Educated in South Australia, he had
a Bachelor of Economics degree, and a Postgraduate Diploma in
Criminology from Cambridge University. He had served in the South
Australian, Papua New Guinea and Commonwealth Police Forces, the
latter two as a Commissioner, and was a former assistant director
of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). An
outstanding policeman of great honesty and integrity, he was appointed
from outside the Queensland Police Force with a brief to reform
it.
Reforming the Queensland Police was an unenviable task. For many
decades the Queensland police force had had a corruption problem.
Graft was paid to senior police and politicians for the protection
of prostitution, S.P. bookmaking and illegal liquor sales. As
the Fitzgerald Report notes: ‘police corruption had acquired
a quaint quasi-legitimacy by the Bischof era . . .Bischof [Queensland
Police Commissioner 1957-1970] himself was said to be deeply involved
. . . Certain police were said to enjoy Bischof’s favour,
and to be his ‘bag-men’.’ 18
Bischof’s ‘bag-men’ were rumoured to be three
detectives — Terry Lewis, Tony Murphy and Glen Halloran.
Collectively, they and their supporters were referred to as ‘the
Rat Pack’. They were the ‘Black Knights’ of
the Queensland Police Force. By 1976 the power struggle between
the Rat Pack and their allies in the Police Union and Whitrod
and his reformers had reached its peak. Whitrod’s campaign
against corruption was starting to bear fruit. Rat Pack associate
Jack Herbert and two others were charged with corruption in the
Southport S.P. case. Two Scotland Yard detectives were conducting
an internal inquiry into police corruption, and pressure was building
for a public inquiry into police corruption.
To counter Whitrod, the Rat Pack and their supporters in the Police
Union began a campaign to woo Bjelke-Petersen. The corrupt police
were promising Bjelke-Petersen an alliance; unlike the ‘Whitlam
man’ Whitrod, they would help Bjelke-Petersen repress his
political opponents. Two famous police ‘provocations’
occurred at this time: on August 10 1976, a female student was
struck over the head with a baton by a police Inspector in full
view of the TV cameras at a peaceful student protest; on August
29 1976 came Cedar Bay. The Cedar Bay raid can almost be read
as the Rat Pack’s application to Bjelke-Petersen —
a sample of the kind of justice that Whitlamites could expect
from a Rat Pack controlled police. So Whitrod’s decision,
in defiance of Bjelke-Petersen, to order an internal inquiry into
Cedar Bay on 6 October, would have fateful effects. Bjelke-Petersen
knew there were other police who would do his bidding.
On November 12, Whitrod learned that Bjelke-Petersen had pushed
Inspector Lewis through cabinet as Assistant Commissioner, a course
which involved his elevation over more than 100 more senior officers.
Whitrod went to the Police Minister’s office and said he
was flabbergasted; he protested that it was widely known in the
force that Lewis was one of Frank Bischof’s bagmen. ‘That
was when he was a sergeant,’ Newbery replied. ‘He
wouldn’t do that sort of thing now.’ Whitrod said
Lewis was unacceptable, and asked to address cabinet. This was
denied.19
Although Bjelke-Petersen gave evidence to the Fitzgerald Inquiry
that he was not responsible for the decision to promote Lewis,
press reports at the time — as well as Lewis’s diary,
seized by the Fitzgerald Inquiry — suggest otherwise.
Following a gathering of National Party ministers in Charleville,
Lewis was informed of his promotion to Assistant Commissioner
by a mysterious caller, whom he records as 007. Lewis wrote in
his diary these words: ‘Next Monday, No 1 (Bjelke-Petersen)
has directed so. One at a time, you (Tony Murphy) next time. Taylor’s
approach.’ A gradual encirclement of Whitrod was planned.20
The next caller was ‘Don’ (Don Lane MLA) who had also
heard the news of Lewis’ promotion. Lewis wrote: ‘Will
show him list.’ The list referred to had been drawn up by
Murphy, and was a series of typed sub-lists headed ‘Guests’,
‘Friends’, ‘Capable’, and ‘Others’.
‘Friends’ were: Sergeants Ron Redmond and Noel Dwyer;
Constables Ron Beer, Graham Leadbetter and Pat Glancy. All were
to have brilliant careers under Lewis. ‘Others’ were:
Whitrod, Assistant Commissioner Bill Taylor, Superintendent Jim
Voight, Inspector Arthur Pitts, Basil Hicks and policewoman Lorelle
Saunders. Lewis added in his handwriting ‘all present CIU’
— the Criminal Intelligence Unit which Whitrod had used
against the corrupt police. All these would have their careers
destroyed under Lewis. This list was the heart of the Rat Pack
conspiracy; the fact that Lewis intended to show it to Lane suggests
Lane had the status of a co-conspirator.21
Six hours later, Lane rang back to report on a meeting with Bjelke-Petersen.
He told Lewis that both Murphy and Lewis had been ‘canned’
by Max Hodges; that Bjelke-Petersen had heard that Murphy was
an ALP supporter; but that Bjelke-Petersen would trust Police
Union President Ron Redmond’s advice. In his record of this
conversation Lewis wrote: ‘KoKo double-crossed No 1 over
Cedar Bay. No 1 really a bigot’. (‘No 1’ is
the code Lewis used for Bjelke-Petersen; ‘KoKo’ is
Lewis’s code for Ray Whitrod.)22
The Cedar Bay alliance had been cemented. It was never written
down; it was a kind of code that Lewis understood and Bjelke-Petersen
wanted; it was the code for a future of endless Cedar Bays. It
meant war on the hippies, war on the young, war on the left: war
on ‘the Whitlamites’. It was the code for the coming
‘drug terror state’.
As Whitrod saw it, the promotion of Lewis was intolerable. Not
only might it be thought that he was associated with the appointment
of Lewis, but his operational control of the Police Force would
be seriously undermined by the Lewis/Bjelke-Petersen alliance.
He conceived of the possibility that he would become a figurehead,
with his reputation a shield for the corrupt. After being informed
of Lewis’s appointment on Friday 12 November, Whitrod thought
about the matter over the weekend and resigned at 9 am on 15 November.
He also ordered summons against four of the policemen involved
in Cedar Bay.
The Courier Mail editorialised the next day:
It had become inevitable, of course, and State Cabinet obviously
meant it to be. And so Queensland has lost probably the best Police
Commissioner it ever had.
Mr Ray Whitrod was an idealist, but a practical one. He wanted
higher standards, higher calibre personnel and reform within the
police force. His critics, in the force and in the Government,
wanted the old safe ways of the entrenched system as little answerable
to the public as it could be.
Aided by the Premier (Mr Bjelke-Petersen) and the Police Union,
the old guard has won. The Queensland public has lost. Cabinet
set up a situation which made it impossible for Mr Whitrod to
do his job properly and left him no real alternative but to resign.
The Government has shown a strange determination to be stubborn
and stupid, with its blatant political interference in the police
force. . . . Obviously the next Police Commissioner, whoever he
is, will be expected to be a “Yes man” to the Premier.
23
On November 22, the 48 year-old Terry Lewis was appointed Police
Commissioner for seventeen years — which would take him
to retirement. Bjelke-Petersen praised his new, crooked commissioner
with the words: ‘He’s a straight-shooter.’ The
accompanying colour piece in the Courier Mail described the new
commissioner as a ‘Man with a light touch’, the irony
possibly being intended, for all of Brisbane was buzzing with
Rat Pack rumours. The Australian entitled its eulogy of Whitrod
‘The Last of the Honest Cops’.24
On November 29, ‘the last honest cop’ told a packed
press conference he had resigned because of political interference.
He would not accept being a puppet commissioner for Bjelke-Petersen.
Politicians were interfering in all levels of police work, and
had demanded favours for themselves and their families. Attempts
had been made to use political interference right down to the
lower levels of police transfer and promotions.
He revealed that Inspector Robert Gray of Cairns, who led the
Cedar Bay raid, was one of the four policemen he had summonsed
in relation to the raid. He had been instructed on ‘higher
authority’ not to let his investigators go to Cedar Bay,
but he chose not to pass on that instruction. Cedar Bay was a
‘surface indication of the existence of a fundamental difference
between the government’s approach to criminal law enforcement
and my understanding of the proper procedures to be followed’,
Whitrod said.
The government’s approach, if carried to the limit, is favoured
by extreme right and extreme left groups . . . These extremist
groups obviously have not missed the significance of Goering’s
successful assumption of control of the German police as an essential
step towards the establishment of the Nazi state, and there have
been similar lessons elsewhere. I felt so concerned at this turn
of event that I resigned lest it be thought I approved or at least
condoned this kind of relationship.
The comparison with Nazi Germany was pointed. Whitrod was an intelligent
man, highly educated in political philosophy; he was an ex-assistant
director of ASIO. What Bjelke-Petersen wanted was a totalitarian
state and Whitrod saw this and would have no part of it.
Whitrod said he had been pushed out of the job by the Premier
who was making decisions contrary to his own. ‘Interference
with my responsibilities reached the stage where I was no longer
in command’, he said.
The government’s view seems to be that the police are just
another public service department, accountable to the Premier
and Cabinet through the Police Commissioner . . . I believe as
Police Commissioner, I am answerable, not to a person, not to
the Executive Council, but to the law.
Q: Do you think Queensland is getting to be a Police State?
A: I think there are signs of that development.
Unfortunately, what was left unsaid was as almost as important
as what was said.
Q: Are any of the bribe taking Rat Pack amongst the recent promotions?
A: I can not answer that.25
The Cedar Bay Trial
Ray Whitrod’s attempts to get justice for the residents
of Cedar Bay went the way of his attempts to reform the Queensland
Police. Cedar Bay had become an important issue that Bjelke-Petersen
needed to win. He carried out a crusade, a witch hunt, vilifying
the victims of Cedar Bay.
Although the Queensland Parliament was prevented from discussing
Cedar Bay because it was ‘sub judice’, Bjelke-Petersen
continued to put out a series of prejudicial press releases. One
press statement, issued on the eve of the new court hearings,
claimed that North Queensland was the ‘drug factory’
for the rest of Australia, and referred to ‘drug plantations
hidden in thick rain forest areas such as Cedar Bay’. Another
paragraph said police believed foreign fishing vessels were bringing
in hard drugs and that police were ‘seriously concerned
that apart from growing cannabis, hippie communes on Cape York
might try to grow the opium poppy, the main source of heroin’.
State opposition leader, Tom Burns, denounced this as ‘a
blatant attempt to influence the court’. and the Council
for Civil Liberties president, Derek Fielding, said it had to
be viewed as ‘a deliberate attempt by the premier to influence
the Cairns magistrate’.26
This campaign of vilification reached its peak during the trial
of Inspector Gray. The police described the hippies of Cedar Bay
as ‘vicious criminal hippies’ who were living in appallingly
squalid conditions, amidst the stink of human excreta. The buildings
were described as dilapidated, abandoned, not fit for human habitation.
According to the police, conditions at Cedar Bay were so appalling
they were only made bearable by the constant smoking of marijuana.
At the trial Gray was acquitted, thanks to barrister Des Sturgess’
famous ‘suppurating sores’ defense. In his address
to the jury, Sturgess relied on ‘sex drug’ hysteria,
appealing to a bigotry based on a fear of youth and sex for which
pot served as code. He told the jury that the case had nothing
to do with bright messages of new hopes for an alternative way
of life. It was about dirt and sores and stink and a return to
pre-history by young people who would do anything except work.
He said Cedar Bay had been portrayed as a sort of paradise occupied
by gentle children of nature. Life there, he claimed, was so squalid
it was made bearable only by steady intoxication from marijuana.
He said Gray had been portrayed as the chief bully man of a bunch
of police bullies who came and interfered with these gentle, peaceloving
hippies who only desired to be left alone. ‘How would you
like your son or daughter to be up there’, he asked the
Cairns jury. ‘What would you expect a conscientious police
officer to do if he found your daughter there? One girl among
nine men . . . youths with legs festooned with suppurating sores.
They were absurd people without shame or modesty.’27
It was Bjelke-Petersen style bigotry, delivered with a QC’s
silver tongue. Sturgess relied on the linking of sex and pot,
which remains a continuing sub-theme in this study. The fear of
cannabis as an aphrodisiac has disturbed the conservative mind
in Australia from 1938 to the present. When Prime Minister John
Howard talks of drugs attacking the ‘moral fibre’
of the nation, this is again code for the youthful promiscuity
and the rejection of the work ethic of radical 1970s youth.
After a 17-day trial, Inspector Gray was cleared of all charges.
Bjelke-Petersen announced that the jury’s decision had justified
his early stand on the issue.
The Right To March
Bjelke-Petersen had got what he wanted: a police force that would
attack his enemies — the young and the Left. And not just
the marijuana smoking hippies of Cedar Bay: already his sights
were set on the marijuana-smoking student protesters from the
universities.
Three weeks before Cedar Bay, when the police had attacked a university
student march, Bjelke-Petersen had supported the police with the
words ‘Australians are becoming tired of demonstrations
on any pretext’. The Police Union immediately supported
Bjelke-Petersen on this issue. Police Union president, Sgt Ron
Redmond, a Terry Lewis supporter, took the opportunity to bag
Whitrod, and called on the Premier to give a clear-cut decision
on what police should do in relation to demonstrations:
*
They feel they have no support other than from the Premier and
the Government in their endeavours to maintain law and order.
They feel deserted by their Commissioner and Minister.28
Ten months into Lewis’s tenure as Police Commissioner and
two months before the next State election, Bjelke-Petersen banned
the right to march in Queensland. On 6 September 1977, senior
police officers were instructed that permits for processions,
which were ‘of a protest nature’, were not to be issued.
On 13 September, Cabinet made the Police Commissioner the final
arbiter on questions of public meetings and marches. Commissioner
Lewis enforced the new edict banning street marches with suitable
enthusiasm.
On 22 September 1977, 700 police were deployed when 400 university
students attempted to march to the city. They dispersed and walked
to King George Square where a rally was held. There were 31 arrests.
On Saturday 22 October 1977, 700 police were deployed when 5,000
university students, civil rights adherents, environmentalists
and others formed in King George Square and marched into Adelaide
and Albert Streets. There were 418 arrests.
That day, National Anti-Uranium Mobilization Day, 20,000 people
marched peacefully through the streets of Sydney and 10,000 did
likewise in Melbourne. A minimum number of police supervised those
processions and no arrests were made.29
On the eve of the State election, 11 November 1977, 690 police
were deployed against a Right To March demonstration. There were
169 arrests. By provoking turmoil in the streets, Bjelke-Petersen
won a smashing victory.
As in the days of the Vietnam Moratorium protests, Right to March
activists found themselves victimised by corrupt Queensland police
who misused the drug laws against them. Ian Kerr, a prominent
activist in the Right To March protests, was subsequently planted
with a block of hash by Queensland police in August 1980. Typically,
the Queensland police who raided his house kicked in his door
and then went through his bookcase, confiscating a number of radical
pamphlets and books before planting him with the hash. Due to
inconsistencies in the police evidence, Ian Kerr was eventually
acquitted on the hash charge.30
Bjelke-Petersen was smashing his opponents in the streets: was
he also smashing them in their homes? Damien Ledwich’s cartoon,
‘Speak Earthperson’, associates the Right to March
demonstrations with the great marijuana drought of 1977 when pot
almost disappeared from the street. ‘This Droughts gotta
break soon’ says the narrator: ‘I’m down to
dry stems and wet dreams.’ In the next frame people shoot
up.
The Drought had begun after Cedar Bay. At that time, heroin started
to seep through Brisbane, and exploded in use during the street
march era. Some said that the corrupt police were pushing the
heroin. Fats Parameter, whose song Pig City was one of the anthems
of Brisbane protest, describes those times:
Within a few years within my circle of friends who had been into
street march politics — between 1977 and 1980, half of them
had turned to heroin. Quite a few subsequently died. I have no
proof, but I always suspected the police sold them another form
of rebellion.
The Queensland Drug-Terror State
After Cedar Bay, the use of ‘drug-terror’ by the Queensland
police force became systematic. Just as in the street march demonstrations,
the use of agent provocateurs was widespread. In May 1978, when
the Drug Squad conducted a series of raids around Rockhampton,
there were many complaints of entrapment. Following the raids,
a letter to the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin protested: ‘It
seems we are paying our agent provocateurs to go throughout the
state causing young people to commit crimes they would not otherwise
consider in order to make the Drug Squad figures look a little
healthier.’32
The Anglican Synod of Rockhampton issued the following statement:
‘while the Synod deplores the growing tendency towards the
use of illicit drugs in the community it nevertheless voices its
concerns at some police methods being used to enforce the law
and gain convictions, believing the end achieved do not justify
the means ...’33
In July 1978, the Drug Squad moved onto Kuranda, where a 28 year
old Sydney man was fatally shot by police as he fled from a drug
search. Queensland lawyers, who had been critical of the ‘Starsky
and Hutch’ tactics of the Drug Squad for years, said they
had been expecting such a shooting. According to the lawyers,
drawn guns were a regular feature of drug raids in Queensland,
irrespective of the likely damage to police; doors were smashed
in without warning and furniture indiscriminately destroyed; not
as part of the search for drugs, but for intimidation. The number
of complaints indicated these practices were standard procedures.34
In August 1978, the Queensland police force brought their ‘Cedar
Bay’ style of drug-terror into northern NSW. At Yelgun,
local resident Luc Tournier was shot and wounded as a result of
a Queensland police stakeout. According to John Burns, secretary
of the Northern Rivers Human Rights Action Group, at least three
dozen shots were fired by Queensland police during the stakeout
and subsequent high-speed chase. Burns alleged that the police
concerned had earlier been seen drinking and larrikinising at
a nearby hotel. When Luc Tournier’s car finally ran off
the road, he was dragged out and, as one officer held a gun to
his head, another repeatedly kicked him in the ribs shouting:
“Die you —— die!’ Burns’ statement
continues:
The next morning, Luc’s home was ransacked by police, armed
with pistols and rifles, his wife and a neighbour being dragged
to the police station, charged with minor drug offences, while
their screaming children were left behind. While these people
were being questioned, other police went back to their homes,
tearing everything apart and taking and destroying personal possessions.35
Needless to say, Luc Tournier and his friends were hippies.
Year by year the number of drug ‘persecutions’ in
Queensland increased, often executed against dissidents, because,
as we shall see, under the Queensland system the Mr Bigs were
protected. The stated aim of this persecution was to drive drug
users out of Queensland, and in this regard it succeeded with
many young, liberal Queenslanders choosing to leave the state
and become ‘Queensland refugees’. However, it did
not stop drug use in Queensland at all, as graph 3 (below) shows.
The burgeoning War on Drugs in Queensland is reflected in the
graph of Drug Offences in Queensland 1968 - 1988. Notice the growing
acceleration of arrests following Cedar Bay (August 1976) which
reached a crescendo in the years between 1983 and 1986 in which
the Nationals ruled alone. Note the fall in 1987/88, the years
of the Fitzgerald Inquiry, when the Queensland police were lying
low. Over 100,000 drug offences were prosecuted in Queensland
during Bjelke-Petersen’s premiership; most of these (almost
90,000) while Terry Lewis was Police Commissioner.
In 1983, after 15 years of Bjelke-Petersen and his tough-on-drugs
policies, drug offences in Queensland had not gone down at all.
Instead, they had increased by an extraordinary 8,000%. During
the same period, Bjelke-Petersen’s tough-on-drugs stand
proved enormously popular and his party’s share of the vote
increased from 19% to 39%. While the War on Drugs proved a successful
means of social control for a corrupt, right-wing government,
it was accompanied by a massive increase in illegal drug use in
Queensland, massive erosion of civil liberties and massive corruption.
Footnotes
1 ‘Statement by G.E. Smith’, Parliamentary Debates
Senate, 7 Sept 1976 pp437-438. These statements were read into
Hansard by Senator Keefe and reported in the Courier Mail in the
article ‘Police burnt our huts and clothes’, The Courier
Mail, Saturday Sept 11, 1976, p4
2 Statement by G.E. Smith; Statement by Peter Dimitriou; Parliamentary
Debates Senate , 7 Sept 1976, pp435-438
3 ‘Statement by G.E. Smith’ also ‘Statement
by Michael Lennon’, Parliamentary Debates Senate, 7 Sept
1976, pp437-439
4 Lunn, Hugh. (1978). Joh: The life and political adventures of
Johanes Bjelke-Petersen, [St. Lucia: University of Queensland
Press], pp236-254
5 ‘Statement by G.E. Smith’, Parliamentary Debates
Senate, 7 Sept 1976, pp437-438;
6 ‘Tough on drugs’ - police minister’, The Courier
Mail , Sept 1 1976, p14
7 Margaret Brisdon Cribb, ‘An out-of-town tryout: the Lockyer
by-election’ in Politics in Queensland: 1977 and Beyond
edited by Margaret Brisdon Cribb and P. J. Boyce, UQP Brisbane
1980
8 ‘Editorial’, The Courier Mail , 8 September 1976,
p4
9 ‘Tough on drugs’ - police minister’, The Courier
Mail , Sept 1 1976, p14
10 ibid
11 ibid
12 Wright, Keith Queensland Parliamentary Debates, Vol 271, 8
Sept 1976, pp305 -306
13 ibid
14 Lunn, Joh, pp 236 - 254
15 Newbery , Hon T.G. ‘Ministerial Statement’, Queensland
Parliamentary Debates, Vol 271, 8 Sept 1976, pp296-7
16 Newbery , ‘Ministerial Statement’, Queensland Parliamentary
Debates, Vol 271, 8 Sept 1976, pp296-7
17 Trundle, Peter ‘Stamp duty, land tax look: Joh’,
The Courier Mail , 18 Sept 1976, p4
18 Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities
and Associated Police Misconduct (hereafter referred to as The
Fitzgerald Report), p 32 for the ‘bag-men’ quote and
pp 30 -33 for the early history of ‘the Joke’.
19 Whitton, The Hillbilly Dictator, p38
20 Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and
Associate Police Misconduct (The Fitzgerald Report), p 45
21 ibid, p45
22 ibid, p45
23 ‘Editorial’, The The Courier Mail, 16/11/76, p4.
To cover the damage done by Whitrod’s resignation Bjelke-Petersen
announced an inquiry into the Police Force. However, Mr. Bjelke-Petersen
said that the inquiry would not be into allegations of “malpractice
and corruption” only into police procedures because Mr.
Bjelke-Petersen said he knew of no corruption in the Queensland
police force.
24 ‘Lewis police chief from next Monday’, The The
Courier Mail, 23 November 1976, p1
25 ‘Whitrod Claims: Government briefed on Cedar Bay’,
The Courier Mail, 30/11/1976, p1
26 ‘Bjelke drug attack on eve of court case’,The Australian,
Sept 25 1976, p10
27 Lunn, Joh; pp 236 - 254
28 ibid
29 The Fitzgerald Report) pp 50-51
30 Interview with Ian Kerr, December 1999
31 Interview with Fats Paremeter, July 1999
32 Sturgess, Gary ‘Drug Squad terror tactics cause alarm’,
The Bulletin 29/7/1978, p 28
33 ibid
34 ibid
35 Forsyth, Christopher, ‘Police dont tolerate this raid
Mr Wran’ Nation Review, Sept 15-21, 1978, p2
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