Tough Mullett Takes Aim

Tough Mullett takes aim Hedley Thomas | From: The Australian | May 08, 2010 12:00AM Former Victoria Police union chief Paul Mullett says he was a political target PAUL Mullett believes he has been set up for political reasons. It cost him his job, his reputation and could have sent him to prison. Now he has nothing to lose, he may be more politically dangerous than ever. His challenge to the Brumby government is simple: if there is nothing to hide, no official corruption to be concerned about, no improper agendas, then launch an open inquiry into all of the unusual circumstances surrounding covert investigations that snared Mullett and former assistant commissioner Noel Ashby in 2007. Both men and their lawyers are pulling apart a spider's web of political intrigue, the allegedly corrupt conduct of the Office of Police Integrity, and the motives of their detractors in having them criminally prosecuted. "My allegations are that senior people in the Victoria Police and the OPI have abused the criminal justice system to seek a politically motivated outcome," says Mullett. The OPI has returned fire with a spirited defence of the conduct of its employees. Its director, Michael Strong, strongly rejects the serious allegations made by Mullett, Ashby, the Police Association Victoria and a leading Melbourne barrister Phillip Priest QC (who described the OPI's conduct as "corrupt"). Any examination of the events that culminated in the failed prosecutions must also look at the political environment that produced the outcome, according to Mullett. It is why he starts his story in 1999, when a targeted and damaging industrial campaign by the Police Association was a significant factor in a seismic shift in Victorian politics. The record shows the then Kennett government was on track to comfortably win the state election. Few pundits had given Steve Bracks, Labor's fresh-faced new opposition leader, any chance of success. "We ran a very hard campaign that started about eight months before the election," Mullett, the Police Association's secretary at the time, recalls. "Kennett appeared to be going very well as premier, but he was cutting police numbers. We ran a tough campaign that said 'cutting police numbers is a crime'. "I'll never forget meeting Steve Bracks, I think it was his second day in office as premier. He walked over, shook my hand and said: 'Paul, we will never, ever forget you.' They had not thought they would win." At the time Mullett was new to the job as head of the Police Association, having been assistant secretary since 1993, but he had discovered the enormous political power that could be wielded by his union. He realised the association's membership of about 11,000 sworn police -- men and women who were relied on by politicians to uphold the eternal electoral promise to be tough on crime -- could make a government. Mullett, and the association, also could break a government if the honeymoon came to an end. By August 2007, when the brief extract (below) of a telephone conversation was secretly recorded, the political landscape in Victoria had changed again. Having steered the Labor Party to a third win, in late 2006, Bracks handed the premiership to his treasurer, John Brumby, and left politics. The chief commissioner of Victoria Police, Christine Nixon, a reformist from NSW when she was appointed by Bracks, and Mullett, still the association secretary, had been at loggerheads for several years. Their relationship started well but their vastly different agendas meant it was always going to end badly. Mullett believed Nixon was plotting with members of the association's executive to oust him from it over bullying allegations, and he accused her of constantly interfering in the association's business. Justice Donnell Ryan in the federal court delivered a judgment in 2008 confirming Nixon was closely involved in a high-level bullying investigation, which weakened Mullett's effectiveness in waging an industrial campaign on behalf of police. Ryan found: "I am satisfied on the evidence as it stands that the commissioner herself was actively involved in various decisions taken between May 2006 and January 2008 in relation to the investigation of the bullying allegations." Nixon viewed Mullett with disdain. She resented his political influence and no-holds-barred advocacy on behalf of his members, employees for whom she was responsible. She pushed a top-level investigation of his alleged bullying of sworn officers who worked for the association. He had blocked her reform agenda, and a controversial deal that he struck with Bracks had provided police with another raft of benefits. It was a deal that helped Bracks and Labor, but it humiliated Nixon. Mullett was warring with Nixon, taking on the infant Office of Police Integrity, a body set up to target police corruption, fighting a faction in his union that had accused him of being a tyrannical bully and wanted to unseat him, and trying to plug damaging leaks to the media that he believed was part of an orchestrated campaign against him. Crucially, his political relationships with the new Brumby government were also strained. Mullett: Comrade, comrade. Peter Lalor, industrial delegate of the association: Oh, Fish. I was just listening to a news item. John Brumby standing by his 3.25 per cent pay rise to the nurses. Mullett: Yeah. Lalor: Won't be happy either. Mullett: No, that's good. Lalor: Yeah, I don't think anyone's happy with John. Mullett: I've given Lisa Fitzpatrick [state secretary of the Australian Nursing Federation, Victorian Branch] my telephone book. Lalor: Ah. We'll have a logo. Go John [Brumby] go, go John go. F . .k off. Mullett: I thought we'd all start singing a favourite Labor song: "It's time to sign, it's time to sign". On the morning of this conversation, the nasally voices of Mullett and one of his 50-odd union delegates, Lalor, then a senior sergeant, were recorded in a secret telephone intercept. It was one of many intercepts conducted during covert operations being conducted at the time by the state's OPI and Victoria Police as a result of a tip-off from a murderer that he had killed a man after Lalor had provided the man's address. This conversation ranged over the union's forceful industrial strategies to improve the wages and conditions of Victoria Police. Mullett and Lalor discussed internal union politics, their lack of respect for Nixon and her deputy commissioner, Simon Overland (whom they called "Wonderland"), and their disgust at the direction Victoria Police was being taken by leaders the old-school police and union heavyweights regarded as "academic nerds". Mullett shared with Lalor a story he had heard from his source in the Victoria Police hierarchy, assistant commissioner Noel Ashby, that Terry Moran -- now in charge of Kevin Rudd's office but in 2007 the most senior public servant in Brumby's office -- offered Overland a six-week taxpayer-funded executive course at Fontainebleau, near Paris. Mullett says: "If you're looking for a promotion, he'll go in as Inspector Clouseau and come out as Chief Inspector Dreyfuss." But, for the most part, the conversation revolved around the fierce campaign being run by the Police Association as master-minded by Mullett to wring as much as possible from the Brumby government in the enterprise bargaining negotiations that were then on foot. Mullett demanded a generous new enterprise governing agreement, the first since 2001, for his members and he wanted it signed off by Brumby. Mullett referred during the August 14 intercept to the "political pressure point", and agreed with Lalor that for a protest meeting of members, Melbourne's Vodafone Arena is "not big enough. We need the MCG with the nurses, the teachers, the [indistinct] and us." At this critical juncture in Victorian politics, industrial argy-bargy and a covert OPI-police investigation that involved eavesdropping on numerous telephone conversations calls, Mullett was also threatening the new Brumby government that his 11,000 members would impose "work bans" and stop doing revenue-raising tasks such as processing speeding and traffic fines. The bargaining for a new five-year agreement was tough and the political stakes high. Mullett had become an increasingly difficult key stakeholder for the three critical points in a triangular relationship. As a relentless union boss he kept demanding more from the Brumby government. Mullett railed publicly against the reform agenda of Nixon. And Mullett ridiculed the police watchdog, the OPI, newly created as a safeguard against police corruption. Many police respected and supported him. They had achieved remarkable windfalls attributed to strong advocacy by the former noted detective, who had two valour awards and a reputation as a fierce catcher of criminals. But to the government, Nixon and the OPI, Mullett was a destabilising and uncontrollable menace. This trinity would be better off without the antagonistic bomb-thrower. The events that unfolded within weeks of the enterprise bargaining agreement being signed in September 2007 were little short of sensational. Mullett was publicly vilified in OPI hearings in November 2007, accused of tipping off a suspect (Lalor) in a murder investigation, suspended from Victoria Police, charged with perjury by then deputy commissioner Kieran Walshe, forced to retire from his job at the association and criminally prosecuted. The bomb- thrower was neutralised. But Mullett was not a completely spent force. By the end of committal proceedings launched by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Melbourne magistrate Peter Couzens was distinctly underwhelmed by the Crown's evidence. Mullett had been charged with perverting the course of justice, and for lying over his answers that he did not recall some things.

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