Latest / Real Crime with Adam Shand / Inside Pentridge: The Chaplain Who Knew Them All | Peter Norden

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Inside Pentridge: The Chaplain Who Knew Them All | Peter Norden · Real Crime with Adam Shand

0:05
Speaker 1: Apoge Production.
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Speaker 2: Welcome to Real Crime with Adam Shand. I'm your host
0:17
Speaker 2: Adam Shand. In two thousand and three, when I was
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Speaker 2: covering Melbourne's Gangland War, I met the former Catholic chaplain
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Speaker 2: of Penridge Prison in Melbourne, Father Peter Norden. For more
0:27
Speaker 2: than forty years, Father Peter Norden has worked in a
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Speaker 2: variety of roles within the Australian criminal justice system. At
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Speaker 2: the time, he was burying many of the old school
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Speaker 2: crooks who were gunned down in that bloody conflict. Between
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Speaker 2: nineteen ninety eight and twenty ten, thirty six Underworld figures
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Speaker 2: were murdered in the so called Melbourne Gangland killings. He
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Speaker 2: moved easily in the ranks of those heavy criminals and
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Speaker 2: their families.
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Speaker 3: This was because he.
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Speaker 2: Built up trust in the underworld over decades behind those
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Speaker 2: bluestone walls of Penridge. He wasn't there to convert them
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Speaker 2: or judge them for their crimes, but to be a
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Speaker 2: confidant and source of comfort, particularly to the most vulnerable,
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Speaker 2: while also being a voice for reform. Norden was senior
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Speaker 2: chaplain at Pentridge and has written extensively on prison reform
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Speaker 2: and human rights. In two thousand and eight, he left
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Speaker 2: the priesthood, but has continued to advocate on behalf of
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Speaker 2: prison inmates across Australia. Father Peter Nordon continues to call
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Speaker 2: for sweeping reform of the criminal justice system. I recently
1:35
Speaker 2: caught up with Peter for this chat. How did you
1:39
Speaker 2: become the prison chaplain at patrick.
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Speaker 3: Well? I started a training for the priesthood as at a
1:47
Speaker 3: very young age, just turned eighteen, and I joined a
1:50
Speaker 3: group called the Jesuits, which is part of the Catholic Church,
1:54
Speaker 3: and they had a seminary out at Watsonia later became
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Speaker 3: the Prison Officers Training College. But when I was there,
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Speaker 3: I came across a young fellow called Gary whose fiftieth
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Speaker 3: wedding nun of her I went to recently, and he'd
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Speaker 3: stolen a car and I asked the person in charge
2:09
Speaker 3: of our training could go and visit him at a
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Speaker 3: place called Tarana in Parkwell. The boy was there on
2:14
Speaker 3: he got six months for car theft or something, so
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Speaker 3: that was how I initially made contact. I was only
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Speaker 3: eighteen and I was in my first year of training
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Speaker 3: and it was a fairly isolated place. You weren't allowed
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Speaker 3: to go out visiting people much, but I was allowed
2:28
Speaker 3: to do that. And then that summer, or was it
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Speaker 3: the next summer, I did a four week placement with
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Speaker 3: the chaplain who was there, who was a wonderful guy
2:35
Speaker 3: called Kevin Mogg should have been archbishop instead of George
2:39
Speaker 3: Pell would have made a much better job of.
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Speaker 1: It, and that's on the podcast.
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Speaker 3: Anyhow, So I started some work there and then as
2:49
Speaker 3: a training Jesuit, normally you'd have a break. It's a
2:51
Speaker 3: fifteen year training period, longer than a brain surgeon, and
2:55
Speaker 3: halfway through you'd do kind of an internship and normally
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Speaker 3: you'd go and teach him one of these prestigious Jesuit schools. Well,
3:02
Speaker 3: i'd done social work at Melbourne UNI and the schools
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Speaker 3: weren't quite very creative about how they could use a
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Speaker 3: trainee Jesuit as a social worker in a school, little
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Speaker 3: did they know. So instead I came up with this
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Speaker 3: proposal to open a halfway house for young men at
3:17
Speaker 3: that time, later men and women seventeen to twenty one
3:21
Speaker 3: year olds who were repeat offenders, and we set that
3:24
Speaker 3: up in Power Street, Hawthorne, and that became late the
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Speaker 3: Brosenham Center, which then grew into Jesuit Social services. But
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Speaker 3: that was the beginning. It was meeting a young fellow
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Speaker 3: who had stolen a car, who lived near Bungo Street
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Speaker 3: in Watsonia, and I started visiting him and then brothers
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Speaker 3: didn't take much notice because he had a lot of
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Speaker 3: people come in and sniff around the prison. But after
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Speaker 3: a few years, when I was running this halfway house,
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Speaker 3: we had a murder and the murder was the mother
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Speaker 3: of Robin Cooper, who at that time late he was
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Speaker 3: a qure counselor and an old Saverian. He and his
4:00
Speaker 3: brother were aligned at the Liberal Party and he became
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Speaker 3: a member of Parliament and if Jeff if Kennet had
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Speaker 3: have won his last election, Robin Cooper would have been
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Speaker 3: the Minister for Prisons and Police. But it was a
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Speaker 3: shocking tragedy which I don't want to discuss in detail here.
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Speaker 3: But after that happened, Broz sort of took a bit
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Speaker 3: of notice because he saw me on the Willasey program
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Speaker 3: wellasy at seven, and he thought I had a bit
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Speaker 3: of dash, I think, and decided that I might be
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Speaker 3: someone who could come and work with him as he
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Speaker 3: moved towards retirement.
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Speaker 2: Several years later, Father Broslin is one of the great
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Speaker 2: figures of Victorian society.
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Speaker 1: He needs it with the background. Who was he? What
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Speaker 1: was his mission?
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Speaker 3: Well, he was a diocesan priest working for the bishop.
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Speaker 3: He'd been a chaplain down at the orphanages in geelongs
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Speaker 3: and St Augustus. He later worked at the inner city
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Speaker 3: parish of Saint Joseph in Collingwood and Saint John's in
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Speaker 3: East Melbourne, and he was asked to become the first
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Speaker 3: full time Catholic chaplain of Pentridge in nineteen fifty six
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Speaker 3: and he stayed there for thirty years. He was there,
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Speaker 3: of course from fifty six. He was there during the
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Speaker 3: Ronald Ryan trial and hanging and he was one of
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Speaker 3: the key people along with Barry Jones and Brian Dixon,
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Speaker 3: the Liberal member of Parliament who opposed the execution against
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Speaker 3: Henry Bolty. Anyhow, Ryan was eventually executed, Broslon and the
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Speaker 3: chaplain had to stand at the bottom of the gallows
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Speaker 3: and before my last rites. But he became probably the
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Speaker 3: best known priests in Australia before Bob Maguire. Father Bob
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Speaker 3: came along and he was the first Catholic priest in
5:37
Speaker 3: Australia to get a state funeral, which happened perhaps twenty
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Speaker 3: years ago. In our twenty five years ago, I.
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Speaker 2: Remember interviewing Father Brosnan when Baldy died, and his anger
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Speaker 2: towards Baldy had never did Yeah.
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Speaker 1: I think he might have said what Thursday, bastard, but
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Speaker 1: I can't remember.
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Speaker 3: He wouldn't have said done.
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Speaker 1: Is that something in those terms?
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Speaker 3: Someone said to him, what are you going to do
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Speaker 3: when you retire, Father Broston? He said, oh, I think
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Speaker 3: there's a nice quiet parish in Western Victor Victory and
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Speaker 3: it was where Baldi had his farm, and he said,
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Speaker 3: I thought I might just become a nice quiet parish
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Speaker 3: priest over in Western District. And of course it was
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Speaker 3: Baldy's place, and the last thing Baldi won it was
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Speaker 3: for Brosman to be appointed the local priests there. When
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Speaker 3: bros retired at the age of seventy five.
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Speaker 2: I think a lot of people would be unclear about
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Speaker 2: what a chaplain actually does in the prison.
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Speaker 1: What is the role?
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Speaker 3: Well, when I was working as a chaplain, sometimes you'd
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Speaker 3: have to speak to year twelves at some school or
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Speaker 3: rather and they'd say, father Peter did it. Prisoners talked
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Speaker 3: to you much. I'd have to try to explain to
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Speaker 3: them what actually the dynamic was because in the prison
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Speaker 3: no one trusted each other. The crims didn't trust the screws,
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Speaker 3: and the crims after the drugs hit the place, at least,
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Speaker 3: didn't trust each other. Previously, there were settled networks that
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Speaker 3: were predictable and added a degree of stability to the
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Speaker 3: prison environment. But once the serious drugs hit the prison,
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Speaker 3: the prisoners didn't even trust each other. So the chaplain
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Speaker 3: was about the only person in the place you could trust.
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Speaker 3: My approach there was an Anglican, a Salvony, an arting church,
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Speaker 3: and my approach was I was there for the crims
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Speaker 3: and other chaplains, so we're here for everyone. They're all
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Speaker 3: God's children. And I'm saying the staff live in homes,
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Speaker 3: they've got access to chaplains. It's an adversary situation. It's
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Speaker 3: the green uniforms versus the blue, and I'm here for
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Speaker 3: the people who are in the green. Of course I'll
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Speaker 3: be polite and respectful to the staff, otherwise you get
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Speaker 3: no cooperation at all. But my priority is for the
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Speaker 3: people in green and not for the gangsters. I didn't
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Speaker 3: say this publicly, But I was there for the people
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Speaker 3: who were the most vulnerable in the prison, and that
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Speaker 3: meant the young, the disabled, those with mental illness. They
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Speaker 3: were very vulnerable in the prison. But to be effective
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Speaker 3: with them, you had to make it with the top
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Speaker 3: tier of the prison pecking order. So it meant you
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Speaker 3: had to engage the gangsters to get ability and profile
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Speaker 3: and status. I didn't want it for its own sake,
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Speaker 3: so that I could move more easily within the prison
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Speaker 3: and engage those who are the greatest need and most vulnerable.
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Speaker 2: And who were the leading gangsters. And this is like
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Speaker 2: nineteen seventy six, I believe.
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Speaker 3: Isn't it right? Ah? Yes, but I don't want to
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Speaker 3: be highlighting names. We can talk about that as much
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Speaker 3: as I did. I mean, probably most of them. I
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Speaker 3: used to say, you know, father Peter, he's running with
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Speaker 3: this mobel, he's running with the Richmond Moby, he's running
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Speaker 3: with the Carlton crew, or he's running with the crew
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Speaker 3: of the Western Soburbs. I wasn't with anyone, so but
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Speaker 3: you had to kind of get engaged with them in
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Speaker 3: order to have credibility. I suppose it's a street credibility,
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Speaker 3: and you know, I come from a middle class background,
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Speaker 3: although you know our family never owned its own home,
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Speaker 3: et cetera. But I knew I had to learn the lingo.
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Speaker 3: You learn how to walk, you learn how to talk
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Speaker 3: in the prison in such a way that you're credible.
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Speaker 3: Not some tough from outside the crims would say, father,
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Speaker 3: But you know you come in here at eight in
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Speaker 3: the morning, you leave it four o'clock at night. You
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Speaker 3: don't really know what prison it's like. You know we
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Speaker 3: have to live here, and I say, I know that,
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Speaker 3: but I am You know, I've been doing this for
9:16
Speaker 3: quite a long period of time now, on and off
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Speaker 3: in different roles, about twenty years. But it's true. If
9:21
Speaker 3: you don't live in the prison, you don't understand the
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Speaker 3: insecurities of being a convicted or even a reminded person.
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Speaker 3: It's not the same.
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Speaker 2: Seeing you again after quite a few years, I suddenly
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Speaker 2: recall your motive, active listening, the empathetic listening, the way
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Speaker 2: you engage with your eyes and things. I'd amaze that
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Speaker 2: would have been critical back then. Yes, we would have
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Speaker 2: learned those skills.
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Speaker 3: In there. You learn, but you learn not to be
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Speaker 3: too confronting, like with a seventeen to eighteen year old
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Speaker 3: who comes into the prison shit scared. You don't want
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Speaker 3: to be doing too much eyeballing because it's threatening, and
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Speaker 3: you don't ask too many questions. You talk a little
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Speaker 3: bit and know that he or she's assessing you from
10:03
Speaker 3: those first couple of minutes. It's a bit like I
10:06
Speaker 3: do weddings. You know, if you say something stupid in
10:09
Speaker 3: the first minute or two, you've lost the whole gathering.
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Speaker 3: So it's really important, say, in doing a wedding, that
10:15
Speaker 3: I have the couple, like greet them and say a
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Speaker 3: few little nice words, and I tell the couple I said,
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Speaker 3: everyone's looking at me wondering who this guy is and
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Speaker 3: is he going to make a mess of it or not?
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Speaker 3: And within twenty seconds thirty seconds, if you look friendly
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Speaker 3: and you're smiling and happy, you've won half of them
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Speaker 3: already within a minute. You've got to.
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Speaker 1: Judge the room and how you approach it.
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Speaker 2: But I think that I guess my point is that
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Speaker 2: you would get a quick read of the person you're
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Speaker 2: dealing with, how much familiarity, what level of spirituality, you
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Speaker 2: could engage with the sorts of things and try to
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Speaker 2: find their need.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, but it wasn't about religion. I mean, you know,
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Speaker 3: it's about engagement first, and religious needs came two or
10:52
Speaker 3: three or four steps down the line. So I was
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Speaker 3: there as a religious chaplain, but I was there for
10:59
Speaker 3: the whole person. You know everything about that person. So
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Speaker 3: in the prison I would be down go to education.
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Speaker 3: I spent a lot of time in remand, but I
11:10
Speaker 3: go to industries. If there was a football game on
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Speaker 3: or an athletic carnival, I'd be there. So you're involved
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Speaker 3: in the whole world of the prison. And that's the
11:19
Speaker 3: same as what used to happen at least as a priest.
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Speaker 3: That the priest wasn't there just at the weddings and
11:24
Speaker 3: funerals and masses, but he or sheena would be visiting homes,
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Speaker 3: would be at the shopping center, be at the local football.
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Speaker 3: It was a total involvement. So for these young people
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Speaker 3: who said did they talk to you much, you didn't
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Speaker 3: have any understanding of what it would be like. And
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Speaker 3: in fact, if you played the game right, you were
11:43
Speaker 3: the most sought after people in the prison, And particularly
11:46
Speaker 3: if you showed yourself to be courageous, you know, by
11:51
Speaker 3: being prepared to name injustice when it occurred, and access
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Speaker 3: to the media. You then became in some ways the
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Speaker 3: most powerful person in the institution because you had access
12:02
Speaker 3: to the media no one else did, and he had
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Speaker 3: access to the not just the local prison officer. If
12:08
Speaker 3: they said I'm not happy you were doing that, and
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Speaker 3: I'd say, we'll speak to the governor, or speak to
12:12
Speaker 3: the Director of Prisons, or speak to the minister. But
12:15
Speaker 3: in fact I'm accountable to a higher authority, and I
12:18
Speaker 3: don't mean the archbishop. So you take the wind out
12:22
Speaker 3: of their sales when they thought they were going to
12:24
Speaker 3: sit on you for going over time at a service
12:28
Speaker 3: for five minutes or something like that. You know, petty
12:30
Speaker 3: things they'd pick you up for. But access to the media.
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Speaker 3: The very first day that I was appointed, Tom Pryor
12:37
Speaker 3: was a famous Herald's Son crime reporter and he was
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Speaker 3: a great mate. He wrote the book On a Knock
12:43
Speaker 3: about Priest John Brosnan. He interviewed me at the front
12:46
Speaker 3: of the prison with a photographer and he said, Farlo Peter,
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Speaker 3: what do you think of the prison system? And I thought,
12:52
Speaker 3: here's the chance. First day, Well, it's an old system
12:56
Speaker 3: built on what wasn't working in England for the last
12:59
Speaker 3: two or three hundred years and here we are still
13:02
Speaker 3: replicating the model. It's more school of crime than doing
13:06
Speaker 3: anything other than warehousing people at great expense to the community.
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Speaker 3: Well bang, That gets on page three of the Herald's son.
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Speaker 3: So from the very first day, I established my license,
13:17
Speaker 3: my freedom, my capacity to actually have freedom of speech,
13:22
Speaker 3: even though officially I was a public servant and shouldn't
13:25
Speaker 3: have been talking.
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Speaker 2: And you were there in the wake of the Jenkinson Inquiry,
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Speaker 2: which had been purported to look at violence and treatment
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Speaker 2: of prisoners and so forth, and it was widely regarded
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Speaker 2: by prisoners as a whitewash. A lot of these practices continued.
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Speaker 2: It was a grim place, Gothic old battle castle.
13:46
Speaker 1: There in Coburg. What were your impressions of it back
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Speaker 1: then and how brutal was it.
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Speaker 3: I've been rereading the evidence brought before Jenkinson over the
13:56
Speaker 3: last six months and some of his conclusions, but it
14:00
Speaker 3: was a big disappointment. He was a Catholic judge. I
14:02
Speaker 3: think his son for a while joined the Jesuits tree
14:05
Speaker 3: or two. But I was very disappointed that it went nowhere.
14:08
Speaker 3: It's very hard to have independent witnesses, but it went
14:12
Speaker 3: for several months, but it's a closed institution. I used
14:16
Speaker 3: to have a saying that the prison walls serve a
14:19
Speaker 3: dual purpose. They stopped prisoners for escaping, but I also
14:22
Speaker 3: keep the community outside and ignorant of what goes on
14:25
Speaker 3: behind those walls. So you did have visiting magistrates, and
14:30
Speaker 3: you had a visiting doctor. But in many ways those
14:34
Speaker 3: people who were visiting magistrates and even the resident doctor
14:38
Speaker 3: could be very easily compromised by going along with a
14:42
Speaker 3: system of oppression and rather than speaking as a proper professional.
14:46
Speaker 3: If you're a visiting magistrate, individuals should have freedom of
14:51
Speaker 3: speech without having three or four prison officers there prepare
14:54
Speaker 3: you and tell you that this blokes are no hope,
14:57
Speaker 3: and he wouldn't know what he was talking about. And
15:00
Speaker 3: the same with the doctors. There was a guy there once.
15:02
Speaker 3: His arm was just about falling off. He had a
15:05
Speaker 3: bad bone injury in his shoulder up her arm and
15:08
Speaker 3: you could tell it was just fading away. And I
15:11
Speaker 3: went to the local governor and directed nothing happen. He'd
15:15
Speaker 3: been waiting for twelve months to go to Saint Vincent's.
15:18
Speaker 3: So I rang up Brendan Dooley, who was the top
15:20
Speaker 3: bone specialist in Australia doctor Brendan Dooley, and Brendan Dooley
15:25
Speaker 3: got them to ring the prison and he was in
15:27
Speaker 3: Saint Vincent's Hospital for a surgery to his arm within
15:30
Speaker 3: twenty four hours. Now, this guy had been waiting for
15:33
Speaker 3: a year and literally his arm was falling off, it
15:36
Speaker 3: was fading away. But instead within twenty four hours, forty
15:40
Speaker 3: eight hours, he was in Saint Vincent's and he had
15:42
Speaker 3: a reconstruction on his arm that saved his arm. That's
15:46
Speaker 3: an example. I don't mean that's a big note, but
15:50
Speaker 3: that's what an ombudsman, or what a visiting magistrate or
15:54
Speaker 3: a visiting doctor should be doing.
15:56
Speaker 1: At the same time, the society was steeped in the
15:58
Speaker 1: idea that jails should be.
16:03
Speaker 2: Punishing and brutal, and that was the whole Bentham approach
16:08
Speaker 2: to incarceration. If you could make it hard, make it harder,
16:11
Speaker 2: if you could make the food poor, make it poorer.
16:13
Speaker 2: These people were here to be punished. Yeah, and so
16:16
Speaker 2: the community was quite happy to go.
16:18
Speaker 1: Along with all this. So you were a voice in
16:20
Speaker 1: the wilderness in a way. People like you.
16:22
Speaker 3: Well, that was the old Christian moral. You know that
16:24
Speaker 3: you've made a bad decision, and you'd be punished for it,
16:28
Speaker 3: as if people were all living off a level playing field.
16:32
Speaker 3: But most people who commit serious crime, except for the
16:35
Speaker 3: five or ten percent of professional crooks, they don't think
16:38
Speaker 3: about their actions. They're either influenced by drugs or alcohol,
16:43
Speaker 3: or by some form of mental illness, who've got very
16:47
Speaker 3: low front lobal development if they're a teenager, they don't
16:51
Speaker 3: think of the consequences. And so most murders that are committed,
16:55
Speaker 3: half of which are domestic, are committed without thought, without planning.
17:00
Speaker 3: I mean some of them, as we've seen recently with
17:02
Speaker 3: mushroom killings and so on, allegedly were very carefully planned.
17:07
Speaker 3: But most serious crimes is not thought about. And so
17:11
Speaker 3: that idea that to treat people badly so that they
17:15
Speaker 3: will repent and change the way of their lives. When
17:19
Speaker 3: the key issues, particularly today is access to stable housing,
17:24
Speaker 3: access to legitimate employment, and health services. So now the
17:29
Speaker 3: prisons are crowded, with almost half the prison population of
17:34
Speaker 3: people with a significant disability. It's more than five times
17:37
Speaker 3: the rate of the general community. So these people, maybe
17:41
Speaker 3: some might have committed serious crimes, but most wouldn't, so
17:43
Speaker 3: they're not given a prison sentence to start with, they're
17:45
Speaker 3: given it what's called a community based order, but because
17:48
Speaker 3: they've got a disability, whether it intellectual or mental health
17:51
Speaker 3: or whatever, they breach that order. And so the magistrate
17:56
Speaker 3: or possibly the judge who gave them a community based
17:58
Speaker 3: order never intended them to go to the prison maximum
18:02
Speaker 3: security prison, but more than half of them breached. People
18:05
Speaker 3: with disability breach those community alternatives and they end up
18:09
Speaker 3: in the neck for a crime that didn't deserve a
18:11
Speaker 3: prison sentence. So there's been this huge net widening now
18:15
Speaker 3: that we're having all this remand bail reforms. When I
18:20
Speaker 3: was working in the prison, twenty five to thirty percent
18:22
Speaker 3: of the prison population were on remand and they were
18:25
Speaker 3: people mostly who committed serious crimes. Now it's fifty percent
18:29
Speaker 3: across Australia people of the whole prison population. Fifty percent
18:32
Speaker 3: of people charged but are not given bail because if
18:36
Speaker 3: they've committed a very very serious crime, everyone understands the reason.
18:40
Speaker 3: But if that person's homeless or if they've got a
18:42
Speaker 3: significant disability, the police are going to oppose that bail
18:46
Speaker 3: because there's no way that person's going to turn up
18:48
Speaker 3: in court otherwise. So now you've got fifty to fifty
18:51
Speaker 3: people on remand. Now we're not talking about the serious offends.
18:55
Speaker 3: We're talking about those who have got disability and they're
19:00
Speaker 3: filling up fifty percent of our prison population. It's the
19:03
Speaker 3: biggest challenge that this state government has at the moment.
19:06
Speaker 3: They've got empty prisons because they've got no staff to
19:09
Speaker 3: employ people. There's about two thousand empty cells in the
19:12
Speaker 3: Victoria at the moment, but there's no one to actually
19:15
Speaker 3: staff the prison. Who've got to train the people and
19:18
Speaker 3: that's the biggest concern. I had a meeting with the
19:21
Speaker 3: Secretary of the department only two weeks ago, Apartment of Justice,
19:25
Speaker 3: and that's her biggest challenge at the moment. What are
19:27
Speaker 3: we going to do with all these people who are
19:29
Speaker 3: going to end up on remand and it's just going
19:31
Speaker 3: to overflow.
19:35
Speaker 1: In your era, you saw this failed experiment.
19:40
Speaker 2: Well, Age Division was long there on before you got there,
19:43
Speaker 2: and you had Jaikie Jock I was.
19:44
Speaker 3: In Haste Division two days a week.
19:47
Speaker 2: You were, and what we saw from h Division was
19:50
Speaker 2: people going there for disciplinary offenses while they're in jail
19:54
Speaker 2: for often minor pup offenses. And after the Age Division experience,
19:59
Speaker 2: they came out as very resentful.
20:02
Speaker 1: Very nasty, and huge problems to the community.
20:04
Speaker 2: People like Stanley Taylor, mister Adel Flannery, people like that,
20:09
Speaker 2: What did you see in the way that they were
20:11
Speaker 2: treated that was turning a bicycle thief into a murderer.
20:15
Speaker 3: That was Brosnan's quote. He actually said that publicly many times,
20:19
Speaker 3: that he saw the brutality of H Division turned by
20:22
Speaker 3: thieves into murderers and rapists.
20:25
Speaker 1: I'm glad to Robertson quite.
20:27
Speaker 3: Eminence, but look, it still happened. When I used to
20:31
Speaker 3: go to H Division every Wednesday morning, and that was predictable.
20:35
Speaker 3: The prison officers knew that I was going to arrive,
20:37
Speaker 3: but I also when another time during the week, and
20:39
Speaker 3: I never told them when I was coming, so it
20:42
Speaker 3: was unpredictable. When I'd rock up as a chaplain, you know,
20:46
Speaker 3: other crims from over in the remard. But so go
20:48
Speaker 3: and see Johnny. He's gone down the slot down to
20:51
Speaker 3: H Division. So I'd rock up to see Johnny, and
20:54
Speaker 3: the prison officer would say, oh, he doesn't want to
20:56
Speaker 3: see it, and I said, it's a right, I need
20:59
Speaker 3: to say that with a big smirk on his face.
21:01
Speaker 3: So I'd call someone else out, and then i'd work
21:04
Speaker 3: out from the chief's office, I'd see who else was
21:08
Speaker 3: in the yard with this original guy that I'd asked
21:10
Speaker 3: to see. So I want to see Tommy Brown. Tommy
21:13
Speaker 3: Brown come out very father, you know, yep, yep, yep.
21:16
Speaker 3: I said, why didn't you want to see me? She
21:17
Speaker 3: didn't even know you were here. What do you mean?
21:19
Speaker 3: And I said, oh, I heard he didn't want to
21:21
Speaker 3: see me. So this second personer goes back to the
21:23
Speaker 3: yard and tells him, and then from the artist, I
21:26
Speaker 3: want to see the bard Ray. I want to see
21:27
Speaker 3: the eff and pard Ray and you know, so they
21:30
Speaker 3: had to bring him and sure enough, black and blue
21:32
Speaker 3: stitches all around his eyes and whatever. He had been
21:35
Speaker 3: bashed as soon as he got there, seriously bashed, not
21:37
Speaker 3: just fallen over. Should have been a hospital case. And
21:41
Speaker 3: they didn't want the chaplain to see that type of thing.
21:44
Speaker 2: You're one of the few people that wasn't in there
21:46
Speaker 2: to give accounts of H Division. And we've seen the
21:50
Speaker 2: Chopper film that's probably where we've most got a big
21:52
Speaker 2: look at H Division.
21:54
Speaker 1: Described the atmosphere in there, what was it like it.
21:57
Speaker 3: Was compared to the rest of the prison, which was antiquated, yes,
22:00
Speaker 3: and a lot of isolation, but it was militarized. It
22:04
Speaker 3: was all like you're in a military camp marching. Instead
22:07
Speaker 3: of walking, prisoners were went to march at the double
22:11
Speaker 3: pace or something, and they weren't allowed to have any
22:14
Speaker 3: eye contact. There was no TVs there. I think early
22:17
Speaker 3: on they had radios and later they had TVs, but
22:21
Speaker 3: there were so many other punishments. There are some maximum
22:24
Speaker 3: security places. I did a report for the Supreme Court
22:27
Speaker 3: in Tasmania recently which replicates that there was a guy there.
22:31
Speaker 3: He'd been in solitary confinement for four and a half years,
22:34
Speaker 3: only got one hour of the solid day. He had
22:37
Speaker 3: one book, no radio, no TV, no contact visits. In
22:41
Speaker 3: other words, if you had a visitor, he had to
22:43
Speaker 3: have visitors, but behind a glass screen. And that went
22:46
Speaker 3: on for practically four years until it was brought forward
22:50
Speaker 3: into the Supreme Court, and unfortunately it was an out
22:53
Speaker 3: of court settlement and the system was changed. Was based
22:57
Speaker 3: on what had been going on in Barwin in a
22:59
Speaker 3: CASIA unit in Victoria. All the training happens to Victoria.
23:04
Speaker 3: The idea is Tazzy replicated and picked it up. But
23:07
Speaker 3: because it wasn't a court decision, it didn't establish precedent,
23:11
Speaker 3: so therefore there was no policy change. I did one
23:15
Speaker 3: a similar case of the Supreme Court recently here in Victoria,
23:18
Speaker 3: a young Indigenous man who was mistreated in the cells
23:22
Speaker 3: under the Melbourne Magistrates Court here in Melbourne in Lonstoyle Street,
23:26
Speaker 3: and he became a quadriplegic, and it was medical neglect
23:31
Speaker 3: and they should have called a doctor in two nights
23:34
Speaker 3: before he was flat out for three days and finally
23:37
Speaker 3: when the doctor was called in the ambos, he was
23:40
Speaker 3: set off to the Austin and he's now a quadriplegic.
23:45
Speaker 3: Now he had a case that settled, and I don't
23:47
Speaker 3: know what it was a secret settlement, but it'd be three,
23:50
Speaker 3: four or five million dollars easily. But there was no precedent,
23:54
Speaker 3: in other words, no change in policy. So even only
23:58
Speaker 3: last month I went to see the secretary of the
24:00
Speaker 3: Department and I said, well, look that's going to happen
24:03
Speaker 3: again if you don't change it. You've got to have
24:05
Speaker 3: a doctor turn up there every afternoon to make sure
24:08
Speaker 3: those people should be in that place rather than at
24:10
Speaker 3: a proper prison, and they should only be there for
24:13
Speaker 3: one or two nights, not for fourteen nights. And she said,
24:16
Speaker 3: my biggest problem is finding themselves for all these extra
24:19
Speaker 3: romand people that I've got. But that's how change occurred
24:23
Speaker 3: in the United States. And I've been to those through
24:26
Speaker 3: the United States several times. California particularly, people say the
24:30
Speaker 3: changes occurred because it was costing too much money. It
24:33
Speaker 3: was civil action cases coming out of California that actually
24:37
Speaker 3: produced systemic change. And that's why you won't get these
24:41
Speaker 3: changes by marching up and down the street. It's from
24:44
Speaker 3: good human rights lawyers who are prepared to take on
24:47
Speaker 3: these sorts of cases and establish precedent and changes in policy.
24:52
Speaker 1: Certainly wasn't happening back in the seventies.
24:54
Speaker 3: No. Brutal, absolutely brutal h division and it was the
24:58
Speaker 3: idea that make it tough and people will learn. But
25:01
Speaker 3: as you say, there were very prominent examples where people
25:04
Speaker 3: came out and took it out on the community.
25:08
Speaker 2: As you're talking to people in that situation and you're
25:12
Speaker 2: aware of the brutality, the pressure, the institutionalized brutality. Now
25:17
Speaker 2: could you see the coarsening of the human spirit if
25:21
Speaker 2: you like, the brutalizing of people going on?
25:24
Speaker 3: Oh within no, but most of them were either broken
25:27
Speaker 3: or they just became aggressive. But you had to be careful.
25:33
Speaker 3: You know, the last man who had the Cat of
25:35
Speaker 3: nine tales in Australia, Bill O'Malley. We had the last
25:38
Speaker 3: man hanged in Australia, Ronald Ryan. But Bill O'Malley had
25:42
Speaker 3: been o'melia O'Malley had been convicted of the murder of
25:46
Speaker 3: a police officer and he got these Cat of nine tales.
25:51
Speaker 3: I've read his book. I don't know how much of
25:53
Speaker 3: that is true as against what the official record was.
25:57
Speaker 3: But he then learned to be tricky and people didn't
26:02
Speaker 3: know what he was thinking. He'd been belted in the boys'
26:04
Speaker 3: homes in New South Wales many many times as a
26:07
Speaker 3: thirteen fourteen, fifteen year old that escaped very frequently. But
26:12
Speaker 3: Bill learned not to give away what he was truly thinking.
26:15
Speaker 3: And that's the biggest danger. You don't know what impact
26:19
Speaker 3: are bashing or this neglect or solitary confinements having on
26:23
Speaker 3: the human mind until they get out, and that's when
26:27
Speaker 3: you can often see the consequences. And there were some
26:30
Speaker 3: very notorious examples from h division. But look, there is
26:34
Speaker 3: a bit of a tendency to focus on the high
26:37
Speaker 3: security prisons most of my time when I was working
26:40
Speaker 3: as a chaplain, the people who are most concerned about
26:43
Speaker 3: were the seventeen eighteen year olds in Remand for a
26:45
Speaker 3: stolen car and their welfare and what was happening to
26:49
Speaker 3: them because young kids. Now. I helped change the law
26:53
Speaker 3: from seventeen to eighteen about ten fifteen years ago now,
26:57
Speaker 3: and it was Steve Brax who did it.
26:58
Speaker 1: Finally under Rob Holes, former Victorian premier.
27:01
Speaker 3: As Attorney General. When Brax was Premier and Rob Holes
27:04
Speaker 3: was the Attorney General, they weren't going to change the
27:07
Speaker 3: law even though it had been policy. Anyhow, after several
27:10
Speaker 3: years we brought the change about. So it's now eighteen
27:15
Speaker 3: in Victoria as in the rest of the country. But
27:17
Speaker 3: this idea of changing from ten to fourteen, which has
27:21
Speaker 3: been resisted by the Victorian government, but around Australia has
27:24
Speaker 3: also been resisted, I think Northern Territory change, but they're
27:27
Speaker 3: moved it back. Queensland still ten year olds. Well, you know,
27:32
Speaker 3: putting ten year olds in custody now if they've committed
27:35
Speaker 3: a serious crime, and sometimes there's a twelve year old
27:38
Speaker 3: or a thirteen year old that will commit murder. We're
27:40
Speaker 3: not talking about those cases. We're talking about, particularly in
27:43
Speaker 3: the territory or Western Australia, Aboriginal kids who win their
27:47
Speaker 3: charged had taken thousands of climeters away on remand down
27:51
Speaker 3: to Perth, and they might be there for a week
27:53
Speaker 3: or two, but sometimes they might be there for a
27:56
Speaker 3: couple of months, even for vandalism charge. This is the
28:00
Speaker 3: best way to create a criminal identity and to lay
28:03
Speaker 3: the foundations of a or career.
28:06
Speaker 2: True And as you say, I guess the people who
28:09
Speaker 2: were in h Division and Jaiker Jiker and the adult
28:11
Speaker 2: the gangsters is that probably were beyond really come redemption.
28:14
Speaker 2: But you're focusing on the up and comers who are
28:16
Speaker 2: coming in there, and they're seeing a lot of life
28:20
Speaker 2: opportunities gone, employment, education and so forth. So what did
28:25
Speaker 2: you see your role? I mean, you're more a social
28:28
Speaker 2: worker really than a priest.
28:29
Speaker 3: No, you're there for the whole person. And that's what
28:32
Speaker 3: I said before. That's why i'd rock up an industry
28:35
Speaker 3: and education and family visits I'd turn in. I wouldn't
28:38
Speaker 3: intrude on family visits, but you'd walk into the visiting
28:41
Speaker 3: era and if someone called you over you come and
28:43
Speaker 3: join the family, and you'd visit the families out of ours.
28:47
Speaker 3: But people misunderstand these days, particularly what the role of
28:51
Speaker 3: a chaplin might be, or what the role of a
28:52
Speaker 3: priest was. At least it wasn't like a supermarket person
28:56
Speaker 3: running around doing weddings, funerals and baptisms. It was actually
29:01
Speaker 3: knocking on doors and being part of the community. Now,
29:04
Speaker 3: particularly in the for a church, because of the shortage
29:07
Speaker 3: of priests, they can't do that. Instead of having two
29:10
Speaker 3: or three priests in each parish, now they've got one
29:12
Speaker 3: priest running three parishes and all he does is jumping
29:16
Speaker 3: his car and drive from one place to the other.
29:18
Speaker 3: And a capacity to actually be engaged. So when I
29:21
Speaker 3: was chuckling at prison, coming back to the central focus
29:24
Speaker 3: of our discussion, I was playing that pastoral role. And
29:28
Speaker 3: out of the pastoral role becomes a guidance role, and
29:31
Speaker 3: out of the guidance role sometimes comes a spiritual role.
29:35
Speaker 3: But you don't start the other way around. You'll scare people.
29:38
Speaker 3: Offer to start, but people also you've got to establish
29:41
Speaker 3: a credibility and your capacity to engage in order to
29:45
Speaker 3: be able to work at that deeper level.
29:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, I found a very minor way.
29:50
Speaker 2: I've been speaking the prisoners for twenty five years as well,
29:53
Speaker 2: I guess, and that pastoral thing is very important, particularly
29:57
Speaker 2: when you see people who've gone in there and they've
29:59
Speaker 2: been on the tear outside.
30:01
Speaker 1: They're probably alcohol affected, off in drugs. There's a lot
30:04
Speaker 1: of from all around them. When something in the.
30:06
Speaker 2: Solitude and the quiet of the prison, insight begins to
30:11
Speaker 2: occur and there's a desire to talk.
30:15
Speaker 1: Could you see that as certain prisoners.
30:17
Speaker 3: I know it happened a lot, not for everyone, and
30:19
Speaker 3: you don't impose yourself on everyone. But on the day
30:21
Speaker 3: that Pentridge officially closed in ninety six or thereabouts, I
30:26
Speaker 3: was asked to speak at the closing ceremony, despite the
30:28
Speaker 3: fact that I'd been a public critic of the system.
30:32
Speaker 3: The governor or the director of the prisons that invited
30:34
Speaker 3: me to speak, and I only had a few minutes,
30:38
Speaker 3: and I said, every cell in this institution has been
30:42
Speaker 3: wept in and every cell has been prayed in, every
30:45
Speaker 3: cell And it was just a catchy phrase which got
30:49
Speaker 3: remembered and picked up. When I finished in the prison,
30:53
Speaker 3: I was moving on to another job and we had
30:56
Speaker 3: a chaplains meeting with the other Protestant chaplains, and the
30:59
Speaker 3: governor of the prison was meant to offer me a plaque,
31:01
Speaker 3: which was a bit silly because prison offices used to
31:03
Speaker 3: get a plark as public servant because they had been
31:06
Speaker 3: in uniform. But they started giving one to retiring chaplains,
31:09
Speaker 3: and the word went around that the governor wasn't refused
31:13
Speaker 3: to present this plaque to me, and the other chaplains
31:16
Speaker 3: were a bit churlish about it and sort of saying, well,
31:19
Speaker 3: that serves him right, really, But I said, look, I
31:21
Speaker 3: can only come for a short time of this chaplains
31:23
Speaker 3: meeting because I've got to go into town. Actually, the
31:26
Speaker 3: minister's going to present the plaque to me himself, so
31:30
Speaker 3: as the minister who decided to be the puck, possibly
31:33
Speaker 3: because he thought it might be bad, you know, publicity.
31:36
Speaker 3: If the plaque wasn't presented to me, not that I
31:38
Speaker 3: wanted it, Now I have it a pride of place
31:40
Speaker 3: at home. More is a bit of a joke than
31:43
Speaker 3: any kind of If I had been a prison officer
31:46
Speaker 3: and worked there for twenty years, obviously it's got a
31:48
Speaker 3: different significance. But as a chaplain, I didn't want to
31:51
Speaker 3: be part of the social control system because very easy
31:55
Speaker 3: for chaplains, and I've written something about this in a
31:58
Speaker 3: journal recently. Very easy for chaplains to be part of
32:01
Speaker 3: the social control system. After all, the modern prison was
32:04
Speaker 3: built the monastic model. For your listeners, I'm talking about monasteries,
32:09
Speaker 3: monks who lived in cells and they were cut off
32:12
Speaker 3: from the outside world and just had the Bible and
32:15
Speaker 3: they're singing in the chapel. And so the modern design
32:20
Speaker 3: of the prisons from England was built on that monastic model,
32:23
Speaker 3: like a monastery.
32:24
Speaker 1: I never knew that, hence the word cell.
32:27
Speaker 3: And the only thing you didn't have TVs or radios,
32:29
Speaker 3: You had a Bible and you'd only get out of
32:32
Speaker 3: the cell for an hour's exercise into one of these
32:35
Speaker 3: the big exercise yard. You get out and exercise and
32:38
Speaker 3: there'd be a prison officer in the center tower and
32:40
Speaker 3: you wouldn't even be.
32:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, they don't see everything from the tower.
32:46
Speaker 3: They only discover them in the foundations in the old
32:48
Speaker 3: Pentridge prison only very recent years. Yeah, the chaplain can
32:53
Speaker 3: be very easily made part of the social control system.
32:56
Speaker 3: When I visited America for the first time and I
32:59
Speaker 3: was part of a more progressive network of prison chaplains
33:03
Speaker 3: part of particularly through the Jesuit Network and others, but
33:07
Speaker 3: the American Correctional Chaplains Association didn't oppose capital punishment and
33:13
Speaker 3: at the time didn't oppose the rapid expansion of the
33:17
Speaker 3: prison system that took place through the nineteen eighties. Of
33:20
Speaker 3: the nineteen nineties, the prison population of America increased by
33:25
Speaker 3: a million and a few years and then a second
33:27
Speaker 3: million ad huge cost to the community, despite the fact
33:31
Speaker 3: crime wasn't dramatically increasing, it was significant. But after the
33:36
Speaker 3: first million extra prisoners they found in America, there was
33:40
Speaker 3: obviously a significant drop in the crime rate because street
33:44
Speaker 3: it was easy to go to New York without getting
33:46
Speaker 3: margged and so on. But the second midion no measurable
33:50
Speaker 3: impact on crime or community safety for the second million people.
33:54
Speaker 3: All the research has been done, so obviously more people
33:57
Speaker 3: could have gone to prison make the streets safer, but
34:00
Speaker 3: the second million nothing and huge expect both financial and
34:06
Speaker 3: social cost. All those people in prison have got kids,
34:11
Speaker 3: and it's those kids who don't have dads, and in
34:14
Speaker 3: some ways, even though they are the father, the dads
34:18
Speaker 3: actually perform a negative role because there's a high possibility
34:22
Speaker 3: that those kids will model themselves on their father's antisocial
34:26
Speaker 3: behavior because the father is not home, is in prison.
34:31
Speaker 2: The confessionals always regarded as sacrisanct, the confidentiality when you're
34:36
Speaker 2: in cells with prisoners and talking to them, did you
34:39
Speaker 2: take a similar approduct, I mean them, I guess there
34:41
Speaker 2: are moments where they could have passed information to you
34:43
Speaker 2: that might have been important to the waters.
34:47
Speaker 3: Ah, well, that's right in terms of being part of
34:49
Speaker 3: the system. The confessional secrecy, which is part of church's
34:56
Speaker 3: rules and regulations, doesn't just apply to what's called the
35:00
Speaker 3: sacramental confession. It also applies to the professional role of
35:05
Speaker 3: the chaplain as a confidant, much the same as it
35:08
Speaker 3: does to a lawyer and a doctor. That confidentiality has
35:12
Speaker 3: to be interpreted broadly in terms of the professional practice.
35:17
Speaker 3: But I would avoid being in situations where I was
35:20
Speaker 3: receiving information that might have compromised me. And on some
35:23
Speaker 3: occasions prisoners wanted to put you in a situation where
35:27
Speaker 3: you were compromised for their own advantage, So you had
35:31
Speaker 3: to be a bit smart. They might have thought that
35:33
Speaker 3: you were a bit naive, and it's okay if they
35:36
Speaker 3: think that. But behind it all even through the Gangland
35:39
Speaker 3: Wars later on, which I was centrally involved doing quite
35:44
Speaker 3: a few of the funerals, I always had a bit
35:46
Speaker 3: in reserve that I knew that I needed to be
35:48
Speaker 3: in charge of the situation. I'd turn up at some
35:52
Speaker 3: social functions, birthday parties or whatever they were, whether it
35:56
Speaker 3: was a wedding or a baptism or something for the
35:58
Speaker 3: families of some of the people centrally involved in that,
36:02
Speaker 3: and that was my role as a chaplain, to be
36:04
Speaker 3: part of it social world. But at some of those functions,
36:08
Speaker 3: I would not only see solicitors there, but I'd also
36:11
Speaker 3: see barristers there, and I used to ask myself, and
36:15
Speaker 3: I never really challenged them, what hell is this barrister
36:19
Speaker 3: doing at this family function? Solicitor you might ask the
36:23
Speaker 3: same question, but it's a little bit not quite as clear.
36:27
Speaker 3: I had serious reservations that criminal barristers were crossing the
36:32
Speaker 3: line by socializing with some of these people that they'd represented.
36:36
Speaker 3: Now many many of them, most of them wouldn't do it,
36:39
Speaker 3: and I'm not going to mention any names, but it's
36:41
Speaker 3: just a question that came to my mind, and I
36:44
Speaker 3: had to think about what my role was there. Have
36:46
Speaker 3: dinner and whatever with the families. But I didn't want
36:50
Speaker 3: to be compromised.
36:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can have a few names with Bob Vernon
36:54
Speaker 2: and Brian Burke and the host of them, Andrew Fraser.
36:58
Speaker 2: You wonder why that is, and I think maybe they did.
37:00
Speaker 2: They were just better company. I think them probably judges
37:03
Speaker 2: or other barristers or certainly believe warders.
37:06
Speaker 3: Yes, oh well, I mean that's their judgment. And I
37:09
Speaker 3: think the experienced people like Brian Burke would never have
37:12
Speaker 3: been compromised. But I saw others that I thought could
37:16
Speaker 3: have been. I can't sit in judgment on them, but
37:19
Speaker 3: I just wondered about that crossing the line a bit.
37:22
Speaker 1: Yes, I did meet you.
37:23
Speaker 2: I think it was in December two thousand and three
37:26
Speaker 2: when you were officiating at Graham the Munster Kinnerburg's funeral.
37:29
Speaker 2: He'd been murdered in the first week of December in
37:32
Speaker 2: that year by Carl William's cohort.
37:35
Speaker 1: And you gave a very memorable service.
37:38
Speaker 2: It was the Sacred Heart Q I believe, yes, right,
37:41
Speaker 2: and everyone was. There was a huge moment. Church was overflowing.
37:44
Speaker 2: It was full of criminal heads. How would you at
37:47
Speaker 2: you go about framing a not a eulogy of but
37:50
Speaker 2: a whole service around someone who's died so violently.
37:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, well there were I knew Graham pretty well. He
37:56
Speaker 3: used to He and his wife Sybil used to call
38:00
Speaker 3: at a restaurant in Bridge Road, Richmond. I was at
38:03
Speaker 3: Saint Saint Ignatius Church on the hill and I'd be
38:05
Speaker 3: walking the dog and Graham it would be at this
38:08
Speaker 3: Italian place, just a reasonable cheebot place, and you'd see
38:13
Speaker 3: me go past, you come out going and I said,
38:17
Speaker 3: what are you here for? He said, I like to
38:18
Speaker 3: come here on Tuesday nights because the Tigers coming here
38:20
Speaker 3: from their pastor after their training. And he was like
38:23
Speaker 3: a kid wanting to see these football players with his wife.
38:27
Speaker 3: But no at Graham's funeral and he was gunned down
38:32
Speaker 3: in the middle of the night when he was just
38:33
Speaker 3: coming home to cure his family home. And I got
38:37
Speaker 3: a call, as I had several times previously from the family.
38:42
Speaker 3: Sybil rang and as I said to Cameron Stewart, I
38:45
Speaker 3: think in the Australia Yea that his headline was that
38:50
Speaker 3: they'd moved from being gangster wives to gangster widows in
38:54
Speaker 3: five seconds. And they would then call and not necessarily
38:59
Speaker 3: in this order according to Father Nordon, the police, their
39:03
Speaker 3: lawyer and the priest, but not necessary early in that order.
39:06
Speaker 3: So when I get a call from civil at two
39:08
Speaker 3: or something, I'm over there in.
39:10
Speaker 1: The morning, in the morning after the murder.
39:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm there within ten minutes. I drive from Richmond
39:18
Speaker 3: over to q By the time I get there, there's
39:20
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty coppers there. They've already got a
39:23
Speaker 3: caravan there making hamburgers and coffee. And I thought, it's
39:28
Speaker 3: just funny. It's a bit suspicious, but I was being paranoid.
39:31
Speaker 3: But anyhow, they have these systems ready to roll out.
39:35
Speaker 3: And so there was a young copper standing outside and
39:38
Speaker 3: he said, what are you doing in here? And I said, oh,
39:40
Speaker 3: I obviously allowed in. I'm a chaplain to the family
39:43
Speaker 3: and I'm being called to the family to conduct the
39:45
Speaker 3: last rites. So I open up the book. He's and
39:49
Speaker 3: I've got the oil and whatever, and you're not allowed
39:52
Speaker 3: touch the body. And I said, well, I'm doing the annoying.
39:55
Speaker 3: I've got to annoy at the forehead and the palms.
39:59
Speaker 3: You're not allowed to touch the body, and I know.
40:02
Speaker 3: So I then started the service and I turned up
40:05
Speaker 3: the volume saying that these prayers and you know, a
40:09
Speaker 3: gospel passage, and the officers started getting a bit embarrassed
40:12
Speaker 3: because I'm doing this religious thing. And so he turns
40:16
Speaker 3: and looks the other way. While he's turning the other
40:19
Speaker 3: way for twenty seconds, bang the oil goes on the
40:22
Speaker 3: monster's forehead and on his wrists. So I fulfilled what
40:25
Speaker 3: was my professional duty. I mean, there's not as interfering
40:30
Speaker 3: with a crime scene. They knew how he died, and
40:33
Speaker 3: it wasn't from anything I'd done. It was from a
40:36
Speaker 3: thirty eight revolver. So anyhow, we go inside. I said,
40:40
Speaker 3: I'll go and to see the family. You've done what
40:42
Speaker 3: you know, I'll go and see the family. And so
40:45
Speaker 3: there's three or four senior inspectors there and talked at
40:48
Speaker 3: FAB five. So one of the inspectors say, you're ready
40:50
Speaker 3: to go now, father, and I said, no, not at all.
40:53
Speaker 3: I'll be here for a long time. Mat He said,
40:55
Speaker 3: I thought you might have been finished, you know, you're
40:57
Speaker 3: having done the annoying And I said, oh no, it's
41:01
Speaker 3: been a pretty tough I'll be here as long as
41:04
Speaker 3: the family want me here. And so he then thinks
41:07
Speaker 3: to himself and he says, Look, Missus Kinnerborough, it's been
41:10
Speaker 3: a shocking experience for you, but you know we can
41:14
Speaker 3: solve a lot of these things. If you and the
41:15
Speaker 3: family members were to come down to some Kilda road now,
41:19
Speaker 3: you could make your statements and it all be finished.
41:21
Speaker 3: You know, you wouldn't have to worry having to do
41:22
Speaker 3: it in the next couple of days. So several turns
41:25
Speaker 3: and looks at me and I go, I'm shaking my head, No,
41:28
Speaker 3: don't do it, and he's sort of persisting, and I said, Inspector,
41:33
Speaker 3: Missus Kinnerburrough has had a very, very difficult time. As
41:36
Speaker 3: of the family members, I think it'd be much better
41:39
Speaker 3: for them to stay here in their own home and
41:42
Speaker 3: within the next few days they will be happy to
41:45
Speaker 3: do the interviews that you have suggested, But not tonight, Inspector.
41:49
Speaker 3: But the inspector wanted the family out of the house
41:52
Speaker 3: so they could search the place, and they wanted the
41:55
Speaker 3: place empty so they could go through with a fine
41:57
Speaker 3: tooth comb and find a whole lot of what they
42:01
Speaker 3: thought might have been evidence. Now I'm not there on
42:04
Speaker 3: Graham's side. They had every right in the world to
42:07
Speaker 3: stay in that home that night and not to be
42:09
Speaker 3: talked into having to leave the home to give some
42:12
Speaker 3: interview at two or three in the morning, after Graham
42:16
Speaker 3: had been shot dead on their doorstep. Now I'm not
42:19
Speaker 3: saying that because I wanted to disrupt the police duties,
42:23
Speaker 3: but it was just if I hadn't have been there,
42:26
Speaker 3: they would have had a lot of trouble saying no
42:29
Speaker 3: to that pressure being placed on them by that senior
42:32
Speaker 3: inspector from the homicide squad.
42:35
Speaker 2: Yes, and I think that, and the place could have
42:38
Speaker 2: been searched, and it could have been very embarrassing for
42:40
Speaker 2: everyone because obviously Graham was a prolific receiver of stolen goods,
42:43
Speaker 2: and so they say it's all in the past now,
42:47
Speaker 2: but I think but he was also the old school
42:50
Speaker 2: where those guys didn't share much with their wives because
42:53
Speaker 2: they might have to be forced into that situation at
42:55
Speaker 2: some stage or other. And I think he knew better
42:57
Speaker 2: than to burden his wife with those things. But that era, right,
43:00
Speaker 2: We can go to the gang lay war, because it
43:02
Speaker 2: was that's what I really started my crime career, if
43:05
Speaker 2: you like, and the violence and the spondineity of it.
43:09
Speaker 2: And I think we've had a lot of gang wors
43:11
Speaker 2: since in Australia, but that one seems to still be
43:15
Speaker 2: the high watermark.
43:17
Speaker 3: Well, it was complicated because when I was cutting my
43:20
Speaker 3: teeth during the seventies, ten years fifteen years before, there
43:24
Speaker 3: was such a thing as a consorting squad, and the
43:27
Speaker 3: consorting squad was an intelligence gathering squad in Victoria Police,
43:32
Speaker 3: and there was one in every jurisdiction around Australia and
43:36
Speaker 3: they would be doing research and gathering data and who's
43:39
Speaker 3: connected to herm And eventually the consorting squads were abandoned.
43:43
Speaker 3: So when the Gangland murders started occurring in Melbourne early
43:47
Speaker 3: nineties to mid nineties, at least with about thirty thirty
43:51
Speaker 3: plus deaths occurring, the police had no background information and
43:59
Speaker 3: it was either yourself or Cameron Stewart that asked me,
44:02
Speaker 3: had I ever heard of someone called Benji andvy Venemon?
44:06
Speaker 1: Yeah?
44:06
Speaker 3: And I said, no, I know who you referring to,
44:09
Speaker 3: but I don't know him and I don't know who
44:11
Speaker 3: he is because he came from nowhere. And it was
44:14
Speaker 3: a journalist, whether it was yourself or whether it was
44:17
Speaker 3: Cameron Stuart, was asking me that question. But they had
44:21
Speaker 3: no background information and there was a change in power
44:24
Speaker 3: dynamics going on between those who were the old crew
44:29
Speaker 3: often centered around Carlton and a new crew that was
44:33
Speaker 3: growing up in the western suburbs. Who don't need to
44:36
Speaker 3: mention any names, but there was a power struggle going
44:38
Speaker 3: on and that was what it was all over, and
44:41
Speaker 3: a lot of strong egos that had been offended, and
44:44
Speaker 3: it went on and on and on. But the police
44:47
Speaker 3: had very little intelligence and possibly that's why they compromised
44:53
Speaker 3: themselves at that time and decided to proceed with witness.
44:58
Speaker 1: X oh Nicola Gobbo.
45:01
Speaker 3: It was pretty desperate times. There were a lot of deaths.
45:05
Speaker 3: They didn't know what was going on. They felt they
45:08
Speaker 3: needed to compromise a barrister who was representing some of
45:15
Speaker 3: these people and at the same time allegedly became a
45:19
Speaker 3: Crown witness against them. Now, the senior police would say
45:24
Speaker 3: and did say in the Royal Commission, and they can
45:26
Speaker 3: remain nameless, that they were not aware that Gobo was
45:30
Speaker 3: actually giving evidence to police on people that she was
45:33
Speaker 3: currently representing. That's what they said on sworn evidence at
45:37
Speaker 3: the Royal Commission. Certain senior officers. Well that could well
45:41
Speaker 3: be true. It sounds unlikely, but if it's sworn evidence
45:45
Speaker 3: from very senior ex officers. You'd have to give it
45:49
Speaker 3: some credibility. That might be the case, because that's the
45:52
Speaker 3: sworn evidence they gave in the Royal Commission. But they
45:54
Speaker 3: were certainly in the dark and they were desperate to
45:58
Speaker 3: find out what the next step was. But at Graham's
46:01
Speaker 3: funeral at Sacred Heart, you asked me the question how
46:05
Speaker 3: you proceed with that? Well, I knew that crew, a
46:08
Speaker 3: number of them pretty well. Media were thrown outside and
46:12
Speaker 3: weren't allowed in, although someone had a microphone inside and
46:15
Speaker 3: they had a camera through a side door. But I
46:17
Speaker 3: remember one of the lines there that I said was
46:22
Speaker 3: by this time a dozen or more of the people
46:24
Speaker 3: that I knew had been murdered, And I said to
46:28
Speaker 3: this group they were about four hundred there. Real strength
46:32
Speaker 3: doesn't come from the barrel of a gun. But when
46:35
Speaker 3: men who have differences with one another learn to live
46:39
Speaker 3: with one another and settle their differences and find a
46:43
Speaker 3: way of getting on with their own lives, these deaths
46:46
Speaker 3: have to stop. Well. Now, a very famous journalist who's
46:51
Speaker 3: got different reputation from different quarters, Andrew Bolt, around that time,
46:59
Speaker 3: gave me a broadside in his column in The Herald
47:02
Speaker 3: Sun saying that I wasn't preaching the gospel of these people.
47:05
Speaker 3: I was getting up there and saying that Mara Gondala
47:08
Speaker 3: would be welcomed at the Pearly Gates or something. So
47:12
Speaker 3: I got Bolt's email and I sent him word for
47:16
Speaker 3: word because I don't add lib. At those funerals, I
47:19
Speaker 3: didn't add LIB. I had a script. They mightn't have
47:21
Speaker 3: known that I had a script, but I was reading
47:23
Speaker 3: it word for word without looking like I was reading
47:26
Speaker 3: it because I knew what I wanted to say, and
47:30
Speaker 3: I told him. I gave him exactly what I said,
47:32
Speaker 3: and I said, if you say I'm not preaching the gospel,
47:35
Speaker 3: just read the scripts of those couple of homilies that
47:38
Speaker 3: I've given at recent funerals and tell me where I'm
47:40
Speaker 3: not preaching the gospel. Didn't have the guts to reply,
47:44
Speaker 3: and he didn't have a leg to stand on because
47:47
Speaker 3: I knew exactly what I was doing, what I was saying.
47:50
Speaker 3: And obviously you've got to be engaging, even at a funeral.
47:55
Speaker 3: But there's no way I wasn't giving them the hard
47:58
Speaker 3: word and challenging them. You were.
48:02
Speaker 1: I remember that I was there that day.
48:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think I couldn't help but feel, knowing
48:06
Speaker 2: your background of pantries prior to that, that there was
48:10
Speaker 2: a sense of trust that had come from those quiet
48:13
Speaker 2: moments behind bluestone walls, listening to people's lives, listen to
48:18
Speaker 2: their struggles, and the empathy that gave you a bit
48:21
Speaker 2: of license to tell the truth.
48:23
Speaker 3: That's true. But even in that Church of Sagred Heart,
48:26
Speaker 3: on the day of Graham Kinnerborough, the Monster's funeral, when
48:29
Speaker 3: I came out with that key line, which was the
48:32
Speaker 3: most confronting line in the homily, I could see two
48:36
Speaker 3: three hundred heads drop. Everyone's head dropped because I'm telling
48:42
Speaker 3: them put the guns away. That's got to be the
48:45
Speaker 3: end of it.
48:46
Speaker 2: There was some sort of crescendo was reached shortly after that.
48:49
Speaker 2: I quoted that in my book Big Shots, that exact line,
48:52
Speaker 2: and that you understood how high the stakes were. The
48:57
Speaker 2: volume was being turned up, and eventually the thing was
49:00
Speaker 2: that the cart and Crew weren't really firing back. They
49:03
Speaker 2: were coming from a position a relative stream than affluence,
49:05
Speaker 2: whereas the Western suburbs, people led by Carl Williams, were
49:09
Speaker 2: trying to establish themselves and they had people there who.
49:11
Speaker 1: Didn't mind dying in the process.
49:13
Speaker 3: Of this well gun for hires. There was a lot
49:15
Speaker 3: of young and even more, you know, semi burnt out
49:18
Speaker 3: gangsters that were prepared to do the dirty work for
49:21
Speaker 3: a price. And some of them are spending long, long
49:24
Speaker 3: times in prison. Some of them have been knocked themselves.
49:27
Speaker 3: He talked about Andrew Venyuman.
49:28
Speaker 2: He'd come from a Greek Orthodox background, great Cypriet family
49:31
Speaker 2: from Sunshine, and I went to attend his forty day
49:35
Speaker 2: memorial after his funeral he died in early two thousand.
49:39
Speaker 1: And four, and all the boys of an older boys
49:43
Speaker 1: there and all these young gangsters. They had the spiritual background.
49:46
Speaker 2: And I was speaking to the family, and they'd had
49:49
Speaker 2: connection with their local clergy and things, and they growing
49:52
Speaker 2: up in that environment. And Andrew had this view that
49:56
Speaker 2: he was beyond the pale spiritual sense and that now
49:59
Speaker 2: he was going to take down as many people as
50:01
Speaker 2: he could because he was headed for hell.
50:04
Speaker 3: Although when he was killed in the restaurant in Carlton,
50:07
Speaker 3: he had a pair of rosary beads in his pocket,
50:09
Speaker 3: just like Mario Kunda had a pair of rostary beads
50:12
Speaker 3: in his pocket when he was gunned down outside his
50:14
Speaker 3: home in Brighton.
50:16
Speaker 2: So there's a strong spiritual connection and a sense of
50:18
Speaker 2: heaven and hell going on here.
50:20
Speaker 3: Well, it's as if there's two different worlds and those
50:23
Speaker 3: two worlds interact with one another. And I would have
50:26
Speaker 3: had the opportunity of seeing that more closely than most
50:31
Speaker 3: clerical repers, the church representatives would have, but all of us,
50:35
Speaker 3: you know, if there is a struggle between good and
50:39
Speaker 3: evil and self centered and other scented ways of living,
50:43
Speaker 3: it's a lifelong kind of journey, and no one gets
50:46
Speaker 3: it completely sorted out.
50:47
Speaker 2: I don't think not to get to the end. I
50:49
Speaker 2: guess it all is revealed or nothing. That's two thousand
50:54
Speaker 2: and three four. You completed your work at Pintrick by
50:57
Speaker 2: the time, when.
50:57
Speaker 3: Did you finish the pend nineteen ninety two. But from
51:00
Speaker 3: then I ran this network that I set up Victorian
51:03
Speaker 3: Criminal Justice Coalition for the next or fifteen years, and
51:06
Speaker 3: we had sixty members, and that would be what's lacking
51:09
Speaker 3: at the moment in Victoria around human rights. There's some
51:12
Speaker 3: very good individual lawyers and legal advocates doing different things,
51:16
Speaker 3: but we had a membership of sixty and we were
51:20
Speaker 3: focused on what private prisons, which were just being introduced
51:23
Speaker 3: by Jeffrey Kennett or the other parts of the country
51:26
Speaker 3: police shootings. There were one stage fifteen shootings a year
51:31
Speaker 3: and Victoria compared to about one or two in New
51:33
Speaker 3: South Wales. We managed to help stop that because in
51:36
Speaker 3: the end more people were being killed with mental illness
51:39
Speaker 3: than with criminal records. And then police pursuit. So I mean,
51:43
Speaker 3: we saw a pursuit the other day with a couple
51:45
Speaker 3: of kids ended up in Burke Street. Again it was
51:47
Speaker 3: a stolen car. Now, I don't think the police knew
51:50
Speaker 3: that they'd done a serious crime before that, but there
51:53
Speaker 3: were thirty plus thousand cars stolen in Victoria every year.
51:58
Speaker 3: Ninety five percent of those found the next day with
52:01
Speaker 3: an empty tank, not damaged and not having caused any injury.
52:06
Speaker 3: But if there's a police pursuit on the risk of
52:09
Speaker 3: injury to either the drivers or the car the police
52:13
Speaker 3: officers themselves or independent bystanders has increased incredibly. So we
52:19
Speaker 3: actually happened to change those the police pursuit policy. The
52:22
Speaker 3: Association didn't like it at all, the use of firearms.
52:26
Speaker 3: When I was doing the funeral for Colleen Richmond, who
52:29
Speaker 3: was the last person killed at that time, she was
52:32
Speaker 3: a young Couri woman who was shot dead by police
52:35
Speaker 3: outside the Hanniba Welfare Services in Saint Kilda. She had
52:40
Speaker 3: a little tomahawk and she was attacking the park bench
52:43
Speaker 3: with this tiny hot tomahawk and the staff were worried
52:46
Speaker 3: about her welfare and they called the police and two
52:49
Speaker 3: young constables turned up, twenty twenty one year olds, and
52:52
Speaker 3: they did what they were trained to do. They saw her,
52:55
Speaker 3: they clearly called out, dropped the weapon, dropped the weapon,
52:58
Speaker 3: and they repeated the warning. She was in a psychotic state,
53:03
Speaker 3: she had disobeyed an order and they emptied the revolver
53:06
Speaker 3: to her central body, as they were trained to do.
53:11
Speaker 3: When I finished the service, we marched down Fitzroy Streets
53:13
Speaker 3: and killed her in a big processions. Katani gardens out
53:17
Speaker 3: and as were walking along, my mobile goes off and
53:20
Speaker 3: who is it but Pat mcnamaro, the Deputy Premier, the
53:23
Speaker 3: Minister for Police and Prisons, and he said, Peter, I
53:25
Speaker 3: just wanted to let you know that we've had a
53:28
Speaker 3: meeting earlier today and we've taken two important decisions, and
53:32
Speaker 3: I wanted to tell you straight away that we're going
53:35
Speaker 3: to retrain the police in the use of firearms and
53:40
Speaker 3: we're going to disarm the police, and only those who
53:43
Speaker 3: need to carry weapons will carry these weapons. So in
53:46
Speaker 3: other words, police at the MCG don't need to be armed.
53:50
Speaker 3: Maybe they've got someone in reserve who do. So. Come
53:54
Speaker 3: to Katana Gardens and I had to give a speech
53:56
Speaker 3: down there and a TV crewis ruled out. Five o'clock
54:00
Speaker 3: News Channel ten and the six o'clock news, seven and
54:02
Speaker 3: nine carried the story of what the police and the
54:05
Speaker 3: Deputy Premier told me. By the seven o'clock news, the
54:09
Speaker 3: union had worked on him so strongly that the idea
54:12
Speaker 3: of disarming the police had to be dropped and Pat
54:15
Speaker 3: McNamara had to compromise. He couldn't do it, but they
54:18
Speaker 3: did retrain the police in what was called Project Beacon.
54:22
Speaker 3: And the number of deaths that occurred in Victoria from
54:24
Speaker 3: police shootings, as I said, more people with mental illness
54:28
Speaker 3: in the last few years than criminals with records dropped
54:32
Speaker 3: down completely, almost completely, from about twelve fifteen a year
54:37
Speaker 3: to possibly one a year.
54:40
Speaker 2: This work and what you've been doing since reflects I
54:43
Speaker 2: guess that changing balance between the Jesuit priests who comes
54:48
Speaker 2: into the prisons with a social work background and the
54:51
Speaker 2: shift between spiritual and secular emphasis.
54:55
Speaker 1: In the end you leave the priesthood. Did that reflect
55:00
Speaker 1: your own journey or a loss of faith? All?
55:03
Speaker 3: Oh, well, it was I had forty years from the
55:06
Speaker 3: age of eighteen to fifty eight, and I felt that
55:09
Speaker 3: I'd made my contribution. But also when I was only
55:14
Speaker 3: a youngster, the church was at a dynamic stage of development.
55:18
Speaker 3: We had a most of your readers won't know what
55:22
Speaker 3: I'm talking about, but John the twenty third, who was
55:24
Speaker 3: a progressive pope, very pastoral, and it was a time
55:29
Speaker 3: of great engagement. The Jesuits had redefined their mission as
55:32
Speaker 3: the service of faith, of which the promotion of justice
55:36
Speaker 3: is an essential ingredient. So my opening a halfway house
55:39
Speaker 3: for ex prisoners rather than going teaching at Savia Colleage
55:42
Speaker 3: or Riverview in Sydney was a little expression of that.
55:47
Speaker 3: But over the next ten or twenty years we had
55:50
Speaker 3: a very conservative Polish Pope, John Paul the Second, and
55:53
Speaker 3: then an even more conservative pope in Benedict, and the
55:56
Speaker 3: church changed completely and it became far more conservative and
56:01
Speaker 3: far more centralized on Rome. And at the same time,
56:05
Speaker 3: the continued exclusion of women in the church and the
56:09
Speaker 3: most delicate of all the exposure of child sexual abuse
56:13
Speaker 3: within the church, for which the church was using lawyers
56:16
Speaker 3: to protect their own interests. So at the age of
56:19
Speaker 3: fifty eight, after forty years service, I decided I'd had
56:23
Speaker 3: enough and I had another career to pursue before it
56:26
Speaker 3: was too late. And that's the reason I left. Because
56:31
Speaker 3: I hadn't lost faith in Christianity. I'd lost faith in
56:35
Speaker 3: the leadership of the church and at a local level
56:38
Speaker 3: in Australia, the sorts of people who were being appointed
56:41
Speaker 3: as the senior leaders of the church were not people
56:45
Speaker 3: who had the support of mainstream Catholics. They had the
56:49
Speaker 3: support of very conservative elements like Oprah's stay in the
56:52
Speaker 3: Catholic Church. So I don't want to say more about
56:56
Speaker 3: it than that, but from that I then resigned. I
57:00
Speaker 3: was lucky to get an appointment from the Vice Chance
57:02
Speaker 3: that I was in the Melbourne Law School for three
57:04
Speaker 3: years on a professorial fellowship, and then I continued after
57:09
Speaker 3: that teaching at r MIT and legal studies and criminology
57:12
Speaker 3: and mental health and now at Deacon University in an
57:16
Speaker 3: honorary role in criminology. But no I left forty years
57:21
Speaker 3: service I thought was long enough and I had served
57:25
Speaker 3: my time, and I'm glad I made that move.
57:29
Speaker 2: You sacrificed a lot in your life for other people,
57:32
Speaker 2: and you were there for other people in a very
57:34
Speaker 2: turbulent era. Can you look back with a sense of
57:38
Speaker 2: satisfaction and contribution?
57:40
Speaker 3: Oh, yes, indeed. But it's amazing. Not that within myself, yes,
57:44
Speaker 3: but it's amazing people's memory. They wouldn't be aware that
57:49
Speaker 3: a chaplain could be an advocate and get away with it,
57:52
Speaker 3: you know, And I don't think that the church. But
57:55
Speaker 3: now we had quite a number of people working in
57:58
Speaker 3: prison chaplaincy from the Catholic prison ministry. Now there's part
58:02
Speaker 3: time priests who come in for two hours a week,
58:06
Speaker 3: and up until a few months ago there was an
58:08
Speaker 3: eighty five year old nun in charge and as twice
58:11
Speaker 3: as many, if not coming on to three times as
58:14
Speaker 3: many people in prison now as before. So the prison
58:18
Speaker 3: ministry is not about just saying mass and looking after
58:21
Speaker 3: people like that. It's about being a presence a voice
58:25
Speaker 3: of conscience in the institution as well. But to do that,
58:29
Speaker 3: you can't do it on a part time basis. You've
58:31
Speaker 3: got to be pretty heavily involved and engaged.
58:38
Speaker 2: That was Peter Norden, former Penridge Prison chaplain. In a
58:42
Speaker 2: world where inmates find themselves shunned by society and without
58:46
Speaker 2: a voice. His insights into life behind bars remain as
58:50
Speaker 2: fresh and relevant as when he first entered Pentridge in
58:53
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies. It's easy to demand the longer sentences
58:57
Speaker 2: and more brutal prisons as a solution to crime, but
59:01
Speaker 2: remember almost all of these inmates will eventually come back
59:04
Speaker 2: into society and we'll have to deal with them again.
59:08
Speaker 2: If you have some information that could help solve the crime,
59:11
Speaker 2: please call crime Stoppers on one eight hundred triple three,
59:15
Speaker 2: triple zero, or email me on Adam Shann writer at
59:20
Speaker 2: gmail dot com. This has been Real Crime with me
59:24
Speaker 2: Adam Shanned. Thanks for listening.
59:37
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59:41
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