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The Prisoner Who Changed Australian Law · Real Crime with Adam Shand

0:05
Speaker 1: Appoche production.
0:15
Speaker 2: Welcome to Real Crime with Adam Shander.
0:16
Speaker 3: I'm your host, Adam Shann question for you, how many
0:20
Speaker 3: prisoners in Australian jails will never be released?
0:22
Speaker 2: I'll give you some thinking time, wh yar ponder that?
0:24
Speaker 2: One might surprise you to know.
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Speaker 3: It's fewer than twenty prisoners in Australia who are serving
0:31
Speaker 3: life sentences with no possibility of parole. That's out of
0:35
Speaker 3: a total prison population of more than forty six thousand,
0:38
Speaker 3: which is incidentally at an all time high. It's about
0:41
Speaker 3: a thousand people who are serving standard life sentences, but
0:44
Speaker 3: the vast majority retained the right to apply for release
0:47
Speaker 3: after serving a minimum non parole period. It's popular in
0:50
Speaker 3: certain circles to suggest that many more should be locked
0:53
Speaker 3: up until their death, but does that mean our society
0:55
Speaker 3: will be any safer. We're seeing acts of parliament to
0:58
Speaker 3: keep dangerous villains inside increasingly. In nineteen ninety, Victorian Gary
1:03
Speaker 3: David was the very first prison Australian history to be
1:06
Speaker 3: held in prison under an Act of Parliament credit specifically
1:10
Speaker 3: to prevent his release. David never walked free. He remained
1:13
Speaker 3: under this specialized preventive detention until he took his own
1:17
Speaker 3: life while in custody in nineteen ninety three. Following his death,
1:21
Speaker 3: the specific Act lapsed, but the legal president it's set
1:24
Speaker 3: entirely reshaped Australian law. Neil Cole was the only member
1:29
Speaker 3: of the Victorian State Labour Caucus to oppose this law.
1:32
Speaker 3: It's my pleasure to welcome Neil to the Real Crime Studio. Hi, Neil, Hi,
1:35
Speaker 3: I'm good to be here. My pleasure to see you again.
1:39
Speaker 3: You are a bit of a polymath. You've written plays,
1:42
Speaker 3: you've been a member of Parliament, you've been a criminal lawyer,
1:45
Speaker 3: you started the Flemington Legal Service.
1:48
Speaker 1: Is there anything you can't do well? I can't get
1:50
Speaker 1: on at the Melbourne Theater Company. I think I've just
1:53
Speaker 1: had to accept that I'll be an independent theater for
1:56
Speaker 1: the rest of my life and happy to be so.
1:58
Speaker 1: So no, I have got many limitations, but writing the
2:02
Speaker 1: Place is the one that I've most enjoyed doing. And
2:06
Speaker 1: it's a great vehicle if you're a colectic polymath, whichever
2:10
Speaker 1: way put it, because you can research so many different
2:13
Speaker 1: topics and write about them. So it's good fun.
2:16
Speaker 2: It is.
2:17
Speaker 3: We'll talk about your players a bit later. But in
2:18
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety. You're a member of parliament in Victoria and
2:22
Speaker 3: this case of Gary David's future came up and you
2:26
Speaker 3: were the only one in the caucus to oppose it.
2:29
Speaker 2: Why did you oppose that?
2:30
Speaker 1: Well, the primary reason was that he was diagnosed with
2:34
Speaker 1: borderline personality disorder and because the word personality was in there,
2:40
Speaker 1: they and some psychiatrists about fifty to fifty said it
2:44
Speaker 1: wasn't a mental illness and they can't treat personalities. My advice,
2:49
Speaker 1: which was good advice, was that he did have a
2:53
Speaker 1: mental illness and that borderline personality dore was a bit
2:56
Speaker 1: of a misnomer. If you have a look at the
2:59
Speaker 1: symptoms of the illness, it includes moving in and out
3:02
Speaker 1: of psychosis, and in his case, he was very severely depressed.
3:07
Speaker 1: He'd be problems with moots wings, self destructive, you know,
3:13
Speaker 1: cutting off his penis and doing all sorts.
3:15
Speaker 2: Of twice twice. Yeah.
3:17
Speaker 1: Well, so to me there was no doubt that he
3:20
Speaker 1: would fit within the mental honest frame. But it's always
3:24
Speaker 1: difficult because when lawyers think, we as a lawyer, we
3:27
Speaker 1: think differently, so we were recused of being lawyers. You know,
3:30
Speaker 1: your lawyers you always look at this, but I think
3:33
Speaker 1: the fundamental principle is that a person should do their
3:36
Speaker 1: time and then they should be released. But there are
3:41
Speaker 1: people in his case. Certainly he was dangerous. There's no
3:45
Speaker 1: doubt at all. He was portraying himself as being very dangerous.
3:49
Speaker 1: He was going to do things that would make the
3:52
Speaker 1: Jullian Night effort look minor. All this sort of hyperbole
3:56
Speaker 1: about what he was going to do, and so the
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Speaker 1: government was forced into a position because I don't know
4:03
Speaker 1: whether you're aware of it, but initially he was diagnosed
4:08
Speaker 1: as having a mental illness and certified accordingly. But he
4:11
Speaker 1: appealed to the Mental Health Review Board and they said
4:16
Speaker 1: borderline personality isn't a mental illness. So that's what led
4:20
Speaker 1: to the government being in this position to having to
4:22
Speaker 1: introduce legislation. But it was a disgrace. The pschiatry profession
4:29
Speaker 1: was a disgrace in saying that you can't They've said
4:33
Speaker 1: at one stage they can't treat people at that, which
4:35
Speaker 1: is utter nonsense. You can treat them, and it could
4:40
Speaker 1: have been treated. But I doubt that he was so
4:43
Speaker 1: severely affected by in his whole life. He spent I
4:48
Speaker 1: think thirty years of his thirty five years in institutions.
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Speaker 2: Right, So let's get some background here.
4:54
Speaker 3: He was serving a fourteen year sentence for attempted murder
4:59
Speaker 3: of people at a pizza shop. He was due to
5:02
Speaker 3: be released, I think at nineteen ninety three, and there
5:07
Speaker 3: was an attempt, as you say, to section him and
5:10
Speaker 3: to keep him involuntary mental patient in the system that failed.
5:15
Speaker 3: And now there was this Act of Parliament that was
5:19
Speaker 3: created which would have effectively said that we suspect him
5:24
Speaker 3: of crimes in the future that he has not yet
5:27
Speaker 3: committed that we're going to protect the community from. And
5:31
Speaker 3: I even speaking to a couple of the inmates who
5:33
Speaker 3: were with him at that time, they said they knew
5:37
Speaker 3: that he'd made these threats about a huge massacre he
5:40
Speaker 3: was going to perpetrate in the context of a therapeutic
5:45
Speaker 3: situation where he was encouraged to talk about his anti
5:48
Speaker 3: authority urges and thoughts, and this ultimately was used as
5:53
Speaker 3: a blueprint for what he was going to do when
5:56
Speaker 3: he was released. He was definitely a difficult character. But
6:01
Speaker 3: was that legal? Was that fair?
6:04
Speaker 1: Well? It was legal because they passed the legislation to
6:06
Speaker 1: say that it was. I don't think there's any doubt
6:09
Speaker 1: that Gary David should have been held in custody, but
6:13
Speaker 1: he should have been classified as someone with a very
6:16
Speaker 1: severe mental illness, namely borderline personality disorder. Nobody today anywhere
6:22
Speaker 1: would suggest that borderline personality disorder isn't a mental illness.
6:27
Speaker 1: The term borderline personality disorder is a little bit of
6:30
Speaker 1: a misnomer. It's just one of those things that it's
6:33
Speaker 1: like they used to call bipolar mood disutomatic depression and
6:37
Speaker 1: you change it to bipolar. So it was clearly somebody
6:41
Speaker 1: who had a very severe mental illness aside from constantly
6:46
Speaker 1: damaging himself and trying to take his own life and
6:49
Speaker 1: being severely depressed and having all sorts of problems, and
6:54
Speaker 1: you can actually treat it, you know where there are
6:57
Speaker 1: lots of different psychotherapists you can use. But you know, Adam,
7:00
Speaker 1: one of the worst things about it, apart from the
7:02
Speaker 1: concept of locking one person up because they're likely what
7:06
Speaker 1: they might do, and the problem was where does that
7:11
Speaker 1: end you can start to There's no such idea as
7:15
Speaker 1: you can give person fifteen years and then they'll get out,
7:18
Speaker 1: but when it comes to fourteen years and six months,
7:21
Speaker 1: so no, no, no, we're going to extend it like
7:23
Speaker 1: it's terribly dangerous to be interfering with the system in
7:27
Speaker 1: that way.
7:28
Speaker 3: Well, to me, it actually is troubling in the sense
7:31
Speaker 3: that we have a presumption of innocence in our legal system,
7:35
Speaker 3: and surely that must apply it to actually not yet committed.
7:39
Speaker 3: So this was saying, no, we believe he is dangerous,
7:43
Speaker 3: he will commit these acts on the basis of what
7:45
Speaker 3: he said, and therefore this fundamental legal principle is going
7:49
Speaker 3: to be swept away.
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Speaker 2: And was only ever used on Gary David.
7:54
Speaker 1: Well, that shows you how bad it was, because it
7:57
Speaker 1: was after that they then changed their mind and said
8:01
Speaker 1: borderline personalities was a mental illness, like it's in the
8:04
Speaker 1: DSM four treatments, GSM five. Now it's got treatments for it,
8:10
Speaker 1: you know, psychotherapy, dialectic, there's a whole range of things
8:14
Speaker 1: you can do for people. You know what I think
8:16
Speaker 1: they'll add. And one of the worst thing about it,
8:18
Speaker 1: apart from the criminology and predicting dangerousness, is that it
8:23
Speaker 1: was so discriminatory because there is about one percent, not high,
8:29
Speaker 1: of people we've borderline personality disorder in our community. So
8:33
Speaker 1: what we were saying all them is oh, we can't
8:35
Speaker 1: treat you. You're not mentally ill. Piss off. You know.
8:39
Speaker 1: There was a terrible thing to do. And the pschiatry
8:43
Speaker 1: profession has not exactly covered themselves in glory over the
8:48
Speaker 1: last fifty years. The problems are just manifest in relation
8:53
Speaker 1: to psychiatry. But this particular one was just so bad
8:59
Speaker 1: and said, with the authority of God, but no, it's
9:04
Speaker 1: not a mental illness and it's got its personality only,
9:08
Speaker 1: and we can't tach personality. What a terrible thing to
9:12
Speaker 1: have said. You know, people have got personality disorders can't
9:15
Speaker 1: be treated. Of course they can be treated.
9:18
Speaker 3: To be fair, one of his fellow inmates, so I
9:20
Speaker 3: spoke to you this morning, said he didn't think he
9:23
Speaker 3: was mad. He thought he's just a bloody nuisance around
9:27
Speaker 3: the jail, to the point where there were times where
9:29
Speaker 3: he would go to his cell and take the toilet
9:31
Speaker 3: paper and seal up the door and turn the taps
9:34
Speaker 3: on until the water was at the trap level, causing
9:36
Speaker 3: all kinds of dramas. But the same inmate said when
9:40
Speaker 3: he got to jail in the late seventies, Gary David's
9:43
Speaker 3: father Rupert, was in Pentridge as well, and the story
9:47
Speaker 3: that he'd been told was that Gary David's father had
9:52
Speaker 3: abused him physically, sexually, emotionally to the point where even
9:58
Speaker 3: he had nailed his own son's foot. I believe to
10:01
Speaker 3: the floor that's correct.
10:03
Speaker 2: A lot of trauma in that.
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Speaker 1: Absolutely, And you would think given everything that was purveyed then,
10:10
Speaker 1: in particular, it was sort of like the end of
10:13
Speaker 1: Freudian analysis at that around that time, and it was
10:17
Speaker 1: more to psychopharmacologis, you would think that somebody could at
10:20
Speaker 1: least sit down with him and talk about that, who
10:23
Speaker 1: was a psychiatrist, But they were saying, no, we can't
10:26
Speaker 1: do that because it's personality. It was utter rubbish.
10:31
Speaker 2: You know.
10:31
Speaker 1: It was as bad as the some of the things
10:34
Speaker 1: they've done. Look in the old days, the use of
10:37
Speaker 1: electric shock treatment or insulent therapy, all these things that
10:42
Speaker 1: they did and were given with the.
10:46
Speaker 2: Force of God. You know.
10:47
Speaker 1: The psychiatrist was saying, no, no, no, borderline personnality. We
10:50
Speaker 1: can't treat personality disorder, just nonsense. And when you say
10:54
Speaker 1: about him being a pest, he was. I think there's
10:58
Speaker 1: no doubt he was a nuisance, but he was in
11:01
Speaker 1: the end he took his own life or I think
11:05
Speaker 1: she died from peritonite.
11:06
Speaker 3: He did. He apparently had a well first off, as
11:09
Speaker 3: we said before, he severed his own penis twice, putting
11:12
Speaker 3: it on the trap for the waters to find, and
11:15
Speaker 3: the second time they couldn't sew it back on again
11:17
Speaker 3: and they gave him a spigot instead, and Chopper Red
11:19
Speaker 3: gave him the very unflattering nickname of cooler bar like
11:23
Speaker 3: a wine cast after that.
11:24
Speaker 2: So he's a person who was deeply disturbed.
11:27
Speaker 3: He had a criminal background, as you say, he spent
11:30
Speaker 3: most of his time in institutions, but he had this
11:33
Speaker 3: terrible trauma in his life that should have been taken
11:37
Speaker 3: into account. And the funny thing is that Penridge Prison
11:40
Speaker 3: had one of the most eminent jail psychologists, doctor Alan Bartholomew's,
11:45
Speaker 3: working there and who was regarded as a very progressive
11:48
Speaker 3: or very enlightened practitioner. But he didn't come to Gary
11:52
Speaker 3: David's aid whatsoever.
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Speaker 1: And he was probably never referred to him because they're
11:59
Speaker 1: probably saying that he was he was a problem person,
12:02
Speaker 1: not a mad person. And again it's just the prejudice
12:07
Speaker 1: that applies. If you ask a psychiatrist with about schizophrenia,
12:12
Speaker 1: straight away they know what to do if I did
12:15
Speaker 1: a hypothetical geelong ones. When I asked them about personality,
12:20
Speaker 1: they undernard and danced around as soon as you mentioned schizophrene.
12:23
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we know what to do there. So there
12:26
Speaker 1: because they can't because they are hard to deal with
12:29
Speaker 1: people with borderline personality sort of, you know, psychiatrists perhaps
12:34
Speaker 1: don't want to deal with them. I had a very
12:36
Speaker 1: dear friend of mine who had bipolar mood disorder who
12:40
Speaker 1: took her own life. And she was a doctor, and
12:43
Speaker 1: you know, throughout the period she was just a wonderful woman.
12:48
Speaker 1: Struck down with this terrible, bloody borderline personality disorder and
12:53
Speaker 1: she was you know, she'd take on causes, she'd be
12:57
Speaker 1: at times a bit aggressive and rude and hard to
13:01
Speaker 1: deal with. But and she didn't get the proper treatment.
13:04
Speaker 1: They diagnosed her. This is the other thing they do.
13:07
Speaker 1: Of course, they diagnosed it with bipolar mood disorder when
13:10
Speaker 1: she didn't have bipolar mood disorder. It was obvious, you know, anybody,
13:14
Speaker 1: And she got diagnosed with that, and that diagnosis went west.
13:18
Speaker 1: But all the time, really she needed intensive therapy. And
13:22
Speaker 1: it's very very hard to do, but it is doable well.
13:26
Speaker 3: Also the state then had Jayward at Aarrawrat, a psychiatric
13:31
Speaker 3: division at its disposal. He was there for a while,
13:35
Speaker 3: but he then he gets put back in mainstream and
13:37
Speaker 3: H Division the punishment division.
13:40
Speaker 2: So all along the line.
13:41
Speaker 3: There isn't an acceptance of his mental health condition which
13:47
Speaker 3: ultimately he was crying out for help.
13:50
Speaker 1: Well, back then the treatment of people with mental illness
13:54
Speaker 1: was pretty ordinary. But the treatment of people outside of
13:58
Speaker 1: the prison. I remember going when I was a member
14:02
Speaker 1: of parliament. I'd got to go and visit this guy
14:08
Speaker 1: who was the brother of a member of our branch
14:13
Speaker 1: or Collingwood branch was so I went to see him
14:16
Speaker 1: and he was in G division, the ansipiatric division. Yeah,
14:21
Speaker 1: and I was a bit up patrick that he was
14:22
Speaker 1: being held there. He was held in Penridge at all,
14:26
Speaker 1: and he said, I near, I'd much prefer to be
14:29
Speaker 1: here than at Larundo.
14:32
Speaker 3: Which is one of the mental asylums, yeah, which was
14:36
Speaker 3: a terror place.
14:37
Speaker 1: Well it was on the start of it was after
14:40
Speaker 1: the institutionalization, so there weren't many people. But he just
14:44
Speaker 1: said the treatment I've been given by people was bad.
14:47
Speaker 1: And he was in prison and he was treated well.
14:50
Speaker 3: Well because also the trick with when you were sent
14:52
Speaker 3: to a place like Laryndeal or jay Ward, your prison
14:56
Speaker 3: sentence would sort of stop, and you were there almost
14:59
Speaker 3: at the pleasure of the governor or the therapeutic consultants
15:02
Speaker 3: that would make a decision about you. So it wasn't
15:06
Speaker 3: necessarily a place you wanted to be sent to if
15:09
Speaker 3: you wanted to get out anytime soon.
15:11
Speaker 1: He was more concerned with staying inside and being treated well.
15:16
Speaker 1: And I think that generally the wardens the prison guards
15:20
Speaker 1: probably treated people with mental illness a bit better. That
15:25
Speaker 1: seemed to me what was going on, because they were
15:27
Speaker 1: there because they were sick, But forensic psochietry prisons just
15:32
Speaker 1: were so inadequate in those days. I think it's better
15:36
Speaker 1: now we've got Thomas Embling. The intention is very very good.
15:41
Speaker 1: Having said that, it's now somewhere between ten and twenty
15:47
Speaker 1: percent of people in prison in Victoria who've got schizophrenia, Yes,
15:52
Speaker 1: I've heard that. So if in turns, we've gone from
15:56
Speaker 1: one direction to the opposite. And a lot of that is,
16:00
Speaker 1: without putting it too simplistically, a lot of that is
16:04
Speaker 1: because we do institutionalize people and didn't give them proper support,
16:09
Speaker 1: and we still don't. So we've just bring through a
16:13
Speaker 1: massive process with the NDIS, for example, over the treatment
16:19
Speaker 1: of people with schizophrenia and accommodation. The NDIS was going
16:24
Speaker 1: to defund our what's called our Havens, which your projects
16:29
Speaker 1: would people with schizophrenia live in and get twenty four
16:32
Speaker 1: hour care, and they were chopping it. So we're only
16:36
Speaker 1: but they've relinquished that idea, thank god, thanks to Mark Butler.
16:41
Speaker 1: But we're still struggling with them to keep that care.
16:45
Speaker 1: So and the problem is if you don't, they will
16:48
Speaker 1: end up in the prisons.
16:50
Speaker 2: Right.
16:50
Speaker 3: We did see after your time in government, the Kennet
16:53
Speaker 3: government come in and they were hell bent on the
16:57
Speaker 3: institutionalizing mental health patients. And we also saw Victoria police
17:02
Speaker 3: shoot them in alarming numbers, which led to a reform
17:06
Speaker 3: I think was Operation Beacon they called it, which was
17:09
Speaker 3: looking at all the use of force. And so this
17:12
Speaker 3: question of how we treated mentally ill inmates became a
17:17
Speaker 3: lot harder, a lot more hard edged, I should say.
17:20
Speaker 3: But you took the view that the Community Protection Act,
17:25
Speaker 3: which sounds a bit sinilar to me and a bit Awellian,
17:28
Speaker 3: was wrong. How was that received by your colleagues? He
17:30
Speaker 3: must have thought this was a very popular decision to
17:32
Speaker 3: keep a guy like Gary David who was threatening the
17:35
Speaker 3: wholesale slaughter once he got out.
17:37
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody in the cabinet or beyond believed
17:41
Speaker 1: it was the right thing to do.
17:43
Speaker 2: They did it because they had to.
17:45
Speaker 1: They had no choice, because the advice from psychiatrist was
17:49
Speaker 1: you can't treat it, and this guy was very dangerous.
17:52
Speaker 1: He was threatening to kill massacre people. I don't think
17:57
Speaker 1: there's any doubt we had to keep Garry David locked up,
18:00
Speaker 1: but I don't think anybody really wanted I voted against
18:05
Speaker 1: it in the caucus. Nobody else did. It was a
18:08
Speaker 1: cabinet decision, but nobody I know, none of them, Joan Kern,
18:12
Speaker 1: any of them really wanted to do it. And I
18:15
Speaker 1: certainly know Jim Kennan, who was the Attorney General. It
18:18
Speaker 1: was one of his least highlighted moments. I'm pretty sure
18:23
Speaker 1: he really They did it only because they had to,
18:26
Speaker 1: and it wasn't just responding to the law.
18:32
Speaker 2: And order campaign.
18:33
Speaker 1: It was much more specific and much more fundamental in
18:37
Speaker 1: our society. Not only that you lock him up, but
18:42
Speaker 1: that you rule out the treatment of people who've got
18:47
Speaker 1: a personality disorder. It is utterly disgraceful. But to be
18:52
Speaker 1: fair to the labor, my labor colleagues, they were only
18:56
Speaker 1: doing what they were advised to do.
18:59
Speaker 3: Well, and just on the balance, well, the balance of probabilities,
19:03
Speaker 3: you couldn't go wrong as cautious as saying let's not
19:06
Speaker 3: let him out. But I think it also had the
19:08
Speaker 3: added effect that Gary David never went through any kind
19:12
Speaker 3: of pre release rehabilitation or treatment or some sort of
19:16
Speaker 3: plan for once he was free, because he was there
19:20
Speaker 3: in perpetuity. We only lasted three years, As you rightly said,
19:23
Speaker 3: he died at peritonitis, having reopened self inflicted wounds on
19:28
Speaker 3: numerous occasions.
19:30
Speaker 2: That's not the actions of a well.
19:31
Speaker 1: Man, no, no. But then they argued, oh, just because
19:35
Speaker 1: people are cutting their pennis off or damaging their bodies
19:39
Speaker 1: or doing all this destructive behavior, and on top of
19:43
Speaker 1: that threatening to carry out mass murders, that he wasn't treatable,
19:48
Speaker 1: that it wasn't treatable. Therefore, because Gary David's not treatable,
19:52
Speaker 1: nobody's treated, which is an incredibly terrible thing to have said.
19:57
Speaker 1: But the other thing to remember this time, labor party
20:02
Speaker 1: was on the nose. We were the guilty party. Everything.
20:06
Speaker 1: It couldn't do anything right, you know, including Coote Island
20:09
Speaker 1: blowing up, and so they fightery. So they'd lost their
20:14
Speaker 1: nerve and were being just survival mode and so, but
20:20
Speaker 1: it wasn't anything that they could really get around. You know.
20:24
Speaker 1: I was the only one who was saying, no, this
20:27
Speaker 1: is wrong. And then they'd accused me of being a
20:30
Speaker 1: lawyer because we only had three lawyers in the whole caucus.
20:34
Speaker 1: That was John Cain, Jim Kennan and me who'd practiced.
20:39
Speaker 1: So they dismissed it by saying, you're a lawyer. But
20:41
Speaker 1: in fact it wasn't about being a lawyer. It was
20:44
Speaker 1: about having an insight into what is mental illness.
20:49
Speaker 3: Indeed, because self mutilation was regarded by the Waters and
20:54
Speaker 3: some of the therapeutic staff at Penridge as an active protest,
20:58
Speaker 3: the people were cutting things off. Chopper Red got his
21:01
Speaker 3: ears chopped off to get out of h division and
21:04
Speaker 3: other people were swallow knowing why people were cutting bits off, left,
21:07
Speaker 3: right and center because the regime was so harsh and
21:10
Speaker 3: punitive and people lost a sense of dominion over their
21:14
Speaker 3: own bodies. In addition to the loss of liberty that this,
21:17
Speaker 3: whether it was bronzing up with your own feces or
21:20
Speaker 3: cutting part of your anatomy off, was an active protest
21:23
Speaker 3: where you had dominion over at least.
21:25
Speaker 1: That it's like without it's like Bobby Sands and them
21:30
Speaker 1: going on hunger strike was the only way they could
21:33
Speaker 1: protest it in all nat Yeah. So, but I think
21:38
Speaker 1: also that people in those days people getting tattoos and
21:43
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean that they've got a mental illness
21:46
Speaker 1: per se, but it means they've got issues which need
21:49
Speaker 1: to be addressed or if possible, then also there were
21:53
Speaker 1: some people who are exceptionally violent and what can you
21:57
Speaker 1: do to treat them even though they're not got a
22:01
Speaker 1: mental illness?
22:02
Speaker 3: And the whole system in Victoria and elsewhere across the
22:05
Speaker 3: actually at the time was very punitive. In fact, Father
22:07
Speaker 3: Brosnan said of h division, the pantry regim generally get
22:10
Speaker 3: people going in there as bicycle thieves coming out as murderers.
22:13
Speaker 3: So I guess to be fair to the authorities to
22:16
Speaker 3: see a guy like Gary David, who could conceivably be
22:20
Speaker 3: put in the category of recalcitrant, evil, difficult, self willed prisoners,
22:26
Speaker 3: would allow them to say well, no, he's not mad,
22:28
Speaker 3: he's just bad.
22:30
Speaker 1: It may have, but they're equally if a person had
22:33
Speaker 1: a psychotic episode, which happens, and they said they were
22:37
Speaker 1: going to kill someone, they'd be certified straight away, wouldn't
22:41
Speaker 1: be any doubt about it. And in the case of
22:43
Speaker 1: Darry gavi and that's what he was saying. Whether it's
22:46
Speaker 1: psychosis or not doesn't really matter. He was not well,
22:50
Speaker 1: he was saying all this stuff. There's a strong argument,
22:54
Speaker 1: I think to say too, Adam, that he didn't want
22:58
Speaker 1: to get out of prison. He didn't want to get out,
23:01
Speaker 1: so he did everything he could to keep himself in.
23:05
Speaker 1: I don't think the parole board would have ever given
23:07
Speaker 1: him early release, and I don't think he wanted to
23:13
Speaker 1: be released, so.
23:15
Speaker 3: It would have happened eventually because Eve anterest about all
23:17
Speaker 3: prisoners are released, and he would have done his fourteen years.
23:20
Speaker 1: Why he did all this hyperbole about killing people and
23:25
Speaker 1: some whatever. But I still come back to the point
23:28
Speaker 1: that it might not have been a psychotic episode, but
23:30
Speaker 1: he was certainly unwell and had a mental illness, and
23:33
Speaker 1: it's a personality disorder, which now everybody accepts.
23:37
Speaker 3: Well, indeed, and you've got a special interest in this
23:40
Speaker 3: because you were, I believe, the very first sitting politician
23:45
Speaker 3: in the world to publicly admit you had a mental illness,
23:48
Speaker 3: a bipolar disorder diagnosis.
23:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was, I think also it was a member
23:55
Speaker 1: of parliam victorious, hardly a big thing in the world soon,
23:58
Speaker 1: but it was really big at the time when I
24:03
Speaker 1: did it. The circumstances weren't particularly pleasant at the time
24:07
Speaker 1: for doing it, but the response was unbelievable. Like it
24:12
Speaker 1: was unbelievable because so many people, I'll say this, people
24:19
Speaker 1: who were my enemies within the Labor Party and people
24:21
Speaker 1: who were my enemies in the Liberal Party. I mean ideologically,
24:25
Speaker 1: all of them came to me. All of them had experience,
24:29
Speaker 1: and for a lot of people it meant a hell
24:32
Speaker 1: of a lot to have somebody to say, look, I've
24:35
Speaker 1: got bipolar mood disorder. I've been the shadow Attorney General.
24:38
Speaker 1: I've nobody said anything about it until I resigned. But
24:43
Speaker 1: the important point is that it shouldn't be seen as
24:46
Speaker 1: a barrier by somebody with bipolar mood disorders more than
24:51
Speaker 1: capable of being a member of parliament, and or depression
24:55
Speaker 1: or schizophrenia for that matter. Schizophrena is a tougher gig,
25:00
Speaker 1: generally than by polar.
25:03
Speaker 3: Because you were experiencing symptoms presumed through your parliamentary career,
25:07
Speaker 3: which maybe gave you a little bit more insight when
25:10
Speaker 3: you're looking into the situation of Gary David.
25:12
Speaker 1: Are you the biggest problem with bipolar Yes, definitely, although
25:16
Speaker 1: I hadn't been diagnosed then, so my knowledge of mental
25:20
Speaker 1: illness was scant. But once I got diagnosed, I became
25:24
Speaker 1: much more aware of the issues of personality disorder, and
25:28
Speaker 1: I became much more aware of the nature of depression.
25:33
Speaker 1: And we're not allowed to use the word intractable or
25:37
Speaker 1: it's called difficult to treat depression, and I became much
25:40
Speaker 1: more aware of that. And I realized, certainly looking back
25:44
Speaker 1: on the stress and strain that political life puts on you,
25:48
Speaker 1: which is quite unusual.
25:49
Speaker 2: It's not it's so.
25:52
Speaker 1: Unpredictable, and you've got to deal with a lot of
25:55
Speaker 1: different people. You've got a lot of people that are
25:58
Speaker 1: against you all the time. There's a lot of insincerity
26:02
Speaker 1: in politics, so they a lot, but it is in sincerity,
26:08
Speaker 1: you know, you can It's like the Lyndon Johnson line
26:11
Speaker 1: when he was being criticized and he said, look, back
26:14
Speaker 1: if I was walking on water, he'd say, because I
26:16
Speaker 1: can't swim. And if you've got a mental illness and
26:19
Speaker 1: you get depressed, the worst thing, not the worst thing,
26:22
Speaker 1: but the single most important thing for people with bipolar
26:26
Speaker 1: is their high level of empathy, very very high level
26:30
Speaker 1: of empathy. And if you're in politics, it's very dangerous
26:36
Speaker 1: because you leave yourself way open because you care about people.
26:40
Speaker 1: And I recall people coming to see me and you
26:45
Speaker 1: couldn't do anything about it, and rather than saying, well,
26:48
Speaker 1: look I can't do anything about it, you get really
26:50
Speaker 1: upset by it. One a woman came from Frankston any place,
26:55
Speaker 1: came to see me because her son was prostituting himself,
26:59
Speaker 1: a fourteen year old boy in Russell Street, which was
27:04
Speaker 1: at that stage there was a drugs and other things
27:07
Speaker 1: going on there. And I said to her, look, I
27:10
Speaker 1: can't do anything. I'm useless. I can't do anything. And
27:14
Speaker 1: the only advice I could give her was to go
27:17
Speaker 1: home and to see counseling and wait for him to
27:20
Speaker 1: come back. So what I'm saying is that I'm not
27:23
Speaker 1: being self righteous, because most members are feel the same way.
27:26
Speaker 2: But if you've got that.
27:27
Speaker 1: Empathy and you're looking at and you look at things
27:30
Speaker 1: that are wrong, you can't really handle it. I suppose
27:35
Speaker 1: it's the problem. But on the more important point was
27:39
Speaker 1: going public. It was so overwhelming with the number of people, police,
27:46
Speaker 1: people who'd opposed me. So many people were affected by
27:52
Speaker 1: mental illness, and it's really sad to think that they
27:58
Speaker 1: just incredible, incredible, and I think it was an incredible
28:02
Speaker 1: watershed for people that were saying, well, just having a
28:06
Speaker 1: mental illness doesn't mean you can't fulfill a good and
28:10
Speaker 1: purposeful life, however difficult it might be.
28:13
Speaker 3: Well, I think we've come a long way, and I
28:15
Speaker 3: think that's generally accepted, and I think that's certainly the case.
28:19
Speaker 3: Speaking of watersheds, so this Community Protection Act was a
28:22
Speaker 3: watershed in Australian legal history.
28:24
Speaker 2: And you're the lawyer, you can probably explain this better
28:26
Speaker 2: than I.
28:27
Speaker 3: But we've seen similar sort of legislative efforts to keep
28:31
Speaker 3: people in jail, like Julian Knight, the Hot Street Killer
28:35
Speaker 3: and Craig Minogue, and I think the public is very
28:38
Speaker 3: much in favor of that style of legislation where we
28:42
Speaker 3: will again use that same principle of trying to predict
28:46
Speaker 3: future actions that people have not yet crimes not yet committed,
28:50
Speaker 3: and removed the presumption of innocence. So we're still dealing
28:53
Speaker 3: with the same issue in our system today we are,
28:56
Speaker 3: and I don't.
28:56
Speaker 1: Think it's going to change what worries me. More like
29:00
Speaker 1: the Julian Night case. I wouldn't let you out myself,
29:05
Speaker 1: and I think most people would think to do what
29:07
Speaker 1: he did to kill six people, you know, it's not
29:10
Speaker 1: really something that you could really redeem yourself from, I suppose,
29:15
Speaker 1: which goes against everything I would normally say and believe,
29:18
Speaker 1: but that is a particularly bad example of it. But
29:23
Speaker 1: the way the law and ordered debate has gone that
29:27
Speaker 1: there's bussing anything could happen. That's my fear. There would
29:32
Speaker 1: be another government like the Caine Kernel government that was
29:36
Speaker 1: forced to make a decision that locks somebody up. And
29:41
Speaker 1: when you've got governments making decisions to lock individuals up,
29:45
Speaker 1: then it's very very bad. I think if there are
29:49
Speaker 1: people who are too dangerous to be released, even if
29:53
Speaker 1: they're not mentally ill, unfortunately they are going to have
29:57
Speaker 1: to do that. They're going to have to say no,
29:59
Speaker 1: you can't, you can't be released. It's a bit different
30:02
Speaker 1: within the case of somebody who's killed six people. I
30:05
Speaker 1: think it's a bit different from the dangerousness of a
30:09
Speaker 1: Gary David, you know, I think, but it's very worrying
30:15
Speaker 1: because of the total abrogation of civil liberty.
30:20
Speaker 3: Well, we either have a presumption of innocence or we don't.
30:22
Speaker 3: And I think this idea that governments in the Parliament
30:26
Speaker 3: can intervene in that the specific cases. I mean, in
30:29
Speaker 3: the case of Julian Night, there's no doubt it was
30:32
Speaker 3: a mad act, a horrific, unrepenting mad act, but it
30:37
Speaker 3: wasn't an act of.
30:37
Speaker 2: Madness, No, no, not at all.
30:39
Speaker 3: It was an act of madness, and he tried to
30:41
Speaker 3: think at one stage, he tried to pretend that it
30:43
Speaker 3: was that he was being dictated to by aliens or
30:46
Speaker 3: something or other, and there was an attack on Hoddle
30:49
Speaker 3: Street there at Clifton Hill and he needed to act
30:51
Speaker 3: and it was all just rubbish.
30:53
Speaker 2: It was deep immaturity. And I guess the problem that
30:55
Speaker 2: we have is.
30:56
Speaker 3: That the jails are full of people with mental disorders,
31:00
Speaker 3: whether they're diagnosed or not, and the experience of being
31:04
Speaker 3: in jail can cousen people's mentality, can remove their empathy,
31:11
Speaker 3: and these psychopathic tendencies can come to the fore. And
31:15
Speaker 3: the whole debate we have right now is to lock
31:17
Speaker 3: them up for longer, lock them up harder, less liberties,
31:21
Speaker 3: no parole, all this type of thing, all these sort
31:23
Speaker 3: of populist tactics. Are we just preparing ourselves for criminals
31:29
Speaker 3: who are coming out harder, badder, and with a.
31:34
Speaker 2: Chip on their shoulders.
31:34
Speaker 1: It's nothing new. Like when I was growing up, We've
31:37
Speaker 1: everybody said that jail was the best place to go
31:40
Speaker 1: if you wanted to train criminals, and unfortunately is a
31:44
Speaker 1: reality and a lot of people go to jail with
31:48
Speaker 1: mental illnesses. Shouldn't be in jail, but there's a lot
31:51
Speaker 1: of people who are bad buggers. What do you do
31:53
Speaker 1: about the best Well, I think it's got to be more.
31:55
Speaker 3: I think, particularly for younger offenders now, and we're seeing
31:58
Speaker 3: a rash of teenagers or just over the age of
32:02
Speaker 3: criminal responsibility now ending up and we're going to have
32:04
Speaker 3: adult time for adult crimes in Victoria. I think we
32:08
Speaker 3: need to look at other methods incarceration that don't harden
32:13
Speaker 3: people and end up with that college of knowledge type
32:15
Speaker 3: approach where people go in low level criminals come out hardened,
32:19
Speaker 3: angry with I said, against society.
32:22
Speaker 1: I agree, and I always have And the only way
32:25
Speaker 1: to resolve it is to put more money into prisons,
32:28
Speaker 1: I suppose. But the problem for any government is the media.
32:34
Speaker 1: So if you've got machete attacks or you've got something
32:37
Speaker 1: else going on, people think, like I had one client
32:41
Speaker 1: who was stabbed to death. I had another three clients
32:44
Speaker 1: who actually stabbed somebody to death. That was and that
32:47
Speaker 1: was in nine point eighty one, eighty two eighty three.
32:52
Speaker 1: We had gangs, There was problems with the Phlem Boys
32:56
Speaker 1: and the Broady Boys and all this stuff. None of
32:58
Speaker 1: that really happens anymore, but you know, the night so
33:03
Speaker 1: it's always been the same.
33:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, And people sort of forget that.
33:07
Speaker 3: The early eighties there was a peak of violent crime
33:11
Speaker 3: in our society, and we've seen it been falling gradually
33:15
Speaker 3: ever since. There was a spike at the last couple
33:16
Speaker 3: of years. But in fact, while all thish theory has
33:19
Speaker 3: been going on about arsons and machete attacks and things,
33:22
Speaker 3: the crime rate has actually fallen. But I think, as
33:25
Speaker 3: you well know, the perceptions are the reality. And if
33:28
Speaker 3: your neighbor's house is burning, you can't feel safe.
33:31
Speaker 1: I think it's a genuine fear and concern, like they're
33:35
Speaker 1: bloody young blakes with machetes. You know, they ought to
33:38
Speaker 1: be bloody, looked up, they're stupid. But then to people,
33:43
Speaker 1: we forget that with all these people said, oh, you know,
33:47
Speaker 1: organized crime's terrible at the moment, and I said, look,
33:51
Speaker 1: my understanding of organized crime, which is quite extensive, is
33:55
Speaker 1: that if they're blowing up and killing people, they're not
33:58
Speaker 1: very well organized. There's something very wrong going on. And
34:02
Speaker 1: to think it was a they picked up us sixteen
34:05
Speaker 1: or seventeen year old who's involved with blowing things up,
34:10
Speaker 1: it's not organized crime. There's something else happening. And we
34:15
Speaker 1: must look at that and say, well, cigarettes become a
34:20
Speaker 1: tradable commodity, look what happens. But then we don't have
34:25
Speaker 1: bank robberies anymore. Burglaries are way down because what do
34:30
Speaker 1: you do, And once upon a time, stealing a color
34:33
Speaker 1: of TV was currency about forty fifty Now who care?
34:37
Speaker 1: You know you pick them up in the street. Basically
34:40
Speaker 1: people put them out. So there's a lot of changes.
34:44
Speaker 1: But equally, there's a lot of white collar crime on
34:48
Speaker 1: the phone, people doing things to deceive people into giving
34:52
Speaker 1: their money. Away, there's a different type of crime, and
34:56
Speaker 1: there's still the same violence amongst young people with machetes
35:00
Speaker 1: or knives whatever. It's all all the same. But the media,
35:05
Speaker 1: and it's always been the case, the law in order
35:08
Speaker 1: to lobby debate is very emotional, very very instantaneous too.
35:14
Speaker 1: It's straight away, as soon as something happens, it's on
35:18
Speaker 1: the well.
35:19
Speaker 3: I think we've seen a certain loss of community spirit,
35:22
Speaker 3: and what I mean by that is that there's a reliance.
35:25
Speaker 2: Upon me, mine and mine.
35:27
Speaker 3: These days, my social progress, my family, my house, and
35:32
Speaker 3: loss of connection to the community generally. So any threat
35:35
Speaker 3: to me, mine and I is going to be met
35:37
Speaker 3: with politicians. Fixed this now, you can't cope with it,
35:41
Speaker 3: Just fix it. And if it means locking people up
35:43
Speaker 3: for long periods of time and not even worrying about
35:46
Speaker 3: the consequences, because that's the thing.
35:49
Speaker 2: All these people.
35:50
Speaker 3: Are coming back to society. There's only twenty across the country,
35:54
Speaker 3: as I said, of the outset who are held there
35:56
Speaker 3: in perpetuity. So make it hard on the way in,
36:00
Speaker 3: you'll get hard on the way out. I think our
36:02
Speaker 3: society is going to have to deal with that whole situation. Fortunately,
36:06
Speaker 3: you're not dealing with it these days. You've had a
36:09
Speaker 3: can I say, a late career change to be a storyteller. Yeah,
36:14
Speaker 3: and you've written a couple of plays. I've written thirty seven,
36:18
Speaker 3: a couple more than a couple, thirty seven, including the
36:22
Speaker 3: one we're doing about Jean MacLean will call Me and Jane.
36:25
Speaker 3: Jean was the member of Parlament with me, but she
36:28
Speaker 3: was older than me and she was locked up for
36:32
Speaker 3: opposing the Vietnam War. It's fairly five that were called.
36:37
Speaker 3: So I'm writing that one at the moment, which is
36:39
Speaker 3: a performed reading. It's going on at the Motley Barhouse
36:42
Speaker 3: from the third of August to the ninth. But I've
36:44
Speaker 3: written thirty thirty six plays, including one about the police shootings,
36:49
Speaker 3: called a comedy called a Policewoman's Absurdity. But it's been
36:53
Speaker 3: a radical transformation for me because I when I went
36:58
Speaker 3: on to Lithium back in nine oh ninety three, believe
37:01
Speaker 3: it or not, it mollified my mood and I discovered
37:06
Speaker 3: I could write dialogue. It's amazing, the hardest thing any
37:09
Speaker 3: writer can do.
37:10
Speaker 1: You can't. It's very rare that you got the gift
37:14
Speaker 1: of writing dialogue. But having not been brought up in
37:17
Speaker 1: an artistic field at all. Now my parents were. My
37:21
Speaker 1: dad was in the Air Force as a policeman. My
37:24
Speaker 1: mother was a tailor by trade. So it was not
37:27
Speaker 1: something I'd ever done, even at university. So I had
37:30
Speaker 1: to go and learn all about playwriting and structure, which
37:33
Speaker 1: being a lawyer helped me because there's a lot of structure.
37:36
Speaker 1: But it's been a pretty big change in my life
37:40
Speaker 1: for sure.
37:41
Speaker 3: And how we came together for this interview, which has
37:43
Speaker 3: segued in a few different sure places, was you're writing
37:47
Speaker 3: a play about the Beaumont children. Yeah, yeah, it discippears
37:50
Speaker 3: in ninety sixty six of the three Beaumont children, Jane,
37:53
Speaker 3: Arna and Grant, and I put you in touch with
37:56
Speaker 3: Bill Hayes and his off side Stuart, his IF side
38:00
Speaker 3: of Stuart Mullins about their belief that Harry Phipps the
38:04
Speaker 3: canel business, was the one who took the kids and
38:08
Speaker 3: murdered them.
38:09
Speaker 2: Yeah.
38:10
Speaker 1: Having looked at the material, what's your view? It confirms
38:14
Speaker 1: what they're saying. But I think they're like often happens,
38:20
Speaker 1: and journos are very guilty of this and so are
38:22
Speaker 1: other people. But they're pushing the case pretty strongly, and
38:27
Speaker 1: all of the evidence comes in sort of reconfirms what
38:31
Speaker 1: their thoughts are. So what I'm going to do is
38:34
Speaker 1: write it from the perspective, well, a perspective of him
38:38
Speaker 1: telling the story of what happened. Then you make up
38:41
Speaker 1: your own mind whether you believe it or not.
38:44
Speaker 2: So Harry Hips are telling the story.
38:47
Speaker 1: One man play going on in February at the festival
38:53
Speaker 1: and letting him tell exactly what happened on that day,
38:58
Speaker 1: and subsequently watching the way that they tried to find him,
39:04
Speaker 1: and how appalling the I don't blame the police because
39:08
Speaker 1: I think it was just so difficult. I'm not at
39:11
Speaker 1: all blaming the police, but it was a bit of
39:13
Speaker 1: Keystone Cops almost.
39:15
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I agree with it. I don't blame the police.
39:17
Speaker 3: I mean that the incidence of three children being taken
39:21
Speaker 3: at one time is vanishingly real.
39:24
Speaker 2: I can't think of another one in Australia in the world.
39:27
Speaker 3: We had Jeron Ratcliffe Kirsty Gordon from the Adelaide Oval
39:29
Speaker 3: years later. That's two, but the three of them to
39:32
Speaker 3: go missing at once, So I think the impact on
39:34
Speaker 3: We've looked at this in a bit of detail. The
39:37
Speaker 3: Glenell police station had I think two phone lines and
39:40
Speaker 3: three or four coppers and there was a queue of
39:43
Speaker 3: people up the street looking to give evidence on that day.
39:46
Speaker 3: They couldn't get to give their evidence, and there was
39:50
Speaker 3: an attempt later on by the police several days later
39:53
Speaker 3: to dawknock the whole area, I guess, to recoup some
39:55
Speaker 3: of that missed evidence. But you wonder what was missed
39:58
Speaker 3: on that very first day because the identic at pictures
40:01
Speaker 3: there were two of them I think that were conflicting,
40:03
Speaker 3: and you wonder.
40:05
Speaker 1: They weren't just conflicting. The first one was clearly wrong
40:08
Speaker 1: to the point of it was stereotyping somebody, and that
40:13
Speaker 1: lasted for a week. But I think the bigger problem,
40:16
Speaker 1: Adam was in the first two or three days they
40:20
Speaker 1: were looking for the kids. They'd gone under a bridge,
40:25
Speaker 1: or they've been in the sand, So the entire police
40:28
Speaker 1: operation was trying to find kids that had gone missing
40:32
Speaker 1: rather than looking for the perpetrator. And by the time
40:36
Speaker 1: they'd actually sit down to look at the perpetrator, the
40:40
Speaker 1: horse had bolted, disposed of the kids that abused them,
40:45
Speaker 1: disposed of them, and he was back in his house
40:48
Speaker 1: and that was it. Like from then on the guy
40:51
Speaker 1: was in I say, it's not the police's fault. He'd
40:54
Speaker 1: never been in trouble with the police before in his life.
40:57
Speaker 1: He was well known as a businessman, a very successful
41:02
Speaker 1: businessman Britain businessman, so it was very difficul for the
41:05
Speaker 1: place to find him, and of course they didn't and
41:10
Speaker 1: he only became a suspect in two thousand and five
41:13
Speaker 1: after he died.
41:15
Speaker 3: But really on the basis that his son Hayden gave
41:18
Speaker 3: a very detailed statement about seeing the Beaumont children at
41:21
Speaker 3: his house, and also from two young boys who claimed
41:25
Speaker 3: that they've been asked to dig a hole at Harry
41:27
Speaker 3: Phipps's Castelloy factory at North Plimpton, which looked a lot
41:32
Speaker 3: like Graves And of course South Tray Police, to their credit,
41:36
Speaker 3: did take these things seriously.
41:37
Speaker 2: They dug several holes.
41:37
Speaker 3: Of you know, and there was another independent excavation at
41:41
Speaker 3: the same time. They found nothing so far, so we
41:43
Speaker 3: still rely upon Hayden Phipps. I think the biggest issue
41:46
Speaker 3: for the Beaumont case is that there's never been a
41:48
Speaker 3: coronial inquest. Surely that's just a basic thing to say. Well, say, Paul,
41:53
Speaker 3: what do you have, let's see what you did. Are
41:56
Speaker 3: there any other lines of inquiry that, even at this
41:58
Speaker 3: late stage, some decades later, that we can at least
42:02
Speaker 3: come to some sturdy view on what happened.
42:04
Speaker 1: I don't know why they haven't had a coronial inquest,
42:08
Speaker 1: and I don't know why they didn't go back and
42:11
Speaker 1: investigate all the pedophiles. I think one of the great
42:14
Speaker 1: lines in the play I do so say myself, is
42:16
Speaker 1: that Adelaide was the city of churches, beautiful churches, wonderful churches,
42:20
Speaker 1: great big buildings, cathedrals, amazing churches, full of pedophiles. And
42:25
Speaker 1: the question's got to be asked, why on earth that gain.
42:30
Speaker 1: It's only in the nineteen nineties when we changed the
42:33
Speaker 1: legislation relations to children giving evidence that started to come
42:37
Speaker 1: about and they stopped covering it up. And I don't
42:40
Speaker 1: know why. And it'd be interesting to see the police
42:43
Speaker 1: files whether they did investigate all these people who were
42:48
Speaker 1: pedophiles within all of that substinutely came out and then
42:52
Speaker 1: they did an investigation or a coronial inquest or inquiry.
42:55
Speaker 1: You can't remember what it was, and they're not letter
42:57
Speaker 1: release the documents for eighty years. It's like, what games that?
43:02
Speaker 1: What else where else would that happen other than child treatment.
43:05
Speaker 3: Well, you hail from south Ofstrada, so maybe you can
43:07
Speaker 3: explain the culture to us a bit better.
43:09
Speaker 1: Well, I did my play called Don Dunstan an Audience
43:12
Speaker 1: with Don Dunstan. I was only in Adelaide for three years.
43:16
Speaker 1: My dad was in the Air Force, so we were
43:18
Speaker 1: in Malaysia. We went to Malaysia and then we came back.
43:21
Speaker 1: So I was there for three years or four years.
43:24
Speaker 1: And the boy my children case. I remember it vividly
43:27
Speaker 1: when they announced three kids were missing. But I don't
43:30
Speaker 1: think Adelaide is very insular. It's everybody knows each other.
43:36
Speaker 1: And I noticed that the one thing that did surprise
43:39
Speaker 1: me when the play was on, apart from loving the
43:42
Speaker 1: Don Dunstan played, was the amount of wine they all drank.
43:46
Speaker 1: It's like it comes out of the taps or something
43:48
Speaker 1: in Adelaide. It's so big. It was huge. I had
43:51
Speaker 1: not seen it like that, and so but I think
43:54
Speaker 1: Adelaide's no different from anywhere else really, that the pedophiles
43:59
Speaker 1: and the child molesters were getting away.
44:02
Speaker 3: With it, well they were, I think back in the
44:03
Speaker 3: day until kids begin to go missing and get murdered.
44:06
Speaker 3: This was almost like a social welfare issue rather than crime,
44:10
Speaker 3: and I think that's that's persisted for a very long time.
44:12
Speaker 3: We could go on for HOURSI Neil, I'm looking forward
44:14
Speaker 3: to seeing your play what's it called The Beams.
44:17
Speaker 1: That's not till next year, but I've got the play
44:19
Speaker 1: called Me and Jane about Jane MacLean, who was very
44:22
Speaker 1: important in change to rape law in particular, among many
44:27
Speaker 1: other things. But The Beaumont Children Killer is next February
44:31
Speaker 1: at the Arts Festival at the what do they call
44:34
Speaker 1: it the Fringe Festival, which really isn't a fringe festival.
44:37
Speaker 1: It's much bigger than that it is. But I'm surprised
44:40
Speaker 1: that they wanted it on. They've been very the producers
44:42
Speaker 1: were very keen to have it on, which surprised me.
44:45
Speaker 1: I thought that, you know, the topic would deter but
44:48
Speaker 1: it hasn't. And the way I'm doing it, I hope,
44:50
Speaker 1: is a way that is disclosed. He brings it all
44:55
Speaker 1: out in the open and from his perspective, from the
44:58
Speaker 1: way he talks about it, and hopefully leaving it to
45:01
Speaker 1: the audience to decide at the end which they're going to.
45:03
Speaker 3: Go okay, well look forward to that. Thanks for time today,
45:06
Speaker 3: Thank you, and good that's Neil Cole. I think it's
45:09
Speaker 3: I think anything that keeps the Beaumont case in the
45:11
Speaker 3: public frame is a good thing. Whether you agree or
45:14
Speaker 3: not that Harry Phipps was the perpetrator, I got my doubts,
45:16
Speaker 3: but I think that keeps that in the public frame.
45:18
Speaker 3: There are still people alive who have information and could
45:21
Speaker 3: still come forward about other suspects or even the fact
45:24
Speaker 3: that Phipps was the perpetrator. If you know anything, you
45:27
Speaker 3: know what to do, call crime Stoppers one hundred, triple three,
45:29
Speaker 3: triple zero, or you can always email me if you
45:32
Speaker 3: don't trust the police. And I get that sometimes I
45:34
Speaker 3: get that. As Adam Shanner, writer at gmail dot com,
45:37
Speaker 3: I think the Gary David story is one that we
45:39
Speaker 3: need to keep in the frame as well, because we
45:43
Speaker 3: are saying, let's lock people up for the rest of
45:46
Speaker 3: their lives?
45:47
Speaker 2: Is it right? Other alternatives?
45:49
Speaker 3: Are there of alternative Love to hear your thoughts on this,
45:51
Speaker 3: You can leave your comments in the podcast. This has
45:54
Speaker 3: been Adam shan for Real Crime. Thank you for listening, Thanks.
46:04
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46:07
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