Peter Dutton’s ‘Queensland Cop’ world’s vision is a matter of concern

The journalists, as a rule, do not write the headlines. They are designed to get their attention, especially in our economy based on clicks, and unfortunately they are not always an precise reflection of the history they are selling.

But even as a journalist who knows it very well, I am still worried about a holder a few years ago That reading: “Peter Dutton has the worldview of a Queensland police. It is of interest to try it. “

As author of Pork CityA book about the old days in my hometown adopted by Brisbane, I was surprised. You had to pretend that many things had not happened, and it was not yet happening, to take a holder like that to the letter.

Pork City was named after a dark single by The parameters. The song excorted the corruption, intimidation and brutality of the best of Queensland, four years before its institutionalized malice was discouraged by the Fitzgerald consultation.

The last witness who appeared in Fitzgerald’s investigation was Joh Bjelke-Ptersen, the former Queensland prime minister from 1968 to 1987. When asked the aged dictator of Hillbilly if he understood the Separation of powers under the Westminster systemBjelke-Petersen first pretended that he had not heard the question. Then he said he did not understand, bubbling incoherently until, finally fixed, he replied: “Well, you tell me, and I will tell you if you are right or not. Do you not know?”

It is true Victoria and New South Wales had the Brutal and Corrupt Police at that time. But the ignorance and contempt of Bjelke-Plantersen for Democratic subtleties meant that Queensland was the only state in which the police effectively served as the private government of the government.

They maintained Dossiers in political dissidents. They wildly defeat the protesters. They were harassed and intimidated journalists. In fact, they harassed and intimidated anyone who seems a bit different. Indigenous and young peoples, especially punk, were favored objectives. (Sometimes they mixed them. After the San Francisco Punk band The dead Kennedys He touched the Hall Festival in 1983, the police arrested the black drummer of the band, the deceased Dh danger, believing that he was a drunk indigenous man).

In exchange for its loyalty, the government turned a blind eye to the protection of the police (in fact, vision of active consultation) of the entire “sin”, the strict Lutheran prime minister claimed to have stopped in the Tweed River but that illuminated the Moonlight status Like a Christmas tree.

The bribes flowed to the top: Commissioner Terry Lewis was found having collected more than $ 600,000 Of the brothels and casinos that the successive police ministers had sworn, on national television, it did not exist.

Within the force, this racket was called in “the joke” code, something in which you were, or you were not. Lewis was finally imprisoned for 14 years and stripped of his gentleman. (That is him on the cover of Pork Citycarrying a Tommy pistol).

Peter Dutton, let’s be absolutely clear, was not part of any of this Deboucyry. But he was every centimeter a product of the culture and politics of the time, having graduated from the Queensland Police Academy in 1990. Is this really the worldview that it is of our interest “to give a chance”?

And what about the Queensland police? How much have Pig City and Queensland change? In the introduction of the book, I promoted it as a story about how Brisbane grew. I am much less sure of that now.

At the beginning of 2022, at the same time the contentious holder appeared, Queensland’s police service was staggering by a scandalsculminating in Judge Deborah Richards investigation in the responses of the service to domestic and family violence.

That followed Margaret McMurdo’s investigation, dismissed as “Only another report to awaken the Slam Police every time” For the former Chief of the Police Union, Ian Leavers. The graduates abandoned their opposition after an investigation into the Hannah Clarke deaths and his three children.

The Richards report found that the QP suffered poor leadership and was plagued with cultural problems, including rooted misogyny, sexism and racism, which, as expected, committed their responses to domestic and family violence.

The graduates then wrote A vicious opinion article for the Messaging mail in which he said that a state treaty would offer a “free pass to all rapists, abuser of domestic violence, habitual housing invader and car thief” that identified themselves as aborigines. The now is the state Cross -border commissioner.

To distract from their failures, the Queensland police, together with the Messaging mail and the LNP, conducted a relentless campaign on youth crimes. It doesn’t matter that QPS’s own data showed that the rates were in Almost records.

Despite being a state problem, campaigning in crime is natural territory For a former policeman like Peter Dutton. The choice of Queensland last October was an exercise of fear and hate, foreshadowing the federal campaign ahead.

Bjelke-Petersen has been dead for 19 years. It is an abstract figure for most people now. When I wrote Pork CityPart of my motivation was to explain what it was like to grow in Queensland in the 70s and 80s.

The easiest way to imagine Bjelke-Petersen is a proto-trom will: an authoritarian ignorant with a ruthless will to power. Everything that lacked, fortunately, were nuclear codes and a Twitter account.

His Queensland was the political swamp of which Peter Dutton emerged. Anyone who thinks is a worldview that we should hug, nor did it grew up here, it is too young to remember or too dumb to worry.

Do you have anything to say about this article? Write us to [email protected]. Include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your saying. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.