Latest news with #FitzgeraldInquiry
Daily Maverick
2 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Maverick
If heeded, Ramaphosa's judicial commission could mark a new era of integrity in South Africa
President Cyril Ramaphosa's announcement on Sunday night of a judicial commission of inquiry into alleged corruption and political interference in South Africa's policing authorities may prove to be a pivotal moment in the country's battle to restore public trust in our justice system. Sparked by alarming claims from KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, this inquiry now sits at the crossroads of institutional reform and constitutional accountability. Yet, the depth of the allegations suggests this moment demands more than a routine political reaction — it demands a national reckoning. The breadth and depth of the allegations are astonishing. The accusations include sabotaging politically motivated investigations, collusion with criminal syndicates, and systemic infiltration of the police, prisons, the prosecuting authority and judiciary. The immediate placement of Police Minister Senzo Mchunu on special leave has raised difficult but essential questions. Is special leave an adequate response to such serious allegations? Should stronger disciplinary or even prosecutorial measures have been considered? Is the South African Police Service fundamentally compromised and in urgent need of comprehensive reform? Ramaphosa's announcement rightly triggers comparisons to one of the most consequential corruption probes in modern democratic history: the 1989 Fitzgerald Inquiry in Queensland, Australia. South Africa's unfolding inquiry finds a striking echo in the celebrated Fitzgerald Inquiry, which was also a response to deep-seated police and political corruption. System overhaul That investigation, formally known as the Commission of Inquiry Concerning Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct, exposed systemic corruption within Queensland's police force and government, ultimately transforming both. Led by Justice Tony Fitzgerald, the inquiry not only toppled a sitting premier and sent a police commissioner to prison — it overhauled entire systems of oversight, ethics and accountability. What made the Fitzgerald Inquiry so transformative was its scope. It did not merely focus on individual wrongdoing, but illuminated how institutional rot takes root and flourishes when cultures of impunity go unchecked. It exposed bribery, illegal gambling, prostitution rings and deep ties between organised crime, the police and politicians. Fitzgerald's final report issued more than 100 recommendations, including the restructuring of the Queensland Police Service, the creation of independent oversight bodies such as the Criminal Justice Commission (now the Crime and Corruption Commission), and stronger protections for whistle-blowers. Importantly, Premier Joh Bjelke Petersen resigned, and Police Commissioner Sir Terence Lewis was jailed (and stripped of his knighthood). Crucially, these were implemented with political will and public support. In South Africa, the echoes are disturbingly familiar. Our nation has already endured the corrosive effects of corruption — and the lesson should be clear: superficial reform is not reform at all. Once again, we find ourselves confronted by allegations not merely of individual misconduct, but of a coordinated attempt to subvert justice for political ends. The question is no longer whether we should act — but how comprehensively we are willing to do so. Scapegoating Ideally, the scope of the judicial commission must extend beyond Minister Mchunu. While his alleged actions are deeply troubling, isolating him risks scapegoating one individual while ignoring the broader dysfunction. Perhaps the inquiry must probe the entire law and justice cluster, including the police, prison services, the National Prosecuting Authority and even elements within the judiciary itself. These institutions form the bedrock of our democracy. If they are compromised, our constitutional order is not merely under strain — it is under siege. By broadening the mandate, the commission can identify root causes — hierarchies of power, gaps in internal oversight, incentive systems — and guide comprehensive reform. The EFF decried 'special leave' as a 'cowardly deflection', alleging that it breaches Section 98 of the Constitution on ministerial accountability. Constitutionally, South Africa has robust protections designed to uphold the rule of law, from judicial independence (Section 165) to prosecutorial impartiality (Section 179). Yet these safeguards are only as effective as our willingness to defend and enforce them. Ethical governance requires more than rhetorical commitment — it demands action, including real consequences for breaches of public trust. Placing a minister on leave is a procedural start, not a resolution. One should not be perceived as an alarmist. However, it would be short-sighted to ignore concerns expressed by others that ethics and accountability are under siege. South Africa's constitutional democracy depends on the integrity of its law-and-order structures Comparative global examples reinforce this. Other nations facing similar crises have taken decisive action: In Italy, the Mani Pulite ('Clean Hands') investigations during the 1990s led to widespread arrests and political resignations, reshaping Italian politics and reinforcing prosecutorial independence. Police reforms In India, landmark Supreme Court rulings of 2006 catalysed police reforms and called for the establishment of independent complaint authorities. The court directed all States and Union Territories to constitute Police Complaints Authorities (PCAs) in its landmark judgment on police reforms. These examples demonstrate that institutional failure can be overcome — but only through transparency, accountability, and systemic reform. In our current moment, the South African public deserves more than the promise of justice — they deserve its full pursuit. Anything less would not only betray the ideals enshrined in our Constitution, it would squander a rare and crucial opportunity for renewal. If treated as a mere exercise in optics, the effort risks joining past commissions that failed to deliver change. But if heeded — and acted upon — the inquiry could mark the beginning of a new era of integrity in South Africa. DM
Sydney Morning Herald
24-06-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘The Trumpian model': Richard Roxburgh takes on Australia's most provocative politician
Working on the documentary Joh: The Last King of Queensland was, director and co-writer Kriv Stenders says, 'like going back in a time machine, reliving my childhood and my early adult life'. Trawling through reams and reams of archival footage – news clips, interviews, amateur films of political protests in Brisbane during Joh Bjelke-Petersen's near-20-year reign as premier, 'I was finding footage of Brisbane in the '60s and '70s and into the '80s, stuff I vividly remember. I wouldn't call it therapeutic, but it was a strange feeling going back in time and reliving that part of my life.' Stenders and I were students together at the University of Queensland in the mid-1980s, a time when the cronyism and corruption and coercion of Bjelke-Petersen's National Party-led government seemed immovable. The police force was an instrument of his rule, used to intimidate anyone who didn't fit Bjelke-Petersen's narrow view of what an 'an ordinary, decent citizen' might look like (homosexuals, people of colour, creative types and the Left in general were all fair game). Laws and political boundaries were rewritten to further his dominance and agenda, democracy and civil liberties trampled under jackbooted foot. On the upside, the Queensland economy boomed, driven by coal mining and clear felling of native forest and migration north from other states (the abolition of death duties was a major drawcard). Loading And there were enough who bought into the myth of the maverick peanut farmer from Kingaroy, who left school at 14, as some kind of political and economic savant that a campaign to have him installed as the Coalition's man in Canberra – 'Joh for PM' – had serious traction for long enough to cruel John Howard's tilt in 1987 and hand the Lodge back to Bob Hawke. Does any of this sound familiar, even if you know nothing about Bjelke-Petersen? Stenders thinks it should. 'The reason I wanted to do this film was the elephant in the room, which is the relevance of the story now, the prescience of it,' he says. 'The playbook that Joh played from is very much the same one Netanyahu is using, that Trump's using, that various populist leaders around the world are drawing from. So it just felt like a really timely documentary, and the right time to go back and look at Joh's legacy and work out what's changed and what hasn't.' One of the most shocking things about the Bjelke-Petersen era – for those of us who experienced it firsthand, at any rate – is how little the rest of the country knew about what was going on, at least until Chris Masters ' The Moonlight State report for Four Corners and the subsequent Fitzgerald Inquiry into corruption blew the lid off it all. Richard Roxburgh grew up at the same time, in rural NSW, but had little sense of the man he would go on to play in Stenders' film. 'I was a long way away from it, so I guess we were shielded from it,' he says. Of course, he did come to understand the craziness of that time. But for many others, it has faded, or simply never been spoken of – and given the current state of the world, that's far from ideal. 'You'll speak to a 30-year-old who has never heard of Joh Bjelke-Peterson, and so I think this is really important, because there is so much of the Trumpian model, a kind of pre-echo of many of the conditions that we're seeing now – the ever-revolving door of crackdowns and their growth over time, the way one quietly leads to another, which quietly leads to another,' says Roxburgh. 'And you end up in a state where anybody who felt slightly different either had to be prepared to have their heads staved in with batons, or to just get on the highway and head out of there.' Roxburgh has become something of a go-to man for portrayals of men from recent Australian history. Loading 'I've got a theory that he's going to play every famous Australian before he dies,' jokes Stenders, who recently directed him in The Correspondent, his film about journalist Peter Greste, who spent more than a year in an Egyptian prison. He's played Bob Hawke (twice), crooked copper Roger Rogerson (also twice), Ronald Ryan, the last man hanged in Australia, composer Percy Grainger, Bali bombing investigator Graham Ashton and more. Is there anyone left for you to do? 'I've done it,' he says, unequivocally. 'That's it now.' You don't fancy playing Tony Abbott, perhaps? 'You know, I wouldn't mind having a crack,' he admits, despite his better judgment. 'I can feel my mum rolling in her grave at the idea that I played Joe Bjelke-Petersen, but I think she would really respond to the documentary.' His Bjelke-Petersen is not a full-on immersion in character. It's more an impression. He roams the stage of an empty theatre, dressed in an ill-fitting beige suit, ruminating on his life and times and – to his mind – unjust downfall in that halting, stuttering, circumlocutory way of his. He gets the voice spot on. Loading 'It's all based around the idea of Joh's final hours in office, where he actually barricaded himself in like Hitler in his bunker,' explains Stenders. The monologues were written by novelist Matthew Condon, using a mix of Hansard transcripts, television interviews, and news reports. 'They're not verbatim,' says Stenders. 'They're a fusion of a number of sources.' There are interviews, too, many with critics of Bjelke-Petersen, who died in 2005 aged 94, and the deeply entrenched corruption that flourished under his reign (though he faced court, he was not convicted, after his trial ended in a hung jury). But there are also those who speak in his defence – former Brisbane Lord Mayor Sally-Anne Atkinson, Nationals leader David Littleproud, independent MP Bob Katter – and who all insist, to paraphrase Bjelke-Petersen, 'there's nothing to see here' when it comes to those pesky claims of wrongdoing. Though there's balance, Stenders feels the film is 'pretty unequivocal' in terms of being a cautionary tale. 'Joh did some pretty provocative and divisive things that are undeniable,' he says. 'He was complicit in a corrupt government, I think that's undeniable. But at the same time, I didn't want to paint him – as I think a lot of people did back then, and I did myself – as a fool, as a clown, as an idiot. Joh used that country bumpkin thing very much as a mask, as a facade. And he hid behind that, he used it to his advantage.' People like Bjelke-Petersen may not have much by way of schooling, says Stenders, 'but these guys are actually super smart. They've got a ferocious kind of intelligence and a rat cunning and a strategic mind. And I realised that Joh wasn't the clown I thought he was, that he was actually a very skillful, albeit deceitful, leader. 'The film is trying to unpack and look at his legacy, look at the way he operated, look at the way he constructed himself as a politician. To change power, you first need to understand it.'
The Age
24-06-2025
- Politics
- The Age
‘The Trumpian model': Richard Roxburgh takes on Australia's most provocative politician
Working on the documentary Joh: The Last King of Queensland was, director and co-writer Kriv Stenders says, 'like going back in a time machine, reliving my childhood and my early adult life'. Trawling through reams and reams of archival footage – news clips, interviews, amateur films of political protests in Brisbane during Joh Bjelke-Petersen's near-20-year reign as premier, 'I was finding footage of Brisbane in the '60s and '70s and into the '80s, stuff I vividly remember. I wouldn't call it therapeutic, but it was a strange feeling going back in time and reliving that part of my life.' Stenders and I were students together at the University of Queensland in the mid-1980s, a time when the cronyism and corruption and coercion of Bjelke-Petersen's National Party-led government seemed immovable. The police force was an instrument of his rule, used to intimidate anyone who didn't fit Bjelke-Petersen's narrow view of what an 'an ordinary, decent citizen' might look like (homosexuals, people of colour, creative types and the Left in general were all fair game). Laws and political boundaries were rewritten to further his dominance and agenda, democracy and civil liberties trampled under jackbooted foot. On the upside, the Queensland economy boomed, driven by coal mining and clear felling of native forest and migration north from other states (the abolition of death duties was a major drawcard). Loading And there were enough who bought into the myth of the maverick peanut farmer from Kingaroy, who left school at 14, as some kind of political and economic savant that a campaign to have him installed as the Coalition's man in Canberra – 'Joh for PM' – had serious traction for long enough to cruel John Howard's tilt in 1987 and hand the Lodge back to Bob Hawke. Does any of this sound familiar, even if you know nothing about Bjelke-Petersen? Stenders thinks it should. 'The reason I wanted to do this film was the elephant in the room, which is the relevance of the story now, the prescience of it,' he says. 'The playbook that Joh played from is very much the same one Netanyahu is using, that Trump's using, that various populist leaders around the world are drawing from. So it just felt like a really timely documentary, and the right time to go back and look at Joh's legacy and work out what's changed and what hasn't.' One of the most shocking things about the Bjelke-Petersen era – for those of us who experienced it firsthand, at any rate – is how little the rest of the country knew about what was going on, at least until Chris Masters ' The Moonlight State report for Four Corners and the subsequent Fitzgerald Inquiry into corruption blew the lid off it all. Richard Roxburgh grew up at the same time, in rural NSW, but had little sense of the man he would go on to play in Stenders' film. 'I was a long way away from it, so I guess we were shielded from it,' he says. Of course, he did come to understand the craziness of that time. But for many others, it has faded, or simply never been spoken of – and given the current state of the world, that's far from ideal. 'You'll speak to a 30-year-old who has never heard of Joh Bjelke-Peterson, and so I think this is really important, because there is so much of the Trumpian model, a kind of pre-echo of many of the conditions that we're seeing now – the ever-revolving door of crackdowns and their growth over time, the way one quietly leads to another, which quietly leads to another,' says Roxburgh. 'And you end up in a state where anybody who felt slightly different either had to be prepared to have their heads staved in with batons, or to just get on the highway and head out of there.' Roxburgh has become something of a go-to man for portrayals of men from recent Australian history. Loading 'I've got a theory that he's going to play every famous Australian before he dies,' jokes Stenders, who recently directed him in The Correspondent, his film about journalist Peter Greste, who spent more than a year in an Egyptian prison. He's played Bob Hawke (twice), crooked copper Roger Rogerson (also twice), Ronald Ryan, the last man hanged in Australia, composer Percy Grainger, Bali bombing investigator Graham Ashton and more. Is there anyone left for you to do? 'I've done it,' he says, unequivocally. 'That's it now.' You don't fancy playing Tony Abbott, perhaps? 'You know, I wouldn't mind having a crack,' he admits, despite his better judgment. 'I can feel my mum rolling in her grave at the idea that I played Joe Bjelke-Petersen, but I think she would really respond to the documentary.' His Bjelke-Petersen is not a full-on immersion in character. It's more an impression. He roams the stage of an empty theatre, dressed in an ill-fitting beige suit, ruminating on his life and times and – to his mind – unjust downfall in that halting, stuttering, circumlocutory way of his. He gets the voice spot on. Loading 'It's all based around the idea of Joh's final hours in office, where he actually barricaded himself in like Hitler in his bunker,' explains Stenders. The monologues were written by novelist Matthew Condon, using a mix of Hansard transcripts, television interviews, and news reports. 'They're not verbatim,' says Stenders. 'They're a fusion of a number of sources.' There are interviews, too, many with critics of Bjelke-Petersen, who died in 2005 aged 94, and the deeply entrenched corruption that flourished under his reign (though he faced court, he was not convicted, after his trial ended in a hung jury). But there are also those who speak in his defence – former Brisbane Lord Mayor Sally-Anne Atkinson, Nationals leader David Littleproud, independent MP Bob Katter – and who all insist, to paraphrase Bjelke-Petersen, 'there's nothing to see here' when it comes to those pesky claims of wrongdoing. Though there's balance, Stenders feels the film is 'pretty unequivocal' in terms of being a cautionary tale. 'Joh did some pretty provocative and divisive things that are undeniable,' he says. 'He was complicit in a corrupt government, I think that's undeniable. But at the same time, I didn't want to paint him – as I think a lot of people did back then, and I did myself – as a fool, as a clown, as an idiot. Joh used that country bumpkin thing very much as a mask, as a facade. And he hid behind that, he used it to his advantage.' People like Bjelke-Petersen may not have much by way of schooling, says Stenders, 'but these guys are actually super smart. They've got a ferocious kind of intelligence and a rat cunning and a strategic mind. And I realised that Joh wasn't the clown I thought he was, that he was actually a very skillful, albeit deceitful, leader. 'The film is trying to unpack and look at his legacy, look at the way he operated, look at the way he constructed himself as a politician. To change power, you first need to understand it.'
ABC News
07-05-2025
- ABC News
Antonio Saliba's mystery death to be investigated by coroner
The death of a Mackay billiard hall owner in the 1980s that was raised in the Fitzgerald Inquiry will be investigated by the state coroner. Antonio Saliba, 45, was found dead in 1983 on his hobby farm at Camerons Pocket, near Calen in north Queensland in what police initially said was a horse-riding accident. Mr Saliba's family maintained he was murdered and new information from his nephew Danny Meares has led to a coronial investigation into the death. "I believe the information they have provided to me raises sufficient questions and concerns about the death of Mr Saliba," Queensland Attorney-General Deb Frecklington said. "My thoughts are with Antonio's family, who have shared with me the grief and unanswered questions they have faced over the past 40 years." Fitzgerald Inquiry hears about death Mr Saliba, known as "Burra", operated a billiard saloon in Wood Street, Mackay, where Mr Meares said illegal card games were played. Danny Meares. ( Supplied: Danny Meares ) In a 1990 media report, Mr Saliba's brother Gerald was reported as giving evidence to the Fitzgerald Inquiry against corrupt police and said his brother "used to pay them to protect his prostitution and gambling interests in Mackay". Gerald Saliba was quoted as saying he had been told his brother had been held at gunpoint and hit with a hammer. Family detective work Mr Meares has been looking into his uncle's death for the past six months. He said that, on that fateful day, his uncle had been doing fencing work and when he failed to return, the farm caretakers raised the alarm. "All the guys from the billiard saloon went out looking and found his body, which was in a mess," he said. Mr Meares said the family never believed it was a horse-riding accident. "We always knew that it wasn't, and a lot of people in Mackay know the story. I think he was set up." Mr Meares said he has passed on information he has uncovered over the past six months to the Attorney-General and welcomed the coronial investigation. "Six months ago, I decided I was going to try to see if we could get somewhere," he said. " It's taken a few months, but it was great news to hear from the Attorney-General. " Antonio Saliba, left, with family. ( Supplied: Danny Meares ) Mr Meares said the family hoped for justice and answers, particularly for his uncle's two remaining brothers. "They're in their 80s now and in declining health, so we're hoping to get some closure for them before it's too late."
