The time is long past for a far-reaching inquiry into the administration of justice in the Australian state of Victoria.
Victorian police and public officials have been embarrassed and exposed by a series of public scandals and unsavoury revelations. Police and government politicians strenuously denied that the state had a problem with African crime, even as hundreds of African youth repeatedly rioted at major public events and mounted a terrifying campaign of assaults, robberies, carjackings and home invasions across Melbourne.
Melbourne “Gangland Killings” kingpin Carl Williams was murdered in prison in 2010 after it was leaked that police were paying his daughter’s private school fees in return for Williams turning informant. The Department of Justice Secretary and Corrections Victoria Commissioner both subsequently resigned. But worse was to come: the “Lawyer X” scandal revealed even more deep-seated rottenness, with the lawyer for major organised crime figures (including Williams) covertly acting as a registered police informant.
When it was revealed that the governing Victorian Labor party illegally used hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer’s money, government MPs simply refused to talk to the police. No one was questioned, no charges were ever laid.
The Cardinal George Pell saga should be the final straw that triggers a wide-reaching inquiry.
Someone must pay for the jailing of the innocent George Pell. Call an inquiry into Victoria’s police. Consider this damning statistic: Victoria Police has charged Pell 26 times for child sex abuse, but failed every single time. Every one of those charges was so far-fetched or so weak that it was dropped or ultimately dismissed — although not until Pell had spent a year in jail.
Imagine police trying 26 times to nail you, and failing every time because the charges were so stupid.
Wouldn’t you suspect they had it in for you?
Indeed, Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police Graham Ashton and Cardinal Pell have a bit of history.
The long running enmity between Ashton and Pell is a matter of public record.
Two years before Ashton became commissioner, he was embarrassed by Pell’s team at a 2013 Victorian parliamentary inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Organisations.
Ashton claimed the Melbourne Catholic Church had not referred a single child sexual abuse allegation to Victoria police. Pell’s legal team provided evidence that they had reported 97 of 304 complaints to the cops and encouraged a further 76 victims to go to police.
Ashton was humiliated.
During Cardinal Pell’s trial, police admitted under oath that they had formed a “Get Pell” squad, in the absence of any actual allegations. Instead, police went fishing, and publicly appealed for “victims”. This is an extraordinary reversal of the normal process of the law. Police were assuming their target’s guilt before they even had a crime.
And they’re still at it, along with their cronies, the taxpayer-funded ABC.
If the Victoria Police pursuit of Cardinal Pell isn’t a vendetta then the Pope isn’t a Catholic. You would think Victoria’s top cop Graham Ashton would be too busy wiping the egg off his face to go in for round two. But lo and behold, on Tuesday, exactly seven days after the High Court acquitted Pell and released him from jail, comes yet another leak, one must assume from Victoria police, that they are investigating another sexual abuse accusation against Pell.
But Ashton’s police force and Victorian prosecutors have no credibility when it comes to Cardinal Pell. They cannot be trusted in any further investigation involving him until they account for their failure.
Meanwhile, ABC journalists – who comprehensively failed to predict the outcome of Cardinal Pell’s appeal, even less accurately than they did the last Federal election – were breathlessly reporting that police had visited Pell at his temporary residence in Sydney. What they conveniently neglected to report was that police were investigating threats made against the Cardinal.
But the rottenness in Victoria goes all the way to the top. Premier Daniel Andrews has repeatedly cast aspersions at the High Court’s humiliating smackdown of his state’s justice system.
The perpetrators of this witch-hunt must be called to account.
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