Justice must be open

THE key fact in the ‘Lawyer X’ story can finally be told: a defence lawyer to members of the gangland and other criminals was secretly working for the police.

The reason this story has not been bigger across media is that is has only been reported in puzzling terms due to orders requested by Victoria Police and granted by acquiescing courts.

There will be some who will cheer the police on in this.

They will say the people locked up as a result of this unorthodox arrangement are bad people who have committed crimes and are better off in jail.

Much of this is true but the police who are there to enforce the law must also uphold it.

If there was nothing the public would find odious about this arrangement then why weren’t Victoria Police top brass happy to have it out there in public.

But perhaps the most disturbing element of this saga is the cover up that followed the attempts to report it.

Media has been gagged until this week’s fortunate intervention by the High Court.

At the very least the Victoria Police executive has not played by established protocols.

And now a Royal Commission will investigate the extent to which there has been official wrongdoing.

The Victoria Police executive have participated in criminal trials where it appears judges were not informed that the woman said to be defending the alleged criminals was actually working for police.

An unhappy consequence of this cowboy approach is that various jailbirds around the state may get their cases reviewed, retrials, or even be given ‘get out of jail free cards’.

We can see the beginning of the Victoria Police executive’s argument in response in the statements of chief commissioner Graham Ashton (a former head of the Office of Police Integrity).

There was a gangland war happening that had to be stopped, he argued. Top brass previously gagged this story on other grounds.

The silver lining is that the public will finally learn the truth.