Speaker 1: Welcome to conversations everybody. My guest today, Nick Caldice, has
Speaker 1: done it's just a really intriguing interesting story. He was
Speaker 1: from a well to do family in Egypt. Parents had
Speaker 1: large land holdings, but they were forced to flee the
Speaker 1: na's A regime and settled in Sydney. Could have been Adelaide,
Speaker 1: but they settled in Sydney. From there he worked his
Speaker 1: way up in the New Southwest Police Force to the
Speaker 1: ryle of Assistant Commissioner and he's done some amazing things.
Speaker 1: As I said, he's worked for the United Nations. He
Speaker 1: was requested to go and investigate the murder of the
Speaker 1: Lebanese Prime Minister of Fike Herriri, and then he was
Speaker 1: the commissioner of the Royal Commission in the Veteran's suicide.
Speaker 1: But he joins us now. He's written a book called
Speaker 1: Behind the Badge. Nick. Thank you for your time. How
Speaker 1: are you good?
Speaker 2: Thanks? Thanks very much for having men really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: It's just one of those books you can't put down.
Speaker 1: I mean you can pick it up and you're very kind. Well,
Speaker 1: I think we all like true crime, but there's also
Speaker 1: the human element of it. You know, your family's history
Speaker 1: in Egypt, which is really interesting. So can you I
Speaker 1: mean it sounds like you're from a very well to
Speaker 1: do family, can you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were back to your grandparents.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, my grandfather who I was named after, So
Speaker 3: nick is a nickname. My real name is Negeb or
Speaker 3: as the Arabs say, Najib I was named after him.
Speaker 3: He was titled he was the equivalent of a sur
Speaker 3: at bay in Arabic and he was titled given that
Speaker 3: by King Farouk before they deposed the king and turned
Speaker 3: it into a republic.
Speaker 2: But we were willing to do, but.
Speaker 3: My father got to a point where we had to
Speaker 3: get out of there, and I think the logic was
Speaker 3: that the line for America was too long and Canada
Speaker 3: was too cold.
Speaker 2: So we headed to Australia.
Speaker 1: So what was the connection in Adelaide, Because there was
Speaker 1: a brief over there. You could have ended up in Adelais.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: There's one family of Egyptian people who we've never met
Speaker 3: and we've lost track of, who were good friends with
Speaker 3: one of my uncles, and they actually signed paperwork to
Speaker 3: sponsor us, to say we're off a good character and
Speaker 3: so on. But we never got there. We rang and
Speaker 3: said we'll sorry, we're not coming. As we stopped in
Speaker 3: Sydney and caught up with another friend of a family
Speaker 3: and he said, don't go to Adelaide. There's not as
Speaker 3: much work there and you'll have more chance of getting
Speaker 3: work in Sydney. So we ended up staying in Sydney
Speaker 3: rather than Adelaide.
Speaker 1: What intrigued me is you left so much behind in
Speaker 1: each all, even though a lot of it had in
Speaker 1: time been acquired by the government. But what sort of
Speaker 1: land holding you talked about The amount of land that
Speaker 1: your family did own. Yes, south of Cairo, so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we're all. We're all from the south. They
Speaker 3: call it Upper Egypt, even though it's way down south
Speaker 3: because the Nile flows down from the from Africa really
Speaker 3: and then ends up in the Mediterranean, so the Nile
Speaker 3: flows downwards, they call it Upper Egypt, but it's south
Speaker 3: and that's where our family comes from. We did have
Speaker 3: substantial landholdings. My father had obviously his own, but he
Speaker 3: also managed fairly large amounts of land in farming for
Speaker 3: widows and aunties and uncles who didn't have a capacity
Speaker 3: to do so, so he'd managed that for them as well.
Speaker 3: But they did confiscate all of that and allegedly for
Speaker 3: distribution to peasants, which we're not sure what happened. And
Speaker 3: they gave them everyone government bonds, which frankly ended up
Speaker 3: being worthless. Really it was extreme sort of socialism, and
Speaker 3: certainly at that stage Egypt took a fairly sharp turn
Speaker 3: to the left. President Nasa was anti West and he
Speaker 3: was embraced very much by the Soviet Bloc, and you know,
Speaker 3: they steered him in that direction.
Speaker 1: Obviously never been back to look at the family's landholding,
Speaker 1: just to sort of about.
Speaker 2: That, Yeah, I haven't.
Speaker 3: We had a house near where all the farms were
Speaker 3: apart from my house, and I stewed with the city
Speaker 3: where we come from, and I did get back a
Speaker 3: couple of times to visit, and some of the workers
Speaker 3: there remembered me, and then they just stood there looking
Speaker 3: at me, and then finally one of them said, you know,
Speaker 3: you look just like him, and I said, apparently I
Speaker 3: looked just like my father, God rest hisself.
Speaker 1: So you're ten years old when you twelve? Yeah, twelve twelve,
Speaker 1: So you've got great memories of it.
Speaker 2: Could you speak?
Speaker 1: You could speak?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wasn't special.
Speaker 3: I think everyone in Egypt at the time, if you
Speaker 3: went to a private school, which most people did you.
Speaker 3: I spoke English, French and Arabic before we came out.
Speaker 3: I've lost my French unfortunately after fifty years, but the
Speaker 3: Arabic is still pretty good.
Speaker 1: How were you received, this young Egyptian twelve year old
Speaker 1: going to school. I mean kind of must have been tough.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't imagine you weren't bullied.
Speaker 2: A little bit.
Speaker 3: But we lived in Marigville when we got he first,
Speaker 3: and I went to Margville dealer sou and I think,
Speaker 3: I mean, I wouldn't have statistics or anything, but my
Speaker 3: guess is that the majority of students in Margnal de
Speaker 3: la Sale at the time were actually migrants. I felt
Speaker 3: quite quite comfortable there.
Speaker 1: Your dad had to come out and get a manual
Speaker 1: working job, basically, but did he ever talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: the change of life and.
Speaker 2: We could see it. Graham.
Speaker 3: He has never had never worked for anyone else. He
Speaker 3: was always running his own show and he had very
Speaker 3: large numbers of people working for him. The first job
Speaker 3: he got was on the factory floor in Australia in
Speaker 3: standard telephons and cables and redfern just on the factory
Speaker 3: floor and he adjusted, He did what he had to do.
Speaker 3: Then he had a courier van for a while, and
Speaker 3: then eventually he set up a laundry and dry cleaning
Speaker 3: business at Flemington and we went from there. He had
Speaker 3: that till he died, and then we sold it after
Speaker 3: he passed away.
Speaker 2: But he was.
Speaker 3: Happy to do whatever he needed to do to make
Speaker 3: sure that the family's fed and looked after.
Speaker 1: He died young.
Speaker 2: He did just turned sixty.
Speaker 1: Actually, how did that impact on you?
Speaker 3: It was complete shock. He had had a heart condition.
Speaker 3: Heart conditions run and you know they joke that men
Speaker 3: die young in our family. In Upper Egypt in particular,
Speaker 3: they don't use butter to cook. They use gee, and
Speaker 3: it's really sort of artery. It tastes great, but it's
Speaker 3: artery clogging stuff. And Egyptians are not renowned for their
Speaker 3: exercise capability. So it was a combination of factors. But
Speaker 3: a lot of my uncles died very young as well,
Speaker 3: mainly with heart conditions.
Speaker 1: The dynamics of the family are always intrigued. You had
Speaker 1: a sister, Yeah, My father was insistent that she marrying
Speaker 1: a nice Egyptian boy. Yeah, but she resisted can you
Speaker 1: just recite that for us?
Speaker 2: Yeah, she'll probably kill me.
Speaker 3: But so, she'd met a fellow at her she worked
Speaker 3: in the office of Standard Telephants and Cables. My father
Speaker 3: managed to get her a job there, and she'd met
Speaker 3: this nice Australian fellow called Bruce, of course, and he
Speaker 3: my dad took a fair bit of adjustment to realize
Speaker 3: that she wasn't going to be marrying an Egyptian. Many
Speaker 3: suitors came forward through our church and she just wouldn't
Speaker 3: accept any. And then I think the tide turned when
Speaker 3: my mother switched sides and sided with my sister to say, look,
Speaker 3: you've got to give this a go. And then my
Speaker 3: dad was outnumbered and outflanked, and we met Bruce, and
Speaker 3: we eventually met his parents, and I'm happy to say
Speaker 3: so they've been married now probably gosh, close to fifty years,
Speaker 3: and they're very, very happy. He's a huge part of
Speaker 3: the family. He's been an incredible brother in law. He's
Speaker 3: always been there for us. He's a fantastic fellow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he wasn't. He didn't look anything like an Egyptian,
Speaker 1: did he He look.
Speaker 3: He had blonde hair, and he was about six foot
Speaker 3: three or something. But yeah, he came in on a
Speaker 3: Saturday morning and my brother and I were peeking through
Speaker 3: the blinds to see what this fellow looked like. He
Speaker 3: had to have a sit down with my father and
Speaker 3: he had a nice suit on, it had a haircut
Speaker 3: and everything. And then that went well, and then my
Speaker 3: father said, well, we're going to have to meet your parents.
Speaker 3: So the next Saturday he came up with his parents
Speaker 3: and he and his dad had nice suits on and
Speaker 3: nice haircuts and.
Speaker 2: Everything went well. And then eventually they yeah, they got married.
Speaker 1: Oh happily ever after. Your brother's story is interesting too,
Speaker 1: because it sounded like he could have been anything chose
Speaker 1: to the church.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he was Ducks. He went to Sydney Tech
Speaker 3: Boys at Hurstville. He actually duckst year twelve and he
Speaker 3: was in the top one percent and a number of
Speaker 3: subjects in the HC. And he went to medicine at
Speaker 3: Sydney Uni, finished it and practiced for a few years.
Speaker 3: He was heading towards specializing as a pediatrician. I think
Speaker 3: that's what he wanted to do, but then he got
Speaker 3: the call and gave up medicine and became a priest
Speaker 3: in our church. We copped the Orthodox Christians and he
Speaker 3: hasn't looked back. I mean, he's happy doing what he's doing.
Speaker 3: And obviously my mother just wanted him to set himself
Speaker 3: up a little bit financially, but he made his mind
Speaker 3: up and that was it.
Speaker 2: That's what he wanted to do.
Speaker 1: I don't think we understand clearly the presence of the
Speaker 1: Coptic Christians in that melting plot that is Asian.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've got gosh, quite a sizeable president. I think
Speaker 3: it's perhaps or ninety thousand people, and we've got probably
Speaker 3: two dozen churches in just New South Wales and Queensland
Speaker 3: and the Northern Territory. We do have a sizeable present.
Speaker 3: I think we started migrating probably certainly a trickle in
Speaker 3: the late fifties, but then in the sixties because of
Speaker 3: the wars and so on in the situation in Egypt,
Speaker 3: many more I think started to migrate in the late
Speaker 3: sixties and that continued for some time from the Coptic
Speaker 3: Orthodox Faith.
Speaker 1: We need to take a break. Nick Caldas is my
Speaker 1: guest behind the badge backshortly, folks, Welcome back everybody. If
Speaker 1: you just tuned in, we're speaking with Nick Caldice he's
Speaker 1: a very affable gentleman. He was the Deputy Commissioner of
Speaker 1: Police in New South Wales and resigned after a stellar
Speaker 1: career and went and did some other great things, not
Speaker 1: the least of which was chairing the Commission into Veterans Suicide.
Speaker 1: I know there's a longer title to that, Nick and
Speaker 1: will come to that. He's recounted his life story and
Speaker 1: behind the badge. So you're a young fellow, immigrated from
Speaker 1: Egypt when you're twelve, go to school. I do well
Speaker 1: at school or did you?
Speaker 2: Just? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I did reasonably well, not as well as my brother
Speaker 3: who was who's incredibly bright and committed, and he went
Speaker 3: on to do medicine, as I mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did sport embrace you? Or did you embrace sport?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I'd liked I played rugby league. I also played soccer.
Speaker 3: I didn't like cricket and still don't, I have to say,
Speaker 3: but I played soccer almost into my twenties and I
Speaker 3: quite enjoy all sports now, particularly rugby league and rugby union.
Speaker 3: And my son has played both leagues and union, and
Speaker 3: I obviously used to go and watch him all the time.
Speaker 3: He's a pan of which I'm sort of quite proud
Speaker 3: of we're paying out of supporters. He didn't have any choice.
Speaker 3: He was born into it.
Speaker 1: So you leave school and you go to work in
Speaker 1: an insurance company. What attracted you to the police force.
Speaker 3: I think I always wanted to join the police force grant,
Speaker 3: but I just in that stage. So it's a sort
Speaker 3: of late seventies early eighties. There were height requirements and
Speaker 3: I didn't think I was tall enough, so I put
Speaker 3: it off for a few years and it.
Speaker 2: Didn't hurt me.
Speaker 3: I've got some life experience, and that's some really good
Speaker 3: friends made for good friends. An insurance company and so
Speaker 3: on that I was working at and superannuation. But then
Speaker 3: eventually I pumped up the courage and went in. And
Speaker 3: I was tall enough, there's no problem. But if you
Speaker 3: can believe it, I was too skinny. I had to
Speaker 3: put on away. I haven't had that problem since then.
Speaker 3: But I always wanted to do it, and I knew
Speaker 3: I wanted to go into criminal investigations, so you had
Speaker 3: to do a minimum three years. I did about three
Speaker 3: and a half years in uniform on the truck around
Speaker 3: Balmain and light Art, and then went into the detectives.
Speaker 3: Selected to go into the detectives, and then there's a
Speaker 3: couple of years of studying after that to become an
Speaker 3: actual detective. You're a playing clothes constable, not a detective
Speaker 3: until you complete the training and you're accredited getting your
Speaker 3: designation as a detective.
Speaker 1: There's a photo of you on your graduation. You're a
Speaker 1: fine cut of a young man.
Speaker 2: I was quite skinny, but I was fit in those days.
Speaker 3: But you know, I look at you, you look at
Speaker 3: current photos.
Speaker 2: And he said, the ravages of time.
Speaker 1: Tell me about it. But what attracted you to policing?
Speaker 1: Was there anything specific?
Speaker 3: I think, and I think I mentioned it in the
Speaker 3: book that I have a friend who's a former deputy
Speaker 3: commissioner from NYPD in New York, Mark Julian, who talks
Speaker 3: about why people join the police, and he's a bit
Speaker 3: of a philosopher, and he says, at some stage, you've
Speaker 3: seen or witnessed bullying, or you've been the victim of bullying,
Speaker 3: and somehow' s upconsciously. He thinks we all join the
Speaker 3: police to right wrongs and to help those who can't
Speaker 3: help themselves, and to stand up to bullies. And I
Speaker 3: think in many ways that was sort of the unsaid.
Speaker 3: Almost the undiagnosed reason for me joining. I thought it
Speaker 3: would be a sort of great noble cause, and certain
Speaker 3: in plane clothes or criminal investigation in particular, that is
Speaker 3: exactly what you do, whether investigating murders or arm robberies
Speaker 3: or rapes or whatever it might be, the people who
Speaker 3: are essentially bullies and have done terrible things to others,
Speaker 3: and you're righting wrongs hopefully every day.
Speaker 1: You would describe a couple of cases in the book,
Speaker 1: one as the murder of John Newman, who was a politician.
Speaker 3: He was a member of Parliament in New South Wales
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 1: That was going to great detail which I found really
Speaker 1: interesting about how you were able to find the gun
Speaker 1: that was used in the shooting, and can you just
Speaker 1: give us a sure? I mean, people have to buy
Speaker 1: the book, I know.
Speaker 2: That, but I hope they do.
Speaker 3: But very briefly, Grant took seven years from murder to conviction.
Speaker 3: An awful lot happened, but essentially this fellow was a
Speaker 3: political opponent of John Newman, and John Newman had said
Speaker 3: to him, You're never going to get anywhere as long
Speaker 3: as I'm around, because I think you're a crook, and
Speaker 3: he was a crook, so he approached three different groups
Speaker 3: to do it, all of whom knocked it back at
Speaker 3: all of whom we found and turned and they all
Speaker 3: gave evidence to that effect. And we were probably one
Speaker 3: of the first investigated investigative groups to use and communications analysis,
Speaker 3: analyzing the phone calls, records of the phone calls, which
Speaker 3: broadly tell you where people were and when, and they
Speaker 3: were certainly all around the time of the murder, in
Speaker 3: the vicinity of the murder. And then after the murder,
Speaker 3: the murderer fun Can, who's been convicted and sentenced to life,
Speaker 3: went to the footbridge, a voyager point in the George's River,
Speaker 3: and cutting a long story short, some years later we
Speaker 3: dredged the river found the murder weapon there, which was
Speaker 3: matched ballistically after some effort by the German police, who
Speaker 3: had an excellent forensic capacity for that sort of thing,
Speaker 3: because the gun had rusted very quickly and rodded. We
Speaker 3: can prove that the murderer was at this spot immediately
Speaker 3: after the murder, and we found the murder weapon there
Speaker 3: which was matched ballistically. And as I said, and there's
Speaker 3: a lot of other circumstantial evidence, but.
Speaker 1: You would have thought. Looks, it was twenty miles away
Speaker 1: from the murder scene, wasn't it. There was some distance
Speaker 1: away from the murder scene.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was about ten fifteen kilometers something
Speaker 3: like that. Yeah, not too far.
Speaker 1: So he stopped at a bridge and he's throwing the gun.
Speaker 1: You think there'd be no way in the world that
Speaker 1: anybody could find that gun. Well, that's an amazing piece
Speaker 1: of place it was.
Speaker 3: But the phone records is what led us there, because
Speaker 3: he stood there making calls, trying to alibi himself, if
Speaker 3: you like saying, Now, I was on the phone, and
Speaker 3: the phones are what did him in because that led
Speaker 3: us to where the gun was, and it proved conclusively
Speaker 3: that he was there at the time and place of
Speaker 3: the murder.
Speaker 2: Having said all of that, we had hearings.
Speaker 3: In the Crime Commission to try and roll some of
Speaker 3: these people he had approached, and then we had a
Speaker 3: coroner's inquest which went for some months. Then we had
Speaker 3: a three month committal hearing in the lower court, and
Speaker 3: we had three Supreme Court trials. The last one was
Speaker 3: where he was convicted, and then he appealed to the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court of New soathwas a court a criminal appeal,
Speaker 3: it was knocked back, and then he tried to appeal
Speaker 3: to the High Court of Australia, which refused to hear
Speaker 3: his appeal, saying you haven't got any reasonable grounds. And
Speaker 3: then he was granted the Royal Commission into his conviction,
Speaker 3: which went for nine months. So it was probably the
Speaker 3: most scrutinized investigation I've had anything to do with. But
Speaker 3: despite all of that, and despite the overwhelming evidence which
Speaker 3: was described as they have a willing evidence by the
Speaker 3: Royal Commissioner, Judge Patten, who said that he couldn't find
Speaker 3: a scare of evidence that I or the other members
Speaker 3: of the team had done anything wrong, there are still
Speaker 3: people saying he was framed and that he should be released.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just it's astounding, really you mention.
Speaker 1: But one of the jurors in the first.
Speaker 2: Trial, yes, the second. The first one was aboarded.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately the second one, there was one juror who simply
Speaker 3: refused to convict, and we know now that it was
Speaker 3: eleven to one and they advised the judge that they
Speaker 3: will not be able to reach the verdict. And some
Speaker 3: of the jurors when they told the judge that were
Speaker 3: crying in the jury box and the court. There was
Speaker 3: a very very sad, you know, very dreadful sequence of events.
Speaker 1: Really, as a policeman, you see, you see good, but
Speaker 1: you see the worst of life. What was the worst
Speaker 1: case you're involved in? Can you recount that?
Speaker 3: I think some of the murders we've seen, I think
Speaker 3: there's one I mentioned in the book where a really bright,
Speaker 3: nice young fellow went to a dance party in Castle
Speaker 3: Hill and had a fight with someone who stabbed him
Speaker 3: to death on the dance floor. I mean, just two
Speaker 3: lives there. Lost one victim obviously has lost his life,
Speaker 3: but the offense that ended up getting a very lengthy
Speaker 3: sentence in jail, and you know there's many family very
Speaker 3: affected by that.
Speaker 2: There's probably too many to think of.
Speaker 3: But as you say, Grain, we certainly get to see
Speaker 3: the best of humanity, but you also see the worst
Speaker 3: of humanity as well.
Speaker 1: Well. I'm intrigued as how you get selected to go
Speaker 1: and investigate like a murderer in Lebanon and meet with
Speaker 1: the head of the Syrian security forces. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: intriguing to me. Nick Coldice is my guest, folks, former
Speaker 1: Deputy Commissioner of Police in New South Wales. He's written
Speaker 1: a book called Behind the Badge. Do good work, Live
Speaker 1: by your belief, Fear no one. It is as I
Speaker 1: said at the start, it's one of those books that
Speaker 1: you just won't put down back shortly, Welcome back, everybody.
Speaker 1: My guest on conversations today is Nick Caldice. He's a
Speaker 1: former policeman. He achieved the rank of Deputy Commissioner of
Speaker 1: Police in New South Wales and often did other amazing
Speaker 1: things which will come to and he's recounted the adventures
Speaker 1: in his book Behind the Bat with Roger Joyce. Roger's
Speaker 1: a journalist, I guess is he.
Speaker 2: He's more a writer.
Speaker 3: I think he's written a lot of other people's books,
Speaker 3: and he has written I think screenplays for movies and
Speaker 3: so on.
Speaker 1: How on earth does a policeman in New South Wales
Speaker 1: get to ask to go and investigate the murder of
Speaker 1: a Lebanese prime minister.
Speaker 3: I had served for most of a year in two
Speaker 3: thousand and four as a senior police advisor in Iraq
Speaker 3: with coalition forces. So the FBI and other people on
Speaker 3: you in US circles asked for me to go to
Speaker 3: Iraq to rebuild the Iraqi police. So I got noticed.
Speaker 3: I guess there, and I'm fluent in Arabic and I'm
Speaker 3: reasonably comfortable in a conflict zone. So but then this
Speaker 3: series of murders occurred in Lebanon, and the United Nations
Speaker 3: was given jurisdiction by the Lebanese government to investigate because
Speaker 3: they didn't feel they could investigate them properly with the
Speaker 3: suspects being Hesbellah and Hesbella having pretty much infiltrated most
Speaker 3: arms of the government and actually being in cabinet in
Speaker 3: the government. So they ceded jurisdiction to the United Nations
Speaker 3: and a fellow called Daniel Belmar was the first prosecutor
Speaker 3: of this investigation that was established pursu into a Security
Speaker 3: Council resolution from the UN after the request from the
Speaker 3: Lebanese government. So he came and spoke at a conference,
Speaker 3: or we went spoke at a conference rather with Nick Cowdrey,
Speaker 3: who was the Director of Public Prosecutions in New South
Speaker 3: Wales and they were good friends. And he said to
Speaker 3: Nick Cawdry, I'm looking for someone with three things. Homicide experience,
Speaker 3: preferably an Arabic speaker, and someone who's got a proven
Speaker 3: track record of not pupping their pants in the Middle East.
Speaker 3: And so Nick Calvary rang me, and he was his
Speaker 3: good friend, and he just said, I think you were
Speaker 3: born for that job. You will quit it, and you
Speaker 3: need to think about it. So I was through my
Speaker 3: hat in the ring and I got the job off.
Speaker 2: To living on.
Speaker 1: Well, how do you start to sure?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a really good question, Graham, And I think
Speaker 3: how I approached it, and I think it worked out
Speaker 3: in the end, and I'll come to an outcome shortly.
Speaker 2: But it is a murder investigation.
Speaker 3: I mean, many people who were there before me were
Speaker 3: caught up in the motive and why people should could
Speaker 3: have done it, should have done it, and whatever. None
Speaker 3: of that will actually get you a conviction or produce
Speaker 3: a brief of evidence.
Speaker 2: The building blocks of a normal.
Speaker 3: In any murder investigation, A tangible evidence like the crime scene,
Speaker 3: the explosive evidence, the forensic evidence, witnesses statements, you know,
Speaker 3: all of those. They're building blocks. If you like, you
Speaker 3: have to go through all of that, and that's where
Speaker 3: we started. We went back and did all that properly.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of forensic evidence, a lot of witnesses statements,
Speaker 3: not just what happened on the day, but in the
Speaker 3: things leading up to it and so on, and you
Speaker 3: put all that together and then the picture becomes clear
Speaker 3: in that particular one. Ironically or happily, I guess. We
Speaker 3: actually also relied on communications analysis, again similar to the
Speaker 3: murder of John Ewman, and we proved that the five
Speaker 3: guys that were indicted had had a practice run. And
Speaker 3: then we're in the vicinity of the murder at the
Speaker 3: time of the murder, and they had bought phones and
Speaker 3: sim cards that they used to coordinate for the murder,
Speaker 3: and then they shredded those.
Speaker 2: Obviously they threw them out.
Speaker 3: After that, but we proved that for each of the murderers,
Speaker 3: their real phone and the murder phone, if I can
Speaker 3: call it, that the red cell network had moved together
Speaker 3: for about six months for each of them.
Speaker 2: And that was very conclusive.
Speaker 1: Really, at the end they shredded the sim card, you
Speaker 1: can still track.
Speaker 3: You can the record of the calls that were made
Speaker 3: and the background of where and when they were made
Speaker 3: remains in the system. You might throw out your SIM
Speaker 3: card in the bin, but it doesn't delete the records
Speaker 3: in the system. People need to think about that.
Speaker 1: You're giving too much information.
Speaker 2: Sorry.
Speaker 3: The five people we indicted were all members of Hesblah,
Speaker 3: and the now deceased head of Hesbela at the time,
Speaker 3: Hassan Mastrolla, gave a number of speeches attacking me personally,
Speaker 3: accusing me of being a CIA agent because I'd spend
Speaker 3: time in Iraq and being a Israeli sympathizer and what
Speaker 3: have you. I'd never set foot in Israel or anything
Speaker 3: else at that stage, but anyway, it's a bit of
Speaker 3: a contact sport in the Middle East.
Speaker 1: I understand that, but it seems such a lawless society,
Speaker 1: and I just wonder how there's so many questions. Firstly,
Speaker 1: how did you find the suspect that who could easily
Speaker 1: disappear to the population. But how dangerous was it for you?
Speaker 1: How threatened?
Speaker 2: I don't think.
Speaker 3: I think Hesbelo in particularly are quite rational about how
Speaker 3: they do evil things, and I think at some point
Speaker 3: they almost do a cost benefit analysis. And I was
Speaker 3: the chief of investigation in a United Nations tribunal. If
Speaker 3: anything happened to me, there was going to be hell
Speaker 3: to pay, and in terms of a benefit for them,
Speaker 3: there wasn't going to be any. Once the indictments were
Speaker 3: laid and the trials proceeded. I'd bowed out, but there
Speaker 3: was absolutely no benefit to be gained by them killing me,
Speaker 3: so I proceeded on that basis. And I've always felt that,
Speaker 3: you know, when your time's up, your times up, you
Speaker 3: don't do anything silly, you're careful and all of that,
Speaker 3: but at the end of the day, you know you
Speaker 3: can't spend the rest of your life sort of fearing
Speaker 3: things and hiding in a corner somewhere.
Speaker 1: It's pretty scary, though.
Speaker 2: It wasn't that scary.
Speaker 3: I if I could just go back a little bit gray,
Speaker 3: and this may be you have interest. I actually lived
Speaker 3: through the Six Day War as a ten year old,
Speaker 3: when Cairo was getting bombed and all that sort of stuff,
Speaker 3: and then I went to Iraq, as I said, for
Speaker 3: the best part of a year, and we did two
Speaker 3: more tools after I finished. And I find that with
Speaker 3: these conflict zones and whatever and dangerous areas, you can't
Speaker 3: really predict how you'll react until you're in it. And
Speaker 3: I found it didn't worry any you know, I can
Speaker 3: function and hopefully effectively and get the job done. Focus
Speaker 3: on what you've got to do, and be careful don't
Speaker 3: do anying silly, but also that be afraid. You can't
Speaker 3: share fear, and you can't let those who may wish
Speaker 3: you harm know that they've got you rattled.
Speaker 2: All is lost.
Speaker 1: If you do that, you start recounting a meeting with
Speaker 1: the head of the Syrian Secret Police. I guess the
Speaker 1: best way of describing it. And it's as I imagine
Speaker 1: it to be in the movies, where you know your
Speaker 1: frisk you let your body goes left behind. You're let
Speaker 1: into this compound. And what led you to that? I
Speaker 1: mean how.
Speaker 3: I so I The last position I had with the
Speaker 3: U N was the head of oversight in each big
Speaker 3: part of the UN has to have an office of
Speaker 3: overside and one of the larger parts of the UN
Speaker 3: is unaway the United Nations Relief Works Agency, which does
Speaker 3: everything for the Palestine refugees in five places Lebanon, Syria, Jordan,
Speaker 3: Gaza in the West Bank. So I was the head
Speaker 3: of oversight for that area in those five countries and
Speaker 3: so on. So it's sort of like internal affairs, if
Speaker 3: you like, i'd thought apartment's investigations and orders evaluation and.
Speaker 2: An ethics division.
Speaker 3: Wearing that hat, my investigator has been barred from getting
Speaker 3: into Syria and they needed to go to carry out
Speaker 3: a whole lot of investigations into corruption allegations and so on.
Speaker 3: So I had to find a solution to get them
Speaker 3: into the country because Syria insisted on even if you're
Speaker 3: traveling on a UN diplomatic passport, he had to get
Speaker 3: a visa. So I managed through an Egyptian fellow I
Speaker 3: had met who knew people in the regime introduced me
Speaker 3: to the major General who was in charge of everything
Speaker 3: basically in faracy, intelligence, caes and so on, and he
Speaker 3: could click his fingers and make things happening. I got
Speaker 3: an introduction, and I wasn't sure if he knew who
Speaker 3: I was, because I had led the investigation into Hariri
Speaker 3: and we pointed the finger at the Syrian regime and
Speaker 3: at his government. And then I'd done the investigation into
Speaker 3: the use of chemical weapons and we had again pointed
Speaker 3: the finger at him personally and his government. And then
Speaker 3: I go to see him asking for a visa, and
Speaker 3: he was so warm and really really open, and we
Speaker 3: sat down and we ended up having a Cuban cigar
Speaker 3: or two and a cup of coffee, and he said,
Speaker 3: what do you need, and I told him.
Speaker 2: We just need visas for my staff to be able
Speaker 2: to get in to do this.
Speaker 3: And I assured him that they were not there investigating
Speaker 3: the regime. They were there investigating United Nations issues and
Speaker 3: the United Nations staff.
Speaker 2: And he was good to his word.
Speaker 3: For the next probably two years or two and a
Speaker 3: half years, three years, we got visas whenever we wanted
Speaker 3: them to go in. And I never knew whether he
Speaker 3: knew who I was or what I'd done prior to
Speaker 3: meeting him, until the last time I saw him.
Speaker 2: I went to say goodbye in Damascus and.
Speaker 3: I just said to him, you know, we were talking
Speaker 3: about something, and I said, people have written a report
Speaker 3: about that, and he just looked at me and said,
Speaker 3: in the Gee, people write reports about all sorts of things.
Speaker 3: It doesn't mean anything and it won't do anything. And
Speaker 3: he started laughing. So he knew exactly who I was,
Speaker 3: but I think he just wanted to size me up.
Speaker 3: And we talked earlier Graham about lovable rogues. I think
Speaker 3: he's in that category. He was someone who if he
Speaker 3: wasn't what he was, you probably quite enjoy his company.
Speaker 2: You know, very very.
Speaker 3: Learned and well read and affable and in a good
Speaker 3: sense of humor and.
Speaker 1: All of that, I guess is Nick Caldas. Amongst many things,
Speaker 1: he was the Deputy Commissioner of Police in New South Wales.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about the role as the Chairman
Speaker 1: of the Royal Commission into Defense and Veteran Suicide when
Speaker 1: we come back backshortly. Folks, Welcome back everybody. If you
Speaker 1: just tuned in, we're speaking with Nick Caldas. He was
Speaker 1: the Deputy Commissioner of Police in New South Wales and
Speaker 1: if you just tuned in, if you didn't tune in,
Speaker 1: you should go back and listen to it because he's
Speaker 1: worked with the United Nations. Was interesting to look just
Speaker 1: quickly before we get onto other things. It sounded as
Speaker 1: though you want all that critical of the Syrian dictator Assad.
Speaker 3: Now I was, in fact, my team and I authored
Speaker 3: the report that absolutely blamed him for the use of
Speaker 3: chemical weapons on his people, and we said they were
Speaker 3: absolutely heartless in what they did. But so that's that's
Speaker 3: my judgment. That he did terrible things to people in
Speaker 3: the prisons and the people they had arrested and tortured
Speaker 3: and so on.
Speaker 2: We have so much evidence of that there's no doubt
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 3: I guess the point the only point is that when
Speaker 3: I did meet this fellow who was the head of
Speaker 3: the secret police, it was very difficult when you're up
Speaker 3: close and personal to connect that in some way to
Speaker 3: the things that you know that the regime has been
Speaker 3: doing and was doing at the time. There's a sight
Speaker 3: to it that's sort of human, you know, It's like
Speaker 3: people in war. I remember reading one of George AWA's
Speaker 3: books about the Spanish Civil War and he talked about
Speaker 3: he saw an enemy there who was he was on
Speaker 3: the Republican side against the Franco forces, and he saw
Speaker 3: a fellow having you having a poop and he could
Speaker 3: have shot him thead and he just said, you know,
Speaker 3: humanity sort of kicked in. He said, he's just another
Speaker 3: guy who's trying to get on life and he's going
Speaker 3: to the.
Speaker 2: Toilet and he couldn't bring himself to shoot him.
Speaker 1: Did you were you dis in charge with the police
Speaker 1: force in the end, I mean, there was the incidents
Speaker 1: where you've, amongst other officers, you've phones were bugged, and
Speaker 1: how did that sit.
Speaker 3: It rankled obviously, and it's not the main reason I left.
Speaker 3: I think after thirty five years, I was ready to
Speaker 3: move on, and it became clear to me that I
Speaker 3: wasn't really I probably wasn't going to get the commissioner's job,
Speaker 3: and the stuff I went through took a bit of
Speaker 3: a toll on my health as well.
Speaker 2: So it was time to move on. And I'm a
Speaker 2: big believer that when you move on, you move on.
Speaker 3: I haven't sit foot in police premises since I left,
Speaker 3: and you just go and do other things and hopefully
Speaker 3: be useful and don't look back.
Speaker 2: And that's what I did.
Speaker 3: I don't think I'll ever say, you know, I've got
Speaker 3: ill feelings towards the organization or the people.
Speaker 2: I never will.
Speaker 3: And I say in the book that if you know,
Speaker 3: when they do well, I'm proud of them, and then
Speaker 3: if they suffer, I agree for them. You know, so
Speaker 3: you never really get it out of your blood, I
Speaker 3: guess once you've done three and a half decades.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you talk about post from an ex stress disorder,
Speaker 1: and we understand completely what it would happen to policemen
Speaker 1: and ambulance officers and nurses and the like, but it
Speaker 1: takes a personal toile. I mean, you impact on your
Speaker 1: marriage even though you had you got three kids.
Speaker 3: I have, yeah, yeah, and it does take a tile
Speaker 3: on your family as well. It's not just you and
Speaker 3: I guess if we could mention. So I was requested
Speaker 3: and I did share the Royal Commission and to defense
Speaker 3: and veteran suicides. And one of the reasons I accepted
Speaker 3: that role. It took me a little while to agree,
Speaker 3: to be honest, because I knew it was going to
Speaker 3: be a hard slog. But I saw and my views
Speaker 3: were confirmed as we went along a lot of similarities
Speaker 3: between police and emergency services and the military and the problems.
Speaker 2: So I took on that role.
Speaker 3: And I now know that on any given year, up
Speaker 3: to eighty percent of those whose suicide from a military
Speaker 3: background have never been to war. It's how the organization
Speaker 3: treats them. It's how their colleagues treat them. It's the
Speaker 3: chain of command, it's a disciplinary system being weaponar against them.
Speaker 3: That's all of those things. And then when they transition
Speaker 3: out of the military, it's the things that sometimes happened
Speaker 3: to them there as well, where they can't get all
Speaker 3: their benefits and they really struggle to get their pension
Speaker 3: and their medicine medical bills.
Speaker 2: Paid and so on.
Speaker 3: All of those were problems that we looked at and
Speaker 3: hopefully made recommendations that could fix these issues.
Speaker 1: You made one hundred and twenty two recommendations. I looked
Speaker 1: at it closely because I was trying to There was
Speaker 1: a couple of suicides with AFL footballers not that long ago,
Speaker 1: and I've seen both. I've seen the sporting camaraderie and
Speaker 1: I've seen the military camaraderie, and there's similarities. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not life and death as a sportsman, but I
Speaker 1: was trying to relate any of those recommendations to sport.
Speaker 1: But I thought, one hundred and twenty two recommendations, how
Speaker 1: on earth is it possible to implement all of those?
Speaker 3: Well, we actually studied it is possible, and some of
Speaker 3: them are really low hanging fruit. It's not a huge
Speaker 3: effort required, such as streamlining processes for making claims and
Speaker 3: so on in the department bedroom affairs. But bottom line
Speaker 3: is we studied other recent Royle commissions and some of
Speaker 3: them have had three and four hundred recommendations, so we
Speaker 3: trended them down to one hundred and twenty two, as
Speaker 3: you know, and one hundred and four have now been
Speaker 3: accepted by the other and easy government, and they did
Speaker 3: so in record time, which.
Speaker 2: Were very grateful for and very happy about, obviously.
Speaker 3: But the main recommendation, Graham, and the one that really matters,
Speaker 3: is we had identified fifty seven inquiries that preceded US
Speaker 3: seven hundred and seventy odd recommendations. Out of those fifty
Speaker 3: seven inquiries about all aspects of suicidality over thirty years,
Speaker 3: hardly anyone had ever gone back to check whether those
Speaker 3: recommendations had been acquitted and whether they met the intent
Speaker 3: of the recommendation. Some of them senate inquiries that were
Speaker 3: quite significant. A lot of good work had gone into them.
Speaker 2: No one followed up. So the main recommendation.
Speaker 3: Out of ours, and the one that really mattered, it
Speaker 3: was the only one that mattered, was that they established
Speaker 3: a body with Royal Commission powers and the ability to
Speaker 3: check whether our recommendations were being implemented properly or not.
Speaker 3: And then forever more report on the welfare issues and
Speaker 3: what's happening with all aspects really of service, and then
Speaker 3: after service, how we treat people when they come back
Speaker 3: from war or otherwise. I'm happy to say that, as
Speaker 3: I said, the government of the day is accepted that
Speaker 3: by partisan support, which we called for both sides of
Speaker 3: this should be a bipartisan issue. Both sides of politics
Speaker 3: need to agree that we've got to do better for
Speaker 3: our veterans. And they have done that, and I understand
Speaker 3: they've already appointed an individual who was establishing that body
Speaker 3: and in line with all our recommendations, and we've had
Speaker 3: a lot of really positive feedback from veterans saying that
Speaker 3: they hope this will be a turning point.
Speaker 1: You're quite critical of various bodies or institutions obstructing this commission.
Speaker 1: Can you expand on that a little bit?
Speaker 2: Certainly?
Speaker 3: I think bureaucracy generally, and it's not just to our
Speaker 3: federal government or the or the is Velian Defense Force.
Speaker 3: I think police forces sometimes do this. They go into
Speaker 3: self protection mode. They don't want to reveal the wrongdoing,
Speaker 3: they don't want to admit wrong, they don't want to apologize,
Speaker 3: and they don't want to have restitution if you like.
Speaker 3: It's what bureaucracies do, and I don't think how Commonwealth
Speaker 3: government is any different. Anyone who watched the robot that
Speaker 3: Royal Commission may think that perhaps it's not just restricted
Speaker 3: to Robot that it's actually a bit wider than that.
Speaker 3: In our government, there are many good reasons why people
Speaker 3: might object to us getting our hands on documents. But
Speaker 3: we all had our clearances, we had secure premises, We
Speaker 3: complied with everything you could possibly need to do to
Speaker 3: gain access to material, but people often still found reason
Speaker 3: to not.
Speaker 2: To give us documents. There is one issue i'll just
Speaker 2: mention which is very specific to your question.
Speaker 1: Ram.
Speaker 3: We identified as a problem and we worked out that
Speaker 3: we're the third raw commission to raise it as an issue.
Speaker 3: The Auditor General had done a very good inquiry into
Speaker 3: whether Defense generally had carried forward and acted on recommendations
Speaker 3: out of various inquiries prior to us. Nothing to do
Speaker 3: with suicide, just whether the Department of Defense and the
Speaker 3: Australian Defense Force see things through once they get recommendations.
Speaker 3: He found them wanting and he was critical and he
Speaker 3: made a number of recommendations. He made it a very
Speaker 3: good report, the Auder to General of Australia. He tabled
Speaker 3: it in Parliament, he put it on his website, and
Speaker 3: I think they held a press conference and so on.
Speaker 3: But because it was tabled in parliament, the Powers that
Speaker 3: be argued that it had parliamentary privilege and therefore we
Speaker 3: couldn't use it, rely on it, or question anyone about it.
Speaker 3: And we got our own legal advice and that is correct.
Speaker 3: If it's been in parliament, you cannot use it. It's
Speaker 3: parliamentary privilege. Now I don't personally. Personally, I don't think
Speaker 3: that's acceptable, and governments should be worried that people who
Speaker 3: have you know, when things have become very clear, just
Speaker 3: because they've been tabled in parliament, you can't do anything
Speaker 3: about it. I don't think that was ever the intent
Speaker 3: of partmentary privilege. So we argue that that ought to
Speaker 3: be We sought an exemption. We're rejected quite harshly, i'd say,
Speaker 3: by the government of the day, and based sides of
Speaker 3: politics said bugger off.
Speaker 2: You know, we're not going to make it.
Speaker 3: You're not going to get it, even though others had
Speaker 3: asked for it before, and I think the Law Reform Commission,
Speaker 3: in fact, some years ago, had said this is an
Speaker 3: anomaly and should be looked at, that Royal Commissions of
Speaker 3: Inquiry and qirenta's inquests and so on should be exempt.
Speaker 1: How does this old worn out policeman, how does he
Speaker 1: spend his time.
Speaker 3: These days, I'm sort of I jake that I'm not
Speaker 3: really sure what i want to do when I grow up,
Speaker 3: so I'm still working on it.
Speaker 2: I'm a work in progress.
Speaker 3: I've probably got a couple of years left and me
Speaker 3: I might do something useful, but I've got a lot
Speaker 3: of downtime. I serve on a couple of boards now.
Speaker 3: I share the board of Multicultural New South Wales. The
Speaker 3: advisory Board quite involved in multicultural issues and so on,
Speaker 3: and I used to do that for fifteen years, and
Speaker 3: the police led the effort in engagement with the various
Speaker 3: communities and equity and all that, and I'm happy to.
Speaker 2: Do all of that.
Speaker 3: I spend as much time as I can with my kids,
Speaker 3: obviously and my wife, and that's it.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 1: Given your experience in the Middle East, and specifically the
Speaker 1: time you spent in Lebanon, how are you viewing what's
Speaker 1: happening over there in the Middle East at the moment.
Speaker 3: I actually spent a lot of time in Gaza and
Speaker 3: the West Bank as well. When I work for UNRAU,
Speaker 3: the agency that handles all the Palestine issues. I'm quite pessimistic.
Speaker 3: I don't see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Speaker 3: I think there's an enormous amount of misery and hatred
Speaker 3: in every direction, and I don't see how it's I
Speaker 3: just can't see how it's going to be resolved. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of politicians saying all sorts of things, none
Speaker 3: of which are realistic. For the first time in a
Speaker 3: lot of years, I just can't see how all the
Speaker 3: misery and the hatred and the violence can mend.
Speaker 1: It's a sad way to finish our chat, Nick, but
Speaker 1: I've really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: Thanks Matte, Thanks very much, Gan, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Nick. Nick Caldice was my guest. Folks. The
Speaker 1: book is called Behind the Bad. It is a ABC
Speaker 1: Books publication. Thank you, folks for joining us.