1
00:00:01,720 --> 00:00:06,240
Speaker 1: He was a tough, knock about politician who understood how

2
00:00:06,280 --> 00:00:09,440
Speaker 1: to talk to both sides of politics, liberals and labor.

3
00:00:10,200 --> 00:00:13,400
Speaker 1: He could appeal to people on their own terms. He

4
00:00:13,440 --> 00:00:15,480
Speaker 1: could be more of a knock about than any knock

5
00:00:15,480 --> 00:00:19,439
Speaker 1: about politician because he was. This reporter has got his

6
00:00:19,560 --> 00:00:21,680
Speaker 1: little notebook and he's got his little pen, and he's

7
00:00:21,680 --> 00:00:24,360
Speaker 1: standing there and he hears a clique, and he turns

8
00:00:24,360 --> 00:00:28,240
Speaker 1: around and there is Jeff Clark with a gun held

9
00:00:28,240 --> 00:00:32,080
Speaker 1: to this blog's ear. I'm Andrew Ruhle, and this is

10
00:00:32,640 --> 00:00:36,080
Speaker 1: life and Crimes Today. We're going to go back in

11
00:00:36,240 --> 00:00:40,680
Speaker 1: time and look at the life and crimes and alleged

12
00:00:40,680 --> 00:00:45,239
Speaker 1: crimes of Jeffrey Wayne Clark, the man better known as

13
00:00:45,360 --> 00:00:48,760
Speaker 1: Jeff Clark, former head of AT SICK. That would be

14
00:00:48,840 --> 00:00:53,559
Speaker 1: the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. In fact, there

15
00:00:53,640 --> 00:00:56,120
Speaker 1: is no longer an at SICK, and the reason for

16
00:00:56,200 --> 00:01:01,680
Speaker 1: that is that Jeffrey Clark, Jeff Clark, disgraced himself with

17
00:01:01,800 --> 00:01:07,240
Speaker 1: his gross misbehavior allegedly. And I know about this because

18
00:01:07,280 --> 00:01:09,759
Speaker 1: I wrote a story back in two thousand and one

19
00:01:10,040 --> 00:01:15,440
Speaker 1: which was headlined something like Jeff Clark, Power and Rape,

20
00:01:15,680 --> 00:01:20,000
Speaker 1: and that story covered two or three broadsheet news pages,

21
00:01:20,200 --> 00:01:26,560
Speaker 1: and it detailed, among other things, how Clark had allegedly

22
00:01:26,680 --> 00:01:31,119
Speaker 1: raped at least four women and perhaps more. And that

23
00:01:31,240 --> 00:01:36,800
Speaker 1: long involved story was based legally at least on the

24
00:01:36,959 --> 00:01:42,080
Speaker 1: sworn statements statutory declarations of four women. They were Carol Stingle,

25
00:01:42,200 --> 00:01:47,600
Speaker 1: Kate Heay, Joanne McGinness, who is Clark's cousin, and a

26
00:01:47,640 --> 00:01:50,640
Speaker 1: woman called Sharon Handley who was also some sort of

27
00:01:50,800 --> 00:01:54,600
Speaker 1: in law or some connection with the Clark's family somehow.

28
00:01:55,680 --> 00:01:59,000
Speaker 1: And there were other potential victims, and there were other

29
00:01:59,080 --> 00:02:01,920
Speaker 1: victims who came four forward and so on and so forth.

30
00:02:01,960 --> 00:02:05,680
Speaker 1: But the story that I did was based on the

31
00:02:06,440 --> 00:02:11,640
Speaker 1: very detailed allegations made by those four women, independently of

32
00:02:11,680 --> 00:02:15,600
Speaker 1: each other. In fact, I traveled around Australia to interview them.

33
00:02:15,600 --> 00:02:18,200
Speaker 1: I went to a Chuker for one, I went to

34
00:02:19,120 --> 00:02:21,920
Speaker 1: I think the Gold Coast or in that area the

35
00:02:21,960 --> 00:02:24,920
Speaker 1: Sunshine Coast for another, and I went to Darwin for

36
00:02:24,960 --> 00:02:28,120
Speaker 1: another one. And so they were scattered across three or

37
00:02:28,120 --> 00:02:33,760
Speaker 1: four states. And it was a story with enormous impact

38
00:02:33,919 --> 00:02:38,480
Speaker 1: and consequences because immediately Jeff Clark, who was then chair

39
00:02:38,760 --> 00:02:43,519
Speaker 1: of at SICK, was under pressure and under the pump

40
00:02:44,040 --> 00:02:48,320
Speaker 1: and ultimately, although he was never convicted of rape, he

41
00:02:48,400 --> 00:02:51,239
Speaker 1: was tried on one charge of rape against his cousin

42
00:02:51,320 --> 00:02:55,680
Speaker 1: Joan McGinnis, and a magistrate in his wisdom decided that

43
00:02:56,040 --> 00:02:58,640
Speaker 1: it wouldn't stand up in front of a jury and

44
00:02:58,720 --> 00:03:01,320
Speaker 1: so it was dismissed. That is not to say that

45
00:03:01,480 --> 00:03:06,960
Speaker 1: the accuser was not believed. I think the accusers were believed.

46
00:03:07,040 --> 00:03:11,320
Speaker 1: But it's hard to get convictions in sexual assault cases,

47
00:03:11,360 --> 00:03:14,400
Speaker 1: as we know from other cases we've had, of course

48
00:03:14,440 --> 00:03:17,280
Speaker 1: the George pel case and many others where a jury

49
00:03:17,440 --> 00:03:21,160
Speaker 1: is not going to convict probably or if there is

50
00:03:21,200 --> 00:03:25,840
Speaker 1: a conviction, it won't stand appeal, but where the jury

51
00:03:25,880 --> 00:03:30,320
Speaker 1: of public opinion is something else. Again, So who's Jeff Clark?

52
00:03:30,440 --> 00:03:37,400
Speaker 1: Well interesting story. Jeff Clark's mother was a girl from

53
00:03:37,520 --> 00:03:39,400
Speaker 1: and she was once a girl, so she was a

54
00:03:39,400 --> 00:03:44,280
Speaker 1: girl from Framlingham, which is an Aboriginal settlement or community

55
00:03:44,680 --> 00:03:48,559
Speaker 1: which is down in the west of Victoria near Warnablle,

56
00:03:48,800 --> 00:03:51,760
Speaker 1: and it is to the Warnable District in the Western

57
00:03:51,800 --> 00:03:55,760
Speaker 1: district what Lake Tires is to the east of the state.

58
00:03:55,920 --> 00:04:00,000
Speaker 1: Lake Tires Aboriginal settlement, was where I went to school

59
00:04:00,280 --> 00:04:03,080
Speaker 1: and where my family grew up and had a lot

60
00:04:03,120 --> 00:04:05,360
Speaker 1: to do with it. For all his bluster and he's

61
00:04:05,400 --> 00:04:09,480
Speaker 1: bullying and this sort of bikey boss stuff, deep down,

62
00:04:10,040 --> 00:04:12,800
Speaker 1: Jeff Clark knew from the time he was a little

63
00:04:12,840 --> 00:04:15,560
Speaker 1: boy that he was different from the rest of the

64
00:04:15,600 --> 00:04:20,640
Speaker 1: mob down at Framlingham. One of his black female cousins,

65
00:04:20,680 --> 00:04:23,920
Speaker 1: not the one he raped, he whose name is Joanne mcginner's,

66
00:04:24,200 --> 00:04:29,120
Speaker 1: she told me that she recalls young Clark arriving at

67
00:04:29,120 --> 00:04:32,040
Speaker 1: the settlement from the city as a little boy. This

68
00:04:32,120 --> 00:04:35,120
Speaker 1: is Jeff Clark as a little boy back in the fifties.

69
00:04:36,320 --> 00:04:39,960
Speaker 1: He was so embarrassed, she told me by the sandy

70
00:04:40,160 --> 00:04:42,440
Speaker 1: red hair and the blue eyes that he'd inherited from

71
00:04:42,440 --> 00:04:45,400
Speaker 1: his Glaswegian father, that he is his father was a

72
00:04:45,440 --> 00:04:50,160
Speaker 1: Scottish fellow from Glasgow. That to fit in with the

73
00:04:50,240 --> 00:04:53,039
Speaker 1: local kids at Framlingham, the little Aboriginal kids, he would

74
00:04:53,080 --> 00:04:56,679
Speaker 1: rub mud on his face. Now I have to say,

75
00:04:57,440 --> 00:05:02,120
Speaker 1: and I absolutely mean this serious about this. Nothing else

76
00:05:02,160 --> 00:05:06,839
Speaker 1: about Jeff Clark makes me sorry for him, But that does.

77
00:05:07,520 --> 00:05:11,400
Speaker 1: That crisis of identity for a little kid might explain

78
00:05:11,760 --> 00:05:16,600
Speaker 1: what turned him into a bash artist, a rapist, a misogynist,

79
00:05:16,960 --> 00:05:21,039
Speaker 1: and a calculating and brazen thief, not that any of

80
00:05:21,040 --> 00:05:27,120
Speaker 1: this sort of nature or nurture, handwringing stuff his victim's anguish.

81
00:05:27,680 --> 00:05:31,880
Speaker 1: His criminality now seems as ingrained as that sneer that

82
00:05:31,960 --> 00:05:34,799
Speaker 1: we see on his face at all times. I knew

83
00:05:34,880 --> 00:05:37,320
Speaker 1: men in the past. They're all dead now, but I

84
00:05:37,400 --> 00:05:42,119
Speaker 1: knew men who did time in Penridge. With Jeff's biological father,

85
00:05:42,360 --> 00:05:45,680
Speaker 1: Ginger Macintosh. He was a standover man, a street fighter

86
00:05:45,720 --> 00:05:48,839
Speaker 1: and an armed robber. He is a Scottish hardman who

87
00:05:49,600 --> 00:05:52,880
Speaker 1: ended up in Australia as many scaleybags did, and he

88
00:05:52,920 --> 00:05:56,800
Speaker 1: would occasionally visit Jeff and his mother Jeff's mother former

89
00:05:57,400 --> 00:06:03,320
Speaker 1: girlfriend of Macintosh, at Framlingham after she'd quit working the

90
00:06:03,360 --> 00:06:08,320
Speaker 1: streets of Fitzroy. Macintosh drove a Pontiac, which is a

91
00:06:08,440 --> 00:06:11,200
Speaker 1: large American car for those who don't know, with a

92
00:06:11,240 --> 00:06:15,560
Speaker 1: pistol in the glovebox. According to that same cousin, who

93
00:06:15,680 --> 00:06:19,240
Speaker 1: was a daughter of the well liked and respected Framlingham elder,

94
00:06:19,440 --> 00:06:23,159
Speaker 1: the late Banjo Clark, was Banjo Clark's daughter, one of

95
00:06:23,360 --> 00:06:26,800
Speaker 1: many who told me that story, and she was an

96
00:06:26,800 --> 00:06:31,159
Speaker 1: eyewitness to the Pontiac, the gun, the whole muzzle, and

97
00:06:31,240 --> 00:06:35,000
Speaker 1: they're all related somehow to Jeff Clark. Was an interesting

98
00:06:36,160 --> 00:06:39,719
Speaker 1: job for me to do a profile of Jeff Clark.

99
00:06:39,800 --> 00:06:41,919
Speaker 1: To be asked to do a profile of Jeff Clark

100
00:06:42,760 --> 00:06:45,039
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one, and I think I was

101
00:06:45,080 --> 00:06:49,159
Speaker 1: asked to do it because various people at the newspaper

102
00:06:49,200 --> 00:06:54,159
Speaker 1: where I then worked had heard unsavory rumors, gossip and

103
00:06:54,240 --> 00:07:00,279
Speaker 1: allegations about Jeff Clark, quite detailed allegations, and it was

104
00:07:00,360 --> 00:07:03,800
Speaker 1: considered a very hard story to do because he was

105
00:07:03,880 --> 00:07:08,760
Speaker 1: the darling of the sort of intellectual left and the

106
00:07:08,800 --> 00:07:11,800
Speaker 1: Greens and the Labor Party and so on and so on,

107
00:07:12,320 --> 00:07:16,680
Speaker 1: and so it was tricky for a lot of people

108
00:07:16,800 --> 00:07:20,400
Speaker 1: to get their head around that story. And they knew

109
00:07:20,440 --> 00:07:22,680
Speaker 1: about it, and they knew that he was a bad

110
00:07:22,960 --> 00:07:26,080
Speaker 1: who did bad things, but they didn't really have the

111
00:07:26,120 --> 00:07:29,560
Speaker 1: stomach for the writing of the story. And I was

112
00:07:29,600 --> 00:07:31,600
Speaker 1: asked to have a look at him. I had no

113
00:07:31,720 --> 00:07:35,800
Speaker 1: real preconceptions about Jeff Clark. I went to the Western

114
00:07:35,840 --> 00:07:38,720
Speaker 1: District to Warnablee and I spoke to people and I

115
00:07:38,880 --> 00:07:41,000
Speaker 1: just asked them, you know, do you know Jeff Clark.

116
00:07:41,080 --> 00:07:42,760
Speaker 1: Did you know him when he was a kid? You know,

117
00:07:43,000 --> 00:07:45,400
Speaker 1: what was he like? Did he play footy, Did he

118
00:07:45,400 --> 00:07:47,560
Speaker 1: play cricket? Did he do this? Do that? The things

119
00:07:47,600 --> 00:07:50,760
Speaker 1: that you ask about almost anybody that you're trying to profile,

120
00:07:50,960 --> 00:07:53,520
Speaker 1: you find out who they are, who they know, and

121
00:07:53,960 --> 00:07:56,280
Speaker 1: what they used to do, and you're fishing sort of

122
00:07:56,280 --> 00:07:59,880
Speaker 1: for the anecdotes that illustrate somebody's character. And to me,

123
00:08:00,560 --> 00:08:04,560
Speaker 1: it didn't matter really what his character was or wasn't.

124
00:08:05,080 --> 00:08:08,559
Speaker 1: It was just another story to write. But the more

125
00:08:08,680 --> 00:08:12,280
Speaker 1: I asked and the more people I spoke to, the

126
00:08:12,280 --> 00:08:15,720
Speaker 1: more bad things they told me, and the more I knew,

127
00:08:15,760 --> 00:08:19,720
Speaker 1: and the more I followed it, the more bad things

128
00:08:19,760 --> 00:08:23,160
Speaker 1: other people told me. And so after a few days

129
00:08:23,160 --> 00:08:26,200
Speaker 1: of this, I realized that when I went back to

130
00:08:26,320 --> 00:08:30,120
Speaker 1: my city office back in two thousand and one, that

131
00:08:30,280 --> 00:08:33,480
Speaker 1: this was a story that was taking on a very

132
00:08:33,600 --> 00:08:38,880
Speaker 1: dark and nasty edge. That the stories about Jeff Clark

133
00:08:39,440 --> 00:08:44,680
Speaker 1: were well founded. It wasn't just one loose allegation of

134
00:08:44,800 --> 00:08:47,960
Speaker 1: rape that had been thrown out by a court. There

135
00:08:47,960 --> 00:08:52,520
Speaker 1: were multiple allegations from multiple people who were by this

136
00:08:52,640 --> 00:08:56,720
Speaker 1: stage scattered all over Australia and who did not necessarily

137
00:08:56,760 --> 00:08:59,679
Speaker 1: know each other or certainly not know each other in

138
00:08:59,720 --> 00:09:03,400
Speaker 1: any sort of cohesive way. And so I came back

139
00:09:03,480 --> 00:09:06,840
Speaker 1: with a notebook full of tough stuff, and this caused

140
00:09:06,920 --> 00:09:10,000
Speaker 1: very long faces at the paper where I then worked,

141
00:09:10,040 --> 00:09:13,520
Speaker 1: because many people there had invested a lot of time

142
00:09:13,559 --> 00:09:18,440
Speaker 1: and effort and affection and love and professional interest in

143
00:09:18,720 --> 00:09:23,000
Speaker 1: the rise and rise of Aboriginal politics in general, and

144
00:09:23,240 --> 00:09:27,800
Speaker 1: Jeff Clark in particular, because he was a tough, articulate,

145
00:09:29,000 --> 00:09:33,000
Speaker 1: capable Aboriginal politician. To get to be chair of at SICK,

146
00:09:33,240 --> 00:09:35,200
Speaker 1: he didn't have to get a lot of votes, So

147
00:09:35,240 --> 00:09:37,760
Speaker 1: I have to say that you could become the chair

148
00:09:37,800 --> 00:09:40,880
Speaker 1: of at SICK with a handful of votes, which he

149
00:09:40,960 --> 00:09:45,360
Speaker 1: was easily able to organize. But having got there, he

150
00:09:45,640 --> 00:09:48,920
Speaker 1: was one tough hombre. He knew a lot about how

151
00:09:48,960 --> 00:09:52,680
Speaker 1: to be a barnyard politician. He was a tough, knock

152
00:09:52,720 --> 00:09:56,240
Speaker 1: about politician who understood how to talk to both sides

153
00:09:56,240 --> 00:10:00,160
Speaker 1: of politics, liberals and labor. He could appeal to who

154
00:10:00,720 --> 00:10:03,000
Speaker 1: people on their own terms. He could be more of

155
00:10:03,040 --> 00:10:05,840
Speaker 1: a knock about than any knock about politician because he was.

156
00:10:06,320 --> 00:10:10,600
Speaker 1: He was a former very good footballer, not good enough

157
00:10:10,640 --> 00:10:16,559
Speaker 1: to have played at the highest level necessarily, but well

158
00:10:16,640 --> 00:10:20,000
Speaker 1: known to those who did. And he went over to

159
00:10:20,040 --> 00:10:22,280
Speaker 1: South Australia and I think to the west of Perth

160
00:10:22,320 --> 00:10:27,679
Speaker 1: and played professional football. He was also better than average boxer.

161
00:10:27,720 --> 00:10:31,200
Speaker 1: He could fight like a thrashing machine. He was genuinely

162
00:10:31,280 --> 00:10:35,480
Speaker 1: tough and he was genuinely feared by a lot of people,

163
00:10:35,800 --> 00:10:39,520
Speaker 1: not only his own people who he dominated effortlessly, but

164
00:10:39,679 --> 00:10:41,800
Speaker 1: a lot of people down in the west of Victoria

165
00:10:41,920 --> 00:10:46,000
Speaker 1: where he lived and grew up, were basically nervous of

166
00:10:46,080 --> 00:10:48,400
Speaker 1: him and now nervous of him personally because he was

167
00:10:48,400 --> 00:10:52,679
Speaker 1: a tough guy. He was brutal, he was aggressive, he

168
00:10:52,720 --> 00:10:55,880
Speaker 1: was a standover man. And also there was a darker

169
00:10:56,080 --> 00:10:58,920
Speaker 1: edge to him than all those things. There were those

170
00:10:58,960 --> 00:11:01,840
Speaker 1: who said, if you get in Jeff's way, or you

171
00:11:01,920 --> 00:11:05,000
Speaker 1: oppose him or criticize him, you run into bad luck.

172
00:11:05,080 --> 00:11:08,400
Speaker 1: Your house might burn down, or your car might burn

173
00:11:08,520 --> 00:11:11,800
Speaker 1: or your hay sheds or you know, one family I

174
00:11:11,840 --> 00:11:15,640
Speaker 1: said that he and his mate's sister steal that family

175
00:11:15,760 --> 00:11:19,439
Speaker 1: sheep and things like that. So he had on the side,

176
00:11:20,160 --> 00:11:24,480
Speaker 1: essentially a little crime gang of people who would do

177
00:11:25,320 --> 00:11:27,960
Speaker 1: what he suggested. And if he didn't want to actually

178
00:11:28,120 --> 00:11:31,280
Speaker 1: get his own hands dirty, he had a few people

179
00:11:31,320 --> 00:11:34,079
Speaker 1: around him who would. And these were guys that had

180
00:11:34,120 --> 00:11:38,480
Speaker 1: criminal records and were pretty bad dudes. And so this

181
00:11:38,840 --> 00:11:41,559
Speaker 1: is the story that I wrote in two thousand and

182
00:11:41,559 --> 00:11:44,560
Speaker 1: a month Jeff Clark, head of ad Sick, a man

183
00:11:44,640 --> 00:11:48,760
Speaker 1: who's was then earning on the public purse, a big

184
00:11:48,800 --> 00:11:50,960
Speaker 1: salary in the mid two hundredths I think was two

185
00:11:51,040 --> 00:11:54,720
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand, which nearly quarter of a century ago,

186
00:11:55,480 --> 00:11:58,960
Speaker 1: was the sort of money paid to a state premier,

187
00:11:59,559 --> 00:12:02,199
Speaker 1: and not a hell of a lot less than perhaps

188
00:12:02,240 --> 00:12:05,559
Speaker 1: the prime minister was on or a cabinet minister was on.

189
00:12:05,840 --> 00:12:13,400
Speaker 1: So there was a very heavyweight Aboriginal politician who was

190
00:12:14,040 --> 00:12:17,120
Speaker 1: dutchess by both sides of politics, who knew his way

191
00:12:17,120 --> 00:12:21,559
Speaker 1: around Australian politics and also used to have four ways overseas.

192
00:12:21,600 --> 00:12:25,280
Speaker 1: He'd go to Canada and the United States and New

193
00:12:25,360 --> 00:12:29,040
Speaker 1: Zealand and elsewhere, sort of riding the wave, the first

194
00:12:29,080 --> 00:12:33,520
Speaker 1: wave of the sort of post colonial trend in identity

195
00:12:33,559 --> 00:12:37,800
Speaker 1: politics of indigenous peoples, which is in itself a pretty

196
00:12:37,800 --> 00:12:40,839
Speaker 1: good thing. But I think it's fair to say that

197
00:12:40,920 --> 00:12:43,600
Speaker 1: Jeff Clark used a lot of those things to his

198
00:12:43,720 --> 00:12:47,360
Speaker 1: own ends. And we can say those things now because

199
00:12:47,400 --> 00:12:50,920
Speaker 1: it has become more and more apparent over the years

200
00:12:51,000 --> 00:12:54,480
Speaker 1: over the intervening years that Jeff Clerk was a bad

201
00:12:54,559 --> 00:12:57,640
Speaker 1: dude who did bad stuff, and he did a variety

202
00:12:57,679 --> 00:13:01,679
Speaker 1: of bad stuff. It's worth pointing out that although accused

203
00:13:01,880 --> 00:13:06,760
Speaker 1: by four different women in one block of multiple rapes,

204
00:13:07,440 --> 00:13:11,480
Speaker 1: that he denied the rapes, but he never ever sued

205
00:13:11,800 --> 00:13:13,880
Speaker 1: over it. He said he was going to go to

206
00:13:13,920 --> 00:13:17,120
Speaker 1: the Press Council, which would cost nothing, of course, and

207
00:13:17,200 --> 00:13:20,080
Speaker 1: complain about the story. He never did. He did wing

208
00:13:20,200 --> 00:13:24,719
Speaker 1: and wine to a shrinking number of sympathetic journalists, reporters

209
00:13:24,720 --> 00:13:29,480
Speaker 1: and the odd author, but their numbers gradually crumbled away.

210
00:13:29,559 --> 00:13:32,480
Speaker 1: There was initially a ground swell of support for him

211
00:13:33,040 --> 00:13:36,960
Speaker 1: from the sort of do gooder intellectual left, let's say.

212
00:13:37,320 --> 00:13:40,040
Speaker 1: In fact, people such as the head of the Civil

213
00:13:40,080 --> 00:13:44,560
Speaker 1: Liberties Union in Victoria, who was a prominent barrister and

214
00:13:44,720 --> 00:13:48,320
Speaker 1: others were very vocal for a while about it. The

215
00:13:48,400 --> 00:13:53,120
Speaker 1: Clerk expose that was attacked by the people I've just

216
00:13:53,200 --> 00:13:56,920
Speaker 1: described and all their fellow travelers, including you know, people

217
00:13:56,960 --> 00:14:01,720
Speaker 1: I worked with at different times, gan as a neutral

218
00:14:01,760 --> 00:14:06,440
Speaker 1: profile of a powerful political figure, a figure who was

219
00:14:06,480 --> 00:14:12,120
Speaker 1: then highly paid, an influential and part of an institution

220
00:14:12,280 --> 00:14:17,600
Speaker 1: that had a lot of influence with politicians on both sides,

221
00:14:17,840 --> 00:14:22,400
Speaker 1: with governments. This man who pretended to represent them was

222
00:14:22,440 --> 00:14:28,280
Speaker 1: actually exploiting and robbing his own constituents in a position

223
00:14:28,520 --> 00:14:31,440
Speaker 1: that he'd nailed down with the votes of a handful

224
00:14:31,480 --> 00:14:35,760
Speaker 1: of people. This was absolute Tammany Hall stuff, right down

225
00:14:35,760 --> 00:14:38,480
Speaker 1: to the bribes, the guns, and the violence. By that

226
00:14:38,560 --> 00:14:42,760
Speaker 1: Tammany Hall, I'm referring to the bad old days in

227
00:14:42,800 --> 00:14:48,040
Speaker 1: New York when crooks and crooked politicians and gangsters and

228
00:14:48,080 --> 00:14:52,560
Speaker 1: all sorts of people could run New York by the

229
00:14:52,560 --> 00:14:56,240
Speaker 1: influence they wielded at the town hall known as Tammany Hall.

230
00:14:58,120 --> 00:15:01,240
Speaker 1: The fact is, I have to say that guns and

231
00:15:01,320 --> 00:15:06,600
Speaker 1: violence always appealed to Clark. When a Warnable Standard reporter.

232
00:15:06,920 --> 00:15:11,320
Speaker 1: Warnable Standard is a newspaper still published in Warnable years ago.

233
00:15:12,000 --> 00:15:16,600
Speaker 1: A reporter working for that paper many years ago went

234
00:15:16,640 --> 00:15:21,160
Speaker 1: to Framlingham to do a story about Jeff Clark's gang

235
00:15:21,440 --> 00:15:25,840
Speaker 1: illegally pinching firewood in the state forest to sell. They

236
00:15:25,840 --> 00:15:29,480
Speaker 1: were just pinching, would to sell it for cash. This

237
00:15:29,560 --> 00:15:32,080
Speaker 1: reporter has got his little notebook and he's got his

238
00:15:32,120 --> 00:15:34,360
Speaker 1: little pen, and he's standing there and he hears a click,

239
00:15:35,040 --> 00:15:38,800
Speaker 1: and he turns around and there is Jeff Clark with

240
00:15:38,880 --> 00:15:44,240
Speaker 1: a gun held to this bloke's ear. Now he was terrified.

241
00:15:44,560 --> 00:15:46,560
Speaker 1: He's staring down the barrel of a gun. We all

242
00:15:46,600 --> 00:15:51,680
Speaker 1: would be. And Clark is cloating, and Clark says, you're

243
00:15:51,680 --> 00:15:54,760
Speaker 1: going to write a nice story, aren't you. And the

244
00:15:54,840 --> 00:15:58,640
Speaker 1: reporter nodded and quietly backed away and went back to

245
00:15:58,680 --> 00:16:02,400
Speaker 1: warnable and probably wrote a very tame story. Now that

246
00:16:02,520 --> 00:16:06,320
Speaker 1: happened way back, way back. That'd be the late seventies,

247
00:16:06,360 --> 00:16:11,520
Speaker 1: early eighties. But when the same reporter, by this time

248
00:16:11,600 --> 00:16:15,600
Speaker 1: no longer a young country reporter, but a senior sub

249
00:16:15,720 --> 00:16:18,560
Speaker 1: editor on Melbourne newspapers. And I worked with this guy

250
00:16:18,600 --> 00:16:22,680
Speaker 1: and I knew him well when in two thousand and one,

251
00:16:22,880 --> 00:16:28,280
Speaker 1: so this is maybe twenty years later, he was urged

252
00:16:28,400 --> 00:16:33,560
Speaker 1: to write that story to outline what had happened to him.

253
00:16:34,840 --> 00:16:39,640
Speaker 1: He refused, not because it wasn't true, but because it

254
00:16:39,880 --> 00:16:45,360
Speaker 1: was He was still scared that Jeff Clark would reach

255
00:16:45,400 --> 00:16:50,400
Speaker 1: out and hurt him. This is a chief sub editor

256
00:16:50,920 --> 00:16:55,360
Speaker 1: on a Melbourne newspaper who lived in a Melbourne suburb

257
00:16:56,560 --> 00:16:58,720
Speaker 1: was still scared in the year two thousand and one

258
00:16:58,840 --> 00:17:04,000
Speaker 1: that Jeff Clark would do him some harm. He wasn't alone.

259
00:17:04,400 --> 00:17:07,600
Speaker 1: Nearly everyone I spoke to about Clark down in Western

260
00:17:07,680 --> 00:17:11,560
Speaker 1: Victoria back in those days was nervous of him, and

261
00:17:11,680 --> 00:17:16,720
Speaker 1: guns weren't all. As I've mentioned before, they feared that

262
00:17:16,760 --> 00:17:19,240
Speaker 1: their houses, or their farms, or their sheds or their

263
00:17:19,320 --> 00:17:27,760
Speaker 1: fences would be burned out. Jeff Clark loved firepower, not

264
00:17:27,880 --> 00:17:30,200
Speaker 1: just a pistol in the glove box. Like his father,

265
00:17:30,400 --> 00:17:33,880
Speaker 1: the Glaswegient. He once tried to bring back an illegal

266
00:17:34,160 --> 00:17:37,399
Speaker 1: automatic military rifle. I think it was an AK forty

267
00:17:37,440 --> 00:17:40,480
Speaker 1: seven from memory, and if it wasn't an AK forty seven,

268
00:17:40,560 --> 00:17:46,400
Speaker 1: it was the American equivalent them sixteen anti personnel high firepower,

269
00:17:46,760 --> 00:17:50,680
Speaker 1: highly illegal in Australia for ordinary shooters. He was bringing

270
00:17:50,720 --> 00:17:53,520
Speaker 1: it back from North America, I think it was, and

271
00:17:53,560 --> 00:17:58,600
Speaker 1: he got angry when customs confiscated in Darwin. Like too

272
00:17:58,640 --> 00:18:02,399
Speaker 1: many thugs the world over, Jeff Clark posed as a

273
00:18:02,440 --> 00:18:07,840
Speaker 1: freedom fighter, but in truth he was a bandit. As

274
00:18:07,880 --> 00:18:12,120
Speaker 1: the years went on, it appeared that Jeff Clark's fingerprints

275
00:18:12,200 --> 00:18:16,960
Speaker 1: appeared in things other than rape cases. In two thousand

276
00:18:17,000 --> 00:18:21,359
Speaker 1: and seven, it was finally decided by a civil court

277
00:18:21,480 --> 00:18:25,000
Speaker 1: a civil court in an action brought by one of

278
00:18:25,000 --> 00:18:28,919
Speaker 1: his victims Carol Stingle, who was very a simple woman

279
00:18:28,960 --> 00:18:31,560
Speaker 1: that I really liked and got on well with. She

280
00:18:32,160 --> 00:18:36,160
Speaker 1: bravely brought a civil action against Clark, suing him for

281
00:18:36,320 --> 00:18:39,040
Speaker 1: the pack rape of her when she was a teenager.

282
00:18:39,320 --> 00:18:42,639
Speaker 1: That Clark and others other people that he led had

283
00:18:42,760 --> 00:18:45,800
Speaker 1: all raped her, she said, And in fact the civil

284
00:18:45,880 --> 00:18:50,000
Speaker 1: court upheld her action and said that she had been raped,

285
00:18:50,400 --> 00:18:53,679
Speaker 1: and she was awarded a sum of money which Clark

286
00:18:53,800 --> 00:18:56,800
Speaker 1: was meant to pay her. Clark claimed at the time that,

287
00:18:56,840 --> 00:18:58,680
Speaker 1: you know, he was a victim of all sorts of

288
00:18:58,800 --> 00:19:03,000
Speaker 1: terrible things. He was the victim of entrench racism. And

289
00:19:03,040 --> 00:19:05,000
Speaker 1: where would he get the sort of money. It wasn't

290
00:19:05,040 --> 00:19:07,120
Speaker 1: a lot of money either, he said, you know, where

291
00:19:07,119 --> 00:19:08,720
Speaker 1: would he get the sort of money to pay out

292
00:19:08,880 --> 00:19:11,119
Speaker 1: that this alleged victim, And so on and so forth.

293
00:19:11,720 --> 00:19:14,960
Speaker 1: He forgot conveniently that even at that stage he owned

294
00:19:15,080 --> 00:19:17,760
Speaker 1: various properties, either in his own name or in the

295
00:19:17,840 --> 00:19:21,480
Speaker 1: names of proxies, and so there was no doubt had

296
00:19:21,480 --> 00:19:24,439
Speaker 1: he wanted to put his hand on money, he could,

297
00:19:24,880 --> 00:19:27,440
Speaker 1: And indeed, in subsequent years he did put his hand

298
00:19:27,480 --> 00:19:29,120
Speaker 1: on quite a lot of money. He put his hand

299
00:19:29,119 --> 00:19:32,480
Speaker 1: on money that wasn't actually his. He put his hands

300
00:19:32,480 --> 00:19:37,640
Speaker 1: on money that belonged to various aboriginal bodies that he

301
00:19:37,720 --> 00:19:41,400
Speaker 1: had access to. Despite the fact that he was notionally

302
00:19:41,440 --> 00:19:46,960
Speaker 1: in disgrace, through his connections his family, his very dominant family,

303
00:19:47,080 --> 00:19:51,320
Speaker 1: he was able to exert control, actual control or proxy

304
00:19:51,400 --> 00:19:58,040
Speaker 1: control over aboriginal bodies that had access to taxpayers money.

305
00:19:58,640 --> 00:20:01,639
Speaker 1: And so over the years Jeff Clark and one of

306
00:20:01,680 --> 00:20:06,040
Speaker 1: his sons at least was able to and actually his

307
00:20:06,200 --> 00:20:09,040
Speaker 1: wife was charged with some of these offenses, but the

308
00:20:09,160 --> 00:20:13,480
Speaker 1: charges against so were later dropped. I note I suspect

309
00:20:13,520 --> 00:20:17,200
Speaker 1: because it was felt that she might have been acting

310
00:20:17,480 --> 00:20:20,680
Speaker 1: under his influence and perhaps it was better to stick

311
00:20:20,720 --> 00:20:25,440
Speaker 1: with charges against him and one of their sons, who

312
00:20:25,480 --> 00:20:29,320
Speaker 1: was a pretty smart cookie. These are not ignorant people.

313
00:20:29,320 --> 00:20:34,280
Speaker 1: These are pretty well educated, pretty sharp blokes. They systematically

314
00:20:34,400 --> 00:20:38,920
Speaker 1: roughted these aboriginal bodies of money, and in the end

315
00:20:39,359 --> 00:20:43,000
Speaker 1: it turns out that Jeff Clark owns a royal flush

316
00:20:43,040 --> 00:20:47,880
Speaker 1: of properties. He owns either four or five properties, most

317
00:20:47,920 --> 00:20:50,240
Speaker 1: of them in Victoria, but one not at Fitzroy Crossing

318
00:20:50,280 --> 00:20:54,040
Speaker 1: in the Northern Territory. They are worth a considerable sum,

319
00:20:54,200 --> 00:20:57,600
Speaker 1: particularly one at Hall's gap, I believe, and the blocks

320
00:20:57,640 --> 00:21:00,399
Speaker 1: of land there and all sorts of things. Came a

321
00:21:00,440 --> 00:21:04,879
Speaker 1: time when a vary astute and hard working policeman, Detective

322
00:21:04,920 --> 00:21:11,479
Speaker 1: Inspector Mark Collins, decided to look deeply into Jeff Clark

323
00:21:11,520 --> 00:21:15,159
Speaker 1: and the Clark family's affairs. And as I had in

324
00:21:15,200 --> 00:21:20,520
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, a decade later or thereabouts, Detective

325
00:21:20,560 --> 00:21:23,720
Speaker 1: Inspector Collins found that the more he looked, the more

326
00:21:23,760 --> 00:21:27,280
Speaker 1: he found. To make a long story short, over a

327
00:21:27,400 --> 00:21:33,320
Speaker 1: number of years, he and other investigators, quite sophisticated fraud investigators,

328
00:21:33,359 --> 00:21:37,840
Speaker 1: were able to build a case against Jeff Clark and

329
00:21:38,080 --> 00:21:42,040
Speaker 1: at least one of his sons, if not other people, which,

330
00:21:43,119 --> 00:21:46,359
Speaker 1: to put it simply, showed that they'd been involved in roots,

331
00:21:46,480 --> 00:21:51,360
Speaker 1: multiple roots, lots and lots of roots, which added up

332
00:21:51,400 --> 00:21:56,439
Speaker 1: to something like a million dollars total. And the result

333
00:21:56,520 --> 00:22:00,240
Speaker 1: of this was that Clark and at least one of

334
00:22:00,280 --> 00:22:04,640
Speaker 1: his sons, Jeremy, were charged with all these offenses, and

335
00:22:04,760 --> 00:22:08,320
Speaker 1: they went to court and went through trials which were

336
00:22:08,320 --> 00:22:12,439
Speaker 1: actually suppressed. These were secret court cases in order to

337
00:22:13,119 --> 00:22:18,200
Speaker 1: preserve something. The law decided that as happens in Victoria,

338
00:22:19,160 --> 00:22:23,320
Speaker 1: we have in this state Victoria, more than double the

339
00:22:23,440 --> 00:22:27,840
Speaker 1: number of cases suppressed pro rather than any other state.

340
00:22:27,960 --> 00:22:30,880
Speaker 1: We're very good at it here, and almost anybody can

341
00:22:30,920 --> 00:22:34,800
Speaker 1: get something suppressed if they wish, and Jeff Clark clearly

342
00:22:34,840 --> 00:22:37,840
Speaker 1: wished to get his suppressed, and they were, and there

343
00:22:37,920 --> 00:22:42,080
Speaker 1: was a number of trials suppressed, and therefore the general

344
00:22:42,119 --> 00:22:46,000
Speaker 1: public knew nothing about them, apart from an initial flurry

345
00:22:46,080 --> 00:22:50,040
Speaker 1: of low level publicity about charges being lone. And so

346
00:22:50,560 --> 00:22:54,720
Speaker 1: this year twenty twenty four, we've seen those charges go

347
00:22:54,800 --> 00:23:00,680
Speaker 1: through the system and Clark actually be convicted and it's

348
00:23:00,800 --> 00:23:04,120
Speaker 1: the suppressions have been lifted, and now we can all

349
00:23:04,160 --> 00:23:07,240
Speaker 1: find out as we have that convicted, over it something

350
00:23:07,280 --> 00:23:11,400
Speaker 1: like a million dollars worth of roots and of perjury.

351
00:23:12,359 --> 00:23:17,160
Speaker 1: They're saying that Jeff Clark told porkies that is untrue,

352
00:23:17,440 --> 00:23:21,800
Speaker 1: that is lies under oath, that he put the Bible

353
00:23:22,000 --> 00:23:25,600
Speaker 1: or whatever he raised in his right hand and swore

354
00:23:25,680 --> 00:23:27,560
Speaker 1: to tell the truth, and he did not do so.

355
00:23:27,960 --> 00:23:33,240
Speaker 1: Now I think it's allowable for fair opinion commentary here

356
00:23:33,960 --> 00:23:37,480
Speaker 1: that a judge sometimes in the near future will decide

357
00:23:37,600 --> 00:23:45,280
Speaker 1: what penalty Jeff Clark should suffer for these crimes. And

358
00:23:45,359 --> 00:23:47,800
Speaker 1: that's fair enough for a judge to have that call.

359
00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:51,720
Speaker 1: But I think it's fair to say that judges take

360
00:23:51,760 --> 00:23:56,639
Speaker 1: a dim view of two things. One is where people

361
00:23:56,760 --> 00:24:01,720
Speaker 1: in positions of trust abuse that trust and steal the

362
00:24:01,800 --> 00:24:05,360
Speaker 1: money or the goods or the property of the poorer

363
00:24:05,400 --> 00:24:09,000
Speaker 1: people around them, which is what he did. And judges

364
00:24:09,040 --> 00:24:13,879
Speaker 1: also take a very dim view of perjury, because people

365
00:24:13,920 --> 00:24:18,080
Speaker 1: who perjure themselves are willing to purgure themselves undermine our

366
00:24:18,359 --> 00:24:23,040
Speaker 1: entire system of the rule of law. If we don't

367
00:24:23,119 --> 00:24:28,159
Speaker 1: have a very tough anti perjury stance, it means that

368
00:24:28,240 --> 00:24:31,919
Speaker 1: people will routinely get up in court and tell lies,

369
00:24:32,800 --> 00:24:35,879
Speaker 1: and at this stage of the game, very few people

370
00:24:36,000 --> 00:24:38,520
Speaker 1: are willing to get up in court and tell lies

371
00:24:38,600 --> 00:24:41,479
Speaker 1: under oath. I think some police are pretty good at

372
00:24:41,480 --> 00:24:44,960
Speaker 1: it in the past. The odd lawyer might give it

373
00:24:44,960 --> 00:24:47,359
Speaker 1: a bit of a tickle if they're willing, but I

374
00:24:47,400 --> 00:24:49,840
Speaker 1: don't think the general public's very good at it or

375
00:24:49,920 --> 00:24:54,480
Speaker 1: keen on it. Some old time crooks might have memory

376
00:24:54,560 --> 00:24:58,840
Speaker 1: lapses under a cross examination, but there's no doubt that

377
00:24:58,920 --> 00:25:03,560
Speaker 1: Jeff Clark was charged with perjury and he's been convicted

378
00:25:03,640 --> 00:25:08,560
Speaker 1: of it, and a judge at some point is going

379
00:25:08,600 --> 00:25:12,400
Speaker 1: to hand down a sentence, and if there is any

380
00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:15,760
Speaker 1: fairness in the world, he will end up behind bars,

381
00:25:15,880 --> 00:25:19,000
Speaker 1: even though he is seventy two years old. There are

382
00:25:19,160 --> 00:25:25,960
Speaker 1: very few mitigating circumstances here. This is an intelligent man,

383
00:25:26,400 --> 00:25:34,200
Speaker 1: clearly a capable man, clearly a personally robust, tough man. Obviously,

384
00:25:35,080 --> 00:25:39,120
Speaker 1: all those things mean that Jeff Clark is not actually

385
00:25:39,160 --> 00:25:43,240
Speaker 1: a victim. Jeff Clark is a perpetrator. Jeff Clark is

386
00:25:43,280 --> 00:25:48,280
Speaker 1: not a sheep. Jeff Clerk is a wolf or perhaps

387
00:25:48,840 --> 00:25:55,560
Speaker 1: a dinger. Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is a

388
00:25:55,600 --> 00:26:01,280
Speaker 1: Sunday Herald Sun production for true crime Australia is Johnty Burton.

389
00:26:02,119 --> 00:26:06,000
Speaker 1: For my columns, features and more, go to Haroldson dot

390
00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:11,560
Speaker 1: com dot au, forward slash Andrew rule one word. For

391
00:26:11,720 --> 00:26:17,280
Speaker 1: advertising inquiries, go to news Podcasts sold at news dot

392
00:26:17,280 --> 00:26:22,520
Speaker 1: com dot au. That is all one word news podcasts

393
00:26:22,560 --> 00:26:26,840
Speaker 1: sold And if you want further information about this episode,

394
00:26:27,119 --> 00:26:29,240
Speaker 1: links are in the description.