Speaker 1: Once a high flying minister, now a broken man.
Speaker 2: It was a significant error of judgment on my part,
Speaker 2: but it was an honester.
Speaker 3: In two thousand and nine, he was found guilty of
Speaker 3: corruptly receiving secret commissions and jailed for seven years. In
Speaker 3: twenty ten, he was found guilty on five charges of
Speaker 3: official corruption and five charges of perjury and jailed for
Speaker 3: an additional seven years.
Speaker 2: I remember breaking down and crying in disbelief at where
Speaker 2: I was and what was happening. My name is Gordon
Speaker 2: Nuttle and this is my story, The.
Speaker 4: Man behind the Rose.
Speaker 2: Episode two.
Speaker 3: Hello, my name's Patrick Condron. Today we go back to
Speaker 3: the beginning of Gordon Nuttle's political career and he takes
Speaker 3: us inside his maximum security prison cell. Gordon Nuttle has
Speaker 3: not been paid for taking part in this podcast.
Speaker 1: Danny a Queensland the Honorable Premier of Queensland.
Speaker 3: Nuttle had been an MP in State Parliament for nine
Speaker 3: years and on the twenty second of February two thousand
Speaker 3: and one, he began his ministerial career in the government
Speaker 3: led by Peter Beatty.
Speaker 5: Your excellency, if Peter Douglas Beatty, do sincerely promise and
Speaker 5: swear that I will be faithful at their true allegiance
Speaker 5: to a Majesty when Elizabeth as lawful Sovereign of Australia
Speaker 5: and her other roles and territories, and her heirs and
Speaker 5: successes according to war, that I will well and truly
Speaker 5: serve the people of Queensland in the Office of Premier
Speaker 5: and Minister's Trade.
Speaker 3: In the Governor's mansion for the swearing in ceremony. A
Speaker 3: smiling Peter Beating nodded to Nuttle as he approached the
Speaker 3: table where he and the Governor sat, blissfully unaware of
Speaker 3: the seismic scandal that his then junior minister would eventually
Speaker 3: unleash on the government. But all that was many years
Speaker 3: down the track. For now, it was all pomp and
Speaker 3: ceremony and afternoon tea with friends and family on hand
Speaker 3: to witness history. I, Gordon Richard Nuttle, do sincerely promise
Speaker 3: and swear that I will be faithful and be a
Speaker 3: true allegiance to her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, as lawful Sovereign
Speaker 3: in Australia and her other realms and territories.
Speaker 6: Until her hairs and successes according to law, and that
Speaker 6: I will well and truly serve the people of Queensland
Speaker 6: in the office of Minister for Industrial Relations of helping God.
Speaker 3: In the following four years, Nuttell would make the trip
Speaker 3: to Government House on two other occasions to be sworn
Speaker 3: in as the Minister for Health and then later Primary
Speaker 3: Industries and Fisheries. I, Gordon Richard Nuttle, do swear that
Speaker 3: I will, to the best of.
Speaker 7: My judgment and ability, faithfully advise and assist the Governor
Speaker 7: or other officer exercising a function or power of the
Speaker 7: Governor as Deputy Governor or Administrator in all matters brought
Speaker 7: under my consideration as a member of the Executive Council
Speaker 7: of Queensland.
Speaker 2: And that I will not disclose.
Speaker 8: The confidential deliberations of the counting.
Speaker 2: So help me, God, you can.
Speaker 1: Please be seated Sign yours to whitment signify.
Speaker 2: Good.
Speaker 3: Nuttle's career as a Member of the Queensland Parliament officially
Speaker 3: started in nineteen ninety two, when he first won the
Speaker 3: safe labor seat of Sandgate on Brisbane's northern outskirts following
Speaker 3: the retirement of previous Opposition leader Nev Warburton. However, Nuttle's
Speaker 3: political journey from MP to maximum security for receiving secret commissions.
Speaker 3: Official corruption and perjury began long before he was elected,
Speaker 3: and interestingly, the trigger for his entry into politics also
Speaker 3: involved a financial matter, police investigation, a court case. There
Speaker 3: are some very clear parallels with the nineteen eighty six
Speaker 3: controversy that eventually saw him jailed in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty six, Alan Bond was trying to buy
Speaker 3: Channel nine in Brisbane, but was being hampered by then
Speaker 3: Premier Joe b Lki Peterson, who was suing the network
Speaker 3: for defamation. Bond eventually got the station, but only after
Speaker 3: a secret four hundred thousand dollars payment to Joe. Well
Speaker 3: here we are again, Yeah, yeah, back for more. I'd
Speaker 3: like to go back in time, right back to the beginning.
Speaker 3: And during my research I found a story in the
Speaker 3: archives from nineteen eighty eight, Oh God, which gives us
Speaker 3: a little bit of an insight into how you got
Speaker 3: into politics. OK Now, can I play it for you?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Sure, Right, here we go. This is from nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 3: from a current affair story that was on the local
Speaker 3: Channel seven.
Speaker 4: All right, I am very bitter about the whole matter.
Speaker 2: I just can't.
Speaker 8: Believe that being a citizen of this state that one
Speaker 8: would be treated so badly.
Speaker 9: Gordon Nuttle was a little man caught in a big
Speaker 9: boys game. Labor Party member, former union official, Nuttle was
Speaker 9: senior accountant at the Adelaide Street branch of the Westpac Bank.
Speaker 9: In August nineteen eighty six, then Opposition leader Nev Warburton
Speaker 9: dropped the bombshell that's still reverberating through the Australian Broadcasting
Speaker 9: Tribunal that Alan Bond had paid Sir Jo Bioka Peterson
Speaker 9: a four hundred thousand dollars defamation settlement. Sir Joe banked
Speaker 9: Westpac and Gordon Nuttle was under suspicion.
Speaker 8: Well, some of the bank's senior officials fronted up at
Speaker 8: my place on a Friday evening about nine o'clock. That
Speaker 8: must have been very rare, Well it was, I must
Speaker 8: have been.
Speaker 2: I was quite shocked.
Speaker 8: There was a couple of them, plus the bank flew
Speaker 8: up an internal investigator from Sydney, and the three of
Speaker 8: them were there and wanted to question me straight away.
Speaker 4: And what could you tell them?
Speaker 8: Well, I said to them right from the word gay
Speaker 8: that I wanted to cooperate with this internal inquiry, that
Speaker 8: they had and that I would assist in any way possible.
Speaker 8: And I told them right from the word gay that
Speaker 8: I had made inquiries internally within the bank about the money.
Speaker 9: So you did make an inquiries about Sajobia Ka Peterson's payout.
Speaker 8: From Alan Bond?
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure?
Speaker 8: Why did you do that? And I told them that
Speaker 8: I've done that well. It had been in the media
Speaker 8: for quite some time, the whole event about the defamation money,
Speaker 8: and I was in a position where I was rather
Speaker 8: curious as if you did actually get that money, and
Speaker 8: out of my own curiosity, I made those inquiries.
Speaker 9: There was no proof yet Nuttele was suspended then sacked.
Speaker 8: I didn't know where to turn to what to do.
Speaker 8: I mean, it must have been financially devastating, it was.
Speaker 8: I had a concessional housing lane with the bank. I
Speaker 8: had no job. I had to refinance my housing lane.
Speaker 8: Not only was I questioned by the bank, but I
Speaker 8: was also questioned by the police, and that frightened me
Speaker 8: a great deal.
Speaker 9: Did you ever believe that you would wind up in prison?
Speaker 2: Yes? I did. I was very very frightened.
Speaker 8: I thought, here I am, I'm going to be in jail.
Speaker 8: I'm going to lose my family, in my house, I
Speaker 8: lose everything, and it was quite devastating.
Speaker 9: Justice Keeley said Nuttle was a truthful witness who did
Speaker 9: not seek to mislead the court.
Speaker 8: My interest in politics has certainly been rekindled, and I'm
Speaker 8: very seriously giving some consideration to seeking pre selection for
Speaker 8: the state seat of Pine Rivers for the Labor Party
Speaker 8: in the forthcoming state election.
Speaker 9: You've certainly been given a very good lesson in the
Speaker 9: dirty side of politics, haven't you.
Speaker 8: Well, Politics they say is a dirty game, and I
Speaker 8: think they're pretty right.
Speaker 2: I sounded pretty good to know, enthusiastic fight up.
Speaker 4: They flogged that out of it. What do you think
Speaker 4: listening back to that?
Speaker 2: Oh God, it was a bit of a tough time.
Speaker 3: But I mean, can you see the parallels between that
Speaker 3: and where you eventually ended up?
Speaker 2: Yeah, to some degree, to some degree.
Speaker 3: So did you tell Nev Warburton because Joe banked at
Speaker 3: Westpac you were a bank Johnny at West Pact. I
Speaker 3: think he banked at the branch that you were working
Speaker 3: in in Adelaide Street. Did you tell Nev Warburton about
Speaker 3: the secret four hundred thousand dollars payment.
Speaker 1: I've been asked this question one hundred times, and the
Speaker 1: answer to it is pretty simple.
Speaker 2: No, I knew about it. I think a lot of
Speaker 2: people within the bank knew about it. But I'm pretty
Speaker 2: sure he got it from some merchant bank people down
Speaker 2: in New South Wales in Sydney, because Bondi had his
Speaker 2: office down there as well, in the same building and
Speaker 2: there was a merchant bank tied up and the money
Speaker 2: came from there to Joe apparently. But I'm pretty sure
Speaker 2: that's I think in Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's where
Speaker 2: where Nev got the info from from down there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, just because I was a bank Johnny and
Speaker 1: knew a bit about it, but never and I after
Speaker 1: that because I got caught up in it.
Speaker 4: And because you were investigated by the coppers.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, they interviewed me and did all
Speaker 1: the rest of it, you know, and of course nothing
Speaker 1: came of it because there was nothing there.
Speaker 2: But I got to know Nev and that.
Speaker 4: Then eventually you inherited his seat of sand game.
Speaker 3: So was that sort of that involvement with Joe and
Speaker 3: the controversy around that.
Speaker 4: Did that reignite or ignite your interest in politics? That
Speaker 4: he got into politics.
Speaker 2: Very much so, very much so. And I was a
Speaker 2: branch member. Nineteen eighty three, I was a candidate. I
Speaker 2: was a candidate on the Sunshine Coast and it was
Speaker 2: Founder Simpson's dad, Gordon Simpson, that I ran against. So
Speaker 2: it's a very safe conservative seat and I cut my
Speaker 2: teeth on that. Then I tried for pre selection down
Speaker 2: the road at Pine Rivers and I was unsuccess So
Speaker 2: I never ever thought that I would get an endorsement
Speaker 2: for a safe agacyat you know, just a rank and
Speaker 2: file branch member. You know, do your bit, do your fundraisers, buy.
Speaker 1: Your raffle tickets, all the rest of it that we
Speaker 1: all do, have the barbecues.
Speaker 2: So I got to know Nev, and Nev became a
Speaker 2: mentor for me. I think his initial plan was he
Speaker 2: was thinking about retiring in nineteen ninety two. Then he
Speaker 2: changed his mind and he said he wasn't going to
Speaker 2: go to ninety ninety five, and then he changed his
Speaker 2: mind again and did end up going in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: two and I got the endorsement, and yeah, it was
Speaker 2: a successful candidate.
Speaker 4: Then what were the early days in State Parliament?
Speaker 2: Oh, wonderful, exciting, really exciting, And when I was in.
Speaker 4: Goss was premier.
Speaker 2: Goss was premier, Keith Olacy was his treasurer, Tommy Burns
Speaker 2: was his deputy. Yeah, solid Blake's rural, old fashioned died
Speaker 2: in the world Labormen, rural labormen, unlike today.
Speaker 4: I was about to say, what's the difference between then
Speaker 4: and now?
Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you the difference between the now. All
Speaker 2: those Blakes worked in their life out there in the
Speaker 2: paddic you know, they had jobs, they actually worked, and
Speaker 2: before they came into parliament, so they understood what it
Speaker 2: was like for people out there, whether they were employees
Speaker 2: or small business people or whatever. They understood it and
Speaker 2: they believed in the ethos of the Labor Party. But
Speaker 2: nowadays they come in and they've become political advisors. They
Speaker 2: go into parliament, none of them have got any bloody
Speaker 2: idea of what it's like out there for mom and
Speaker 2: dad and run his small business. They haven't got a clue,
Speaker 2: no understand And it's all pretend stuff. It's all about
Speaker 2: the media, it's not about the also. And there was
Speaker 2: people like Ed Casey, all those sort of people. So
Speaker 2: when I first went in, I was a backbencher of course,
Speaker 2: and there was a gentleman called Kenny Vaughn who's passed away. Now.
Speaker 2: Kenny was a member for Nudge, which was the seat
Speaker 2: adjacent to me, and he'd been in the ministry and
Speaker 2: chose to stand down and go to the back bench.
Speaker 2: So Ken kind of mentored us in those first few
Speaker 2: years about how parliament works and how it operates. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it was terribly exciting. It was wonderful.
Speaker 4: As an MP.
Speaker 3: The Nuttle family Sandgate home was on Sixth Avenue, a
Speaker 3: couple of houses back from the Esplanade. It was from
Speaker 3: here he emerged to front the media on the eighteenth
Speaker 3: of January two thousand and seven. When he was first charged.
Speaker 3: The sleeves of his white shirt rolled up, his tie loosened,
Speaker 3: and he's DEMI resigned, almost a sly smile played across
Speaker 3: his face.
Speaker 4: How are you all?
Speaker 2: How are you going?
Speaker 8: Okay?
Speaker 3: Had better starts for the new year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a bit like that, all right, Okay. Can I
Speaker 1: just say that I'm probably shocked and stunned by the
Speaker 1: events of today, and that Ken Talbot and I are
Speaker 1: good and decent.
Speaker 2: And honest people that are not.
Speaker 1: Deserved of this type of treatment in these circumstances.
Speaker 2: We have done.
Speaker 1: Nothing improper, nothing up toward, and nothing illegal and nothing wrong,
Speaker 1: and we will now have to rely, I suppose, on
Speaker 1: our legal teams to look after our interests. I am,
Speaker 1: just as I said, shocked and stunned by the events.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know the evidence that we gave, I
Speaker 1: know that there was nothing untoward, and for the conclusion
Speaker 1: to be drawn that we have somehow done something improper
Speaker 1: is just defies all logic.
Speaker 3: In two thousand and seven, the beautiful old Queenslander was
Speaker 3: painted a historic mustard color. We've come back today to
Speaker 3: see the grand old house. Martle isn't enamored with the
Speaker 3: new color scheme. You're back at the old at the
Speaker 3: old ranch. How does it feel to be back here
Speaker 3: at m sandgame.
Speaker 2: It's the first time I've been back to the house
Speaker 2: since they took me away, and it just it's sad
Speaker 2: to see to look at it and see that that
Speaker 2: was my life, because they didn't just take me away.
Speaker 2: They took my lifestyle away. And this is a beautiful
Speaker 2: part of the world. And we loved it here and
Speaker 2: we made it our own home and we made it
Speaker 2: really special. And that house is really special. It's well
Speaker 2: over one hundred years old, and we loved it and
Speaker 2: we cherished it, and beautiful of Queenslander took They didn't
Speaker 2: just take the house, they took me, my lifestyle, my being.
Speaker 2: They just dragged me away from it. But it's lovely
Speaker 2: to see that it's still being looked after.
Speaker 3: Throughout all your trials and tribulations, and even now with
Speaker 3: the health issue you're confronting, You've always said you're a
Speaker 3: glass half full sort of.
Speaker 1: A yeah, yeah, yeah, Look, look I'm happy for the
Speaker 1: people that have that home. You know, I can't change
Speaker 1: what's happened, So it's all about your attitude to now
Speaker 1: in the future, you know. You know, I've had this
Speaker 1: terrible battle when I was away in jail, and I
Speaker 1: reckon if I could overcome that, I can become the
Speaker 1: the cancer.
Speaker 2: Well I'm hoping to anyway, so I'm relying on the
Speaker 2: oncologists to get me right. But it's it's there's a
Speaker 2: degree of sadness in my heart that's been taken away.
Speaker 3: Of course, there's the press conference that you did out
Speaker 3: the front of this house shortly after they had I
Speaker 3: think they charged you. I remember, and you were very
Speaker 3: very upbeat.
Speaker 1: I am I am loyal to the Labor Party. There
Speaker 1: are certain people within the There are certain people within
Speaker 1: the Labor Party that I believe have jumped to wrong
Speaker 1: and inaccurate conclusions that that that they should wait and see,
Speaker 1: you know, all the evidence before that people jump to
Speaker 1: those conclusions when you know that you've done nothing wrong,
Speaker 1: and when you know that you've followed the law and
Speaker 1: you believe in the law. At the end of the day,
Speaker 1: the law should be there to protect you. It's a
Speaker 1: charge that carries a seven year jail turn although you
Speaker 1: obviously say that you're innocent and time to prove that.
Speaker 10: It's got to be a terrifying prospect.
Speaker 2: Well, not if you've not done anything wrong.
Speaker 1: And that's and that's what you that's what you have
Speaker 1: to hope that the legal system will show up at
Speaker 1: the end of the day that we have done nothing,
Speaker 1: nothing that that would warrant.
Speaker 2: Well you.
Speaker 1: Look, I thought, Look, when we sit down and explain
Speaker 1: to a jury and a judge exactly what happened, we're
Speaker 1: going to be fine. I didn't I didn't have a
Speaker 1: fear because I knew that we had.
Speaker 2: We hadn't put it in the register. But we're not
Speaker 2: bloody crooks. You know, we're up criminals, and if you
Speaker 2: sit down and you lay the facts out, you're going
Speaker 2: to be fine. And that and that was the approach
Speaker 2: we took, and it was the attitude I had, and
Speaker 2: I just thought, look, I'll be fine. But on the
Speaker 2: house there there's a verandah and it overlooks the ocean.
Speaker 2: And I was there one day and I was eating
Speaker 2: eating a bit of fruit.
Speaker 1: And there was a photographer down at the beach with
Speaker 1: his car backed up taking pictures of me unbeknownst to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was there wasn't a lot of privacy in those days.
Speaker 2: You know, the media camped out here for a while
Speaker 2: and I kind of understand that, but but that my
Speaker 2: neighbors and my friends that would walk past used to
Speaker 2: give the media a bit of a rev Leave the
Speaker 2: blake alone. You leave him alone.
Speaker 1: He's gone through a enough strife.
Speaker 2: You know. Some of my family came to the auction
Speaker 2: and there were a lot of tears that day because
Speaker 2: that house that was our forever home. And you know,
Speaker 2: as I I said, you know, we were going to
Speaker 2: retire up the beach, but one of the kids were
Speaker 2: going to move in there and raise their children. There
Speaker 2: and it was a forever home for the family, and
Speaker 2: they just took it away, took it.
Speaker 4: Away, And do you do you contemplate that often?
Speaker 1: Not to the degree I have now to be honest,
Speaker 1: because I think you've got to move forward, and as
Speaker 1: hurtful it is, I think if you keep coming back
Speaker 1: and revisiting all the time, very.
Speaker 2: Hard to keep moving forward. So no, we've let it go.
Speaker 3: What is more difficult to let go is the more
Speaker 3: than five years Gordon Nattel spent in a maximum security cell.
Speaker 2: And that's what I want people to understand. It's not
Speaker 2: as if because your crime is not a violent one,
Speaker 2: you know, it's a white collar issue chucked in with
Speaker 2: the worst of the worst. I was in with some terrible,
Speaker 2: terrible people, like really bad people, and you're treated exactly
Speaker 2: the same as them because you're in a maximum security prison.
Speaker 2: And I understand that, but I've never understood why I
Speaker 2: was kept there and to this day and I've got
Speaker 2: to let it go. But you kind of want to
Speaker 2: FOI all the files and have a bit of a
Speaker 2: look because someone somewhere stop me going to that farm.
Speaker 2: Because when I did get to the farm, one of
Speaker 2: the officers said to me, your file came here, we
Speaker 2: were expecting you and it was pulled at the last minute.
Speaker 2: How does that make you feel well? It makes me
Speaker 2: feel as though there was interference. There was interference at
Speaker 2: a very high level. Now, whether that was at an
Speaker 2: apartmental level or a political level, I don't know, because
Speaker 2: I just don't, but there was interference. And you just think,
Speaker 2: when is it going to end? Because it's never It
Speaker 2: just seems that it's never enough. And my health deteriorated
Speaker 2: significantly when I was in the Bad Lades.
Speaker 3: So fourteen years ago, almost to the day, you're found guilty,
Speaker 3: back to the watchhouse, back to court the next day
Speaker 3: for sentencing, and then out to maximum security.
Speaker 4: Talk us through that.
Speaker 2: It put me in paddy wagon and said we're going
Speaker 2: to take you straight out. Normally, most prisoners spend a
Speaker 2: few days in the watchhouse until they're placed. That they'd
Speaker 2: already made the arrangements. My barrass has said to me,
Speaker 2: he said, when the jury found you guilty, he said,
Speaker 2: prison officers came out of the walls of the court.
Speaker 2: He said it was incredible. He said, the number of
Speaker 2: prison officers that came out, and immediately I wasn't allowed.
Speaker 2: I turned a look at my family and I wasn't
Speaker 2: allowed to touch them. So right from the time the
Speaker 2: word guilty, that was it. They took me through a
Speaker 2: door handcuffed me straight away.
Speaker 1: Anyway, So after sentencing, they put me in a van
Speaker 1: and a helicopter followed us out, not that I saw it.
Speaker 2: I took me in and they process you. They and.
Speaker 1: They got my day to birth wrong. I kept saying
Speaker 1: to them, you got my day to birth wrong, but
Speaker 1: they didn't want to listen.
Speaker 2: I'm in a mess, so they got they got a
Speaker 2: psychologist to come and see me. I'm sure. They put
Speaker 2: me on some valley or something, and then I was
Speaker 2: taken out of isolation, placed in isolation, and there was
Speaker 2: a one of the guard showed me that they did
Speaker 2: a sketch drawing in the correer mile or what what
Speaker 2: I was looking what I'm looking at brick wall of
Speaker 2: concrete walls. So they put me in isolation for a
Speaker 2: few days. I think after a day or two, the
Speaker 2: family was allowed a quick visit.
Speaker 4: What were the first sensations you had when you went
Speaker 4: into the security for.
Speaker 2: The first time. You kind of it's like a deer
Speaker 2: in the headlights. To be honest, you're handcuffed and you
Speaker 2: just can't believe that you were in this. It was
Speaker 2: a you can't believe you're in this situation, you know,
Speaker 2: like this is a nightmare. It's not really happening to me,
Speaker 2: but it is. It is happening to you, and you're
Speaker 2: in dirty, old prison greens. I tracks it probably had
Speaker 2: me washed for a week until they get you some clothes.
Speaker 2: So you come in and they kitch out. You don't
Speaker 2: get a lot, you know, you get a track suit
Speaker 2: and a pair of shorts, and it's all the same.
Speaker 2: Everyone's the same, and probably be mourned by one hundred
Speaker 2: prisoners before me. It's not all news. It's all pretty crappy.
Speaker 2: So I broke down. I remember breaking down and crying
Speaker 2: and just in disbelief where I was and what was happening.
Speaker 2: And they were trying to explain to me what was
Speaker 2: going to happen with me in the first few weeks,
Speaker 2: but I kind of wasn't listening. I didn't really know.
Speaker 2: So they took me down to the isolation so and
Speaker 2: there were three guards there, and this guard grabbed me
Speaker 2: and he said, right, he said, when we come to
Speaker 2: the door. You are to face a concrete wall, spread
Speaker 2: your legs, hands up on the wall, all this.
Speaker 1: Sort of stuff like you see on TV. And you think,
Speaker 1: what what do you mean?
Speaker 2: And he said, up you go, you know, And he
Speaker 2: made me do it and demonstrated to me if he
Speaker 2: had got to be so far apart all the rest
Speaker 2: of it. And that's what I say. You treated as
Speaker 2: though you were a danger a dangerous prisoner, like someone
Speaker 2: that would harm somebody. You know, I can't fight my
Speaker 2: way out of a wet paper bag, and here they
Speaker 2: are giving you these instructions. And he sat me down
Speaker 2: and he said but he said, to your smoke and
Speaker 2: I said no. And he said, well that's good. And
Speaker 2: he said do you gamble? And I said no. He
Speaker 2: said right, he said, smoking and gambling that's where you
Speaker 2: get yourself into trouble. Are here.
Speaker 1: And I soon quickly realized that the way to survive
Speaker 1: is you know nothing, you see nothing, and your mind
Speaker 1: your own business. And I'll give you an example of that.
Speaker 1: There was a fella it was used to be he
Speaker 1: was a Quantus pilot. Former Quantus pilot, got himself into
Speaker 1: trouble over drugs.
Speaker 2: He walked past these two blakes playing chess, and he
Speaker 2: said I wouldn't have made that move, and the blake
Speaker 2: jumped up and breaking jaw. So it's a violent place
Speaker 2: as well. It's a really violent place, and people forget that.
Speaker 4: Would have been nothing you'd ever experienced previously.
Speaker 1: It's a different world totally, and you've got to very
Speaker 1: quickly try to adjust to survive because they pray on
Speaker 1: you, you know, they will.
Speaker 2: You're a new prisoner and you're dumb. They'll pray on
Speaker 2: you for money, or they'll pray on you for anything.
Speaker 2: So you kind of got to get your wits around
Speaker 2: you really quickly, you know. I found that really hard
Speaker 2: the first few days by because I was still in
Speaker 2: shock about and I was still in isolation, and I
Speaker 2: just I just couldn't comprehend where I was. I couldn't.
Speaker 2: I couldn't understand it. I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, yeah, someone will come and get me toron,
Speaker 1: I'll be all right. But it wasn't. It wasn't that,
Speaker 1: and I was there and I was stuck. So I
Speaker 1: went into this what they call a unit, and there
Speaker 1: was six wings.
Speaker 2: In the jail.
Speaker 4: So this is after isolation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a few days after what they do is they
Speaker 1: bring you down to the unit where there's fifty prisoners
Speaker 1: and they'll leave you there.
Speaker 2: For three or four hours to a climatize, yeah, and
Speaker 2: then take you back. And the next day it'd be six hours,
Speaker 2: and the next day it'll be the whole day, and
Speaker 2: then the seventh day, bang you're in. And then you've
Speaker 2: got to try and work out who's who in the zoo?
Speaker 2: And I mean that literally. And how do you keep
Speaker 2: yourself out of trouble?
Speaker 4: How did you keep yourself out of.
Speaker 2: Trouble by following those three bits of advice? Know nothing,
Speaker 2: see nothing in my my own business.
Speaker 4: What was the worst of it?
Speaker 2: The worst of it was watching both self harm or
Speaker 2: sing like cell p harm. One fella took his own life.
Speaker 2: That's horrible stuff.
Speaker 1: The guys would make these things, I think they're called shives,
Speaker 1: and you had plastic toothbrushes, but they would sharpen them
Speaker 1: on the concrete, turn them into knives. And you would
Speaker 1: worry that someone were just going to come and jab
Speaker 1: your because you wouldn't give him any money.
Speaker 4: Or you know, And did that ever happen to you?
Speaker 2: No? No?
Speaker 4: How did you survive? Then?
Speaker 2: In the in the early part, you're allowed out of
Speaker 2: yourself for a few hours. Then back in I would
Speaker 2: just stay. I would just stay myself, just too frightened
Speaker 2: to go out. Yeah initially, yeah, yeah. And a couple
Speaker 2: of the boys come and had a chat to me
Speaker 2: and say, look, you'll be all right. And there was
Speaker 2: one fella there. He was one of the tough guys
Speaker 2: in the unit, and they came to see me and
Speaker 2: he said, oh, I brought you a few razor blades.
Speaker 2: You have a show. And I thought, I got to
Speaker 2: repay this real quick. So they have this think called
Speaker 2: the buyout where you can buy some toilet trees and
Speaker 2: things like that. So every week you can buy these
Speaker 2: things so quickly, the very next week, I bought them
Speaker 2: the razor blades, took them. They didn't have to do that.
Speaker 1: Now, you know, you could have done that later on,
Speaker 1: but it would have meant I ate him, and I
Speaker 1: didn't want to be beholding.
Speaker 2: So anyway, I got to nail him and we got
Speaker 2: on all right, and we exercised a little bit. But
Speaker 2: the first four or five months I was.
Speaker 5: You.
Speaker 2: When you're in the wing, they have this area outside
Speaker 2: which is concrete and caged over the top total caged
Speaker 2: and it's four steps squade, ten steps long. And that
Speaker 2: was all I felt aknew for the first four months.
Speaker 2: Concrete cage wire. You sell soul destroying O horrible, horrible,
Speaker 2: just horror.
Speaker 1: And you don't realize it. And you hear Blake's at
Speaker 1: night screaming out in their cells. The guards come around
Speaker 1: every two hours with a torch, shine.
Speaker 2: It on you, and you hear them coming two in
Speaker 2: the morning, three in the morning, whenever they choose to
Speaker 2: do it. And then at seven o'clock the next morning,
Speaker 2: the door was automatically open and you have to stand
Speaker 2: there and they do a head count. They do a
Speaker 2: three or four head count today.
Speaker 1: And you go downstairs and everything's metal and concrete. The
Speaker 1: tables are metal, the seats are metal. Breakfast is a
Speaker 1: bit of cereal at Chabrecky. Everyone's allocated a small cart
Speaker 1: and the milk.
Speaker 2: But people pill for that, but.
Speaker 4: Steal from your Yeah, oh yeah, of course they do.
Speaker 2: It's jire, you know, it's not. It's not play school. Mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: they'll pill for it, and so you could end up
Speaker 2: with no milk for the day. So your six hundred
Speaker 2: milli of milk or whatever it is you've got to
Speaker 2: rash it well, you got to put on your bricky cereal,
Speaker 2: and of course all your crockery and cuperies everything is plastic,
Speaker 2: so your cups, you know, and the guys that couldn't
Speaker 2: afford coffee would try and pinch coffee and they'd supply
Speaker 2: your tea bags. It wouldn't supply you had to buy
Speaker 2: your own coffee, so you had to make sure you
Speaker 2: had enough milk for your coffee. But dinner was about
Speaker 2: four o'clock at night. It's like, you know, because they
Speaker 2: got to clean the kitchen up and get every and
Speaker 2: lock what they call lockaway was in those days was six,
Speaker 2: but they then bought it four to five, so you're
Speaker 2: actually locked in yourself forteen hours a day.
Speaker 4: Did you did you ever fear for your life in there?
Speaker 2: There were I feared getting bashed up twice pretty badly,
Speaker 2: and once for my life. Finally, after about four months,
Speaker 2: they let you go to what they call the oval
Speaker 2: for an hour once or twice a week, and I
Speaker 2: adventured out. I thought I'm going to go, and I
Speaker 2: adventured out, and you get searched as you go out
Speaker 2: by the guards and there's a football over there, and
Speaker 2: it's all, of course why we're all around it, Morris.
Speaker 2: But the purpose of the football level is so the
Speaker 2: guys can get rid of the pent up energy. So
Speaker 2: a lot of the guys played touch football and stuff
Speaker 2: like that, but there's a purpose behind it, you know,
Speaker 2: to get them to burn themselves out and run the energy.
Speaker 1: So I go out, I go to the gym and there's.
Speaker 2: No equipment ready. It's just a big shed and they
Speaker 2: call it the gym. So I go. I walk along
Speaker 2: the grass and I filled the grass first time I
Speaker 2: had felt grass in four months, and and looked up
Speaker 2: and blue sky and no cage. An incredible feeling, like
Speaker 2: a really incredible feeling. So I go in and there's
Speaker 2: this guy and he would be six two sixth th
Speaker 2: I suppose, built like a proverbial brick toilet, and tattoos
Speaker 2: from top to bottom. And someone said, I forget his name.
Speaker 2: We'll call him Harry. For the sake of the argument,
Speaker 2: someone said to Harry, wants to see you there.
Speaker 1: We first smack in the head. Come up here, welcome
Speaker 1: to jaild bang. And I walked over and he said
Speaker 1: here you going, and I said, oh okay. He said
Speaker 1: to me he's a bit of advice for you. He said,
Speaker 1: you've got an appeal on, haven't you.
Speaker 2: And I said yeah. He said, when you're.
Speaker 1: Not going to win it, So you will put your
Speaker 1: head down, do your time and you'll be all right.
Speaker 2: But don't think you're going to win your appeal now,
Speaker 2: piss off.
Speaker 10: It was a bit of good advice by cry You know.
Speaker 10: It's not like talking to your bank manager. You know,
Speaker 10: that was the first one.
Speaker 4: As you'd expect.
Speaker 3: In a maximum security prison, violence pervades every aspect of
Speaker 3: your waking hours. Do you still have nightmares about your
Speaker 3: time in maximum security?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, I do. I do. They faded not as many,
Speaker 2: and they fade very hard to expunge that from your
Speaker 2: mind totally. The unit I was in, I've only been
Speaker 2: in there about six months, not even that, not even that.
Speaker 2: And it was a Saturday morning and they called us out.
Speaker 2: They unlocked the doors and you come and stand at
Speaker 2: your door and they do a head count.
Speaker 1: This morning, this Saturday morning. And I was excited because
Speaker 1: I was getting.
Speaker 2: A visit, so I was really looking forward to that.
Speaker 2: So this Saturday morning, we'd come out at seven o'clock,
Speaker 2: unlocked the doors, standing at your door. They called your name,
Speaker 2: roll call kind of thing. They do that several times
Speaker 2: throughout the day. Call it. They call it a muster
Speaker 2: muster up, muster up. This flake didn't come out of
Speaker 2: his cell, and I just had this gut feeling this
Speaker 2: cut filming.
Speaker 1: This fellow had lost his job. Everyone works in the prison,
Speaker 1: you've all got a job. He had just been sacked
Speaker 1: as the laundry. Gosh, he didn't come out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they called his name again. The inmate next door
Speaker 2: was told have a look inside, and he come back
Speaker 2: and he said he's lying on his bed with a
Speaker 2: plastic bag over his head. So he'd taken his own life.
Speaker 2: So they immediately locked us all the way straight away,
Speaker 2: just backing yourself. Bang locked the door. So the mentality
Speaker 2: of these blakes, there's a fellow there and they're dead,
Speaker 2: so they've got to get the coroner in doctors. Blake
Speaker 2: starts screaming out for breakfast, breakfast. You know, I'm crying
Speaker 2: the something what I horrible? Places says why am I here?
Speaker 2: Because I didn't put something in a bloody register? And
Speaker 2: I again, you think, how am I going to survive this?
Speaker 2: How the bloody hell am I going to survive anyway.
Speaker 2: One of the guards came after about an hour and
Speaker 2: he said, we need your help. And there was two
Speaker 2: of us. They took out of ourselves and it was
Speaker 2: our job to feed everybody.
Speaker 1: So there's a little latch in your door week and
Speaker 1: get food. So we had to give We've got everyone
Speaker 1: breakfast time to cereal. So we've got everyone breakfast. Guy's
Speaker 1: wing and they want to taste. I didn't get my
Speaker 1: cup of tea.
Speaker 2: It's just it's horrible. You know, there's a guy the dead.
Speaker 2: So we were locked away. Then we had to do
Speaker 2: the same thing at lunchtime, and this other fellow. So
Speaker 2: every cell forty eight cells plus mine and the other one.
Speaker 2: So about three o'clock they'd taken the body away. They
Speaker 2: brought some counselors down, some young kids, brought two or
Speaker 2: three there. They let every prisoner out one by one.
Speaker 2: They have a chatter, the counselor. So that was a
Speaker 2: pretty horrible experience. I've seen blake spashed, I've seen blacks.
Speaker 2: It was yeah, yeah, just I've seen black self harm.
Speaker 2: You kind of kind of raise it from your mind.
Speaker 2: An a normal society would never experienced that, So you
Speaker 2: just I never hardened. I just learned and how to
Speaker 2: deal with it and accept it that this is my life.
Speaker 2: And then after about nine months, they moved me out
Speaker 2: of one of those wings over to an area.
Speaker 4: They call it residential, not residential in the traditional sense.
Speaker 2: I wasn't. I wasn't living at Ascot, let me tell you.
Speaker 1: So they've got these wings where they put six flakes
Speaker 1: in a unit, only six six downstairs, six upstairs.
Speaker 2: And it's a little bit bad. It was a little
Speaker 2: bit more open, and there's no cage above you, and
Speaker 2: you and you to go there if you behave yourself.
Speaker 2: But if you misbehaved, they called you. They tip you.
Speaker 2: What they tip? You said, what the hell? Tip me?
Speaker 2: That means I put you, tip your back into where
Speaker 2: you were, tip your back to where you were. So
Speaker 2: I was after about nine months I ended up over there.
Speaker 2: When I was in that horrible place, I worked the
Speaker 2: kitchen in our unit was to make sure everyone got
Speaker 2: breakfast and fed. Because food pinching is a big thing.
Speaker 2: It's the quality of the food's very poor. So I'd
Speaker 2: like to pinch food and all sorts of stuff. So
Speaker 2: I go over to the other residential and I get
Speaker 2: allocated to a unit upstairs, and I stayed in the
Speaker 2: same room, in the same unit the whole time. The
Speaker 2: rest of the time I was in maximum security.
Speaker 3: Next time, Goodon Nuttle gets up close and personal with
Speaker 3: a convicted murderer in maximum security.
Speaker 1: He was mean, that mean, all tough, just me but me,
Speaker 1: And he's sitting in a chair and he's sitting back there.
Speaker 2: Someone said, George wants to see you on.
Speaker 3: And what was the job he was asked to do.
Speaker 2: If I say no, I'm going to get the crap
Speaker 2: belted out of me somewhere down the road. And if
Speaker 2: the guard catches me with this ship, any trusts that
Speaker 2: they had in me is gone.
Speaker 3: And later Operation Gumnut, the Corrections Department's secret plan to
Speaker 3: sneak their high profile inmate past the waiting media and
Speaker 3: into the hands of his family.
Speaker 10: And we're sitting there with our hoodies on and beanies,
Speaker 10: and we thought, gosh, we must look a site like
Speaker 10: sitting outside the boat as at post office in the
Speaker 10: middle of the night.
Speaker 3: The Man Behind the Rose podcast writer, producer and host
Speaker 3: Patrick Condron. Sound design and editing Mark Wright. Graphics by
Speaker 3: Jason Blandford. The Man behind the Rose is a seven
Speaker 3: news production,