Melbourne

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/the-nicola-gobbo-lawyer-x-scandal-explained-20201124-p56hh9.html

More than 1000 convictions under question, tens of millions of dollars expended and a host of former and current police potentially facing charges. What on Earth is the Nicola Gobbo story all about?

The revelation in March 2019 that a former gangland barrister called Nicola Gobbo was also a police informer was a legal scandal like no other – one that threatened the foundations of the state's criminal justice system and some of Victoria Police's most celebrated convictions.

The scandal, unfolding largely in secret and shrouded by suppression orders, took almost a decade to play out until the Director of Public Prosecutions finally decided Ms Gobbo's former clients had a right to know that she might have informed on them, breaching her duties as their lawyer.

The police fought for years in the courts to try to keep her name from public disclosure. They took the case all the way to the High Court, which found in December 2018 that Victoria Police’s conduct in using her as a confidential informer was "reprehensible" and had corrupted prosecutions.

It left Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews with no choice but to call a royal commission into the police's handling of Ms Gobbo and other informers.

Thousands of news stories and millions of dollars later, two convicted criminals released and many others launching appeals, now the royal commission has handed down its final report.

Essentially:

• Nicola Gobbo was legally representing organised crime figures while also acting as an informant.
• This was an undisclosed conflict of interest as well as breach of attorney-client privilege.
• This means Gobbo’s clients were denied their right to due process and hence their convictions are questionable.
• The Police fought to cover this up to avoid the possibility of convictions being overturned.

We supposedly have rights, rule of law, and due process here. We like pointing the finger at other countries’ failings. But then you find all the instances of stuff like this happening.

My take is that it’s a situation where the police thought, “We’re going after bad guys, so it doesn’t matter if we bend a few rules to make it easier to get convictions.” Classic “end justifies the means” thinking. The trouble is, when you violate people’s rights because “they’re bad guys”, you bring the whole system into disrepute. Who gets to decide who the “bad guys” are? How do you ensure only “bad guys” have their rights violated? What good are rights if they disappear as soon as you need them? How can we lecture other countries for flawed legal systems when we have these systemic issues at home?

The worst part is the way the police spent so much time and money trying to cover it up.