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Three more “c” words
Australia is agog following the death in Barwon high security prison of Carl Williams, the baby-faced gangland killer who was serving 35 years for the murder of four people and who was believed to have been associated with the deaths of at least ten others in a series of vicious reprisal killings. His life-story was the subject of the original television series of Underbelly, Williams was one of the kingpins of Melbourne’s underworld and none too pleasant a chap it seems. But for days now we have relived the moment of Williams’s death, again and again, bashed from behind with the stem of an exercise bicycle all under the constant watchful eye of the prison’s CCTV system. Apparently there are some questions to be answered about why it took twenty-five minutes after the bashing for any of the guards to pay any attention.
But agog we are, the media are howling outrage about the fact that Williams and other gangsters have been glamorised by the media, other media than the ones howling that must be. The Underbelly series, which dramatises real-life organised crime, has been so successful that it is hard to know whether life is imitating art or vica-versa and the third series, which started a fortnight ago, has been subject to relentless media coverage. We have the real-life characters on magazine-style shows telling viewers what they think of their television portrayals, being filmed attending socialite functions and occupying favourite spots in corporate boxes. Just a week or so ago, another Melbourne Underbelly identity, Mick Gatto, was in Perth, feted by the television cameras, walking the celebrity carpet into the Danny Green boxing match, a big thing here; this week he was back on television giving his views on his foe, Williams’s death. Interviewed on television news, Gatto said that, while he felt sorry for William’s daughter, he was going to enjoy a lovely day. With that he sat back, grinned and lit a cigar, almost as big and fat as Williams himself.
More forthcoming was “veteran criminal” Chopper Read who told media that when he heard the news of Williams’s death he spat out his drink and laughed his head off. “He was just a big, fat, wobbly-bottomed boy from Footscray. He wasn’t much of a man at all. He was nothing,” continued Read.
He added, for the sake of colour, that he and Gatto are the only two of the major Melbourne underworld figures left and is predicting, probably rightly so, that no-one going to kill Gatto right now because he is much too popular.
Meanwhile, the widow, Roberta, spent the day after the death at the beauty salon to look her best for her New Idea interview, reportedly worth as much as $250,000.
At work, we too have encountered shadowy figures of our own from the twilight world. Or almost, as a meeting between the Corruption and Crime Commission and my boss took place behind closed doors in an internal, windowless room; my involvement limited to ensuring that the clutter from my desk was cleared away should that create a bad impression as these fighters of crime moved through the building. So silent were they that I neither saw them arrive or leave, but I knew when they were there because of the hush throughout the building as those not invited craned to hear whatever their business may have be through the muffled walls of that windowless room.
With a staff of 154 in Western Australia, the Commission, reverently referred to as the Triple C, is empowered to combat and reduce the incidence of organised crime but I learned and this is true, it is not actually empowered to investigate organised crime itself.
And that, I think, explains why they were at our work. Not that the boss has revealed any details, but a paper subsequently obtained reveals that the Triple C has been doing the rounds of universities telling vice-chancellors and senior managers that investigating bullying “may well” be within their statutory brief. They are hot on it too, and who would I be to disregard their vigour when it concurs so uniformly with mine. Bullying in universities occurs, the Triple C believes, because of the skill level of staff (managers) involved in change management, stress on staff and students, an absence of sanctions on perpetrators and a lack of commitment by VCs and senior management to zero tolerance of bullying and violence. Better still, the Triple C believes some universities are more careful about protecting their reputations than managing misconduct, and are prone to attacking whistleblowers rather than investigating their complaints.
As every day passes, I like this country more.