The success of the Wood Royal Commission into police corruption has been widely applauded.
But we have to ask why it has been successful. And the reason may not be very palatable because it flies in the face of generations of unquestioning veneration of the British system of justice.
Wood succeeded where other inquiries have failed. The Independent Commission Against Corruption was singularly ineffectual in uncovering the corruption and nailing those who engaged in it, even though a range of informed people in NSW knew it was going on. Those people included journalists and Members of Parliament.
Similarly in Queensland, the later-to-be Chief Justice of Australia Harry Gibbs conducted an inquiry into prostitution and gaming in Queensland in the 1960s which came to the laughable conclusion that there was no evidence that it was going on when anyone who knew anyone in Brisbane knew. And there are others.
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