Home Page - Save Our Kids - Kevin Rudd and Heiner affair

The Heiner affair is the long-running controversy surrounding the Goss cabinet's 1990 shredding of documents relating to child abuse - including the rape of a 14-year-old Aboriginal girl - after it aborted an inquiry into the former John Oxley Youth Detention Centre.

The documents had been compiled during an inquiry headed by former magistrate Noel Heiner that was set up in the final days of the Cooper conservative government in 1989.

The complaint to the Parliamentary Crime and Misconduct Committee (PCMC) was lodged by former union official Kevin Lindeberg in February 2008 and concerned the handling of the Heiner affair by the main corruption watchdog, the Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) and its predecessor body, the Criminal Justice Commission (CJC).

Attached to the application for review was a nine-volume audit produced by Sydney QC David Rofe that contains details of 68 alleged prima facie charges that he believes could be brought against public officials past and present.

They include Prime Minister Kevin Rudd - Mr Goss's former chief-of-staff - the Governor-General Quentin Bryce, who took no action after requesting and receiving a report on the affair from then Premier Peter Beattie in 2003, and six serving Queensland judicial officers.

The review application to the PCMC also included a statement of concern sent to Mr Beattie in 2007 from legal heavyweights, including the former Chief Justice of Western Australia David Malcolm.

New light shed on Heiner Affair with 'Shreddergate' inquiry set to open

Annette McIntosh, 37, is one of the living victims of Shreddergate - a 20-year controversy involving politicians, shredded documents and "hush money".

For the first time, she has revealed her full identity in her fight for justice. Mrs McIntosh alleges that at 14 years old, as a ward of the state at Brisbane's John Oxley Detention Centre, she was pack-raped.

A year ago, the State Government paid Mrs McIntosh $140,000 in compensation for a crime that never led to charges, let alone an investigation.

She signed a confidentiality agreement. But that is about to be broken. Mrs McIntosh will head to Canberra when Federal Parliament resumes next month, and with Independent Senator Nick Xenophon will fight to open a new inquiry into what has been referred to as the Heiner Affair.

"I cannot wait. I have been waiting for this ... just to tell them straight out I'm still alive," Mrs McIntosh told The Sunday Mail.

"It feels good to speak because I've been told to shut my mouth for over 20 years."

Several probes have been held into the Heiner inquiry's investigation into alleged crimes at the detention centre.

Documents were shredded by the then Goss Government because of fears of legal problems relating to the inquiry, which was also disbanded.

Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd was chief-of-staff to then premier Wayne Goss at the time of the shredding.

But an inquiry has never been held into why Mrs McIntosh, who works with indigenous youth, was paid compensation.

Moves for an inquiry were put on ice last month when former Family First senator Steve Fielding shocked Senator Xenophon and the Coalition by pulling his support.

HOW THE SAGA UNFOLDED

1989: Former magistrate Noel Heiner appointed by the then National Party to inquire into alleged abuse at the John Oxley Detention Centre

1990: Incoming Labor Goss government shreds documents over fears the inquiry was not properly constituted

1995: The Criminal Justice Commission cleared of allegations it had lied to a federal Senate inquiry about a whistleblower who provided information to the Heiner inquiry

1996: Barristers Tony Morris, QC, and Edward Hoard appointed by the Borbidge government to hold an investigation into the shredding

2004: Federal Senate select committee holds hearings into the shredding but they lead to no charges

2010: victim Annette McIntosh receives compensation from the Bligh Government

It follows that any suggestion that the (Goss) Queensland Government came to this matter with clean hands and good intentions bears little scrutiny. Transparency in the Goss Government’s handling of this matter was never present from day one, nor does it exist in the Beattie Government in 2003.

1.17 It is now quite clear that while Queensland’s administrative and criminal justice system has collapsed in around the Cabinet’s unlawful decision to destroy the Heiner Inquiry documents, as Dr. MacAdam suggested in his 27 October 2003 bracket of evidence, these corrupt doings, by natural political and logical extension, go back to the ALP’s transition-

12 I was an ALP member in Federal seat of Bowman occupied by the Hon. Con Sciacca; and the State seat of Manly (later changed to Capalaba) which was occupied by Mr. Jim Elder who later resigned in disgrace, when Deputy Premier and Minister for State Development, after being caught up in electoral rorting which came to light during the Shepherdson Inquiry into electoral rorting within the ALP in late 2000. I used to attend branch meetings on a regular basis. I parted company with the ALP over the Heiner Affair in 1992 after meeting with Mr. Elder when he acknowledged that exposing the Heiner cover-up was only a matter of when it would happen, not if. After the 1992 Goss victory, Mr. Elder became a new Minister and leader of the AWU faction, and spoke in a derisory manner about Heiner whenever it came to the floor of Parliament for debate. 13 Mr. Peter Coyne and Mrs. Anne Dutney Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee – Submission in Reply to 27 October 2003 Brisbane Evidence The Heiner Affair

into-government committee because it is not credible for certain of its members not to have had the same knowledge as Ms. Warner declared she had in the 1 October 1989 edition of The Sunday-Sun. It is simply not plausible to suggest otherwise. It is therefore strongly open to suggest that certain plans originated in this forum – or even within a smaller circle - about how the John OxleyYouth Detention Centre problem within the Families Department would be addressed, along with a general cleaning out of other departments after being in the political wilderness for 32 years when the expected December 1989 State election victory was decided. It was, afterall, another “drover’s dog” election to be won by the ALP against a discredited and dysfunctional National Party Government massively weighed down by the Fitzgerald Inquiry revelations.

1.18 The manifestation of a transition-into-government plan to “clean out” certain public officials showed up when certain high ranking persons, mainly former departmental Directors-General, were shunted off to a ”gulag” at the Normanby Fiveways within a matter of days of the Goss Government winning office where they were given no work, and were eventually either terminated or employed elsewhere. The author knows that Queensland Premier the Hon. Wayne Goss’s Principal Private Secretary, Mr. Kevin Rudd, played a highly significant role in this possess of vetting the suitability of new Directors-General for the Goss administration, even as early as the Sunday after election day.

1.19 Mr. Coyne was suddenly moved from his management position at Wacol on 14 February 1990 to another in the Brisbane Central area to carry out a so-called special task the following day. His secondment occurred the day after the Inquiry was closed which immediately triggered his legal action to obtain access to the Heiner Inquiry documents.14

1.20 He was gazetted15 to his new position which opens up other related questions concerning the subsequent (fraudulent) make-up of his Deed of Settlement* payment of $27,190 which included bogus compensation for additional travelling costs and payment for time off in lieu of worked overtime neither of which he was entitled to. Mr. Coyne claimed that his seconded task was, in reality, a “created non-job”16 for the purpose of justifying his sudden removal from the Centre. *(See Heading: The Fresh Significance of the Particular Provisions in the February 1991 Deed of Settlement)

1.21 The identity of those on the ALP transition-into-government committee may become a highly relevant factor in Heiner now for a variety of reasons. Certain LACA Committee members have seen fit to question me on the suspicion that I must have known about the child abuse at the time which, presumably, I should have done something about by preventing the Inquiry’s records from being shredded or reported it to an appropriate authority because it potentially breached ‘the course of justice’ as the records would have been highly relevant to a police investigation and potential related judicial proceedings. As it happened, I was unaware of the abuse.

1.22 Some of these people may have gone on to hold, and may still hold, very influential positions in State or Federal public office, or, indeed, elsewhere enabling them to hinder justice or to still do so in this serious matter. In the interests of justice, their identity and

14 See the Walsh Memorandum dated 14 February 1990 to DFSAIA Acting CEO Ms. Ruth Matchett. 15 See Queensland Government Gazette No. 55 3/3/90 p.1088. 16 Review of Departmental Services to Young Offenders – See Volume 2 Criminal Justice Commission – Senate Select Committee on Unresolved Whistleblower Cases Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee – Submission in Reply to 27 October 2003 Brisbane Evidence The Heiner Affair

public position held at relevant times, may well therefore become a necessary fact-finding ingredient for the Committee which, when known, may add more weight to the alreadyestablished call for the appointment of a Special Prosecutor to investigate Heiner fully. Equally, given the seriousness of the situation, some may well wish to publicly disavow themselves, under oath, of the same state of knowledge which former Goss Families Minister the Hon. Anne Warner and former Environment Minister the Hon. Pat Comben unquestionably had at the time when they, as Ministers of the Crown, permitted vital evidence of abuse of children in State care to be put through the shredder so that it could not be used in court or in evidence against the careers of certain staff at the Centre who were plainly abusing children in State care and were never held to account. Such conduct may go to a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and accessory after the fact.

1.23 It is open to suggest that two such people caught up in this network and sitting in the Federal Parliament should be questioned under oath in the same way I was to ascertain whether or not they held the same state of knowledge as the Hon. Anne Warner and the Hon. Pat Comben did in those critical days. They are the Member for Griffith, Mr. Kevin Rudd MP and the Member for Lilley, Mr. Wayne Swan MP.

Read the complete document Long-running scandal threatens Rudd Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd was Goss’s chief of staff at the time of the Heiner Affair and shortly after took on the newly-created position of Director-General of the Cabinet Office. According to Queensland academic Scott Prasser: “Rudd was the de facto power behind the throne. He was Wayne Goss’s closest adviser and the Premier’s Mr Fixit. He was the key man’’.

Last December, Queensland Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson said: “Rudd’s chief credential for Labor leadership is that he knows power and has exercised it at the highest levels of government. He ran the government of Queensland for six years ...’’’

The Heiner Affair has been put squarely in the public arena by some of the most respected members of the judiciary and the legal fraternity, people not given to demonstrations of public outrage; but who felt that the shredding of evidence by the Goss executive represented a full frontal attack on the separation of powers, on the judiciary’s function. Given that the matter remains unresolved, there is no guarantee it might not happen again.

These black letter law figures aren’t interested in politics or personalities, but they are gravely concerned about the conduct of the law and, in particular, the manner in which it was applied to a decision of the Queensland government at a time when, as it happens, Rudd held a position of great influence with unhindered access to Cabinet documents.

Source: The Daily Telegraph

Tragic story cries out for an ending FEDERAL Opposition leader Kevin Rudd may be called to answer questions relating to the destruction of evidence as a police investigation into the rape of a Queensland girl 19 years ago gains new momentum.

The girl, who we will call Alice, was just 14 at the time and resident at the John Oxley Youth Detention Centre, in the care of the Queensland Government, when she was gang raped by other inmates. Though some of the rapists confessed, no charges were pressed and the police inquiry at the time was at best belated and perfunctory.

Alice’s tragic story is but one strand of this horror, the other is the Goss ALP government’s attempt to ignore her plight and bury the incident without trace. That attempt began when an investigation, directed by former magistrate Noel Heiner and launched by the Cooper National Party government, was shut down by the Goss government when it came to power.

The Goss cabinet ordered the shredding of all the documents collected by Heiner and this marked the beginning of the Heiner Affair. Rudd was Premier Wayne Goss’s chief of staff at the time and subsequently became the director-general of his cabinet office. It was widely held that nothing took place within cabinet without his knowledge, and he has also claimed his experience running Goss’s cabinet has equipped him to be prime minister of Australia.

Though both Rudd and Queensland Premier Peter Beattie claimed as recently as last week that the shredding of the documents needed no further investigation, it has never been fully examined. Both Rudd and Beattie also rejected the view of former chief justice of the High Court, Sir Harry Gibbs and an unprecedented plea from a former West Australian chief justice (David Malcolm), two retired NSW chief judges (Jack Lee, now deceased, and Dr Frank McGrath), two retired NSW Supreme Court justices (Roddy Meagher and Barry O’Keefe), one of Australia’s foremost QCs (Alec Shand) and a legal academic and barrister (Alastair MacAdam) that an independent special prosecutor be appointed to examine the matter.

Source: The Daily Telegraph

Hiding In The Shadows IN THE space of a week, Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd and Queensland Premier Peter Beattie have snubbed calls for an inquiry into the rape and abuse of children in the care of the Queensland Government, claiming previous investigations established there was nothing more to be investigated.

Through a spokesman, Beattie said: “Two Senate select committees and at least two Senate committee of privileges inquiries. The (Queensland) criminal justice committee, the parliamentary CJC and the Electoral andAdministrative Review Commission (EARC) have also looked at this. The Auditor-General has considered it twice. There is nothing more to be investigated.’’

Rudd’s spokesman said something eerily similar: ``These alleged actions of the Goss Government have been exhaustively investigated in a number of inquiries, including two separate Federal parliamentary inquiries _ one joint select committee, and another by the House of Representatives’ legal and constitutional committee in 2004, chaired by Liberal MP, Bronwyn Bishop and with a government-controlled majority.

``Neither of these inquiries received or considered any allegations in relation to the federal Labor leader nor was he mentioned in transcripts, submissions or in the committee’s reports.

``He was also not included among the persons adversely named.’’

There is another similarity between the claims of Beattie and Rudd. Both are distinctly questionable (and both men must be well aware of that).

First, let’s look at the inquiries Beattie and Rudd are attempting to hide behind.

The first Senate committee to mention the so-called Heiner Affair, which involved the Goss Cabinet’s decision to shred documents needed by investigators, was a 1994 inquiry into whistleblowing generally.

It was not specifically into this matter. Despite the Beattie-Rudd claims that it found nothing wrong, the all-party committee unanimously recommended that the Goss Government (in which Rudd served as Premier Wayne Goss’ chief of staff from 1989 to 1992) review the affair.

Definitely no clean bill of health there. Goss, of course, rejected the committee’s recommendation.

Source: The Daily Telegraph