AN INTRODUCTION TO SLEAZE-A COMMONWEALTH OF PREDATORY SEX AND UNCHECKED CRIME
As we marvel in stunned incredulity at the sordid entanglements and deceptions ensnaring members of the British Royal Family, most notably Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and his former spouse, once heralded as a beacon of feminism and autonomy within the House of Windsor, we conveniently avert our gaze from our own domestic analogues to Jeffrey Epstein: that archetype of the affluent politically connected sexual predator, whose coterie encompassed monarchs, presidents, titans of commerce, and politicians of every stripe, preying predominantly upon underage women.
From Lionel Murphy, Australia’s pre-eminent legal authority of his era (a clandestine procurer and predator in his own right), to erstwhile prime ministers, luminaries of the national broadcaster, the ABC and their kin, alongside a substantial cadre of parliamentarians and the juridical elite, a comparable veneer of unctuous depravity permeates our legal fraternity and judiciary, yet remains expediently overlooked.
Today, we publish the first in a series of investigative reports that pierces the veil of this entrenched cabal: those privileged custodians of our legislative, legal apparatus and judiciary, who vigilantly shield their own entrenched venality.
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THE SHADOWED ENTANGLEMENTS OF KERRY PACKER AND HIS EMPIRE
Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer, Australia’s preeminent media magnate, whose empire spanned the Nine Network, Australian Consolidated Press, and ventures in gambling, property, and sports, embodied a paradoxical blend of charisma and ruthlessness. Born into privilege yet scarred by a domineering father, Sir Frank Packer, he amassed a fortune estimated at A$6.5 billion at his demise, revolutionizing cricket through World Series Cricket and indulging in prodigious gambling feats, such as a A$28 million loss in one session. Wed to Roslyn Redman since 1956, with whom he had two children, James and Gretel, Packer projected familial propriety while pursuing extramarital liaisons, including with former ABC board member and publisher, Ita Buttrose and Julie Trethowan. Packer’s affinity for prostitutes was an ill-concealed facet among intimates, with Buttrose’s name surfacing in Carol Lopes’ diarised notes and those of retired New South Wales Police officers linked to his clandestine operations.
CAROL LOPES– AUSTRALIA’S CHRISTINE KEELER
Carol Lopes, an African-American model of partial Hispanic descent, orphaned and foster-raised, migrated to Australia in the early 1970s, ingratiating herself into Sydney’s elite echelons through her allure and vivacity. Packer dubbed her “SONAP”, Sex Only, No Appearances in Public, during their four-year affair commencing in the late 1970s, lavishing her with opulent accommodations in Bellevue Hill and a minor television role on Channel 9. Post-affair, he sustained her financially until the late 1980s, when withdrawal precipitated her descent into depression and despondency, viewing him as her sole surrogate family.
Their bond, forged in mutual avarice and exigency, pivoted to a calculated enterprise: a series of ephemeral, high-end private bordellos in rented Palm Beach estates, operational chiefly in summers from the early 1980s. Lopes oversaw these, recruiting erudite, cosmopolitan women, models and professionals, from New York, London, and South America, compensated at A$10,000 weekly. These enclaves served as instruments of reciprocity and espionage, rewarding allies and extracting confidences amid indulgence.
Another mistress facilitated procurement, sourcing models and actresses for discreet engagements domestically and abroad, yielding exorbitant fees and favors. Shades of Jeffrey Epstein’s honey pot enterprise.
WHALE HUNTING NETTS A ‘PROFUMO’– IF IT DOESN’T STICK IT STILL STINKS
Among ensnared patrons was Perth businessman Alan Bond, who, in private Sydney and London trysts arranged by Lopes, divulged vulnerabilities. A self-proclaimed “brag,” Bond confided in her and an associate about leveraging debt acquired through worthless overpriced assets with thee help of greedy lawyers and accountants, and evading corporate regulatory scrutiny. In one of his sessions with a Packer pleasure package, he is said to have told her amongst other things, “the regulators like Kerry Packer think they are smart but they are not. They are blind and stupid”. Lopes chronicled these revelations in diarised notes for an unpublished memoir, relaying them verbatim to Packer, who exploited the intelligence.
Packer’s orbit ensnared political luminaries, leveraging media clout for deregulation, gambling reforms, and fiscal leniency. His alliance with Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke was symbiotic: Packer bolstered Hawke against Rupert Murdoch, while Hawke shielded him during the 1984 Costigan Royal Commission probing organized crime ties. In 1985, Hawke convened Packer and Ali Bacher at Kirribilli House to ostracize apartheid South Africa from cricket.
No association with Bob Hawke during his tenure as prime minister could have excluded or tainted by association his charismatic treasurer Paul Keating and other members of his cabinet.
Paul Keating’s daughter, Katherine Keating has recently been linked to both disgraced Prince Andrew and sex traffickers of underaged women, Jeffrey Epstein. Katherine Keating is known to have befriended Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew at a social meet at Epstein’s New York townhouse. This is a matter that any reasonably minded and morally conscious person of Katherine Keatings pedigree and statature without guilt of conscience would have come out and openly addressed before the media got wind of the story. Instead it is now the work of independent journalists and investigators to unearth what is a widespread culture of privilege, crime, corruption and impunity at the highest of levels of government and the law where the nations trust is resposed.
If it is of any consolation to Ann Keating and the Keating family, the introduction to Epstein was in fact suggested by Keating’s friend and long time ‘feminsit issues advisor’ publisher Ann Summers. The leaked Epstein list now also includes the names of feminnist Gloria Steinem and high profile US feminist lawyer Gloria Allred. There is more to come.
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HAWKE-A GREAT FRIEND OF FEMINISTS AND A CHAMPION OF GENDER EQUALITY
Hawke’s proclivity for underage liaisons like those of many other politicians and judges, purportedly introduced to Hawke via his Hong Kong Jockey Club associate Sunny Yam, aligned with Packer’s stratagems; girls, appearing mature and yet just below the line of maturity not yet adults, were deployed against a power elite of judges, lawyers and legislators for entrapment.
Driven by an insatiable ambition and an overweening ego, Bob Hawke’s moral turpitude reached such depths that he even forbade his eldest daughter, Roslyn Hawke, from reporting her raped at the hands of a prominent Labor Party figure and Hawke associate, Bill Landeryou. This unconscionable act was calculated to shield his own reputation, safeguarding his ties to Landeryou, the Australian Labor Party, and the specter of a heinous crime, lest they imperil his ascent and ambitions to the prime ministerial office.
MALCOLM TURNBULL- RHODES SCHOLAR- FORMER PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA– “A GRUBBY PERSON“
Malcolm Turnbull, then future Prime Minister and Packer’s erstwhile counsel from 1983, navigated a fraught mentorship. Turnbull defended Packer in the 1984 Press Council inquiry and enlisted him in the 1986 Spycatcher affair against Margaret Thatcher. Their 1991 Fairfax bid fractured when Turnbull exposed Packer’s monopoly ambitions, eliciting death threats with Packer calling Turnbull “ a grubby little person.”
Turnbull shared a mistress, actor Kate Fitzpatrick, with Packer for a time, but deeper leverage stemmed from honey traps Packer set for an unwwary and ambitous Turnbull: Lopes’ accounts, corroborated by a former New South Wales Police officer, details Turnbull’s compromise via sex with at least one underage girl under Lopes’s purview. Lopes had recruited underaged but mature looking women from the US and Australia for this particular sting, which both the police and Lopes had observed. Whether the clients concerned were aware of this particular danger is not known.
This was a deliberate ploy by Packer to controlling and managing the ambitous Turnbull. Analogous snares netted Bob Hawke, Labor MPs, judges, and the late Lionel Murphy, disgraced Attorney-General and High Court justice, co-owner of a Sydney brothel with underworld figure Abe Saffron. Such vices, including blackmail and corruption, permeated New South Wales and federal power circles, tacitly condoned then and persisting.
Financially, Packer disbursed up to A$20,000 monthly to Lopes (equivalent to A$50,000 today), encompassing an Elizabeth Bay apartment and bordello funds, catering to associates like Hawke, Turnbull, Graham Richardson, and others.
Abrupt cessation of their relationship in 1990 induced her anguish. On March 1, 1991, at 37, Lopes was found dead in her apartment from an ostensible self-administered overdose. A 16-page note to Packer, sequestered in the New South Wales coroner’s office, she lamented denial of access to Packer creating an existential void; a secondary note cursed him for ruining her life. The inquest affirmed suicide absent evidence of foul play.
Yet, as per a retired New South Wales Police Force officer from the vice or major crime squads, Lopes was probably silenced, mirroring fates of prostitute Sally-Ann Huckstepp and heiress Juanita Nielsen, both silenced for threatening exposures of police, political, judicial, and societal corruption.
An unsworn vice squad statement implicates New South Wales Police executing orders from Packer or proxies. Packer rebuffed such whispers as sensationalism, menacing leakers, while his estate has not contested them legally.
These disclosures stem from various interviews with Lopes’ confidants, independent journalists at major Australian outlets, retired police and ATO officers, letters, coronial records, and her unpublished memoirs, illuminating a nexus where power, vice, and coercion intertwined, enduring in elite spheres.
JEREMY GLASSMAN & VICTOR TEAL
