TONY MOKBEL’S RELEASE EXPOSES A ROTTEN LEGAL LEGACY
When Tony Mokbel walked free from a Victorian prison today, April 4, 2025, a TV reporter branded it a “day of shame” for Victoria Police. The statement might have rung true—if not for the inconvenient truth that the scandal’s linchpin, Nicola Gobbo, a lawyer turned volunteer police informer, is merely the latest in a long, sordid tradition within Australia’s legal profession. Since the nation’s colonial beginnings, the line between law and lawlessness has been blurred by those sworn to uphold justice.
FROM OWEN DIXON-BJELKE PETERSEN AND ASKIN TO PARLIAMENT
Take Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Queensland’s iron-fisted former premier and a trained lawyer. In his heyday, he didn’t hesitate to snitch on high-rolling businessmen who greased his palm—and those of his cronies—with bribes. Their crooked lawyers, too, were fair game. “It’s insurance,” Sir Terrence Lewis, his loyal police chief, once confided to a fellow officer. The tactic paid off: power stayed in their hands, and the dirt never stuck.
Down south, Sir Robert Askin, New South Wales’ premier in the 1960s and ’70s, played a similar game. Though not a lawyer himself, he surrounded himself with Sydney’s sharpest legal minds to craft his “Teflon” persona. To keep it intact, he ratted out gangsters, rival politicians, and public figures he despised—or those fingered by his underworld ally, Percival Galea, the notorious bookmaker and race-fixer known as the “Prince.” Askin’s lawyers knew full well what he was up to, and they didn’t blink.
Then there’s Sir Henry Bolte, Victoria’s own knight of the realm, who ruled the state with an iron grip in the mid-20th century. With the police in his pocket—and he in theirs—Bolte’s reign showed just how cozy the relationship between law enforcement and organized crime could get. It’s a legacy that lingers.
MOKBEL, ROGER ROGERSON, WILLIAMSON AND OTHERS- ITS LAWYERS AND JUDGES ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK
Today, the release of Mokbel, a kingpin of Melbourne’s underworld, lays bare an uncomfortable reality: the rot runs deep, and it’s not just the cops who should be hanging their heads. The legal profession—judges, barristers, solicitors—has become a breeding ground for corruption so pervasive that the difference between crime and honor is razor-thin, invisible even to those tasked with upholding justice. The rate at which lawyers face the Legal Services Commission—and walk away unscathed despite damning evidence—is staggering. Next to this systemic decay, the Nicola Gobbo affair looks like a petty squabble, a storm in a teacup.
Governments can no longer afford to bury their heads in the sand. Organized crime has infiltrated the legal sector with ruthless efficiency, and the fallout is inevitable. In Victoria, the gangland wars are poised to erupt once more. Scores remain unsettled, and judges and lawyers alike are still waiting for their cut—for “services rendered,” of course.
An out of control epidemic of organized crime means gangsters i organized crime are now judge, jury, and executioner (literally) for the right price. The law and goverenment’s chose to look the other way.
Mokbel’s release isn’t a day of shame for Victoria Police. It’s a glaring spotlight on a justice system that’s been compromised for generations. The question now is whether anyone has the guts to dismantle this house of cards—or if we’re doomed to watch it collapse under its own weight.
Murray Kirkland