Humble servant of the Nation

The Painters & Dockers Union

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True crime writer Peter Hoysted, aka ‘Jack the Insider’ returns with the story of one of Australia’s most elaborate criminal enterprises.

From the early 1950s, Melbourne’s Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union was much more than an affiliation of dock workers.

It became a thriving criminal enterprise, and a front for crimes including murder, theft, extortion and prostitution.

The Union held sway for five decades, and had members who had never done a day’s work on the Docks, but had plenty of experience with killing.

Eventually a Royal Commission was called into their activities, which led to the downfall of a Federal Government.

Text supplied by ABC.

 

 

289 Comments

  • Dismayed says:

    Off topic. and very inconvenient for the uninformed and outright misleading liberals and their supporters. The Australian Energy Market Operator. The AEMO latest data. 10 year average wholesale Electricity price SA is the third cheapest in he Nation. Last 2 quarters likewise SA is third cheapest. Generation? Well for 4 years in the last Quarter of each year SA has been a net Exporter of Electricity. SA exports more during the middle of the year than the last hotter quarter on average also. The reason for this? Renewable Energy. The AEMC has released another report today which is already being picked apart for its delusional assumptions and blatantly false reasoning.
    http://reneweconomy.com.au/aemo-shatters-marshall-myths-south-australia-energy-15608/

    • Dismayed says:

      Oops forgot to add this because I know most refuse to accept the data. “Even on the 10-year four quarter average, South Australia is cheaper than both NSW and Queensland, and just a smidgin ahead of Tasmania.” Oh dear, how inconvenient.

  • Razor says:

    Looks to me like Will Hodgman is moving forward Boa. Focus on jobs, manufacturing and trade. Good on him. He’s turned Tasmania’s economy around from once being the mendicant state, a title now held by Sth Australia. Marshall to do the same there I suspect.

    • Dismayed says:

      SA has a positive trade balance unlike most other states in Australia, the budget is in Surplus the debt has been reducing to the point where the Libs. have said further debt reduction is NOT their priority, SA has the lead the Nation in Private investment for the last 12 months. Note the AEMO report showing for the last decade SA has had the third cheapest wholesale electricity in the country. Cheaper than both NSW and QLD. SA has been a net exporter of generated power for 4 years. It is a pity those who are so uniformed try to mislead with false comments.

    • Boadicea says:

      Yep, it’s all systems go here, Razor. I think that was the main reason they got in again relatively easily. People were reluctant to change from a winning formula. Why would you?

      • Razor says:

        Absolutely Boa. Great days for SA ahead.

      • Bella says:

        I thought you were against the further erosion of what makes Tasmania beautiful, like less development & less interference in your wilderness areas B?
        What the Tassie Fiberals “winning formula” represents is just more environmental crimes against nature & more bulldozers in not just the Tarkine.
        If that’s what voters want down there then fine, but it’s a sad outcome for visitors because the unanimous drawcard has always been Tassie’s wild beauty & it’s once protected old growth forests. 🌳🌱

        • Boadicea says:

          I didn’t vote, bella. Think I mentioned that before.
          I’m generalising when I talk of the electorate. Lots of people are making a lot of money here right now and there is no way they would risk changing the formula.
          No I don’t like what I see but I cannot change it.
          Great walk today on the mountain – saw three people in total. That’s the way I like it!

  • Dwight says:

    What are the odds we’ll see an upswing in dodgy behavior from the union of the CFMEU/MUA? Nothing like the Painters and Dockers, but as bad as the BLF?

    I was a critic in the US of the use of RICO, but I think we need something similar here.

    • Razor says:

      Absolutely correct Dwight. We need RICO for a whole range of organisations. An amended version has worked well in Qld with the bikies.

    • Boadicea says:

      Almost a certainty, Dwight. With the amalgamation of the available funds presumably they will have heaps if members dues to pay the hefty fines they keep incurring!!

    • Lou oTOD says:

      Odds on Dwight, it is on right now with the illegal MUA strike at Melbourne Ports. The pretence was who trains five workers, the employer (as has been for an eternity), or the union.

      Maybe the union training includes managing excess stock from the docks.

      • Dismayed says:

        Why should a company be able to cancel an agreement because workers wont accept a pay cut or working hours that increase fatigue? Hazard, Risk, Incidents, less productivity, more sick days? cons are blinded by ideology over the National interest every time.

  • Trabvitch says:

    Thanks Jack,

    I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this on “Conversations” yesterday. It was fortuitous timing – I generally only listen to the radio when driving (which is rarely – the car has been used twice since Christmas), and yesterday it helped alleviate the boredom of some of the trip between Canberra and Sydney. I particularly liked the comment on the comparison between the Melbourne and Sydney gangster/police divides.

    To all here, this is definitely worth a listen.

  • Carl on the Coast says:

    Yes, I always thought it appropriate that some members of the Painters & Dockers Union used bottom-of-the-harbour schemes for tax evasion as well as to dispose of some of their enemies.

  • Milton says:

    From what I last saw on a crime show on the Kane brothers, the “Texan” , if not still amongst us, lived to a decent age. How so? Outlived his enemies?
    On the Fidler interview, not sure about the chuck nickname, though I read that in skulls book. But interesting on the bookie “mastermind” as it seems to be the go that Bennett was the “criminal mastermind”. Always a good tag, But you seem certain of this ‘mystery’ person? One show on the robbery that I saw suggested that normally police types [some sort of initials ? consorting?] would normally be present during the tally, and armed, but were called off to somewhere else, Suggesting some of complicity. And from what I gather the money, as well as some bodies have never been found. Though some spring rolls, or pies, back in the day may have been more tasty than others, and some pubs in Manilla, or thereabouts, would have been choicer than others!

    • Jack The Insider says:

      Longley was in jail for the murder of Pat Shannon for a very long time. By the time he got his enemies were all gone. He spent his dotage working with Brian ‘The Skull’ Murphy in conflict management.

      • Razor says:

        Read a book by Adam Shand on ‘The Skull’. An interesting character…….

        • Jack The Insider says:

          I have it. Met The Skull many times. An intriguing and quite likeable character not regarded fabourably by VicPol these days.

          • Razor says:

            Bad or misunderstood Jack?

          • Wissendorf says:

            Is this the same “Skull” Murphy that was a regular on World Championship Wrestling on Channel 9 at noon on Saturday? I can’t recall the commentator’s name, but I’m sure “Skull” Murphy broke the bloke’s glasses once. Ah – them were the days. Great names are drifting back – “KIller” Kowolski, “Haystacks” Calhoun, the “Golden Greek” Spiros Arion, Mario someoene, and always some bastard in a mask – great athletes all. I’m sure there was no acting or “bunging it on” back then. 😉

            • Jack The Insider says:

              No, different guy. Very different.

              • The Outsider says:

                Wissendorf – it was Mario Milano, from Trieste. He subsequently ran a pizza shop in Richmond.

                I used to go to the Palais Theatre in Geelong to watch those guys, along with that ham, Jack Little.

                Was the guy in the mask Waldo von Erich?

                • Wissendorf says:

                  Thanks Outsider. Jack Little was the commentator’s name escaping me – voice like a buzz saw. Milano also. I’m sure the Masked Marvel had different tatts every week and was not one person. He got flogged unconscious by ‘Brute’ Bernard in one bout and I’m sure he was really the work experience kid or something.

            • Lou oTOD says:

              Mario Milano Wiss.

              A female friend of mine was his neighbour at one stage, well after WCW. Not long after he moved in she got more than an eyeful one day when over the fence she observed Mario going for a swim in the nude.

              I’m not sure what she was standing on to peer out the window, but she still goes wobbly talking about it.

              • Wissendorf says:

                Thanks for that labour-saving post Lou. I was about to make a sanger for lunch with some spicy Italian salami, but changed my mind and went to the fisho for some dim sims instead. They make a big salami those Italians.

                btw – How’s your health? Have you defeated your exotic lurgy?

      • Penny says:

        I do remember a few of those shootings, of course the one that got Bill (The Texan) Longley convicted was the Pat Shannon murder at The Druids Hotel. When you wander around South and Port Melbourne nowadays it’s all incredibly gentrified, but I do think there is still a lingering memory of these dark days in the old streets. I know a bunch of us once went in to the Druids Hotel on a dare and lasted all of five minutes.
        I also read that Robert Richter QC said that Longley wouidn’t be convicted for the murder nowadays on the evidence that was put forward.

      • Milton says:

        Always impressed at how old hard men like the Texan, Chopper and Gatto reinvent new careers for themselves. This is the sort of innovation that Turnbull and Pyne often talk about.

      • jack says:

        thats a nice way of putting it.

        lovely bit of radio, my favourite interviewer and first class story teller.

  • Boadicea says:

    I’ve got the one on his travels with his son in Turkey, Milt. Saving it for a holiday read. Looks interesting.

  • Milton says:

    Ghosting, now that was a career I was equipped for. Not the nasty stuff though.

  • Henry Blofeld says:

    What a bunch of thugs, Mr Insider and as you say in your “conversation” they were perfectly placed to control what was coming and going from Australia. Interesting you say the Australian Mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta, has a bigger dollars turnover than BHP, $70 Billion a shocker given its “black” money no tax paid here. For my book none of these chaps to be messed with or for that matter associated with. “Underbelly” covered the Painters and Dockers well too especially the Kane Brothers. Great listen.

  • Milton says:

    Thanks HB for putting us onto this and Jack for listing it. I’ll have a listen later on.
    I listen to the radio when in the car and Fidler if he coincides. What I didn’t know was that he wrote books as well, as I saw 2 in the shop a week ago. One on Iceland and the other Turkey and the Byzantium empire? A multi talented man who goes some way to lifting the iq of Brisvegas!

    • Tracy says:

      Both very good books Milton, my husband particularly liked Saga Land but I preferred Ghost Empire.

    • Razor says:

      Ditched Fran for your podcast on the way to work this morning JTI. Bloody enjoyable. I reckon I’ve got a pretty good suspect for ‘The Architect’.

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