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.
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/
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.
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.
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.
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?
Absolutely Boa. Great days for SA ahead.
I think I just heard Dismayed’s laptop getting thrown through a window.
MTK you should consider a new audiometric test. It may be tinnitus from all those years next to the drawworks.
What will be beneficial, if it can be achieved, is an integrated energy policy nationally. Having states doing their own thing is clearly non-productive
WA 4eva
How can you think that Razor?
I say SA had a winning formula.
Now all they have is stalled renewable projects & a Liberal premier intent on winding back the clock to the dark ages. “Great days” you say?
No mate, the planet can’t afford more Fibs.
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. 🌳🌱
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!
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.
Absolutely correct Dwight. We need RICO for a whole range of organisations. An amended version has worked well in Qld with the bikies.
That was closer to the old consorting laws, Razor. Aversion of RICO tailored to suit our circumstances would be preferable.
Exactly! But I write the legislation!
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!!
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.
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.
Hear, Hear, Dismayed.
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.
Welcome back Trab. Hope all is well.
Very good wasn’t it ,Trab. Nice to see you back!
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.
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!
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.
Read a book by Adam Shand on ‘The Skull’. An interesting character…….
I have it. Met The Skull many times. An intriguing and quite likeable character not regarded fabourably by VicPol these days.
Bad or misunderstood Jack?
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. 😉
No, different guy. Very different.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
South Melb is lovely these days. A bit rougher back then.
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.
Fascinates me, Milt . You and me would have more chance of being flung into gaol for unpaid parking fines!
thats a nice way of putting it.
lovely bit of radio, my favourite interviewer and first class story teller.
that a first class story teller, let’s not accidentally give Richard both credits.
Exactly right Jack, let me just say having listened to Convos on the radio, the first thing that struck me was how much I miss Melbourne
I’ve got the one on his travels with his son in Turkey, Milt. Saving it for a holiday read. Looks interesting.
Ghosting, now that was a career I was equipped for. Not the nasty stuff though.
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.
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!
Both very good books Milton, my husband particularly liked Saga Land but I preferred Ghost Empire.
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’.