Welcome to conversations everybody. My guest today, Nick Caldice, has done it's just a really intriguing interesting story. He was from a well to do family in Egypt. Parents had large land holdings, but they were forced to flee the na's A regime and settled in Sydney. Could have been Adelaide, but they settled in Sydney. From there he worked his way up in the New Southwest Police Force to the ryle of Assistant Commissioner and he's done some amazing things.
As I said, he's worked for the United Nations. He was requested to go and investigate the murder of the Lebanese Prime Minister of Fike Herriri, and then he was the commissioner of the Royal Commission in the Veteran's suicide. But he joins us now. He's written a book called Behind the Badge. Nick. Thank you for your time. How are you good?
Thanks? Thanks very much for having men really appreciate it.
It's just one of those books you can't put down. I mean you can pick it up and you're very kind. Well, I think we all like true crime, but there's also the human element of it. You know, your family's history in Egypt, which is really interesting. So can you I mean it sounds like you're from a very well to do family, can you.
Yeah, we were back to your grandparents.
Yeah, yeah, my grandfather who I was named after, So nick is a nickname. My real name is Negeb or as the Arabs say, Najib I was named after him. He was titled he was the equivalent of a sur at bay in Arabic and he was titled given that by King Farouk before they deposed the king and turned it into a republic.
But we were willing to do, but.
My father got to a point where we had to get out of there, and I think the logic was that the line for America was too long and Canada was too cold.
So we headed to Australia.
So what was the connection in Adelaide, Because there was a brief over there. You could have ended up in Adelais.
Yeah.
There's one family of Egyptian people who we've never met and we've lost track of, who were good friends with one of my uncles, and they actually signed paperwork to sponsor us, to say we're off a good character and so on. But we never got there. We rang and said we'll sorry, we're not coming. As we stopped in Sydney and caught up with another friend of a family and he said, don't go to Adelaide. There's not as much work there and you'll have more chance of getting
work in Sydney. So we ended up staying in Sydney rather than Adelaide.
What intrigued me is you left so much behind in each all, even though a lot of it had in time been acquired by the government. But what sort of land holding you talked about The amount of land that your family did own. Yes, south of Cairo, so.
Yeah, yeah, we're all. We're all from the south. They call it Upper Egypt, even though it's way down south because the Nile flows down from the from Africa really and then ends up in the Mediterranean, so the Nile flows downwards, they call it Upper Egypt, but it's south and that's where our family comes from. We did have
substantial landholdings. My father had obviously his own, but he also managed fairly large amounts of land in farming for widows and aunties and uncles who didn't have a capacity to do so, so he'd managed that for them as well. But they did confiscate all of that and allegedly for distribution to peasants, which we're not sure what happened. And they gave them everyone government bonds, which frankly ended up
being worthless. Really it was extreme sort of socialism, and certainly at that stage Egypt took a fairly sharp turn to the left. President Nasa was anti West and he was embraced very much by the Soviet Bloc, and you know, they steered him in that direction.
Obviously never been back to look at the family's landholding, just to sort of about.
That, Yeah, I haven't.
We had a house near where all the farms were apart from my house, and I stewed with the city where we come from, and I did get back a couple of times to visit, and some of the workers there remembered me, and then they just stood there looking at me, and then finally one of them said, you know, you look just like him, and I said, apparently I looked just like my father, God rest hisself.
So you're ten years old when you twelve? Yeah, twelve twelve, So you've got great memories of it.
Could you speak?
You could speak?
Yeah, I wasn't special.
I think everyone in Egypt at the time, if you went to a private school, which most people did you. I spoke English, French and Arabic before we came out. I've lost my French unfortunately after fifty years, but the Arabic is still pretty good.
How were you received, this young Egyptian twelve year old going to school. I mean kind of must have been tough. I mean, I can't imagine you weren't bullied.
A little bit.
But we lived in Marigville when we got he first, and I went to Margville dealer sou and I think, I mean, I wouldn't have statistics or anything, but my guess is that the majority of students in Margnal de la Sale at the time were actually migrants. I felt quite quite comfortable there.
Your dad had to come out and get a manual working job, basically, but did he ever talk about, you know, the change of life and.
We could see it. Graham.
He has never had never worked for anyone else. He was always running his own show and he had very large numbers of people working for him. The first job he got was on the factory floor in Australia in standard telephons and cables and redfern just on the factory floor and he adjusted, He did what he had to do. Then he had a courier van for a while, and then eventually he set up a laundry and dry cleaning
business at Flemington and we went from there. He had that till he died, and then we sold it after he passed away.
But he was.
Happy to do whatever he needed to do to make sure that the family's fed and looked after.
He died young.
He did just turned sixty.
Actually, how did that impact on you?
It was complete shock. He had had a heart condition. Heart conditions run and you know they joke that men die young in our family. In Upper Egypt in particular, they don't use butter to cook. They use gee, and it's really sort of artery. It tastes great, but it's artery clogging stuff. And Egyptians are not renowned for their exercise capability. So it was a combination of factors. But a lot of my uncles died very young as well, mainly with heart conditions.
The dynamics of the family are always intrigued. You had a sister, Yeah, My father was insistent that she marrying a nice Egyptian boy. Yeah, but she resisted can you just recite that for us?
Yeah, she'll probably kill me.
But so, she'd met a fellow at her she worked in the office of Standard Telephants and Cables. My father managed to get her a job there, and she'd met this nice Australian fellow called Bruce, of course, and he my dad took a fair bit of adjustment to realize that she wasn't going to be marrying an Egyptian. Many suitors came forward through our church and she just wouldn't accept any. And then I think the tide turned when my mother switched sides and sided with my sister to say, look,
you've got to give this a go. And then my dad was outnumbered and outflanked, and we met Bruce, and we eventually met his parents, and I'm happy to say so they've been married now probably gosh, close to fifty years, and they're very, very happy. He's a huge part of the family. He's been an incredible brother in law. He's always been there for us. He's a fantastic fellow.
Yeah, but he wasn't. He didn't look anything like an Egyptian, did he He look.
He had blonde hair, and he was about six foot three or something. But yeah, he came in on a Saturday morning and my brother and I were peeking through the blinds to see what this fellow looked like. He had to have a sit down with my father and he had a nice suit on, it had a haircut and everything. And then that went well, and then my father said, well, we're going to have to meet your parents.
So the next Saturday he came up with his parents and he and his dad had nice suits on and nice haircuts and.
Everything went well. And then eventually they yeah, they got married.
Oh happily ever after. Your brother's story is interesting too, because it sounded like he could have been anything chose to the church.
Yeah, yeah, he was Ducks. He went to Sydney Tech Boys at Hurstville. He actually duckst year twelve and he was in the top one percent and a number of subjects in the HC. And he went to medicine at Sydney Uni, finished it and practiced for a few years. He was heading towards specializing as a pediatrician. I think that's what he wanted to do, but then he got the call and gave up medicine and became a priest in our church. We copped the Orthodox Christians and he
hasn't looked back. I mean, he's happy doing what he's doing. And obviously my mother just wanted him to set himself up a little bit financially, but he made his mind up and that was it.
That's what he wanted to do.
I don't think we understand clearly the presence of the Coptic Christians in that melting plot that is Asian.
Yeah, we've got gosh, quite a sizeable president. I think it's perhaps or ninety thousand people, and we've got probably two dozen churches in just New South Wales and Queensland and the Northern Territory. We do have a sizeable present.
I think we started migrating probably certainly a trickle in the late fifties, but then in the sixties because of the wars and so on in the situation in Egypt, many more I think started to migrate in the late sixties and that continued for some time from the Coptic Orthodox Faith.
We need to take a break. Nick Caldas is my guest behind the badge backshortly, folks, Welcome back everybody. If you just tuned in, we're speaking with Nick Caldice he's a very affable gentleman. He was the Deputy Commissioner of Police in New South Wales and resigned after a stellar career and went and did some other great things, not the least of which was chairing the Commission into Veterans Suicide. I know there's a longer title to that, Nick and
will come to that. He's recounted his life story and behind the badge. So you're a young fellow, immigrated from Egypt when you're twelve, go to school. I do well at school or did you?
Just? Yeah?
I did reasonably well, not as well as my brother who was who's incredibly bright and committed, and he went on to do medicine, as I mentioned earlier.
Yeah, did sport embrace you? Or did you embrace sport?
Yeah?
I'd liked I played rugby league. I also played soccer. I didn't like cricket and still don't, I have to say, but I played soccer almost into my twenties and I quite enjoy all sports now, particularly rugby league and rugby union. And my son has played both leagues and union, and I obviously used to go and watch him all the time. He's a pan of which I'm sort of quite proud of we're paying out of supporters. He didn't have any choice. He was born into it.
So you leave school and you go to work in an insurance company. What attracted you to the police force.
I think I always wanted to join the police force grant, but I just in that stage. So it's a sort of late seventies early eighties. There were height requirements and I didn't think I was tall enough, so I put it off for a few years and it.
Didn't hurt me.
I've got some life experience, and that's some really good friends made for good friends. An insurance company and so on that I was working at and superannuation. But then eventually I pumped up the courage and went in. And I was tall enough, there's no problem. But if you can believe it, I was too skinny. I had to put on away. I haven't had that problem since then. But I always wanted to do it, and I knew I wanted to go into criminal investigations, so you had
to do a minimum three years. I did about three and a half years in uniform on the truck around Balmain and light Art, and then went into the detectives. Selected to go into the detectives, and then there's a couple of years of studying after that to become an actual detective. You're a playing clothes constable, not a detective until you complete the training and you're accredited getting your designation as a detective.
There's a photo of you on your graduation. You're a fine cut of a young man.
I was quite skinny, but I was fit in those days.
But you know, I look at you, you look at current photos.
And he said, the ravages of time.
Tell me about it. But what attracted you to policing? Was there anything specific?
I think, and I think I mentioned it in the book that I have a friend who's a former deputy commissioner from NYPD in New York, Mark Julian, who talks about why people join the police, and he's a bit of a philosopher, and he says, at some stage, you've seen or witnessed bullying, or you've been the victim of bullying, and somehow' s upconsciously. He thinks we all join the police to right wrongs and to help those who can't
help themselves, and to stand up to bullies. And I think in many ways that was sort of the unsaid.
Almost the undiagnosed reason for me joining. I thought it would be a sort of great noble cause, and certain in plane clothes or criminal investigation in particular, that is exactly what you do, whether investigating murders or arm robberies or rapes or whatever it might be, the people who are essentially bullies and have done terrible things to others, and you're righting wrongs hopefully every day.
You would describe a couple of cases in the book, one as the murder of John Newman, who was a politician.
He was a member of Parliament in New South Wales in nineteen ninety four.
That was going to great detail which I found really interesting about how you were able to find the gun that was used in the shooting, and can you just give us a sure? I mean, people have to buy the book, I know.
That, but I hope they do.
But very briefly, Grant took seven years from murder to conviction. An awful lot happened, but essentially this fellow was a political opponent of John Newman, and John Newman had said to him, You're never going to get anywhere as long as I'm around, because I think you're a crook, and he was a crook, so he approached three different groups to do it, all of whom knocked it back at all of whom we found and turned and they all
gave evidence to that effect. And we were probably one of the first investigated investigative groups to use and communications analysis, analyzing the phone calls, records of the phone calls, which broadly tell you where people were and when, and they were certainly all around the time of the murder, in
the vicinity of the murder. And then after the murder, the murderer fun Can, who's been convicted and sentenced to life, went to the footbridge, a voyager point in the George's River, and cutting a long story short, some years later we dredged the river found the murder weapon there, which was matched ballistically after some effort by the German police, who had an excellent forensic capacity for that sort of thing,
because the gun had rusted very quickly and rodded. We can prove that the murderer was at this spot immediately after the murder, and we found the murder weapon there which was matched ballistically. And as I said, and there's a lot of other circumstantial evidence, but.
You would have thought. Looks, it was twenty miles away from the murder scene, wasn't it. There was some distance away from the murder scene.
Yeah, I think it was about ten fifteen kilometers something like that. Yeah, not too far.
So he stopped at a bridge and he's throwing the gun. You think there'd be no way in the world that anybody could find that gun. Well, that's an amazing piece of place it was.
But the phone records is what led us there, because he stood there making calls, trying to alibi himself, if you like saying, Now, I was on the phone, and the phones are what did him in because that led us to where the gun was, and it proved conclusively that he was there at the time and place of the murder.
Having said all of that, we had hearings.
In the Crime Commission to try and roll some of these people he had approached, and then we had a coroner's inquest which went for some months. Then we had a three month committal hearing in the lower court, and we had three Supreme Court trials. The last one was where he was convicted, and then he appealed to the Supreme Court of New soathwas a court a criminal appeal, it was knocked back, and then he tried to appeal to the High Court of Australia, which refused to hear
his appeal, saying you haven't got any reasonable grounds. And then he was granted the Royal Commission into his conviction, which went for nine months. So it was probably the
most scrutinized investigation I've had anything to do with. But despite all of that, and despite the overwhelming evidence which was described as they have a willing evidence by the Royal Commissioner, Judge Patten, who said that he couldn't find a scare of evidence that I or the other members of the team had done anything wrong, there are still people saying he was framed and that he should be released.
I mean, it's just it's astounding, really you mention.
But one of the jurors in the first.
Trial, yes, the second. The first one was aboarded.
Unfortunately the second one, there was one juror who simply refused to convict, and we know now that it was eleven to one and they advised the judge that they will not be able to reach the verdict. And some of the jurors when they told the judge that were crying in the jury box and the court. There was a very very sad, you know, very dreadful sequence of events.
Really, as a policeman, you see, you see good, but you see the worst of life. What was the worst case you're involved in? Can you recount that?
I think some of the murders we've seen, I think there's one I mentioned in the book where a really bright, nice young fellow went to a dance party in Castle Hill and had a fight with someone who stabbed him to death on the dance floor. I mean, just two lives there. Lost one victim obviously has lost his life, but the offense that ended up getting a very lengthy sentence in jail, and you know there's many family very affected by that.
There's probably too many to think of.
But as you say, Grain, we certainly get to see the best of humanity, but you also see the worst of humanity as well.
Well. I'm intrigued as how you get selected to go and investigate like a murderer in Lebanon and meet with the head of the Syrian security forces. I mean, that's intriguing to me. Nick Coldice is my guest, folks, former Deputy Commissioner of Police in New South Wales. He's written a book called Behind the Badge. Do good work, Live by your belief, Fear no one. It is as I said at the start, it's one of those books that you just won't put down back shortly, Welcome back, everybody.
My guest on conversations today is Nick Caldice. He's a former policeman. He achieved the rank of Deputy Commissioner of Police in New South Wales and often did other amazing things which will come to and he's recounted the adventures in his book Behind the Bat with Roger Joyce. Roger's a journalist, I guess is he.
He's more a writer.
I think he's written a lot of other people's books, and he has written I think screenplays for movies and so on.
How on earth does a policeman in New South Wales get to ask to go and investigate the murder of a Lebanese prime minister.
I had served for most of a year in two thousand and four as a senior police advisor in Iraq with coalition forces. So the FBI and other people on you in US circles asked for me to go to Iraq to rebuild the Iraqi police. So I got noticed. I guess there, and I'm fluent in Arabic and I'm
reasonably comfortable in a conflict zone. So but then this series of murders occurred in Lebanon, and the United Nations was given jurisdiction by the Lebanese government to investigate because they didn't feel they could investigate them properly with the suspects being Hesbellah and Hesbella having pretty much infiltrated most arms of the government and actually being in cabinet in
the government. So they ceded jurisdiction to the United Nations and a fellow called Daniel Belmar was the first prosecutor of this investigation that was established pursu into a Security Council resolution from the UN after the request from the Lebanese government. So he came and spoke at a conference, or we went spoke at a conference rather with Nick Cowdrey, who was the Director of Public Prosecutions in New South Wales and they were good friends. And he said to
Nick Cawdry, I'm looking for someone with three things. Homicide experience, preferably an Arabic speaker, and someone who's got a proven track record of not pupping their pants in the Middle East. And so Nick Calvary rang me, and he was his good friend, and he just said, I think you were born for that job. You will quit it, and you need to think about it. So I was through my hat in the ring and I got the job off.
To living on.
Well, how do you start to sure?
Yeah, it's a really good question, Graham, And I think how I approached it, and I think it worked out in the end, and I'll come to an outcome shortly.
But it is a murder investigation.
I mean, many people who were there before me were caught up in the motive and why people should could have done it, should have done it, and whatever. None of that will actually get you a conviction or produce a brief of evidence.
The building blocks of a normal.
In any murder investigation, A tangible evidence like the crime scene, the explosive evidence, the forensic evidence, witnesses statements, you know, all of those. They're building blocks. If you like, you have to go through all of that, and that's where we started. We went back and did all that properly.
There's a lot of forensic evidence, a lot of witnesses statements, not just what happened on the day, but in the things leading up to it and so on, and you put all that together and then the picture becomes clear in that particular one. Ironically or happily, I guess. We actually also relied on communications analysis, again similar to the murder of John Ewman, and we proved that the five
guys that were indicted had had a practice run. And then we're in the vicinity of the murder at the time of the murder, and they had bought phones and sim cards that they used to coordinate for the murder, and then they shredded those.
Obviously they threw them out.
After that, but we proved that for each of the murderers, their real phone and the murder phone, if I can call it, that the red cell network had moved together for about six months for each of them.
And that was very conclusive.
Really, at the end they shredded the sim card, you can still track.
You can the record of the calls that were made and the background of where and when they were made remains in the system. You might throw out your SIM card in the bin, but it doesn't delete the records in the system. People need to think about that.
You're giving too much information.
Sorry.
The five people we indicted were all members of Hesblah, and the now deceased head of Hesbela at the time, Hassan Mastrolla, gave a number of speeches attacking me personally, accusing me of being a CIA agent because I'd spend time in Iraq and being a Israeli sympathizer and what have you. I'd never set foot in Israel or anything else at that stage, but anyway, it's a bit of a contact sport in the Middle East.
I understand that, but it seems such a lawless society, and I just wonder how there's so many questions. Firstly, how did you find the suspect that who could easily disappear to the population. But how dangerous was it for you? How threatened?
I don't think.
I think Hesbelo in particularly are quite rational about how they do evil things, and I think at some point they almost do a cost benefit analysis. And I was the chief of investigation in a United Nations tribunal. If anything happened to me, there was going to be hell to pay, and in terms of a benefit for them, there wasn't going to be any. Once the indictments were laid and the trials proceeded. I'd bowed out, but there was absolutely no benefit to be gained by them killing me,
so I proceeded on that basis. And I've always felt that, you know, when your time's up, your times up, you don't do anything silly, you're careful and all of that, but at the end of the day, you know you can't spend the rest of your life sort of fearing things and hiding in a corner somewhere.
It's pretty scary, though.
It wasn't that scary.
I if I could just go back a little bit gray, and this may be you have interest. I actually lived through the Six Day War as a ten year old, when Cairo was getting bombed and all that sort of stuff, and then I went to Iraq, as I said, for the best part of a year, and we did two more tools after I finished. And I find that with these conflict zones and whatever and dangerous areas, you can't really predict how you'll react until you're in it. And I found it didn't worry any you know, I can
function and hopefully effectively and get the job done. Focus on what you've got to do, and be careful don't do anying silly, but also that be afraid. You can't share fear, and you can't let those who may wish you harm know that they've got you rattled.
All is lost.
If you do that, you start recounting a meeting with the head of the Syrian Secret Police. I guess the best way of describing it. And it's as I imagine it to be in the movies, where you know your frisk you let your body goes left behind. You're let into this compound. And what led you to that? I mean how.
I so I The last position I had with the U N was the head of oversight in each big part of the UN has to have an office of overside and one of the larger parts of the UN is unaway the United Nations Relief Works Agency, which does everything for the Palestine refugees in five places Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Gaza in the West Bank. So I was the head of oversight for that area in those five countries and
so on. So it's sort of like internal affairs, if you like, i'd thought apartment's investigations and orders evaluation and.
An ethics division.
Wearing that hat, my investigator has been barred from getting into Syria and they needed to go to carry out a whole lot of investigations into corruption allegations and so on. So I had to find a solution to get them into the country because Syria insisted on even if you're traveling on a UN diplomatic passport, he had to get
a visa. So I managed through an Egyptian fellow I had met who knew people in the regime introduced me to the major General who was in charge of everything basically in faracy, intelligence, caes and so on, and he could click his fingers and make things happening. I got an introduction, and I wasn't sure if he knew who I was, because I had led the investigation into Hariri and we pointed the finger at the Syrian regime and
at his government. And then I'd done the investigation into the use of chemical weapons and we had again pointed the finger at him personally and his government. And then I go to see him asking for a visa, and he was so warm and really really open, and we sat down and we ended up having a Cuban cigar or two and a cup of coffee, and he said, what do you need, and I told him.
We just need visas for my staff to be able to get in to do this.
And I assured him that they were not there investigating the regime. They were there investigating United Nations issues and the United Nations staff.
And he was good to his word.
For the next probably two years or two and a half years, three years, we got visas whenever we wanted them to go in. And I never knew whether he knew who I was or what I'd done prior to meeting him, until the last time I saw him.
I went to say goodbye in Damascus and.
I just said to him, you know, we were talking about something, and I said, people have written a report about that, and he just looked at me and said, in the Gee, people write reports about all sorts of things. It doesn't mean anything and it won't do anything. And he started laughing. So he knew exactly who I was, but I think he just wanted to size me up. And we talked earlier Graham about lovable rogues. I think
he's in that category. He was someone who if he wasn't what he was, you probably quite enjoy his company.
You know, very very.
Learned and well read and affable and in a good sense of humor and.
All of that, I guess is Nick Caldas. Amongst many things, he was the Deputy Commissioner of Police in New South Wales. We're going to talk about the role as the Chairman of the Royal Commission into Defense and Veteran Suicide when we come back backshortly. Folks, Welcome back everybody. If you
just tuned in, we're speaking with Nick Caldas. He was the Deputy Commissioner of Police in New South Wales and if you just tuned in, if you didn't tune in, you should go back and listen to it because he's worked with the United Nations. Was interesting to look just quickly before we get onto other things. It sounded as though you want all that critical of the Syrian dictator Assad.
Now I was, in fact, my team and I authored the report that absolutely blamed him for the use of chemical weapons on his people, and we said they were absolutely heartless in what they did. But so that's that's my judgment. That he did terrible things to people in the prisons and the people they had arrested and tortured and so on.
We have so much evidence of that there's no doubt about that.
I guess the point the only point is that when I did meet this fellow who was the head of the secret police, it was very difficult when you're up close and personal to connect that in some way to the things that you know that the regime has been doing and was doing at the time. There's a sight to it that's sort of human, you know, It's like
people in war. I remember reading one of George AWA's books about the Spanish Civil War and he talked about he saw an enemy there who was he was on the Republican side against the Franco forces, and he saw a fellow having you having a poop and he could have shot him thead and he just said, you know, humanity sort of kicked in. He said, he's just another guy who's trying to get on life and he's going to the.
Toilet and he couldn't bring himself to shoot him.
Did you were you dis in charge with the police force in the end, I mean, there was the incidents where you've, amongst other officers, you've phones were bugged, and how did that sit.
It rankled obviously, and it's not the main reason I left. I think after thirty five years, I was ready to move on, and it became clear to me that I wasn't really I probably wasn't going to get the commissioner's job, and the stuff I went through took a bit of a toll on my health as well.
So it was time to move on. And I'm a big believer that when you move on, you move on.
I haven't sit foot in police premises since I left, and you just go and do other things and hopefully be useful and don't look back.
And that's what I did.
I don't think I'll ever say, you know, I've got ill feelings towards the organization or the people.
I never will.
And I say in the book that if you know, when they do well, I'm proud of them, and then if they suffer, I agree for them. You know, so you never really get it out of your blood, I guess once you've done three and a half decades.
Yeah, you talk about post from an ex stress disorder, and we understand completely what it would happen to policemen and ambulance officers and nurses and the like, but it takes a personal toile. I mean, you impact on your marriage even though you had you got three kids.
I have, yeah, yeah, and it does take a tile on your family as well. It's not just you and I guess if we could mention. So I was requested and I did share the Royal Commission and to defense and veteran suicides. And one of the reasons I accepted that role. It took me a little while to agree, to be honest, because I knew it was going to
be a hard slog. But I saw and my views were confirmed as we went along a lot of similarities between police and emergency services and the military and the problems.
So I took on that role.
And I now know that on any given year, up to eighty percent of those whose suicide from a military background have never been to war. It's how the organization treats them. It's how their colleagues treat them. It's the chain of command, it's a disciplinary system being weaponar against them.
That's all of those things. And then when they transition out of the military, it's the things that sometimes happened to them there as well, where they can't get all their benefits and they really struggle to get their pension and their medicine medical bills.
Paid and so on.
All of those were problems that we looked at and hopefully made recommendations that could fix these issues.
You made one hundred and twenty two recommendations. I looked at it closely because I was trying to There was a couple of suicides with AFL footballers not that long ago, and I've seen both. I've seen the sporting camaraderie and I've seen the military camaraderie, and there's similarities. I mean, it's not life and death as a sportsman, but I was trying to relate any of those recommendations to sport.
But I thought, one hundred and twenty two recommendations, how on earth is it possible to implement all of those?
Well, we actually studied it is possible, and some of them are really low hanging fruit. It's not a huge effort required, such as streamlining processes for making claims and
so on in the department bedroom affairs. But bottom line is we studied other recent Royle commissions and some of them have had three and four hundred recommendations, so we trended them down to one hundred and twenty two, as you know, and one hundred and four have now been accepted by the other and easy government, and they did so in record time, which.
Were very grateful for and very happy about, obviously.
But the main recommendation, Graham, and the one that really matters, is we had identified fifty seven inquiries that preceded US seven hundred and seventy odd recommendations. Out of those fifty seven inquiries about all aspects of suicidality over thirty years, hardly anyone had ever gone back to check whether those recommendations had been acquitted and whether they met the intent of the recommendation. Some of them senate inquiries that were
quite significant. A lot of good work had gone into them.
No one followed up. So the main recommendation.
Out of ours, and the one that really mattered, it was the only one that mattered, was that they established a body with Royal Commission powers and the ability to check whether our recommendations were being implemented properly or not. And then forever more report on the welfare issues and what's happening with all aspects really of service, and then after service, how we treat people when they come back
from war or otherwise. I'm happy to say that, as I said, the government of the day is accepted that by partisan support, which we called for both sides of this should be a bipartisan issue. Both sides of politics need to agree that we've got to do better for
our veterans. And they have done that, and I understand they've already appointed an individual who was establishing that body and in line with all our recommendations, and we've had a lot of really positive feedback from veterans saying that they hope this will be a turning point.
You're quite critical of various bodies or institutions obstructing this commission. Can you expand on that a little bit?
Certainly?
I think bureaucracy generally, and it's not just to our federal government or the or the is Velian Defense Force. I think police forces sometimes do this. They go into self protection mode. They don't want to reveal the wrongdoing, they don't want to admit wrong, they don't want to apologize, and they don't want to have restitution if you like. It's what bureaucracies do, and I don't think how Commonwealth
government is any different. Anyone who watched the robot that Royal Commission may think that perhaps it's not just restricted to Robot that it's actually a bit wider than that. In our government, there are many good reasons why people might object to us getting our hands on documents. But we all had our clearances, we had secure premises, We complied with everything you could possibly need to do to gain access to material, but people often still found reason to not.
To give us documents. There is one issue i'll just mention which is very specific to your question.
Ram.
We identified as a problem and we worked out that we're the third raw commission to raise it as an issue. The Auditor General had done a very good inquiry into whether Defense generally had carried forward and acted on recommendations out of various inquiries prior to us. Nothing to do with suicide, just whether the Department of Defense and the Australian Defense Force see things through once they get recommendations. He found them wanting and he was critical and he
made a number of recommendations. He made it a very good report, the Auder to General of Australia. He tabled it in Parliament, he put it on his website, and I think they held a press conference and so on. But because it was tabled in parliament, the Powers that be argued that it had parliamentary privilege and therefore we couldn't use it, rely on it, or question anyone about it. And we got our own legal advice and that is correct. If it's been in parliament, you cannot use it. It's
parliamentary privilege. Now I don't personally. Personally, I don't think that's acceptable, and governments should be worried that people who have you know, when things have become very clear, just because they've been tabled in parliament, you can't do anything about it. I don't think that was ever the intent of partmentary privilege. So we argue that that ought to
be We sought an exemption. We're rejected quite harshly, i'd say, by the government of the day, and based sides of politics said bugger off.
You know, we're not going to make it.
You're not going to get it, even though others had asked for it before, and I think the Law Reform Commission, in fact, some years ago, had said this is an anomaly and should be looked at, that Royal Commissions of Inquiry and qirenta's inquests and so on should be exempt.
How does this old worn out policeman, how does he spend his time.
These days, I'm sort of I jake that I'm not really sure what i want to do when I grow up, so I'm still working on it.
I'm a work in progress.
I've probably got a couple of years left and me I might do something useful, but I've got a lot of downtime. I serve on a couple of boards now. I share the board of Multicultural New South Wales. The advisory Board quite involved in multicultural issues and so on, and I used to do that for fifteen years, and the police led the effort in engagement with the various communities and equity and all that, and I'm happy to.
Do all of that.
I spend as much time as I can with my kids, obviously and my wife, and that's it.
Really.
Given your experience in the Middle East, and specifically the time you spent in Lebanon, how are you viewing what's happening over there in the Middle East at the moment.
I actually spent a lot of time in Gaza and the West Bank as well. When I work for UNRAU, the agency that handles all the Palestine issues. I'm quite pessimistic. I don't see a light at the end of the tunnel. I think there's an enormous amount of misery and hatred in every direction, and I don't see how it's I just can't see how it's going to be resolved. There's a lot of politicians saying all sorts of things, none
of which are realistic. For the first time in a lot of years, I just can't see how all the misery and the hatred and the violence can mend.
It's a sad way to finish our chat, Nick, but I've really enjoyed it.
Thanks Matte, Thanks very much, Gan, Thanks for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity.
Thank you, Nick. Nick Caldice was my guest. Folks. The book is called Behind the Bad. It is a ABC Books publication. Thank you, folks for joining us.