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My name is Headley Thomas. Sick to Death is based on my book of the same name and it's the True Story of Dr. Jayant Patel's Lies and manipulation and the herculean effort it took to finally stop him. We've used voice actors throughout this series and on occasion the real people from the story have read their words for us. It is brought to you by me and the Australian. Chapter 50 shock 13 April 2005 the scandalous revelations were irrefutable as hard evidence poured in from Bundaberg, Oregon and New York. The the authorities in Queensland had nowhere to hide. They had no excuses. How could even the most brazen spin doctors have attempted to justify employing Jayant Patel for two years and maintaining his status as director of surgery amid serious complaints, when all the time a simple Google or Internet search could have proved him to be a dangerous fraud? They didn't try. Stephen Seeley's decision to emphasise on the front page the simplicity of the Google search had a devastating result. Ordinary Queenslanders directed outrage at those in charge of the health system. Everyone who had been on a waiting list for treatment or who blamed a hospital for a procedure which had not been a complete success, was given good reason to vent spleen. The politicians, bureaucrats, Patel and the medical board were lined up for an unforgiving pasting in Charlotte street where the Queensland health edifice stood. Gordon Nuttall saw his ministerial career disappearing down a drain. Dr. Steve Buckland, trying desperately to run ahead of the crisis, had few answers pending feedback from the newly appointed investigative team. Calls for sackings flooded radio talk back and the letters pages of newspapers. Troy Daniel, a reader, wrote to me, you can add my wife and I to the list of disgusted citizens of Queensland. I feel sick in the guts. For some of the poor people around the Bundaberg district, at least the deceased have no more pain to endure. It was the start of an unprecedented crisis in confidence, not just in the health system, but in the political structure as well. As one of the labor government's top advisors told me, sometimes there are acts of incompetence that make even the hard men of politics shake their heads in disbelief. A match had been struck and the fuse was well alight. It hissed angrily and headed steadily to the powder keg. The Beattie government, Peter Beatty's staff in in regular contact with their leader during his overseas trade mission, briefed him on the developing fury. Beattie was appalled. Even several thousand kilometres away in Japan, he realised the seriousness of this stuff up he valued above just about Everyone else the wise counsel of his wife, Heather, a highly qualified nurse with impeccable academic credentials and a sensitive political barometer. Heather told him it was bad, very, very bad. The acting Premier, Terry McEnroth, gruffly rejected the predictable calls by the opposition for an inquiry. McEnroth, who as treasurer had kept spending on Queensland health to the bare minimum, reckoned Beattie needed a public inquiry like he needed a hole in the head. The money would be better spent on doctors and. And nurses, McEnroth grumbled. Nick Pabst called me on the mobile phone as Dr. Jerry Fitzgerald tried to explain to ABC Radio 612's Brisbane Morning Radio host Steve Austin why the system had failed so badly. We've got him, Pabs told me, a seasoned newshound from Melbourne. He had been to Patel's home, confirmed his identity and asked for comment as the photographer fired a dozen frames. They were transmitted to Brisbane in minutes. It was a paparazzi style coup. David Fagan could barely contain his enthusiasm when he was told Fitzgerald, who had flown to Bundaberg to meet the patients and hospital staff, was having a tough time. First with the rigorous Steve Austin on live radio and later in a media conference. Fitzgerald sounded well and truly beaten. I apologise unreservedly. The system has let these people down and we have to do better. Obviously, what worries us mostly is there will be a lack of confidence in the community towards Bundaberg Hospital, and the people I've met here, with the obvious exception of Dr. Patel, are wonderful and dedicated, caring people. In Brisbane, Gordon Nuttall demanded explanations from the medical board. Nuttall told me, this is an awful situation.
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I'm very angry. I'm as frustrated as everyone else that this was not addressed back in 2003 when it was first raised. I rely on the Medical Board of Queensland to say to me, these are good, overseas trained doctors who are well qualified to practice.
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David Fagan raised the ante. At this early stage, it seemed possible that a story so shocking might have a fairy tale ending with reforms, proper funding, a change in the culture of COVID up and shoot, the messenger of which I had become all too aware. Fagan directed a team of reporters and photographers to go to Bundaberg to interview traumatised patients. Anyone who knew Patel was fair game. Reporters from a dozen other news outlets flocked to the Sugar Town, including the TV program A Current Affair. Karen Cooper, the Queensland chief of Today Tonight, sent a crew to the Courier Mail to film me doing a Google search, just to rub it in. Fagin wanted to know where Patel ate, drank, slept and partied. He wanted details on how Patel's patients had suffered or benefited from his care. He wanted to know where loved ones of those who had died looked down for comfort and answers. News editor Graham Lloyd urged me to continue working my contacts from Brisbane. The newest angle related to claims that the bodies of several patients who had died post operatively were fast tracked for burial to avoid autopsies. Gay Hawkesworth for the Queensland Nurses Union raised the prospect of exhumations to ensure that test death certificates accurately reflected the real cause of death. She wanted the hospital's managers, Peter Leck and Dr. Darren Keating, to stand aside pending investigations into their conduct.
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It is totally inappropriate for managers or other senior officials to downplay allegations such as those raised by the nurses at the Bundaberg base. It is also totally inappropriate to personally attack and intimidate them. And we believe this may have occurred on a number of occasions.
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It was not exactly business as usual at the intensive care unit. As the enormity of Patel's deception rippled through the wards, almost all the nurses cheered. Tony Hoffman. Chapter 51 Split Personality 14 April 2005. ABC Radio's AM current affairs program introduced the story like this.
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The case of the elusive Dr. Jayant Patel has medical boards across Australia reviewing the way they hire overseas trained doctors.
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And then the reporter Alison Caldwell revealed her scoop. An exclusive interview with a man purporting to be Dr. Patel's brother.
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Speaking from his home in Oregon on the west coast of the United States, Ashish Patel says his brother, Dr. Jayant Patel, has no intention of returning to Australia.
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And then she threw to the interview with Patel's brother Ashish.
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And he doesn't give a damn about Australia probably. I mean this guy is, you know, he has a lot of money and he just wants to travel around the world and he doesn't need to work. So I don't know why he was there. I just picked him up from the airport one day and that's all I know. He didn't tell me anything. You know, I mean essentially he was there for one year and then he extended his contract and his contract expired and he came back here. He's going to go back to New York and work. That's what I was told. In the United States he was at a wonderful position. He was a program director of the training programs and he had a full professorship at the university and he ran the whole residency teaching program here. He wrote several articles and his curriculum vitae is 30 pages long. He was at the top level in the position to the point that he could retire already.
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At 9.30am in Brisbane, one of Queensland's leading TV reporters, Jane Hodgkinson, began a second and more comprehensive interview. Although he sounded agitated during the Trans Pacific call, he kept talking as Hodgkinson, tape recorder running, peppered him with questions. Only a tiny portion went to air on the 6pm news.
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Where is Bundaberg? What's the town you say Queensland. I have no idea what's going on over there. Would you please not call me at this number, please? You know, if you have a problem with my brother, you get a hold of him. But you know there's no point of you talking to me.
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When Jane Hodgkinson mentioned the widening investigations, Patel sounded interested.
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So what are the investigations? I don't know anything about this. But just for the curiosity, what does the investigation show? So who is investigating?
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She explained that separate investigations were being conducted by the coroner, police and Queensland Health. Hundreds of patients, she told Patel, were being contacted.
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I think we are breaking off.
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No, I think you can hear me clearly.
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I was away when he came back and then he went to New York. We didn't talk much about Australia because he was talking about going to India and seeing my mum, his mum, our mum, and I don't know what's happened there.
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Well, he's running away from a lot of trouble. There are many injured and dead people here that he operated on.
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Patel became cranky and started to admonish his interviewer.
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Hey, listen, listen, listen, calm down here, dear. I have nothing to do with you or my brother's practice in Australia. You don't have to be rough at me. I'm just trying to have a conversation with you. You know, I don't live in Australia. I've never been to Australia in my life. And you are calling me out of nowhere and telling me all these things and you are getting kind of upset at me for no reason.
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He offered to take Hodgkinson's telephone number in Brisbane and pass it to his purported brother.
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He continued, I live here with my family. That's why I don't want to get calls over here because I don't need my family members to get upset if he has done something wrong. I know he had a brilliant career over there. I know how well he did over here. I couldn't even figure out at the time why he wants to travel overseas because he says he was going to go and do some voluntary work in the third World. And everything. And apparently he has done well financially, so he is travelling around.
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Jane Hodgkinson explained that apart from the poor surgical outcomes for patients, Patel was also in trouble for failing to disclose to the medical board the actions that had been taken against him in the United States.
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Well, how did he get a licence in Australia? Don't they check on people?
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It was the most insightful question asked all day. Tony Hoffman, hearing the interview on the radio in Bundaberg, screamed after the report had aired. She contacted me from her home.
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He's lost the plot. It's him.
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Hoffman knew the voice and the nuances of the Indian American accent too well to be mistaken. She knew that she was hearing Dr. Jayant Patel bizarrely pretending to be his own brother.
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Believe me, we have listened to that voice for two years. You guys got sucked in about the brother thing. God, it's amazing, isn't it? Never in my wildest imagination. I think I'm dreaming.
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Patel opened up more to our Los Angeles correspondent, Nick Pabst, who reached him by telephone hours after appearing on his front lawn. Continuing the charade of pretending to be a brother, Jayant Patel described himself as a perfectionist. For days afterwards, Nick Pabst believed that he had spoken to a brother.
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Patel told Pabst, he takes bad outcomes really seriously. If I told him this was happening, he would be really pissed. He had a brilliant career in the United States. He told me the story about the train derailment. All the media were there, but he stayed away from the media because he didn't like to take the credit from the staff. He did all the work and they took all the credit. That's what he was telling me. He doesn't brag much.
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Having misrepresented himself to the medical board and Queensland Health, he must have decided it would be easy to hoodwink the media. Patel was one of several hospital doctors who treated passengers for cuts and bruises after the derailment of a Queensland rail tilt train near Bundaberg in November 2004. Now he was pretending to be his brother to pat himself on the back. Rob messenger was being run off his feet as Bundaberg crawled with reporters, all of them seeking interviews with patients. Messenger, the conduit, raised the political stakes and targeted the health minister, Gordon nuttall. I doubt Mr. Nuttall has the guts to look into the eyes of the victims and listen to their stories. An emotional man, he found himself shedding tears while hearing about the pain and trauma. The revelations about Patel's history in the United States stunned Messenger, whose staff had also checked but had come up with nothing. One of the first things Gordon Nuttall did When I exposed Dr. Patel was to travel to Bundaberg and abuse staff for speaking out. Make no mistake, had those courageous staff not gone public with their concerns, Dr. Patel would still be operating at Bundaberg Base Hospital. Peter Leck was a spent force. The revelations hit him hard. Unlike Darren Keating and Jerry Fitzgerald, Leck knew nothing until it came out in the courier mail. He was in no fit state for interviews. He wanted to step aside and leave the district manager's hot seat to someone else. Nobody could tell where this would end. Through Phil Mickerson, who was tasked with managing the media for Queensland Health while his colleague Lisha Schiltz remained on honeymoon, Peter Leck issued a statement. He was unapologetic. He said he had been deeply saddened and hurt by political and personal attacks on my ability and character, which I believe have been unfair, unreasonable and unjust. I firmly believe I have acted appropriately based on information provided to me as manager, and responded swiftly to allegations raised. The stress and feelings of guilt and hopelessness weighed heavily on him. He needed to see a psychiatrist, Dr. Jeremy Butler, but their meeting was a month away. Butler's colleague in the Wickham terrace practice, psychiatrist Dr. Warwick Middleton, offered me an opinion on the mental state of Jayant Patel.
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Even now, it does not seem that he can bring himself to acknowledge these terrible outcomes. I don't get any sense that there is any remorse, responsibility or reflection.
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At the same time, he has an
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amazing sense of entitlement to be centre stage. Everything that has happened will be because of the mistakes and attitudes of others.
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Another psychiatrist whose opinion I sought, Dr. Ian Curtis, said he suspected that for much of Patel's professional life, he had elevated his narcissistic needs and fantasies about a medical career above the welfare of other human beings. Ian Curtis told me, this man has had plenty of warnings to stop doing surgery, but he's continued to do it. It's almost as if he's a different species. He preempts rights over anyone else and he does not have the capacity to develop empathy for the people that he made an oath to care for. Over at Forestry House in Brisbane, the medical board's management team had issued a plea to the external public relations and media advisors for help. Jim O Dempsey, the board's executive officer, and Mary Conn, its chairperson, questioned their own future there. Conn signed off on a raft of stringent new rules and systems which should have been introduced years earlier or at least by late 2003, when clinicians expressed grave concerns to me, which were published in the Courier Mail back then. Here's some of what Mary Conn said
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from today, Queensland will have the most stringent registration process for overseas trained doctors compared to anywhere in Australia. The new system will ensure that doctors can no longer provide false and misleading
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applications to the board without fear of
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being detected and penalised.
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As an audit of the credentials and background of almost 1,700 overseas trained doctors resorted to Google searches, with hits being returned for innocuous things like the membership of equestrian clubs, Jim O. Dempsey gave Gordon Nuttall a report written by Michael Demiguero, one of the board's senior officers. The report conceded that while Patel had been deceptive in his documentation, a thorough check by the medical board should have identified his past. Michael Demiguero wrote this it is my view that a combination of circumstances coincided in this case with unfortunate consequences. In the early evening, scenes of utter despair were played out at Bundaberg's Brothers Leagues Club when the meeting of patients was first planned by Ian Brown of the law firm Carter Kapner Lawyers. Nobody outside Queensland Health's top echelons knew of Patel's wrongdoing in the United States. When the news broke, it drew more than 140 patients and relatives of those who died to the club on the main road into town. As Rob Messinger walked around with a microphone to hand to anyone who wanted to speak, the TV cameras filmed outpourings of grief and anger. Cheryl Johnson spoke about her husband Barry, who had pancreatic cancer before his death in October 2003. His widow correctly feared that he had died as a result of Patel's negligence.
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We thought we should get a second opinion and Dr. Patel said he would perform a Whipple's procedure and that he had done hundreds of them before. He said before the operation that if he came out within an hour that it wasn't a good sign. On the 1st of October, Dr. Patel came out and told us there was nothing he could do and an hour and a half later Barry died.
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The raw emotion was affecting everyone, the Courier Mails reporter Jason Gregory said.
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By that stage almost everyone in the audience was crying.
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Dr. David Malloy, the Australian Medical Association's Queensland president, tried to put on a brave face while comforting people who feared they had been butchered or left to die. He issued a heartfelt apology on behalf of the entire medical community. He had come to share the pain and make amends for attacking messenger just days earlier. It was a brave Gesture by David Malloy to turn up. He won plaudits and respect. There was no forgiveness in the crowd for Nita Cunningham, Labor's parliamentarian for Bundaberg. A furious Beryl Crosby asked her nita
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Cunningham, was it you a week ago who said, we lost a good doctor
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before being asked to leave? The politician was jeered and booed. She never fully recovered. The National Party's senior politician, Jeff Seney, who was seated in the second row, described it as the most distressing and disturbing evening I have spent for a long time.
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Patients of Dr. Patel who had been irreparably damaged from what should have been minor operations and families who have lost loved ones were there to desperately seek answers and explanations.
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Gordon Nuttall, who was not invited, channel surfed the TV news in his office at Charlotte Street. He found it almost unbearable. Although this burgeoning scandal was not directly his fault, it had happened on his watch and as the media kept reminding him, the buck stopped with the minister. The calls for his sacking would be shrill. The political pendulum was not swinging, but it had certainly shifted a few degrees. The National Party leader, Lawrence Springborg, slammed the Beatty government at every conceivable opportunity. In the Bundaberg News Mail the next day, Rob messenger was hailed a hero. On the letters page, one patient, Doris Cavill, stood out from the baying crowd. Dr. Patel had operated on on her in 2004 to remove a large growth.
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Doris said it was a very difficult and rare operation involving several organs and normally would not be done in Bundaberg. He was a marvellous and very caring doctor. He was due to go on holidays to visit his mother in India, but did not leave until he was sure that I was going to be okay. If it was not for him, I would not be alive today.
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Chapter 52 Bloody Mess 15-17-45. Even after Jayant Patel had been revealed as a charlatan, the nurse who had done more than anyone to blow the whistle was fearful of retribution. Tony Hoffman doubted Patel would attempt to harm her. His ego was so vast, he probably regarded her, a mere nurse, as a nobody. Hoffman felt sure that he would want to return to Australia to tell his critics that they were hopelessly wrong. She feared retribution from another source, the bureaucrats who had been severely embarrassed by the revelations. We spoke at length on the telephone several times a day as an extraordinary news story widened into a major crisis. In all my reports, Hoffman remained an anonymous source. Astute readers and Queensland health insiders no doubt speculated about her involvement. But There was nothing they could use as concrete evidence that she had breached the department's Draconian CO code of conduct. For the upcoming weekend, I wanted to write a lengthy feature about Hoffman's struggle to be heard by her colleagues. I wanted to personalise the woman. Who was she? How had she coped? What did she look like? Everyone already knew Patel's history. They had seen his image, but the heroine remained a mystery. When I explained this plan to Hoffman, I suggested a way forward. I would interview her mother, Mari, and ask her for a photograph of her eldest daughter. As a public servant, Hoffman could be disciplined for speaking to journalists, but the Beatty government had no such leverage over her mother. Tony said to me, that's a cunning plan.
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I just don't know if I can trust my mum to talk about me.
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Mari and her husband, Warwick, both retired, were among a few people outside Bundaberg Hospital who knew what had been causing Tony's sleepless nights. They believed emphatically in her cause. Since the story broke, Mari had left the home in Mooloolah on the Sunshine coast each morning to buy every newspaper. Her friends and relatives were inundated with email as Marie copied and pasted the text from news updates on the Internet. When it came to do the interview, Mari spoke with the confidence of a seasoned professional.
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Tony is usually so funny and bright, but for two years she lost her vitality. I thought she was physically sick or depressed. Light in her had dimmed. She was under dreadful stress. She wanted to see something done about this doctor. And now we can see why. If she had been taken seriously two years ago, none of this would have happened. If it had been anyone other than Tony, this doctor would still be operating on the patients. She is not one to stand back when she sees things that are not right. She is stubborn. She will not tolerate incompetence or stupidity. I can only imagine how awful it was for her. As she saw what was happening to the patients. She felt helpless. Thank goodness she didn't give up.
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Afterwards, Marie fretted, I hope I have
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not said too much. I take after my daughter.
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By lunchtime on Friday, as I wrote the Hoffman story headlined How One Woman Exposed Queensland's Deadliest Medical Fraud, the opposition was demanding a public commission of inquiry. The opposition's senior politician, Stuart Copeland, said, the Beatty government has proved time and time again to be the most dishonest, sneaky and closed government in the state's history. We don't need Mr. Beatty to get off his plane from Japan and promise again to get to the bottom of the problem while doing everything he can to shift the blame for this disaster onto everyone but his government. A Royal commission is needed to compulsorily demand all documents, summon witnesses and demand answers. This whole issue is simply far too important to be covered up and glossed over by Mr. Nuttall and his adviser. David Fagan and the Courier Mail were also demanding a public inquiry. The newspaper's editorial thundered.
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The usual options of obfuscation and blunt denial do not wash with Queenslanders any more, if ever they did. Quite apart from the ordeal suffered at the hands of one rogue doctor, this scandal has helped expose certain practices by health administrators which would appall even the most jaded observer of government misadventure. Mr. Beattie rejects the need for an independent judicial inquiry, citing the cost involved. He has instead indicated that the Crime and Misconduct Commission may want to examine the issue. But how is it that the government considers it proper to hold an independent inquiry into the administration of horse racing, yet resist the clear need for a thorough and independent investigation of the health system?
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The stories coming in from our reporting team in Bundaberg were powerful. The anger, shock and sadness of the community and of Patel's patients were conveyed in thousands of words and dozens of images. Jason Gregory and Renee Villaris, two dogged reporters, and their more experienced colleague, Glenys Green, had combed the town and surrounding districts. At 6pm David Fagan began sketching a rough front PA. He wanted it to make an impact like no other Saturday edition. He wanted it to hit our readers right between the eyes. He wanted to make the state of Queensland its institutions and Peter Beattie appreciate the human cost of this disaster. Fagan doubted a conventional front page with just a photograph and headline would suffice. He went for broken. There would be 10 patients on the front page, three of whom were deceased. Ten photographs, 10 accounts of their pain and suffering. The main picture would be Patel. He agonised over the headline. If it struck the wrong chord, we would undo some of the hard work and set ourselves up for blame. Shortly before deadline, the front page was finished in white, tight against a black background, it declared, trail of despair, the lives ruined. Because Queensland Health let this doctor practice, the premier, Peter Beatty, flew back into a storm of protest and recrimination. The coverage in the Courier Mail that day confirmed everything that his wife Heather had warned of. He went into crisis meetings with his senior staff, but Beattie still wanted a boy. More limited Crime and Misconduct Commission inquiry for any government health was too dangerous to be left to a retired judge or an Ambitious senior lawyer with wide powers and public hearings. On Saturday evening, Fagan called me at home. He wanted to keep running hard.
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He said, this is the only story people are talking about. We cannot let it slip now.
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I told him that Hoffman had received a message from Beattie. The Saturday feature article on her had triggered a string of calls from TV stations and other media outlets. Hoffman told them all that she was gagged as she explained to Channel 7's
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Peter Doherty, I can't say anything unless I receive an official clearance.
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He subsequently pressured Queensland Health and the Premier's office. Beattie relented. He sent a message through one of his media managers, Fiona Kennedy, to Hoffman. She had his blessing to say as much or as little as she liked. Michael McKenna, my friend and colleague had a saying, Feed the beast or the beast will feed on you. The beast was the meteor. In a feeding frenzy, a voracious beast might devour anything if not fed it became hostile. I wondered if Beattie was feeding Hoffman to the media to divert it from himself. Having witnessed too many examples of secrecy and cover up, I questioned whether Beattie had suddenly embraced openness and transparency. Under normal circumstances, I would have remained silent about the top level permission and Channel 7's potential scoop. But knowing how David Fagan wanted the issue to maintain momentum, I tipped off Jane Hodgkinson at Channel nine. She told the network bosses at their Mt Coot tha headquarters to prepare the helicopter. As word spread that Hoffman was no longer gagged, the networks dispatched crews and choppers back to Bundaberg. Her little home looked like a film set. As TV crews queued for the interviews, her lawyers, barrister John Allen and solicitor Gavin Rabetsky, urged Queensland Nurses Union Officer Vicki Smyth to ensure things did not get out of hand. The telephone in Hoffman's house rang just before the first of the interviews. It was Janine Keating, the wife of Dr. Darren Keating. She told Tony, I am outside my house.
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Darren doesn't know I'm making this call. My husband is a ruined man.
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Hoffman was taken aback.
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Janine, I have nothing against Darren. It's not about Darren. I'm actually fond of him.
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Keating's wife asked Hoffman to write a letter of support, a note that might help him get through the ordeal. Hoffman doubted that under the circumstances, she would be able to help.
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You have ruined my life. You have ruined my daughter's life. You have had your 15 minutes of fame. Now get back in your box.
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It wasn't about me, Janine. What about the patients and their families? Darren should have listened to what people were telling him, this is out of my hands now.
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The Courier Mails reporter Jason Gregory agreed to talk to Tony Hoffman after the TV report, reporters, all of whom had earlier deadlines. In all the interviews, however, there was no mention of the probable number of deaths which could be attributed to Patel's negligence. I called Hoffman just before deadline. How many? I said. Can you estimate the number? She was reluctant at first.
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It's more than you think, she said quickly, cryptically.
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Hoffman knew about cases involving the intensive care unit. She believed that Patel was responsible for a number of other fatalities involving patients who had not gone to the icu. In the end, she was prepared to say on the record that she suspected he contributed to 20 deaths, but privately she told me that the figure was probably higher. Chapter 53 Legal Games 18 April 2005 Tony Morris, Queen's Counsel, got in touch at lunchtime. I thought this might interest you, he said. A tall, strongly built lawyer reputed to have a brain the size of a planet and an ambition to be Chief justice and Prime Minister, although not necessarily in that order. Anthony John Hunter Morris was an invaluable professional contact. In the past he had provided me with a free written legal opinion on the implications of the Brisbane City Council foolishly covering up research, warning that the next big flood would be more damaging than the official projections had led ratepayers to believe. Morris had given up his time, which he could charge out at more than $5,000 a day to explain complicated judgments or points of law in stories that I chased. He had been the lawyer for the late Christopher Skase, Australia's fugitive corporate giant who remained in Spain out of reach of the authorities after the collapse of his business empire. Morris had worked with Federal Cabinet Minister Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party in their quest to demolish Pauline Hanson over the suspicious registration of the one nation political party. On the day that he contacted me, he briefly outlined a case involving a fellow who had purported to run a Swiss bank from his home at Reedy Creek on the Gold Coast. The case raised by Morris involved an elaborate but ridiculous scam with millions of missing dollars and a con man refer as His Royal Highness. Funds had been frozen amid scrutiny of the scam in the Federal Court. A mercurial and enigmatic character, Toni Morris was the youngest silk in Australian history when appointed Queen's Counsel at the age of 32. Behind his back, he was known by some of his peers as Lord Eldon, after Sir John Scott, a British lawyer who had enjoyed a remarkable career in the law and achieving silk at the age of 31 and going on to enter Parliament and high political office aged 42 as a Tory Attorney General. In one of many articles on his vast website, a must have legal resource for Queensland lawyers, Tony Morris once described his mind as a downmarket antique shop, crammed from the floorboards to the ceiling with useless bits of old junk, some of it valuable, but all of it hard to be rid of. Elsewhere on the website, he expressed his admiration for Sir Samuel Griffith, another lawyer who became a Queensland Premier in 1883 and then promoted himself to Chief Justice. It was the sort of career path Morris might have envisaged for himself. Presciently, he wrote, of all human vanities, there is none greater than to contemplate one's place in history. Posterity reserves its bitterest mockery for those who presume to foresee how they will be judged. In retrospect, our connection became stronger after he acted in court for clients whom I had exposed as charlatans. His father in law, Cedric Hampson QC, had chastised me in early 2003 for refusing to reveal a source during cross examination in the Southport Magistrates Court. It almost resulted in a contempt finding and my imprisonment. Morris was friendly with a handful of journalists. I had called him in 2004 when Theresa Mullen, a media advisor in the Beatty government, needed urgent legal advice after being sacked and threatened with prosecution for taking a bottle of red wine on the government jet to the Lockhart River Aboriginal community, where alcohol was strictly banned. Within 90 minutes of agreeing to help her, Morris was meeting Premier Peter Beattie in the Executive building. And within minutes of their meeting, Morris had extracted a public and private apology from the Premier. Teresa Mullen was reinstated. She never received a bill from Toni Morris. On any other day, the news tip from Morris about the Swiss bank scam would have been welcomed. It looks like a cracking tale, I told him. But I've got my hands full at the moment with Dr. Death. The latest revelation is that he botched a surgery so badly the young man was left impotent and urinating through his bottom. Still anxious to avoid a high profile judicial inquiry which might quickly spin out of control, Peter Beattie had begun sending signals to Robert Robert Needham, the Crime and Misconduct Commission's chairman, to run a self contained mini probe.
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People say there should be a Royal Commission. Well, that's what exists. The Crime and Misconduct Commission is a standing royal Commission. That's their job and I fully support them conducting a full open inquiry.
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There was only one problem. Needham had other ideas. When I telephoned him to ask about Beattie's proposal. On Monday afternoon, Needham ruled it out, saying the anti corruption body lacked the scope, powers and expertise for such a task. At this stage I'm not proposing to mount any inquiry. I do not see any need for the Crime and Misconduct Commission to become involved and cut across all areas that are best dealt with by the Coroner or the homicide squad. Needham believed that the issues of possible criminal negligence were best left to Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson's officers, while the wide statutory powers of State Coroner Michael Barnes permitted him to exhume bodies and conduct forensic examinations. When I relayed this information to Bede's media advisor Steve Bishop, he sounded surprised. It was unusual for the Premier's proposals to be publicly rejected by one of his own appointees. Bishop told me he will seek clarification
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himself from the cmc.
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I began writing a comment piece for the next day's Courier Mail. I wrote, peter Beattie is shirking a core responsibility over issues of life and death affecting hundreds of thousands of corporations Queenslanders. By ducking and weaving around calls for a Royal Commission style inquiry into the scandal over Queensland Health's appointment of a grossly negligent surgeon to Bundaberg Hospital, he is playing politics with lives. A broad inquiry into this systemic failure across Queensland's health and regulatory systems would be painful, but it would end with remedies for illness which plague Queensland Health's bureaucracy. My piece went on, There are compelling reasons for one inquiry led by an eminent retired judge with extensive powers to pull together all the terrible threads of this scandal and investigate in its entirety. If a horse racing industry in which nobody has controversially died or been injured justifies a rationale Royal Commission, then so too do Queenslanders whose lives depend on our public hospitals, my piece concluded, Mr. Beattie needs to show that whatever the political fallout, he has the ticket to take his most serious crisis serious. Chapter 54 the Blowtorch 19 April 2005 Peter Beattie, master tactician, self confessed media tart and consummate all round politician, had nowhere to go. He had been boxed in by the Crime and Misconduct Commission's refusal to take up his suggestion about a limited inquiry. And now the calls for a full commission of inquiry were becoming louder. The Jayant Patel scandal had made everything else Beattie was doing to boost Queensland seem trivial by comparison. The timing for his latest expensive promotional campaign called Smart Creating the Future could not have been worse because when the copywriters polished their material for the Smart state's full page advertisements Patel was not a household name. Peter Beattie says in the advertisements.
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Our researchers, scientists and health professionals are internationally recognised now. We must keep up the momentum. Smart Queensland is a blueprint for doing just that.
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It was dream material for the opposition. A smart state which did not know how to use Google. A smart state which ignored repeated warnings about a negligent surgeon. Beattie hated being mocked, particularly by the Opposition leader, Lawrence Springborg, who said, I
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can say to the Parliament today that our health professionals are certainly attracting international attention and for all the wrong reasons. This is only the tip of the iceberg. What we have seen at Bundaberg Base Hospital is potentially happening elsewhere around Queensland. What we have is a government which is covering it up. If you complain, you'll be castigated, you will be bullied, you will be demoted, you will be driven to the point of suicide. That is what has happened to some of these people. You will be made the problem. The Premier and the Minister are hoping that they will be able to keep the lid on this and that they might be able to contain it. To the Bundaberg Base Hospital. The Premier is presiding over stuff up after stuff up after stuff up.
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Opposition leader Springborg, turning to Gordon Nuttall, went for the jugular.
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People have died because of this maladministration. He has blood on his hands. He should hang his head in shame.
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Beattie had spoken earlier to Robert Needham, who confirmed his reluctance to involve the Crime and Misconduct Commission. Privately, Beattie was not impressed. But publicly he said he accepted needham's reasons. At 9.40am, Peter Beattie took the biggest risk of his political crime career. In his bravest and most selfless act of leadership, he started a process which could only result in excruciating political pain. He told Parliament that he would set up a wide ranging inquiry into the appointment and work of Dr. Jayant Patel at Bundaberg Hospital with terms of reference
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to ensure that the inquiry is effective. On behalf of the Government of Queensland, I apologise to the patients who have suffered as a result of Dr. Patel's appointment and to their families. I will ensure that the inquiry has the power to investigate all aspects of the appointment of Dr. Jayant Patel at Bundaberg Hospital and the treatment of patients he dealt with. The issue of extradition has been raised. I advise the House that we have a long standing extradition treaty with the us. We have extradition arrangements with India. We will do everything within our power to ensure that justice is done here.
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After condemning the inquiry as a damage control exercise, the Opposition focused its rage on Gordon Nuttall, who looked increasingly forlorn and friendless.
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He said, I do not get any joy out of this at all. But the job that I have to do is to try to fix it. The job that I have to do is to try to look after the people of Bundaberg and to try to reassure the rest of the people of Queensland who are treated by overseas trained doctors that those doctors are suitably qualified. And we will do that.
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The Queensland Nurses Union had not initially supported the calls for a commission of inquiry, preferring instead a much weaker form of review. After Beattie's announcement of a powerful inquiry, the union's leader, Gay Hawkesworth, urged wide powers to also investigate what she called
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Queensland Health's secretive and dismissive corporate culture. The so called managerial practice of shooting the messenger is a common experience amongst Queensland Health employees, especially nurses, and has been for years.
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Dr. David Malloy, the head of the Australian Medical association in Queensland, was effusive.
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This is a once in a lifetime
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opportunity for them to change the system. For 30 years they've been immune to reviews.
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That's part of the reason the management
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system is so bad now. Having promised to endow the multi million dollar inquiry with extraordinary powers, Peter Beattie faced another momentous decision. He needed a retired judge or lawyer to lead it. Someone who would work tirelessly, who would command respect. Someone with whom Beattie himself could build a rapport. But someone who would not be seen as a political stooge. Although the inquiry's leaders would not be known for several days, Beattie wanted Toni Morris at the helm. The Premier had been impressed by the tact and efficiency of Morris when they met to hammer out a solution to the political embarrassment involving Theresa Mullen and her then minister Liddy Clark over taking that bottle of wine to Lockhart river in 2004. Morris was a strong supporter of the Liberal Party. He had even given free legal advice to its Federal Minister, Tony Abbott. Under these circumstances, it would be impossible for anyone to brand Morris a Labor stooge. Elsewhere, Attorney General Rod Welford and one of his former top staffers, Barrister Justin Harper, scrambled to put together a short list of contenders, including the newly retired Court of Appeal Justice Jeff Davies QC and his friend, retired Supreme Court Justice Bill Pincus qc. During the compilation of that list, Morris was not raised as a remote possibility should Beattie want a practising lawyer. The top two on the list were Peter Applegarth SC and David Badice sc. But Beattie had made up his mind with a truly serious Crisis threatening to engulf the Labor Party, he made one of his typically audacious moves. Morris picked up a message to call the Premier's office after Beatty's speech in Parliament. He spoke with Rob Whiddon, the Premier's fixer, and Whiddon asked would Morris be available to meet Beattie at Parliament House during the dinner adjournment. When Morris asked what it was about, he was gently rebuffed. It would be better, Whidden explained, not to talk about it over the phone. Morris had no idea he was about to be wooed to head the inquiry. On the way down George street, he pondered the possibilities. There was a vacancy for a Solicitor General. Perhaps, Morris wondered, Beattie might be about to offer that key position. Judicial appointment was another possibility. But Morris believed it would be unusual for such an offer to come from Beattie rather than the Attorney General. It occurred to the ambitious lawyer that he might be offered a role on a state authority or as a state representative on a federal body like the National Crime Commission or the Australian securities and Investments Commission. On arriving at Parliament House, he was ushered into a room with Beattie, the Deputy Premier, Terry Mac and Roth, Rob Whidden and Steve Bishop. There was no courtship. Beattie came right to the point. He said that he was well aware of the connections between Toni Morris and the Liberal Party. But Beattie said he was deadly serious about wanting a tough inquiry and he wanted the public to see him as deadly serious. He told Morris that he had been chosen and as someone who was and would be seen to be fiercely independent. When Terry McEnroth made a point of saying that he supported the nomination, Morris found the assurance curious. He was unaware that others in the Beattie government were nervous about the job offer. Beattie mentioned that Sir Lou Edwards, a non practising doctor and former Liberal Party deputy premier, had already agreed agreed to be a deputy commissioner of the inquiry. Salou had one proviso. He only wanted to be on the team if its leader was happy for him to be there. Tony Morris immediately indicated that he would be happy to work with Sir Lou. At that time, the third member of the inquiry had not been determined. With a lawyer leading it and a former politician and doctor as a deputy, Morris and Beattie agreed the other deputy should represent the nursing profession. Margaret Vida, the director of mission at Holy Spirit Northside and a former nurse surveyor on the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards, would later accept the position. Morris was keenly interested in the job. He told Beattie he would be happy to serve. He saw it as A unique opportunity to do some good for the community. Something which he often lamented was never easy in his profession. He found the issues particularly interesting. Like all senior barristers, Morris had also begun to consider the possibility of eventual judicial appointment. It struck him as a good test drive, an opportunity to experience a semi judicial role to see if he suited the job and if the job suited him. Before accepting, however, he said he would have to talk it over with his wife, Alice. It was a dream appointment. There would be broad terms of reference, white powers for forensic examination of the evidence, national and international media interest, independence from the Beattie government, and a chance for Morris to leave his mark on Queensland history. At the end of what Beattie hoped would be a short but highly effective inquisition into a sick health system, Morris had the potential to be the hero. With the remedy. Recommendations of extra funding for hospitals, changes to the law, sackings, compensation for patients and prosecutions of the guild, guilty or incompetent, were all there for Morris to make. His mentor was Tony Fitzgerald qc, whose successful inquiry into rampant police corruption in Queensland in the late 1980s had revolutionised the police and criminal justice. The inquiry had made Fitzgerald a highly respected figure, admired for his courage and tenacity in exposing the truth about the corruption of the Police Commissioner, Sir Terence Lewis, and his coterie of Ben Cobbs. In his first full time job in the law, Tony Morris had been an associate to Fitzgerald when he was a federal court judge. When Fitzgerald left the bench to return to the bar, Morris was in chambers with him for the period of the corruption inquiry. He had appeared before Fitzgerald at the inquiry on behalf of one of the parties. After accepting Beattie's offer, Morris told me, there is no inquiry anywhere in the country that does not take Fitzgerald as the precedent to work from. Just like the Fitzgerald inquiry two decades ago, the credibility of this commission of inquiry hangs from the gossamer thread of public opinion. There were, however, grave reservations about Morris. As a longtime friend of the Liberal Party, he greatly concerned Beattie's colleagues. Morris was regarded by some of his legal colleagues as too unpredictable to entrust with something as serious as a judicial inquiry. One of the Queensland Bar Association's office bearers said to me, you watch this will come back to bite Beattie. A Supreme Court judge postulated that there were few lawyers with more ability than Morris. But, he added, there were few who also had as much potential to blow the inquiry to smithereens. The judge told me he is an unguided missile. In an interview in his office in the executive Building, a Couple of days before the start of public hearings in late May, Beattie told me some in the Labor Party believed he was mad to pick Toni Morris.
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We are not dealing here with someone who is going to be snowed. We are dealing with someone who will be absolutely ruthless in getting to the truth. This is potentially as damaging for a government as Fitzgerald. It's not about corruption. We're an honest government. It's about health. Health is the most significant vote changer of any issue. So in terms of politics, of course, it's an enormous threat to us, which is why there is nervousness around my appointment of Tony Morris. I knew exactly what I was doing when I appointed him. I warned all our colleagues that there will be a lot of pain out of this politically, we will get bashed.
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I asked Beattie about Queensland Health's reputation for secrecy and cover up.
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He replied, tony Morris has the power to get anything he wants. There is no point going through the pain and the revelation unless at the end of this, we end up with a better system. That's the whole purpose of having an inquiry. The thing that annoys me more than anything about this, let me be very blunt, is that you could actually get on a bloody website and find out what happened and the Medical Board couldn't. And that was the crucial point when I decided there was going to be an inquiry. This is about life and death. A government can't play with people's lives. I'm appalled that this has occurred, but I'm more concerned about the patient. They are, in many senses, in a powerless position and we have a moral obligation. We represent those people. They're Queenslanders and we have an obligation to fix this up. When you're dealing with health, you've got to remember where the Labor Party comes from. There are two things we're obsessive about. One is equal opportunities for education and the other is. Is health services. But this wasn't a cynical exercise. It's a philosophical exercise in the sense that we had to get someone who would take the cleaners to the system.
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Before the public hearings began, the Labor Party was invincible. Its lead over the opposition looked unassailable. Beattie had never been more popular. Still, even in those early days, Beattie feared Patel and the health crisis would flatten his government. He told me, what we have to
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do is keep our nerve in a sense of saying, what is our moral duty here? What is our obligation? The problem has been around for a long time, but all this happened on our watch. If in the end, the people of Queensland are still unhappy with us, then they'll vote us out.
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Although the public inquiry would grab everyone's attention, Beattie had also ordered a separate review of the health system by his favourite public sector consultant, Peter Forster. Separately, Morris and Forster would lead what Beattie described as the most significant and
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far reaching examination of Queensland health in living memory.
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I left the Premier's office pondering the pledges. He sounded sincere, although he had an innate ability to sound like whatever he wanted depending on the circumstances. His powerful charisma and charm, the remarkable need to be loved, the natural cunning and the political savvy had made him Australia's most popular leader. But he could, I knew, turn on invective and and anger when it suited. It had suited Beattie as I sat in the same chair in his office five years earlier to interview him about corrupt voting and Labor Party electoral battles. I had written several articles about the claims of corrupt conduct of labor campaign workers, including those who had helped the then federal Attorney General, Michael Labarch, to keep his job by winning his seat on Brisbane's north northern outskirts. It was never suggested that Michael Labarche himself had known about the alleged corruption and that was a fact I'd prominently reported at the time. The articles greatly distressed Labarche, his wife Linda and Beattie, their longtime friend.
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You wrote a number of untested pieces that damaged a lot of people without them having an opportunity to reply back
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then, a clearly angry Beattie told me in a tirade witnessed by the Kooriemale's then State political editor Matthew Franklin.
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I don't have any faith in what you will write and to be frank with you, it's a case of my concern about whether I will get a fair go about what you are writing.
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But a few moments later Beattie apologised. The storm had passed. He was conciliatory again.
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My sensitivity is about this. My integrity means something to me. It's about my honesty and I will not compromise on these fucking things. Ever.
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Back in the office, Matt Franklin reckoned it was pure Peter Beatty. Pure. Foreign. Sick to Death is written and presented by me, Headley Thomas, the Australian's national Chief Correspondent. Claire Harvey is the Australian's Editorial Director. Audio editing, production and music have been done by Jasper Leake with assistance from Leah Samagloo and Neil Sutherland. Our producer is Kristin Amyot. Production management by Stephanie Coombs Artwork by Sean Callanan. Thanks to Ryan Osland, Matthew Condon, Corinna Berger, Ellie Dudley, David Murray, Dominique McDermott, Zach Skulander and all our family, friends and colleagues who helped in this series and contributed voice, acting. And special thanks to Tony Hoffman and Rob Messenger. Subscribers to the Australian Hear new episodes of Sick to death first@sicktodeathpodcast.com and on Apple Podcasts. You can get exclusive access to photographs, videos, timelines and more at the
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SA.