The stage setting for Act III of the Icac-Cunneen show has changed.
Act I consisted of a series of tangled courtroom dramas, culminating in the magic trick of the high court parsing the idea of corrupt conduct into segments that related to “probity” and “efficacy”. Probity stayed in the plot. Efficacy left the stage.
Act II took us to the nondescript office of a former judge, David Levine, who wears the costume of Icac inspector general and wrote a passionately florid account of his tortured relationship with Megan Latham, the central character at the corruption-buster, Icac. Prosecutor Margaret Cunneen in Act I was the original focus of an investigation into an allegation that a car crash saw her allegedly attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Inspector Levine deftly turned this around and, in a lengthy soliloquy to the audience, claimed that it was Icac and commissioner Latham who were perverting the course of justice, or as he put it in a torrent of adjectives, Icac was: “unreasonable, unjust and oppressive in a serious way.”
So vehement was the inspector’s disagreement with the commissioner that you suspect he might harbour an unbottled ardour for her. This may be revealed in future acts of the play.
Act III moves to a gilded committee room of the sleepy upper-house of the NSW parliament populated by jaded party apparatchiks. The committee is charged with limited duties to keep an eye on Icac and in turn write more reports.
At the moment confusion reigns. This cluster of largely unheard-of politicians is led by Damien Tudehope, a serious Christian with nine children. Together with another Christian, Reverend Fred Nile, the committee brings the spirit of Christianity to keeping alive the memory of 10 of their conservative colleagues lost to political oblivion as a result of Icac’s earlier investigations into illegal election funding.
There have been firm indications that some of the Liberal-Nat-Christians are firmly in prosecutor Cunneen’s corner and are orchestrating a chorus of boo-hisses to the villainous Icac.
A fresh and exciting new twist to the plot has been thrown into the cauldron by commissioner Latham, who produced to the politicians a report that firmly and eloquently unstitches the assertions of the inspector.
His report is “so fundamentally flawed that is cannot be relied on and should be withdrawn. The report is flawed because the inspector failed to give proper consideration to material available to him and failed to afford the commission and commission officers procedural fairness.”
Commissioner Latham goes through Levine’s findings, chapter and verse, and sets fire to each one of them.
Just when you think the tension is unbearable, along comes a dramatic new turn of events. The commissioner also gave to the parliamentarians hitherto secret transcripts and intercepts of prosecutor Cunneen in phone conversation with an exotic smash repair man. The conversation gives rise to various interpretations around the words “fake breasts and “fake chest”.
A key few sentences of the intercepted material were promptly leaked to the reptiles of the press and the illuminating slice went a long way to explaining to a by-now gobsmacked audience why Icac might have wanted to know more about what went on with the car crash, the chest pains and the prosecutor.
“Fake breasts”, according to Ms Cunneen is something she likes to joke about, and as a prosecutor she’s a jokey sort of person. “Fake chest”, on the other hand, refers to pain caused to the victim of the accident, a young starlet played by the up and coming Sophia Tilley.
Cunneen seemed to be saying to the smash repair character that she was going to tell Sophia to fake chest pains which could delay a blood alcohol test and not cause trouble for the insurance of the vehicle that the prosecutor leased from the state car pool.
“That naughty girl had alcohol ... that’s all right I can cover that ... But she had drunk, she’s on her P-plates. But it had been some time ago which is why I sent her a message to start having chest pains and get the ambulance because it has bought her a few more hours. Just hoping it goes down to zero ‘cause otherwise there might be complicated insurance issues.”
The politicians are now in a pickle. They meet and decide to call off another meeting where it was expected they would announce a decision to release the intercepts, or not. Instead, they have been busily consulting lawyers.
In a late developing aside it has emerged that Reverend Fred Nile is a great fan of prosecutor Cunneen and she turned up to wave the flag at a fundraiser for his Christian Democratic Party.
The conservative committee members are aligned to Ms Cunneen’s struggle to “completely destroy” Icac, as she herself has put it, yet the audience wants to know more, they want to hear the intercepts, or at least see the transcript.
From front stage right, the prosecutor originally told us she didn’t “give a damn” if the material was publicly released, but this soon transmogrified into threats from her lawyers that it would be a criminal offence if anyone got near this secret conversation.
This did not stop Greg Wyllie, Ms Cunneen’s partner, in a loud aside from giving his gloss on the conversation – that it was just “puffery” and the way people talk to people in the smash repair business.
Even Reverend Nile might be in contempt of parliament for taking to the lectern and announcing that he has heard the secret tapes and in his mind it is all a tremendous joke.
It’s a joke that has no one in the audience laughing.
In a completely bizarre and unnerving sub-plot, it emerged that some journalists who signed onto the Cunneen cheer squad are aghast at the idea that the parliamentarians might let everyone in on the secret tapes.
This is a new school of journalism that doesn’t believe in disclosure of information. Never mind that people are now on the edge of their seats wanting to know whether Levine’s report is in tatters.
There are indecipherable noises off stage. The curtain comes down. The audience is perplexed. Should they clap or boo? Then they realise it’s only the interval. There’s more to come, but first we need a stiff drink at the bar.
