The Courier-Mail this week has been marking 30 years since the Fitzgerald report into police corruption was handed down, one of the biggest upheavals in the state’s police and political histories.
The inquiry into police corruption was instigated by media reporting, led by The Courier-Mail in 1987, which led to the resignation of long-serving premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen and the jailing of many figures, including police commissioner Terry Lewis.
The newspaper’s reporting sent various government ministers to jail and transformed Queensland society. The inquiry initially was expected to take six weeks.
The week-long commemoration has included revelations from exclusive interviews with Lewis, who was the most senior official to be jailed. The series also looks at where the key players of the Inquiry now are, the figures who slipped through the net and how it shaped the modern Queensland Police Service and the state’s politics.
The Courier-Mail editor Sam Weir said: “What started as old-fashioned shoe leather reporting in an era well before mobile phones, led to one of Australia’s biggest investigative journalism successes.
“Exposing the truth is central to what we do every day and it is a worthy time to mark the efforts of journalists to improve society for all.”