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The Joke – The Crimes of Sir Terence Lewis, Police Commissioner

It was such a ludicrous circumstance that it was referred to by those in the know throughout the Queensland police force and parliament simply as ‘the joke’. A police inspector had been plucked out of the bush and installed as police commissioner at the behest of the Queensland premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

And, once there, the new boss became the puppet for those who allowed corruption to run rampant wherever his superiors saw fit while, at the same time, he lined his own pockets with vast sums of money delivered in brown paper bags. It was, indeed, a joke of mammoth proportions played upon the citizens of Queensland.

The man who would be commissioner, Terry Lewis, was born in Ipswich and went to work at age 13 in Pikes’ Menswear Store in Brisbane, selling suits until he joined the police force in 1948. At best it could be said that the tall man with a friendly smile was about as ordinary a bloke as you’d ever meet.

Terry Lewis married a Cloncurry shop assistant named Hazel Gould and they settled into their suburban Brisbane home to raise their family of five children. Lewis worked his way up in the force and spent 15 years in the Criminal Investigation Branch, until he was promoted at age 35 to run the newly created Juvenile Aid Bureau.

Lewis was showing signs of leadership and, in 1968, was awarded a Churchill Fellowship. He had made up for his poor education by studying in his spare time, gaining a degree in arts and a diploma in public administration. In January 1976, 28 years after joining the force, Terry Lewis was made an inspector and transferred to Charleville, a bush town in Western Queensland, with 35 officers under his command.

Much to the astonishment of his peers and the many officers who were better qualified for the job, by November 1976 Terry Lewis had been installed in Brisbane as assistant commissioner and when the incumbent commissioner, Raymond Whitrod, resigned soon after, he was given the top cop job in Queensland. It was Joh Bjelke-Petersen himself who apparently gave the final nod. It all happened so fast that few had time to protest.

What had transpired personally between the new commissioner and the premier prior to the appointment can only be subject to speculation. But the detractors could read nothing into it other than corruption. And time would prove them 100 per cent correct.

Rumours were rampant that Terry Lewis had been a bag man, meaning that he collected bribes and protection money for the previous commissioner, and that he had been involved in police corruption at the highest level. This was the topic of the new commissioner’s first press conference, where he assured the media that starting immediately there would be a clampdown on SP betting and that he would not tolerate any political interference to his post.

With Terry Lewis at the helm, Queensland slipped into its blackest abyss as corruption at every level ran rampant and the man at the top got his kickback from the lot. Crooked poli-ticians, illegal casino bosses, drug traffickers and corrupt police did little to hide their activities. It could be said that in that dark time of the Lewis years it was the criminals who were running Queensland as they pleased, as long as they paid their respects with brown paper bags full of cash.

Voted Father of the Year in 1980, Terry Lewis moved his clan into a mansion in posh Garfield Drive, Paddington, that he had had built at a cost of $500,000 – a staggering amount of money for those days, given that he was still on a public servant’s salary.

But that was still not enough for the police commissioner. In 1986, after constant lobbying from his family and supporters, Terry Lewis, the suit salesman from Ipswich, became Sir Terence – the only police commissioner in Australian history to receive a knighthood. Hazel, the Cloncurry shop assistant, became Lady Lewis. Now it all really was beyond a joke.

By July 1987 Queensland’s Fitzgerald Royal Commission into corruption was well under way and in the light of certain damning accusations levelled at the premier, Sir Joh – who had by now also received a knighthood – had little choice but to stand his old mate down. Terrified that the commission would find out what everyone else already knew anyway, Sir Terence immediately transferred the deeds to the family mansion into his wife’s name in a feeble attempt to distance himself from questions as to where the money came from to build it. It didn’t work.

Jack Herbert, Lewis’ bag man throughout the years of corruption, turned informer to save his own skin. Herbert told the Commission that Sir Terence was collecting around $120,000 a year in kickbacks from the organised crime that ran Queensland’s illegal casinos and brothels.

Jack Herbert’s wife, Peggy, told the commission that giving the money to Sir Terence was often a combined effort, and she would meet Lady Hazel and slip a brown paper envelope full of cash into her bag beneath the table while they had coffee and scones in a local restaurant. If it wasn’t so evil, it would have been hilarious.

After the commission, Sir Terence was given the bullet. He immediately sold the Lewis Paddington mansion for $600,000, of which $450,000 went straight to solicitors he had employed to free up his superannuation entitlements and long-service leave, valued at an estimated $1.4 million. But it was all to no avail. The taxation department got the lot. But worse was to come.

Charged and convicted on 14 counts of corruption, Sir Terence was sentenced to 14 years in jail. Earning just $4 a day in the slammer, Sir Terence had little to provide for his family so Lady Hazel had to claim the dole, thus becoming the first titled woman in Australia ever to go on welfare. We can only wonder if she used her title on the dole papers.

In 1993 Sir Terence became plain old Terry and Lady Hazel went back to being ordinary old Hazel when he was stripped of his knighthood and all other honours from the Queen that went with it. Released from prison after serving a good portion of his sentence, Terry Lewis, the suit salesman from Ipswich who rose to become police commissioner, now maintains as low a profile as possible and prefers it that way.

He didn’t even attend the recent funeral of his old mate Joh Bjelke-Petersen.