Chapter 20: Crime and Punishment

The Wheels of Justice

Early November, 1983

By the start of November, we were pretty much ready for the next album to be recorded; we had polished all of the new songs at our live performances during October. We still had two performances to go, Millers Manly Vale this coming Thursday and Friday nights. Because the 1st of November also was the first Tuesday in November, Mary Beth had decided to organize a ‘Cup Sweep’ for all of us. By the time partners were included, we had a total of twenty-four people, conveniently the same as the number of starters in the horse race.

I had never really gotten into horse racing; to me it seemed to be an easy way to lose money; but it was the Melbourne Cup, ostensibly ‘the race that stops a nation’. On Monday night, Lisa and Mary Beth had organized the sweep draw; we would all put in five dollars, giving a pot of $120. Whoever drew the winning horse would get sixty dollars, thirty for second, fifteen for third, and fifteen if your horse came in last. The horse I drew was from New Zealand, appropriately named ‘Kiwi’.

“Does it have four legs?” I asked, not impressed with what I had.

Just before 3:00 on Tuesday afternoon, we all gathered around the television in the family room, and watched the pre-race activities. Once the race itself started; I was disappointed – although not really surprised – to see ‘Kiwi’ at the back of the field. Everyone was cheering on their particular horse, and at the final turn, with just the 500 metres of the straight to go, he had improved his position – by one – and was now second last. Amazingly, the horse must had realized that he needed to be at the front of the field, and put on an amazing turn of speed, and won the race by a length. Lisa’s horse – Aramant – struggled to finish last, and appeared to be lame.

“I hope they don’t have to put that poor horse down,” Lisa said.

“Well, this can buy us drinks on Friday night,” I said, holding up my winnings.

After all the excitement of watching the race, it was back to business; Lisa, Merry and Ange were studying for their exams, meanwhile a few of us helped Tracy move her things from the guest room that she had been sleeping in down to my old room, which Merry had been sleeping in prior to moving in with Ange. That would make all of the guest rooms available during the next two weeks while we were recording.

The next morning, I had a phone call from the attorney at the Crown Solicitor’s office, Michael Hennessey who had been dealing with the O’Connell case. He asked if I was able to come in to discuss progress later today and gave me their address in the city. I told him I could be there at 2:00 pm, and asked if there was anything I needed to bring. He told me all I had to do was turn up; all he was going to do was give me an update on how the case was progressing. There was some news for me about what the defence was trying to do that he felt I should be aware of.

After lunch, I caught a train into town, then walked up Martin Place from Wynyard to Queens Square, to where the Crown Solicitor’s office was located. I took the elevator up to Michael’s floor, and found his office.

“Will, great to see you, take a seat,” he said, clearing a bunch of files from his desk. “How’s the leg doing? Fully recovered, I hope?”

“Yes, it’s not causing any major problems,” I said. “The odd twinge or two now and then, but before I do anything strenuous, I make sure I warm up first. What’s the story with the case? When is it going to trial?”

“Okay, let me bring you up to date. I don’t know if you were told, but the defence petitioned the judge for what is called a bench trial; basically, they want it heard and the verdict determined by a judge alone; without a jury involved. It’s not all that common, it requires approval from the judge, obviously, and also the prosecution. We don’t have a problem with it for this case.”

“Why would the defence request that?” I asked. “Surely, having a jury that their barrister can appeal to would be to their advantage?”

“Since they are going for an insanity defence, there’s often lots of conflicting, but quite specialized evidence; expert reports from mental health people, things like that, and it’s very difficult to predict how a random group of people will react. We like it for this trial, as we have pretty solid evidence to blow away the insanity defence. Now, there’s no question of O’Connell’s guilt, they have admitted he tried to shoot you, so there isn’t a guilty / not guilty verdict in the traditional sense.

“Anyway, they felt initially that they would get a sympathetic judge assigned to the case, and initially Judge Wooten was appointed. Despite previously being Dean of the Faculty of Law at UNSW, he’s pretty soft on people who he believes have been discriminated against. However, he resigned early last month, after the defence applied for a bench trial – and had it approved. The judge appointed to take over the case, Jeffery Miles probably won’t be quite as sympathetic.”

“So, despite all of their scheming, he might end up going to prison?” I asked.

“I’m not a gambling man, but ... I wouldn’t recommend putting money on the insanity plea working,” he said. “Now, none of that will really impact you; at some stage during the presentation of the case, you will be called on as a witness; before the trial starts we will go over all that, so you won’t be caught unprepared.”

“Okay; when do you expect that to take place? I’ve got a lot of stuff happening over the next two months.”

“Most likely early December, that’s the tentative calendar. But I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything different.”

“Great. Now, one thing they will probably try to show is that the University treated O’Connell unfairly, he was victimised and not given a fair go. We’ve already contacted the University Registrar’s department and obtained copies of the inquiry report into the cheating, plus copies of their policies and procedures for dealing with such cases. They also have allowed you to provide your notes on his performance in subjects that you taught; we have to show that he was given every chance to complete the subject, but didn’t meet the academic requirements. And these were the same requirements for all students, you didn’t just pick on him, for some personal reason. When the defence are cross-examining you, they will probably try to goad you into saying something intemperate; we’ll practice that before the trial. What is key is that you stay calm and composed, just answer the bare minimum. If they start getting out of line with their questioning, I’ll cut in and object. But we’ll rehearse all of that before the trial.”

“That should be fine; I’ll make sure I’m available whenever you need me,” I said. “Do you want me to get copies of his previous assignments and my assessments from previous years?”

“Let me think about that; maybe if I could have a look at them first; just to make sure there’s nothing in them to bolster the defence’s case. If we are going to use them as evidence, then we need to give them copies beforehand. Now, when you are on the stand, you can of course refer to them as notes to jog your memory, that’s perfectly fine; but I’ll need to look at them before we consider introducing them as exhibits.”

“Okay, I’ll head across to my office now, get copies and drop them back into you,” I said. “I don’t think there’s anything controversial in them, but I’ll leave that decision to you.”

We chatted a little longer, then I left to drive out to the University. Once in my office, I made two sets of copies of O’Connell’s papers from earlier this year and last year. I dropped one copy in at Michael’s office, and kept the other in my notes, if I needed to refer to them during the trial. I also got copies of the details of the five thesis projects that I would be supervising next year; I wanted to read over the project summaries. The meeting that I had planned to have with the five students had been moved forward to this Friday afternoon; the Monday morning that I had planned for the meeting would clash with one of the exams two of them were doing that day. That worked better for me; since on Monday we were going to start recording the new album.

Friday morning I was up in my office fairly early, waiting for the other five to arrive. I had prepared copies of the sample thesis journal pages for them, along with copies of some early Gantt charts of my undergraduate thesis project plan. I also had a copy of the proposed floor plan for the expansion of the first year unit; over the summer break some of the rooms in the old data centre area just outside our offices were being reorganized, and we would have more space within our area. The space would almost double; on one side there would be a large terminal lab – reserved for postgraduate and fourth year Computer Science students - and on the other side of the entrance hallway a study room, and behind that a dedicated micro-electronics lab. The five of them arrived, and I suggested we move to the meeting room.

“Now, I suggest you get familiar with this part of the building,” I said. “We are enlarging the office space here over the summer break, not only will it be for the first year CS unit, but for postgraduate and research students within the Computer Science Department.”

I showed them a copy of the proposed floor plan, explaining what each space would be used for. The study room would have storage cabinets for all of the research students; Michelle would have the keys for each person’s unit sometime early in February.

“What we should do first, before I go over my thoughts on tackling a thesis, is to introduce ourselves to each other, telling a little bit about us, what we do outside of classes here, and what our thesis subject is. Even though I think most of you know about me; you’ve certainly had me in at least one lecture, I’ll start things off,” I said.

“I guess by now you know that I started here in 1976, doing electrical engineering, changed and graduated with an honours degree in Computer Science,” I said. “After a year working for the State Government, managing some network installation projects, I came back here to work on my PhD; implementing the AARNET project and designing and building the routers used in that network.

“Now, outside of the University, I play in a blues / rock band; we’ve made a number of records; in fact we are recording our latest album next week. I grew up on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, but I’ve been living in the inner city and lower north shore area since I started Uni. I also sail, on the weekends I race on a sailing yacht on Pittwater. I’m not quite twenty-six years old, and I married my wife earlier this year. Next person?”

“I’ll go,” Michael said. “My name is Michael O’Malley, I grew up on a farm in the northwest of the state, when I was at High School I attended a Catholic boarding school in Bathurst. My thesis will be working on enhancing the protocols for assigning networking parameters to computers attached to an Ethernet network; there’s a standard out there called the ‘bootstrap protocol’, or ‘bootp’. It was initially designed for booting diskless workstations, but there’s a group of people, mainly in the US, working on enhancing it. In my spare time, I play Dungeons and Dragons and other role-playing games; and Sarah, sitting next to me, is my girlfriend.”

“That’s probably my cue,” Sarah said. “I’m Sarah O’Byrne, originally from Grenfell, in the central west of the state where my father ran a car repair business. I attended the local schools there, before coming to Sydney to attend Uni; I met Michael in first year, and there’s a funny story about how we got together, we can thank Mr Morris for that.”

“I made some smart arse remark in our first Computing I lecture directed at Sarah, actually it was pretty insulting to female students,” Michael said. “Mr Morris called me out, and later up here in his office chewed me out about it. I thought I was going to be in serious trouble, but he just gave me some advice about studying here, and told me to find Sarah, and apologise to her. Well, after apologising, I asked her if she would like to have lunch with me ... and, as they say, the rest is history.”

“Anyway, I was really impressed that Michael was prepared to apologise for what he said; until then I was used to guys making pretty sexist remarks; I assumed that’s just what guys were like.”

“That’s a neat story you guys. My name’s Randy Goldberg, and I grew up in the Eastern suburbs of Sydney, around Woollahra. For my thesis, I’ll be designing an interface unit for standalone printers, either serial or Centronics interface, to them into a TCP/IP network. In my spare time I explore caves, with the UNSW Speleological Society.”

“And I assume from the yarmulke that you wear, you are of the Jewish faith?” I asked.

“Yes, you assume correctly, I do practice the Jewish faith,” he said. “I even wear it underneath my hard hat when I am caving.”

“We both have headgear signifying our faith,” one of the others said. “My name is Kishore Singh, and the dastar, or turban that I wear is a part of my faith as a Sikh. I grew up in Woolgoolga, on the North Coast of NSW; my thesis will be implementing the TCP/IP protocols on the IBM PC, using a 3Com Ethernet card. My main interest is playing cricket, I’m on the University team, one of their spin bowlers.”

“So, is Bishan Bedi one of your heros?” I asked him.

“If I was even a quarter as good at bowling as he was, I would be a very happy man,” Kishore replied. “He was a genius, incredibly economical.”

“I guess that leaves me,” the fifth person started. “My name is Hien Le The, I am a refugee from South Vietnam, my father was their Defence Attaché to Australia, when the war finished, for obvious reasons, we weren’t able to return to our country, and Australia granted us political asylum. I went to high school in Canberra before coming here to study. My thesis will be researching wireless technologies for network bridges; and my hobby is amateur radio, my callsign is VK2ZAX.”

“Okay, everyone, thank you for that,” I said. “Part of the reason for me getting each of you to do that was so we know a little more about the people we are going to be working with over the next twelve months. You probably know my opinion that you don’t come here to University just to get a degree, or to learn about the subjects that you are taking in class. You come here – or you should be here – to learn about life; to broaden your outlook, to have your views challenged and possibly strengthened. A big part of that is interacting with people from different backgrounds, different cultures, different religions. I’m looking forward to working with all of you over the next year, I’m sure you’ll be able to teach me something.

“Okay, let’s get into the substance of your thesis projects, and how I intend to supervise your work. First, we are going to have weekly progress meetings; Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings, between 8:00 am and 9:00 am, we will meet up here. Each hour will be broken up into two 30 minute segments; and the first segment on Tuesdays will for all of you, where we can have a general update on things happening here, we can chew the fat about technology in general, and I’ll let you know of any important things at the uni that you need to be aware of. The other five sessions, that will be one-on-one where we can discuss your individual progress, you can tell me about any road blocks you are hitting, and I can make sure you’re on the right track. Who takes which particular time slot is up to you, I’ll let you work that out, and let me know in our first session back next year.

“Now, over the summer break ... don’t think you’ll have nothing to do; I will expect you to work on a project plan for how you will approach your project. If you don’t know much about project planning, critical path method, Gantt charts and all that, now is the time to learn. I’ve got some notes here that I can give you. So, for your first review sessions next year, I will want to see a preliminary project plan of how you will attack your thesis. Here’s a copy of what I prepared for my undergraduate thesis; you can use that as a template or guide – obviously, the milestones and objectives I had will be quite different from yours, but you should get the idea. I can tell you from experience having a good knowledge of project management techniques, documenting plans with a Gantt chart, things like that will stand you in good stead for whatever career you end up in.

“The next thing, I will expect you to maintain a ‘thesis journal’, here’s a sample of what I did for my thesis. In the notes I’ve given you, there’s the file name and directory part to where I have some resource material; template documents and the like. You will also find a ‘troff’ template that you can use as the basis for your final report, too.

“Now, I will be doing some touring during January and into early February, but when I’m in town, I will be available to assist with your work. Here’s my home phone number, you can call me if you need to. If I’m not at home, there’s an answering machine; leave a message on there. Before you leave today, please give me phone numbers where I can contact you if I have to. Onto more ‘social’ events, I’ll probably be having some sort of party or celebration at my place in Lane Cove close to Christmas day; and probably another one around the Australia Day time, too. I’ll call you beforehand with the details, a word of warning; Randy, I can’t guarantee there will be kosher food; but at least for you, Kishore, none of the food will be Halal. Hien, are you Buddhist, and a vegetarian? If so, there will be a reasonable choice of food, one of the other people in my house is a Buddhist, and also a vegetarian.”

“Thanks, I’m Buddhist, but not strictly vegetarian,” Hien said.

“How did you know about the Halal restriction?” Kishore asked.

“I’m happy eating anything, well, except for those types expressly prohibited,” Randy said.

“What’s the story with the Halal restriction?” Sarah asked.

“We can’t eat food that has been dedicated to Allah,” Kishore said. “We also avoid intoxicants – alcohol, tobacco, and similar things.”

“Avoiding smoking is a good thing,” she replied. “A pity more people didn’t do that!”

“And this is part of what I referred to, learning about other cultures and religions,” I said. “Anyway, I’ll be contacting you to see if you would like to attend parties that I have at my place. Likewise, if you would like to attend any of the concerts that my group will be playing at; give me a phone call and I’ll get you some complementary tickets. There’s no need to be shy about that; we get a stack of comps for every gig, most of the time there are lots of tickets that go unused.

“That would be so cool,” Michael said. “Do you have a schedule of when and where you are playing? We’ve seen you a few times, mainly at the Enmore Theatre. Those gigs you’ve done with Chrissy Amphlette from the Divynils have been amazing!”

“I’ll make sure Michelle has a copy of my touring schedule,” I said. “In general, she knows how to get in contact with me most of the time. Either I’m here, or at home, or touring ... Anyway, take copies of those samples, and unless there are any other questions, good luck in your exams in the next few weeks, then enjoy the summer break.”

I shook hands with all of them, and they headed off, no doubt to continue their study for the exams. I headed back home, to prepare for the evening’s gig. We were playing at Millers Manly Vale, always an enjoyable venue. Tonight, and tomorrow night would be our final gigs before the recording sessions started.

Getting it down on Tape

Mid - Late November, 1983

On Sunday, before Lisa and I left for the sailing club, we stripped all the beds in the guest quarters, opened the windows and put the mattresses out to air. When we returned (after another race with Lisa steering us to a start-to finish victory) I gave each bedroom a through vacuuming, while Lisa cleaned the bathroom. We then made the beds, with fresh sheets and pillowcases, and put clean towels out for all of the others who would be staying over.

“We will have a big crowd around,” Lisa said. “Garry and Jenny, Stewie and Traci, Allison and Sandra; do you think any of the people from Alberts will want to stay over?”

“I doubt it, but it won’t hurt to be ready just in case. I guess there’ll be Glenn and Garry, running the desk and tape recorder, George and Harry producing, and maybe Jim Keays, Glen Wheatley. It will be crowded in here!”

Monday morning we got an early start; George, Harry, Glenn and Garry arrived in a small truck; we helped carry the big mixer and tape deck up to the studio, and while Glenn and Garry were working with Mary Beth and Chris to get everything connected, the rest of us put the sound baffle curtains up on the walls. By the time the rest of the group arrived, we were ready for the first sound check.

“Promised Land?” Phil suggested, and we all agreed, and ran through the extended version.

“Sounds okay,” George said. “What’s the issue with the sound from Garry’s amp? It sounds pretty piss-weak!”

The two engineers checked his amp, one of the output tubes wasn’t working properly. A replacement tube fixed that one. As well, they adjusted the placement of some of the microphones on the drum kits; and with those minor changes, we tried the song again.

“Much better, much better!” George said. “Now, let’s work on the schedule for the week; if we don’t fuck around too much, we should be able to get most of it done by Friday afternoon.”

George wanted to balance out the songs where I was taking the main vocal lead; he was concerned that I would wear my voice out too early in the week. This morning we would concentrate on the title track, ‘Old Time Rock and Roll’; we had been playing that plenty of times in gigs, and had it pretty much right to go. After lunch, it would be one of the new songs, the strangely named ‘Kiss my Funky Penguin.’ Mandy had put the words to a song that George and Harry and written, the title came from how Lisa described my dancing – she said I was a ‘spastic penguin’, but Mandy changed ‘spastic’ for ‘funky’, so as not to upset those with cerebral palsy. George just shook his head about the title, and muttered ‘what have they done to my song’ under his breath.

Tomorrow morning would be ‘Rock and Roll Music’ and ‘It’s Only Rock and Roll’, with another one of George and Harry’s new ones, ‘Tidewater’ after lunch. Wednesday we would try to get four down; ‘Promised Land’ and Led Zeppelin’s ‘Rock and Roll’ in the morning, with ‘Curtains on the Window’ and ‘Allotropia’ in the afternoon. The final three – ‘I’m Just a Singer’, ‘Happenstance’ and ‘Hellbound’ would be on Thursday, leaving Friday free to redo anything that didn’t sound good enough.

With all of the preparations out of the way, we started on the recording. Glenn loaded a fresh tape into the recorder, we did a quick run through of the first song, just so they could check the levels on the tape, and we were good to go. By lunchtime, we had four versions down on tape; each one with a slightly different arrangement. George and Harry would make various suggestions; we would repeat a verse in one version, or have a longer instrumental break in another, a different person would take the main solo. It would be interesting to hear the end result; they would often combine parts from different versions to make the final ‘mix down’ track. The afternoon’s session also had ‘Funky Penguin’ down on tape, but not before everyone collapsed in a fit of laughing as Lisa made comments about my attempts at dancing on the stage – hence the song’s title. It got to the point where as soon as I would sing ‘Kiss my Funky... ‘ everyone would start giggling, people would lose track of what they were meant to be playing. George told us to take a break for thirty minutes; get outside in the sunshine.

“Funky Penguin, what the fuck were they thinking!” he muttered.

We did manage to settle down, and we resumed the recording session without too much drama; ‘Kiss my Funky Penguin’ was down on tape. George wanted us to play through ‘Curtains on the Window’, he felt it had the potential to be one of the singles from the album. He, Harry and Jim were impressed with it; they had a couple of minor changes to the arrangement, but George said he wanted to get Ted over to hear his opinion.

Dinner was pizzas, from the pizza place up on Longueville Road; we got several large, family size pizzas, and spread them out on some trestles in the back yard. Everyone helped themselves; considering there were twenty-four people, it was the only way we could organize things. Once the meal had been finished, everyone helped clean up, the guys from Alberts headed off to their own homes, Phil, Paul, Andrew, Bruce, Mandy and Rachel headed back to their apartments, and the rest of us settled down to relax.

I hadn’t been sitting down for all that long when I was interrupted by a phone call. The person at the other end asked to speak with Will Morris, and I then identified myself.

“Will? Bob McMullen, from the ALP national secretariat,” he said. “How are things going, Comrade?”

“Bob, great to hear from you,” I replied. “How are things in Canberra? The opinion poll numbers are looking pretty good, I reckon.”

“Well, this year has been pretty good, all things considered. I’ll get right to the point, do you remember around this time last year, we had that party strategy meeting up in Sydney, you were there with us and we went over plans for the election, how to make sure we would win, and some policy priorities? Well, we want to have a similar exercise at the end of this month, and I would like you to be there. It will be Monday November 28 through to the 30th. Will that work for you?”

“Yeah, should be fine,” I said. “At some stage I’ll be giving testimony at the trial of the guy who shot me a few months back, but that’s not likely until December.”

“Great; I’ll send all the details to you in the mail. Now, I’ve also got a favour to ask you; we’d like you to kick the meeting off with a short address, maybe fifteen, thirty minutes, to focus everyone’s attention on what should be our mission as the Labor party. Maybe some high level pointers on how we can fight the world-wide trend towards neo-conservatism?”

“Gee, I guess I could do that, but, I mean, I not a delegate to anything, not even on a state level committee. Are you sure you want me to do that?”

“No one better; and because you’re not part of the existing party machinery, all the more reason to get some fresh views. I’ll include details of things in the letter; but I’m looking forward to seeing you again.”

“Okay, I guess if that’s the sort of person you want to address the meeting, I’ll work on something. I’m looking forward to meeting everyone again; it was great last year.”

“Yeah, we are planning on doing this at least one a year, maybe more often, if it proves a success. Anyway, I’ve got some more calls to make; I’ll have all the details in the mail for you tomorrow. Call me if you have any questions, Comrade.”

After I had hung up, I mentioned to Lisa and Merry what Bob had said to me.

“Looks like since you have refused to take up a state office, the Federal part of the party is trying to get you more involved,” Merry said.

“Maybe you should do what Paul Landa has been suggesting, and run for the State Executive?” Lisa suggested.

“And just when am I going to have time for all that?” I replied. “Besides, I’ve already made myself an enemy of the right faction, running for an executive committee position would be the last straw!”

“Still, I think it’s good they have asked you to address the meeting, and really, you will be setting the tone, the direction of the overall policy discussion,” Lisa said.

“I guess I’ll have to start preparing my talk,” I said. “At least I have a few weeks to prepare.”

While the others sat around in the family room chatting, I jotted down some points that I would want to make in my opening address. Around 10, the others headed across to the guest rooms, Lisa and I went to our bedroom to sleep. Well, we didn’t go to sleep immediately; Lisa was feeling rather horny.

“I think I need to have a night with either Ange or Merry – or both – very soon,” she said. “Maybe tomorrow night, we could see if Tracy wants to sleep with you, and I could be with the two other girls? What do you think of that?”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” I said. “Provided I can get Merry to help with the speech writing.”

The next few days recording went well; Ted and Fifa came around on Wednesday afternoon, and he agreed with George, ‘Curtains on the Window’ should be the first single lifted from the album. They weren’t sure about the B side; either ‘Happenstance’ or ‘Hellbound’, it would depend on how things sounded once they were recorded. I appreciated the way George had spread out the various songs; by Thursday evening, despite having sung each one several times, my voice still felt good. At least there weren’t any gigs for us this weekend or next.

Saturday night, Lisa and I were going to the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences for the opening of the James Barnet exhibition and the book containing the artwork Georgina had done for it. I was looking forward to seeing not just Georgina, but her artwork.