Inquisition, The (ATOM Study Guide)

A real-life political thriller, the Wood Royal Commission into police corruption in New South Wales gripped the public imagination for three years as 'steel jawed inquisitor' Justice James Wood exposed a police force rotten to the core. The Inquisition is a film about the operation of that Commission, which heard submissions between 1994 and 1997. It goes to the very heart of how corruption can operate in a society.

Synopsis

It has been said that since the First Fleet arrived Australians have been unsure whether they were on the side of the convicts or the guards. From that moment, allegations of corruption and the police have never been far apart.

By the 1970s many began to suspect that the 16,000-member New South Wales police force – the third largest in the world – was rife with entrenched corruption. There was talk of high-level police protecting drug dealers and trafficking drugs themselves, of police involved in assault, verballing, fabricating evidence and even murder. If true, this was not a case of a few bad apples but of a diseased crop – the police were out of control.

In 1994 an extraordinary confluence of events allowed a now legendary team to take on police corruption. To do so they unleashed an investigative model so extreme it seemed to challenge the very boundaries of justice itself.

Told by the key players themselves – independent MP John Hatton, Justice James Wood, counsels Gary Crooke and John Agius, and investigator Nigel Hadgkiss – The Inquisition is the story of the Royal Commission into the NSW Police Service, which became an international model for battling entrenched corruption. Like The Untouchables (Brian De Palma, 1987), the stakes were high in this unprecedented investigation. For many, it was a matter of life or death. Not everyone survived.

Curriculum Guidelines

The Inquisition would be an excellent program to show to middle, senior secondary and tertiary students of:

• Legal Studies
• Politics
• Civics and Citizenship
• Ethics and Values
• Criminology
• Australian Society
• Media Studies.