Australian Conspiracy: the 1978 Sydney Hilton bombing
The main purpose of this post is to recommend the documentary ‘Australian Conspiracy‘ to a wider audience.
It can currently be viewed in six segments on You Tube (displayed below). A DVD is also available from FilmArtDoco.
Written by Daryl Dellora and Ian Wansbrough and produced by Sue Maslin, Australian Conspiracy was made in the mid-1990s and shown on Australian TV at the time. Norm Dixon’s February 1995 review in Green Left Weekly – The Hilton bombing revisited – is well worth reading. As far as I’m aware, Australian Conspiracy hasn’t been broadcast in recent years.
It’s a gripping, very well-made documentary – and a story of considerable contemporary relevance.
In the 15 years that have elapsed since it was made, little has changed regarding the subject of the documentary: the complicated saga of the Sydney Hilton bombing. The bombing incident that took place in Sydney in February 1978, causing three deaths and shattering the lives of survivors, remains a mystery, slowly fading from public attention.
Sydney Hilton Hotel bomb scene 1978
That’s more than unfortunate. The Sydney Hilton atrocity, after all, was claimed by the authorities at the time to have been a terrorist attack – an event of extreme rarity on Australian soil. It had a major impact on the reorganisation of Australia’s ‘security forces’ – and led to a sharp rise in funding for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).
From the outset, investigating authorities also claimed the bombing was the result of a conspiracy. That is, they asserted it was not the work of a lone bomber. So… in 1978, using the terminology used by the authorities, Australia was the target of a terrorist conspiracy involving loss of life. A true landmark event for the ‘Lucky Country’!
Yet despite the great significance of the incident, the real culpits have never been publicly identified or brought to justice. There were notorious – and very confusing – trials in the decade following 1978. People did spend time in jail for the Hilton bombings. But they were not the killers. Even the bizarre character who claimed in the late 1980s to have been personally involved in the ‘conspiracy’, Evan Pederick, gave self-incriminating testimony at his own trial that isn’t credible.
Overall, justice has not been done in this important murder case.
As the documentary shows, due process was breached repeatedly in the investigation and subsequent judicial process. The inquest, held in 1982, was aborted before crucial evidence could be heard. Despite arrests, trials and incarcerations, it’s clear the real murderers have never faced trial. Instead, there’s abundant evidence of a long and tangled miscarriage of justice.
In the early 1990s, demands for a thorough and credible public inquiry into the bombing gained sufficient momentum to be the subject of a resolution unanimously endorsed by both Houses of the NSW Parliament.
Such an inquiry required Federal involvement. It has never taken place. In the mid-1990s, the Independent MP Ted Mack raised the issue in the Federal Parliament, but his queries led nowhere. Then in 1996, the conservative Howard Government came to power. Within months, the shocking Port Arthur massacre re-focused the nation’s attention. It appears no-one has since raised the issue of the Hilton bombing in the Australian Parliament.
Immediate press reaction to the 1798 Sydney Hilton bombing: a foretaste of 9-11
That’s not acceptable. As things stand, anyone who studies the case with an open mind is likely to conclude that powerful elements in the Australian security services, at the time of the Hilton bombings and for years afterwards, conspired (perhaps with outside parties) to carry out the bombings and pervert the course of justice thereafter. In modern parlance, the Sydney Hilton bombings were most likely an ‘inside job’ of some type. That’s important. Way too important to gloss over.
Thirty years after the Sydney Hilton bombings, politicians are less keen than in the 1970s to ask probing questions about the security forces in this country.
In NSW, perhaps there’s a feeling that the need for self-examination has passed following the demise of the Special Branch in the late 1990s and other major reforms to the State’s police force.
Yet successive Australian Parliaments, in the first decade of this new century, approved quite staggering increases in expenditure on ASIO – amounting to more than 1,000% annual budget increase since 2001.
In that context, questions about the Sydney Hilton incident would have been appropriate. Does it make sense to fertilise a tree infested with rot? Why should an agency whose own bona fides remain under suspicion be given vast new powers and huge budget increases?
Those questions have yet to be asked.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
