Launch of John Jiggens latest book - Sydney Connection
I'm about to turn 53. Now these days growing old is given a bad rap but I think it has a lot going for it. One of the delights is that you have many years and events to look back on, to marvel at and wonder about.
Gleebooks, Sydney
I'm about to turn 53. Now these days growing old is given a bad rap but I think it has a lot going for it. One of the delights is that you have many years and events to look back on, to marvel at and wonder about.
Living in Sydney all my life, my memories are of many extraordinary political and criminal events that characterisied the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
I apologise to young members of the audience but for those of my vintage who call Sydney home names such as Donald McKay, Nugan Hand Bank, Juanita Nielsen, Premier Bob Askin and Murray Riley were regularly in our conversation.
The trading of gossip and facts back then revealed a murky world of politicians, criminals, police and business figures helping each other out.
25 years later John's "Sydney Connection" makes sense of so many of those disconnected stories of my youth. This book joins the dots on the scandals and crimes we read about and lived through.
The cause of the famous marihuana drought of the late 1970s and its connection to international drug trafficking is revealed.
Now I can vouch that this drought was very real. In those days I did smoke and I can remember sitting around on many an occasion discussing the reasons for the shortage.
Back then the drought was put down to big police busts, failed crops, while some argued that the cops were holding back on supply to inflate the price.
Now I learn our long-past stoned speculations were pretty close to the mark; but what we didn't know was the marihuana hauls of the 1970s located plantations of a size way above what the Australian market could handle at that time.
In the 1970s the Sydney market for dope was 4 tonnes, for England 15 tonnes. The biggest bust of that time was the Coleambally plantation that netted 60 tonnes. John correctly identifies that it was only the US market that could take this quantity.
From the Great Marihuana drought John's Sydney Connection takes us on an odyssey from the notorious and now defunct NSW Special Branch to the CIA.
I will leave it to John to flesh out the Sydney connection in detail.
There is another important theme to this book - John details how far our society has moved away from a rational approach to drug use.
Following the defeat of the Whitlam government this country's conservatives advanced their backward agenda. A Nixon-style war on drugs was talked up, with all the double standards that we still see today.
The then Queensland premier Jo Bjelke-Petersen was at the forefront, ordering raids on users. In one such raid at Cedar Bay, houses were burnt down and orchards destroyed.
In NSW for a brief moment under the Wran government it looked like we could have had a breakthrough with drug law reform.
The NSW parliament's Joint Committee Upon Drugs recommended that personal consumption of marihuana be legalised.
The Wran government was gearing up to remove jail penalties for personal consumption of this drug.
But the murder of anti-drug campaigner Donald McKay changed all that. John details where the McKay murder fits within the Connection.
Sadly successive Coalition and Labor govts have continued to reject a humane approach to drug use.
And too often the harsh law-and-order approach of the major parties is adhered to in face of police involvement in the drug trade. The Sydney Connection reminds us that laws that make drug use illegal lead to police corruption.
This two-faced approach of governments is well known to the Greens. We have a well-reasoned policy based on harm minimisation and controlled availability.
But coming into the last state election the Sunday Telegraph ran a front-page story with a double page spread inside wrongly accusing the Greens of supporting the free distribution of certain drugs.
In the dozens of interviews that myself and other Greens members fielded about this beat up, we noted that under a Labor government drugs are readily available. The critical difference is that under Bob Carr the market is unregulated. What the Greens are saying is lets have regulated availability with a health and social approach to drug use. It is time the law books and sniffer dogs were put away when it comes to users.
While the original Sydney connection has dissipated, illicit drugs - now the second biggest commodity in world trade - are still awash in our society.
You would have to think that in a few decades, or even sooner, a follow-up to the Sydney Connection will be needed to make the link between today's crime, police and political figures.
I am pleased to launch Sydney Connection. I urge that you buy the book. Thank you and congratulations to John.
I'm about to turn 53. Now these days growing old is given a bad rap but I think it has a lot going for it. One of the delights is that you have many years and events to look back on, to marvel at and wonder about.
Living in Sydney all my life, my memories are of many extraordinary political and criminal events that characterisied the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
I apologise to young members of the audience but for those of my vintage who call Sydney home names such as Donald McKay, Nugan Hand Bank, Juanita Nielsen, Premier Bob Askin and Murray Riley were regularly in our conversation.
The trading of gossip and facts back then revealed a murky world of politicians, criminals, police and business figures helping each other out.
25 years later John's "Sydney Connection" makes sense of so many of those disconnected stories of my youth. This book joins the dots on the scandals and crimes we read about and lived through.
The cause of the famous marihuana drought of the late 1970s and its connection to international drug trafficking is revealed.
Now I can vouch that this drought was very real. In those days I did smoke and I can remember sitting around on many an occasion discussing the reasons for the shortage.
Back then the drought was put down to big police busts, failed crops, while some argued that the cops were holding back on supply to inflate the price.
Now I learn our long-past stoned speculations were pretty close to the mark; but what we didn't know was the marihuana hauls of the 1970s located plantations of a size way above what the Australian market could handle at that time.
In the 1970s the Sydney market for dope was 4 tonnes, for England 15 tonnes. The biggest bust of that time was the Coleambally plantation that netted 60 tonnes. John correctly identifies that it was only the US market that could take this quantity.
From the Great Marihuana drought John's Sydney Connection takes us on an odyssey from the notorious and now defunct NSW Special Branch to the CIA.
I will leave it to John to flesh out the Sydney connection in detail.
There is another important theme to this book - John details how far our society has moved away from a rational approach to drug use.
Following the defeat of the Whitlam government this country's conservatives advanced their backward agenda. A Nixon-style war on drugs was talked up, with all the double standards that we still see today.
The then Queensland premier Jo Bjelke-Petersen was at the forefront, ordering raids on users. In one such raid at Cedar Bay, houses were burnt down and orchards destroyed.
In NSW for a brief moment under the Wran government it looked like we could have had a breakthrough with drug law reform.
The NSW parliament's Joint Committee Upon Drugs recommended that personal consumption of marihuana be legalised.
The Wran government was gearing up to remove jail penalties for personal consumption of this drug.
But the murder of anti-drug campaigner Donald McKay changed all that. John details where the McKay murder fits within the Connection.
Sadly successive Coalition and Labor govts have continued to reject a humane approach to drug use.
And too often the harsh law-and-order approach of the major parties is adhered to in face of police involvement in the drug trade. The Sydney Connection reminds us that laws that make drug use illegal lead to police corruption.
This two-faced approach of governments is well known to the Greens. We have a well-reasoned policy based on harm minimisation and controlled availability.
But coming into the last state election the Sunday Telegraph ran a front-page story with a double page spread inside wrongly accusing the Greens of supporting the free distribution of certain drugs.
In the dozens of interviews that myself and other Greens members fielded about this beat up, we noted that under a Labor government drugs are readily available. The critical difference is that under Bob Carr the market is unregulated. What the Greens are saying is lets have regulated availability with a health and social approach to drug use. It is time the law books and sniffer dogs were put away when it comes to users.
While the original Sydney connection has dissipated, illicit drugs - now the second biggest commodity in world trade - are still awash in our society.
You would have to think that in a few decades, or even sooner, a follow-up to the Sydney Connection will be needed to make the link between today's crime, police and political figures.
I am pleased to launch Sydney Connection. I urge that you buy the book. Thank you and congratulations to John.
