The Inquisition – Thursday 6 May, 8.30pm ABC1


The Wood Royal Commission unleased an extraordinary investigation that swept through the NSW Police Force like a tsunami. For many, the stakes were life or death. Not everyone survived. By the 1970s many began to suspect that the 16000 member New South Wales police force the 3rd largest in the world was rotten with entrenched corruption. There was talk of high-level police protecting drug dealers and trafficking drugs themselves, of police involved in assault, in verballing, in fabricating evidence… even in murder. If true, this was not a case of a few bad apples, but a diseased crop the police were out of control. In 1994 an extraordinary confluence of events allowed a now legendary team of corruption fighters to take them on. 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 Wood Royal Commission into the NS W Police Service that became an international model for battling entrenched corruption.