The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 4

4 www.smh.com.au WEDNESDAY, JULY 12, 2000 Decade of reform fails to do the trick trial for Bond defender Drug Cocaine brought three of the main players in the Alan Bond saga together again yesterday. Paul Barry reports from Melbourne. remained the most consistent poor performers. It suggested governments might have to rethink the controls they had over these organisations, many of which had become largely autonomous as part of the corporatisation process. Though it warned against generalisations, it said that if after many years of reforms government businesses continued to under perform, the reform policies might be to blame.

"Where unsatisfactory performance is an industry phenomenon there may be a case for reviewing governance arrangements in some industries, given their poor performance and the length of time that reforms have been in place." The commission said most rail authorities had set about improving the performance of their businesses. There appeared to have been an improvement in profitability, though this had been mixed. However, the railways had been operating in an increasingly competitive market and suffering declining market shares. In the case of the State Rail Authority, it recorded negative returns on assets over much of the 1994-95 to 1998-99 period. "However, since the NSW rail industry was restructured in 1996-97, returns have improved, with a positive return made in 1998-99," the commission said.

By LAURA TINGLE Political Correspondent Despite a decade of rail and transport reforms, many services continue to operate poorly, according to the Productivity Commission. The process by which these businesses are held accountable may need to be reviewed, said the commission, which has been the champion of microeconomic and structural reform for 20 years. It said some government business enterprises continued to perform badly despite years of changes aimed at making them profitable and efficient Its findings are contained in a survey of the financial performance of government trading enterprises providing electricity, gas, water, sewerage, irrigation, transport and port services between 1994 and 1999. The businesses have a combined revenue of S48 billion, or 8 per cent of gross domestic product The study said financial management had improved. Most businesses were now required to cover costs and pay dividends.

"However, many businesses are consistently under performing and are still not achieving an adequate rate of return despite a decade of reform." The commission said rail and urban transport authorities nrt'c: i 1 I f-r Is'' I I P' 1 -V I I v' i jCL ff 1 1 Andrew Fraser is used to courts. For many years he led Alan Bond's defence team. And as one of Melbourne's top criminal lawyers, he has featured in some of Australia's most famous cases. But yesterday, in a less familiar role in Melbourne Magistrates' Court, the high-flying solicitor was committed to stand trial on five drugs charges. The most serious of these being knowingly involved in the importation of cocaine could see him sent to jail if he's convicted.

It could also, of course, finish his career. Fraser has continued to practise as a criminal lawyer, despite the drugs charges, and vowed yesterday to continue doing so, despite the objections of the Victorian Police Association. "The police don't run this State," he told the Herald outside the hearing. But they did win the battle yesterday. Fraser was also sent for trial on two charges of trafficking in cocaine, one each of possession and use of cocaine and one of possession of ecstasy.

He entered no plea to any of the charges and was remanded on bail. Fraser was arrested at his home in the beachside suburb of St Kilda on September 12 last year, after 22 police, some of them armed, raided his house at 3.35 am. -This followed the seizure of 5.5 kilograms of cocaine, with a street value of S6 million, in a raid on a house lived in by Werner Roberts and his wife Andrea Mohr, who were committed for trial on importation charges in Melbourne in May. The cocaine, which the court was told was 70 per cent pure, was allegedly found in the boot of Roberts's car, concealed in wooden statues imported from west Africa. A search of Fraser's house, car and office yielded traces of cocaine, but Detective Senior Constable Paul Firth of the Victorian Drug Squad accepted in court yesterday that there was no evidence that linked any of these traces to the imported drugs.

It was perfectly possible, A drug habit Andrew Fraser, right, with former client Alan Bond. Photograph by NIC ELLIS Wee Waa rapist's plea the hope that he would be treated more leniently. In this, he appears to have alleged that Fraser supplied him with cocaine. He was asked yesterday by Chettle whether he had evidence that Fraser sold drugs to him for profit He said he did not He agreed that he had asked Fraser to "procure" for him "as a "It's a bit like going down to the shop and asking sofrieone to pick up something for me while you're there?" Chettle asked. "Yes," said Watson-Munro, "that's a sound analogy." Watson-Munro also talked of the code he and Fraser used when discussing drugs over the phone.

"I've got the boots and I'm ready to play footy," was one such euphemism to put listeners off the scent "I'm going to see a man who has lots of concrete blocks in his car," was another. But the appearance of a sad and crumpled Watson-Munro for the prosecution was not the only rematch on court The man running the importation charge against Fraser is a young DPP solicitor called Berdj Tcha-kerian, who looks like a dead ringer for Pete Sampras with the same dark skin, black bushy eyebrows and deep brown eyes. Not three years ago, in November 1997, Tchakerian faced Fraser in rather different circumstances across a prosecutor's office in Zug, Switzerland. At the time, Fraser was acting for Alan Bond, who was being investigated for concealing assets from his creditors, and Tchakerian was handling the case for the DPP. Both had flown to Zug for the examination of Bond's Swiss banker, Jurg Bollag, who was alleged to be hiding many millions of dollars worth of Bond's assets.

Fraser emerged on the winning side then, after Bollag's refusal to answer questions led to Operation Oxide being abandoned. Tchakerian will doubtless be hoping that the rematch with Fraser in Melbourne County Court, some time next year, will at least go the distance. 'x Yesterday, the court heard of a conversation between Fraser and Roberts in a conference room at Fraser's office on August 16. 1999, allegedly picked up by one of the bugging devices. Federal Agent Tina Westra said that she showed a transcript of this conversation to Fraser in a formal interview in November last year.

Mr Geoff Chettle, for Fraser, put it to her that Fraser had "admitted he knew it the importation was happening, but denied any Westra did not accept that he had denied it. Chettle then quoted from the police transcript of Fraser's interview in which Fraser said: "I did not give any ad.vice on how to go overseas, how to commit an offence, where to source this substance from, how to finance it, who to take, how to was unfit to run a corner store. This testimony led to Bond's trial on the Manet fraud charges being put off for six months, and almost led to Bond's bankruptcy examination being abandoned altogether. Yesterday, Watson-Munro had his own tale of anxiety, depression and damage to tell. Cocaine addiction had helped bring him to a state where he was seeing a psychiatrist twice a week, taking anti-depressants (whose dose was doubled a month ago) and taking other medication for anxiety and to help him sleep.

But Watson-Munro cocaine habit was also why he was in court for the prosecution. Having been trapped by the phone intercepts and bugs (at one point actually snorting cocaine), Watson-Munro made a statement to police last September, in do any of these things. I'm not talking just as a lawyer, I'm talking as a person who has travelled extensively, and be careful coming through customs and give me a ring when you get through." The star prosecution witness earlier in the day was someone that Fraser knows well from the good old days when he was defending Alan Bond. Before cocaine addiction laid him low, wrecked his career and caused him to plead guilty to possession of the drug last September, Tim Watson-Munro was one of Australia's top forensic psychologists. In the early 1990s he was also a vital expert witness on the state of Bond's health.

It was Watson-Munro who made the famous claim in December 1993 that Bond was so brain-damaged, anxious and depressed that he A man who voluntarily took part in Australia's first mass DNA test during the search for a rapist in Wee Waa pleaded guilty yesterday to the crime. Farm labourer Stephen James Boney, 44, was among 500 men in the north-western NSW cotton-growing community who took part in the controversial police DNA testing in April. Police instigated the test after a 14-month investigation into the January 1999 bashing rape of an elderly woman at her home in the town had hit a brick wall. The woman had gone on national television to appeal for information on her attacker. Police spent a week, starting on April 8, asking Wee Waa males aged 18 to 45 to voluntarily give saliva samples.

The father of three and former local rugby league player, who settled in Wee Waa in 1990 after moving from Brewarrina, had been among a dozen suspects targetted by police, but police had nothing to link him to the case other than DNA collected at the scene of the attack. From day one he could have refused the test. Ten days later, as police waited for the results of the samples to come back, Boney suddenly entered Wee Waa police station, saying he wanted to confess, that the pressure from the inevitability of eventually being caught by DNA had got to him. In a brief appearance before Moree Local Court yesterday, Boney pleaded guilty to the rape and will be sentenced in Narrabri District Court on a date to be set Les Kennedy Firth conceded that they were left over from cocaine deals that Fraser had bought for his own use. Fraser admitted on Radio 3AW in Melbourne last October to having a drug habit, and said that he had been using the drug for 12 or 13 years.

"It was there. It was trendy. It was available," he said, and being used by "people with a higher profile than me, people with more money than The essence of his defence to the trafficking charges, which also carry severe penalties, is that while he may have used the drug, he certainly did not supply it to anyone else for profit Police admitted yesterday that analysis of his bank accounts did not show that he- had received large amounts of unexplained cash. In fact, he appeared to be in financial difficulties. The Australian Taxation Office clearly reached the same conclusion last October when it threatened to bankrupt him for non-payment of taxes.

Fraser was technically made bankrupt for a couple of hours, but then produced the money and persuaded the Tax Office to rescind its action. Fraser's defence to the importation charges appears to be that he may well have known that the. importation was going to happen, but he did not advise on it or get involved in any way. Most of the evidence that the AFP says it has against Fraser on the importation charge was gathered with listening devices. The court was told that police placed one bug in his house and three in his office.

How they placed them there without his knowledge or consent is a matter of conjecture. Police also intercepted calls to Fraser's home and mobile telephones for a month, during August and September 1999. They were apparently unable to intercept his office phone. In May, and again yesterday, the court heard of a phone call intercepted shortly after the 5.5 kilograms of cocaine allegedly arrived in Australia, in which Fraser was allegedly told by Werner Roberts, "the eagle has SEA WORLD NARA RESORT. GLAD CCMST MJSTKAUA v.

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