Operation Ark report from National Crime Authority's Adelaide office wedges police in 1980s political fight
This Waymouth Street block contained the Adelaide offices of the National Crime Authority in the 1980s.
South Australia’s police force was unnecessarily damaged by fallout from the National Crime Authority (NCA) Adelaide office’s Operation Ark in 1989. Operation Ark was the sequel to the conviction of drugs squad head Barry Moyse in 1988 and the 1989 Operation NOAH – the annual anonymous telethon in when police appealed to the public for information about drugs.
An Operation Ark report from the National Crime Authority completely agreed that “there was no dishonesty or corruption in the failure of senior offices of SAPOL to inform the NCA or the commissioner of the South Australia Police of the Operation NOAH allegations”. These 13 allegations concerned police involvement, or protection of, drug trafficking.
The allegations were never passed on to the South Australian police commissioner David Hunt who, to his fury, first heard about them a month later on the radio. The NCA original 139-page Operation Ark report concluded that it was through administration errors, rather than corruption, that the allegations weren’t properly investigated. It criticised police procedures and named two superintendents and senior sergeant in the drug squad and internal investigations branch.
This original report was one of the last actions under the NCA chairmanship of Justice Douglas Stewart. Under new chairman Peter Faris, the report was withheld from the South Australian government for six months when a much shorter version arrived with most critical comments deleted.
The Liberal opposition shadow attorney general Trevor Griffin saw “a deliberate attempted to suppress” and “conceal” the original report. Operation Ark was further politicised as the subject of a federal parliamentary committee inquiry. And media leaks from the original report to the ABC’s 7.30 Report and Channel 9 added to the murkiness – and the anger of South Australian police.
