Airdate: The Inquisition

Move over Underbelly, the ABC has a documentary coming up on the Wood Royal Commission and it’s look analysis of corruption within the NSW Police Force.

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 also features dramatic reconstructions.

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.

The Inquisition by award-winning filmmakers Rachel Landers and Dylan Blowen brings together the major players in the Commission for the first time in twelve years.

It has been said that since the First Fleet arrived Australians have been unsure whether they were on the side of the convicts or the guards. From that moment allegations of corruption, and the Australian police force have never been far apart. By the 1970s many began to suspect that the 16,000 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.

In 1994 an extraordinary confluence of events allowed a now legendary team of corruption fighters to take them on. To do so they unleashed an investigative model so extreme, it seemed to challenge the very boundaries of justice itself.

It airs 8:30pm Thursday May 6th on ABC1.