The Ananda Marga – Anderson, Alister and Dunn – Hilton Bombing

The Hilton bombing occurred on 13th February 1978.   It was the first Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting (CHOGRM).    The bomb was planted in a rubbish bin directly outside the main entrance to the Hilton Hotel in Sydney.   The bomb exploded when the bin was emptied into a garbage truck at 12.40 hours, killing two garbage collectors, Alec Carter and William Favell, a police officer Paul Birmistriw succumbed to his horrific injuries and died later, while 11 other people suffered serious injury.  There were 12 foreign leaders staying at the Hilton Hotel at the time of the explosion.


The Ananda Marga sect were targeted and blamed for this blatant act of terrorism and three of its members were arrested, namely Timothy Anderson, Ross Dunn and Paul Alister.   All three were convicted and sent to prison.   My understanding is they were later pardoned and received compensation for false imprisonment.

In this country, once pardoned, they are entitled to be considered innocent of the crimes they had been charged with.  It seems to me the evidence was deemed unreliable, yet the case is very similar to that of Lindy Chamberlain, she has been pardoned and exonerated of all crimes, therefore is entitled to the presumption of innocence, yet debate still remains today surrounding her innocence by a small minority of people who were so convinced of her guilt at the time of her trial, that they refuse to accept the court’s eventual finding, and so it is to some extent the same for Anderson, Dunn and Alister.

I do not hide the fact that I did not like them, they were always agitating for something, vegetarian meals and supplements, including a variety of nuts and other special vegetarian foods and green tea.  One of their principles and commitments to the sect was that they were vegetarian.  There was always an ample supply of vegetables on the food barrow, they just needn’t have taken the meat, after all they were in prison for goodness sake.   There are pensioners who have worked hard all their lives who could not afford to live in luxury like these prisoners were beginning to.

On one occasion Anderson, Dunn and Alister were housed in 13 Wing in the Metropolitan Remand Centre, at the Long Bay Prison complex. On the “D” watch (14.00 to 22.00 hours), were two very experienced officers Sandie Storie and John Royce, both of whom I knew and had a lot of respect for.   Around 18.00 hours Mr Royce received information the prisoners on the middle landing were going to refuse to go to their cells at lock in time (21.30 hours).   Mr Royce informed Principal Prison Officer Mr Dyson of the pending trouble in the wing.

Mr Dyson instructed Mr Royce of the procedure he was to carry out.  

Should the prisoners refuse to go to their cells at lock in time, Mr Storie was to issue a direct order to the prisoners to go to their cells.

If they refused Mr Storie’s direct order, he (Mr Royce) was to issue a direct order to the prisoners to go to their cells.

Should the prisoners refuse both officers’ direct orders, Mr Dyson was to be notified immediately.

The prisoners refused the direct orders from Mr. Storie and Mr. Royce.

To find out what happens next in this tense standoff, read my book “Cutting the Bars – Volume 3”, page 70.

NO APOLOGY AS YET FROM MS. OLIVER

My understanding is that the Department of Corrective Services was inundated with complaints about the news article in the Daily Telegraph dated 26th June 2016, as outlined in my previous blog, titled:

“DIRECTOR LAUREN OLIVER - A disgrace to her uniform and dishonourable conduct towards the memory of thousands of hard working, honest prison officers from yesteryear.

The Director of Media and Communications, Mr. Michael Duffy, issued a limited apology the following day to those Officers who had complained.   To the best of my knowledge, this limited apology was not published in the Daily Telegraph.

The apology reads:
There has been criticism by staff of a feature story in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph about Corrective Services NSW. I apologise to everyone who was offended by the way this turned out.
The article was intended to focus on training and recruits, to assist with our recruitment program. The journalist interviewed some recruits and Lauren Oliver, the Director of the Brush Farm Academy.

Ms Oliver gave an interview that was entirely positive about the staff of CSNSW and the work they do. Her use of the terms “old fat white guys” and “old culture” was in response to the use of similar terms by the journalist, in a question about stereotypes of custodial officers seen in films and on television.

The newspaper decided to turn some of Ms Oliver’s general comments into a major part of the story, and to run a large picture of her. We had no control over those decisions. Newspapers do not show articles to subjects before publication.

We did not present Ms Oliver as a spokesperson for custodial corrections, and she did not agree to do the interview on that basis.

Dealing with the media always involves an element of unpredictability. In this case I got it wrong.

Michael Duffy
Director, Media & Communications

I appreciate the fact that Mr Duffy has accepted responsibility and has apologised, however he is not the person who quoted those hurtful and inaccurate aspersions towards Prison Officers from the past.

I am still waiting for an apology from the person who was quoted, and that is clearly Ms. Lauren Oliver.   She cannot escape the responsibility of her remarks.   She must apologise unequivocally to those many honest, hard working and responsible Prison Officers from yesteryear.

If Ms. Oliver is unable to find it in her heart to accept responsibility for those words that she is quoted as saying, (please read my previous blog), she should resign her position as Director of Brush Farm Prison Officer Training Academy.

In lieu of her apology or resignation, I call on the Commissioner of Corrective Services Mr. Peter Severins, to take extreme disciplinary action against her for her insulting and discriminatory remarks.

I am aware that the Department of Corrective Services Media Section have full knowledge of my blogs.   This matter will not go away and I will keep all my readers up to date with any progress or lack thereof through this web page.

This I believe.

Peter T. Egge

DIRECTOR LAUREN OLIVER

A disgrace to her uniform and dishonourable conduct towards the memory of thousands of hard working, honest prison officers from yesteryear

I do not know Ms Lauren Oliver, the Director of Brush Farm Training Academy.  To the best of my knowledge, I have never met her, nor do I particularly want to.   You can imagine my dismay when I received an email from a good friend that contained an article from the Sunday Telegraph dated 26th June 2016, page 40, written by Jordan Baker.   The article focus, as I see it, was on Prison Officer Recruitment and Training.   Ms Oliver referred to Prison Officers from years gone by as, “Those old fat white guys wouldn’t last very long these days”.   She continued on, “That’s the old culture, our staff is fighting so hard against that”.    Further she inferred we could not de-escalate a situation and went on to state, “Modern guards have to be good communicator’s, and fit enough to respond to an emergency”, surmising my generation of Prison Officers could not.

I found her quoted statement’s instantly racist, offensive, degrading and completely ill informed, in fact she is totally wrong.   She has also dramatically reduced the status of her own trainee’s by referring to them as “Guards”.   When I trained Prison Officers in 1978 and 1979 I trained “Prison Officers” not “Guards”.

This lady has no understanding of the history of prisons in New South Wales.   Prison is the oldest occupation in Australia.   Just to enlighten Ms Oliver, in January 1788 Captain Arthur Phillip landed on the Kurnell Peninsula following a gruelling eight months at sea with a fleet of 11 ships with 1,030 people on board of which three quarters were convicts.   He was Admiral of the fleet and his flag ship was HMS Sirius.   It is not for me or Ms Oliver to be critical of how the convicts were treated in the late 1700s; it was the way prisoners were treated in those days by law, other than to say the system was very hard, nor is it ok for Ms Oliver to criticise my fellow prison officers of my generation of the 1970s and the early 1980s, other than to say “It was a hard place for hard men”.

The way we carried out our duties was strictly by way of the Prisons act, Regulations and Prison Rules, in other words we were legally bound in the operation of our duty.   We were all very proud of the way we conducted ourselves and still are, and rightfully so.  I reached the rank of Senior Assistant Superintendent and was among the very first of the Executive Prison Officers to be Commissioned by the Governor of New South Wales in 1984.

As for her reference to, “those old fat white guys”; is Ms Oliver aware that Australia had a White Australia Policy up until 1973 and in 1975 the Whitlam Government introduced the Racial Discrimination Act.   All of this did not stop the Department of Corrective Services from hiring a number of European, Indian and of course Australian Aboriginal Officers, in fact she may remember one, the previous Commissioner of Corrective Services in New South Wales, Mr Ronald George Woodham.   The last time I looked, terms such as, “Those fat white guys” were in breach of the Anti Discrimination Act.

Ms Oliver and her softly softly, touchy feely way of dealing with crims is a complete failure.   As a result, the whole modern penal system is nothing short of a joke.

The Australian population in 1976 was around 14,000,000

The Australian population in 2016 is around     24,000,000

An increase of about 71%

The NSW prison population in 1976 was around       4,000

The NSW prison population in 2016 is around         11,000

An increase of about 275%

How does Ms Oliver explain the following simple facts?   If the Australian population has only increased 71% in forty years and the number of criminals under her care has increased a massive 275% in the same forty years, the current prison system is long overdue to have an enquiry into its failure, and perhaps the recruitment and training methods of Ms Oliver.

The Government’s resources which are funded by the tax payer are being wasted on “Bull Shit” programs.  Ms Oliver proudly proclaimed she was going to be training 1400 “Guards” this year.  Well hell Ms Oliver, in 1976 there were only 1500 prison officer’s in the whole of New South Wales.

I would suggest Ms Oliver that you think before you open your mouth, and consider those hard working, honest and brave prison officers whose good name and reputation you have deliberately chosen to besmirch.

I would also suggest you read my books “It’s All in the Fall”, “Cutting the Bars-Volume 1”, “Cutting the Bars-Volume 2”, and “Cutting the Bars-Volume 3”, to enlighten yourself as to what the prisons were really like and what the officers had to contend with in the 1970s and 1980s.   I may suggest that it is you Ms Lauren Oliver that would not last very long at all in those days.

This I believe

PETER T EGGE
I most cordially invite Ms Oliver the right of reply, or indeed to offer her apology to those like me who were so hurt by her stinging, flippant, uneducated remarks.