Earlier this month, counsel assisting with the Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants (RCMPI) submitted its review into the saga and offered the major players a chance to respond. In new reply submissions published recently, Ms Gobbo has called out Victoria Police for its submission, labelling it an “inconsistent” account.

“However articulate and subtly undertaken, an attempt to shift blame onto Ms Gobbo, as Victoria Police seek to do in their submissions, seriously undermines veracity of the unreserved apology that Victoria Police make to the community,” lawyers Peter W Collinson QC and Rishi Nathwani submitted on behalf of Ms Gobbo.

“Victoria Police’s apology is littered with caveats, inconsistency and deflection coupled with a failure to accept all events, including the recruitment of Ms Gobbo. None of this would have occurred but for their conduct, no matter the behaviour of Ms Gobbo.”

Her lawyers claim that Victoria Police first attempted to mitigate their responsibility with an attack on Ms Gobbo, in one instance referring to her “unusual psychological make-up” that they claimed meant she that was “simultaneously intelligent, articulate, needy, vulnerable, manipulative, dishonest and with a questionable ethical compass”.

Mr Collinson and Mr Nathwani said that even if these criticisms are to be believed, the submissions demonstrated how culpable Victoria Police were in the decision to recruit Ms Gobbo and continuing that relationship for several years after they became aware of these issues. The lawyers added that they resigned her to a life where she currently “exists with her children in the expectation that she will one day be killed”.

They added that there was “no acknowledgement” of the impact of this decision on Ms Gobbo’s life or that of her children, indicating that despite her key role in the saga, she “lives every day with the consequences of her actions in a way a police officer will not”.

“Whilst Victoria Police officers may suffer reputational damage, not one will also have to endure that which Ms Gobbo has since 2018 and continue to for the rest of her life,” Ms Gobbo’s lawyers submitted.

VIEW ALL

The lawyers moved on to pointing out holes in the Victoria Police submission, focusing first on the claim that had they known “the full picture” of her history with her clients – that she started at a young age – they would have approached her with more caution.

Mr Collinson and Mr Nathwani said that there was no evidence to indicate how Victoria Police suggest they would have approached Ms Gobbo differently and there was no evidence that she would have been treated with greater caution if so. They also made note of the fact that they failed to acknowledge the “full picture” was known to them.

Her lawyers also said that Ms Gobbo’s close proximity to their targets was the “exact” reason they sought to register her in the first place, despite concerns for her safety.

Victoria Police were also found to have relied on the fact that it was because of a note-taking policy that much of the information during this decade was available to the royal commission. However, her lawyers said they failed to recognise that most of the notes came from the SDU, “who Victoria Police criticised where necessary”.

In one instance, retired senior detective Gavan Ryan, by his own admission, said that he did not take notes on human source matters so that the material would not be able to be disclosed. The lawyers said Victoria Police would have used this to explain how often he used “I cannot recall” during his evidence before the commission: “It is not a mitigation but a consequence of the deliberate, clandestine tactic he employed”.

One of the more repeated criticisms of Ms Gobbo in the police submissions was there was not a single officer who believed Ms Gobbo was in breach of her legal duties and that Victoria Police officers did not have the training of a lawyer to recognise this.

“Whilst this might be right, even the most junior, trainee police officer would recognise that a human source giving information against her clients was a prima facie conflict of interest,” Ms Gobbo’s lawyers submitted.

Read more of the Lawyer X submissions here:

• Lawyer X: Counsel assisting submissions detail legal breaches, allege criminal wrongdoing
• DPP cautions commission against ‘factual findings’ of Lawyer X conflicts
• Lawyer X: Former top cop at ‘epicentre’ of Victoria Police misconduct
• Lawyer X fights against claims she lied under oath
• Lawyer X: New inquiry documents show depth of conflicts in Tomatoes Tin case
• Lawyer X: The cases, charges and consequences of Nicola Gobbo
• Lawyer X police prosecutions doubtful, IBAC says