I grew up in Queensland under the Joh Bjelke-Petersen rule of late 60/70/80s where GOVT Ministers, police corruption ran rife, brown paper bags full of corrupt dealings, illegal gambling dens, police officers drunk on duty and my local police head detective was the biggest corrupt officer of my local station, we use to call him pin head as he looked like a pin head, he ended up becoming police commissioner in later years, but in our early days he controlled the drug dealing in our local area (his son was a junkie).
Yes we lived in a police state at the time, but the good thing there was no tolerance with protesters and if they shut down roads the police would go in with battens drawn and they didn't muck around, they were dragged off by the hair and off to the cells batted and bruised even the women.
There was one Minister called Russ Hinze, he was a big fat pig, he was the Minister for everything, racing/gambling/main roads, you name it he was in charge of them all, his family had their hands in everyone pockets and nothing got built in Queensland without the brown paper bag full of money, ahhhhh the good old days, a few times in my younger days being pulled over by the cops on my Norton where the officer was so drunk he couldn't get out of the car or write a ticket for that matter and the good cops got nowhere in their rankings, Joh would get voted in with only 30% of the vote with his Gerry Mander voting system and he has a saying about the media "I feed the chooks", the National/Country party ruled, but they all fell down hard in the end, but Joh walked away untouched, his trial was rigged.
Ashley