Murray Olds: Australian correspondent on the Melbourne drug kingpin who avoided extra jail time

Over in Australia, former drug kingpin Tony Mokbel managed to avoid additional time in prison over a drug trafficking conviction. 

Mokbel, one of the key figures in Melbourne’s gangland war, was sentenced to 30 years’ jail after pleading guilty to serious drug-related offences in 2012. 

Australian correspondent Murray Olds says reports have surfaced accusing his lawyer of corruption, prompting an additional investigation.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
International Correspondence with ends in Eye Insurance, Peace of Mind
for New Zealand Business.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Muriol's Ossie correspondent with us Almas and with my experience
of American coffee, it's not worth drinking.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
I mean no, really, fifty bucks for a bloody bear glass.
You're cracking jokes.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
And that's ridiculous. And then what's going to happen is
I'm going to come in with my OCD because you're
going to have it, and I'm going to come into
my into your house. And because it's not going to
have any friends, it's just going to be the one bear.
It's going to frustrate me. So I'm going to throw
it away for you. That's what I do. Hey, now
tell me about this drugger kingpin? Why is he had
years slashed off a.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Sentence because his lawyer was a stooge. She was informing
on not just Tony Mockbell, but the Melbourne underworld. Her
name was Nicola Gobbo. And I mean, look, there's no
doubt that Tony Mockbell was a notorious drug dealer. He
was one of the kingpins in the Melbourne Underworld and
he was jailed for thirty years back in twenty twelve,

(00:56):
he admitted that he was the kingpin of a huge syndicate.
There were three separate matters that went to trial and
he got thirty years and non parole of twenty two
so he wasn't due out until twenty thirty four. One
of the jail terms twenty years. But today he's walked
free and no more jail time because his barrister successfully

(01:16):
argued in the Court of Appeal in Victoria. His barrister
said his lawyer back then Nicola Gobbo was corrupt. She
was and her behavior by informing on the underworld to
the Victorian police basically corrupted all the trials. Where's my quote? Here?
Here we go as she was Now I've just lost it. Anyway,

(01:38):
bock Bell didn't know that she was a so called
supergrass until after he pleaded guilty, until after he'd been jailed.
So basically he's gone back now after serving all these years,
he appealed and he's actually now for time already served.
He's walked out today. His sentence is done.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Amazing. Now, why has this person bit a nurse?

Speaker 3 (01:58):
Well, this person was up in a regional hospital in
Tamworth and he's a twenty seven year old fellow and
he failed to appear in court for sentence four counts
of assaulting frontline health workers. Now he has a personality disorder,
so is he does have a mental health condition. He

(02:19):
was taken to hospital because of welfare concerns. He had
treatment for a bunch of injuries. He was also perhaps
offers medication. He tried to leave the hospital, he was
told that staff wanted to put him into a mental
health unit. So he apparently just went he went crazy.
He started gnashing his teeth and thrashing around. Four security

(02:39):
guards drive to stop him. It triggered a lockdown of
the emergency department and according to the documents tended in
court today, one guard had a massive bite to the
finger and all four guards suffered a range of different injuries.
This guy was really fighting back with all he had. Anyway,
what this has done, of course, I mean, you can't
go assaulting nurses, as you say, and so the state

(03:01):
government of New South Wales are saying, right, we're going
to have to have a review of security in our hospitals,
particularly regional hospitals where oftentimes you don't have security guards,
certainly none is armed. You don't have any armed guards
at the state's hospitals. But this isn't good enough to
have four guards at Tamworth. It's a major hospital, it's

(03:21):
a big center, it's a big city. But all four
guards were injured, one of them with his finger bitten,
and that's not good enough according to the Union and
the government.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Now, what is it that ozsie goat meat has got
that the US loves well.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
Apparently it's clean and it's green, and these goats are
out there breeding in the wild. They're now being caught
and they're not being shot from a helicopter as that
was the case because they are feral. What they're doing
they're actually taking them to avatars, slaughtering them, humanely dressing
the meat. And it's just going absolute gangbusters in the
United States. Not just the US, Korea, China, and the

(03:57):
Caribbean are all scoffing up vast quantities of Australian goat.
Apparently it's a very clean meat, it's a very lean meat.
When I was living in South Sudan, I had quite
a number of meals off goat and it's a lovely
meat when it's done well, it's beautiful in the curry,
but high demand, of course means higher prices. And that's
got a lot of farm well not a lot, but

(04:19):
some farmers out on the edge of the desert, you know,
and some of that more marginal country where perhaps you
can't run sheep. They're going to run goats, which apparently
don't need as much tucker, and they're going to run
them by breeding them up and then off to slaughter
for an up and coming export business center.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
Interesting stuff. You're right, goat is a very good meet Mars.
Thanks very much, Murray Old's Australia correspondent.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
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