The conclusion of the inquiry judge, Brian Martin, and even the judge's right, power and duty to conduct the inquiry were fiercely resisted, at great extra public expense by the ACT Director of Public Prosecutions, Jon White. Once the report came out, White argued that the findings of the report should be rejected by the ACT Supreme Court, on the basis that the remaining undiscredited evidence "proved" the man's guilt in any event. The Supreme Court decided to put the DPP to the test, quashing the conviction and ordering a new trial. Since then there has been absolute silence from the DPP about whether such a trial will take place. Even direct inquiries from the court elicit only opaque answers.

While the matter sits in the balance, the DPP's office does not have to address or answer a host of very basic questions arising from the case. It had been the best resourced murder investigation and prosecution process in Australian legal history. The prosecution having five years to prepare its case and the trial lasted months. It took place in the aftermath of the collapse of two important convictions showing serious flaws in forensic evidence and forensic scientific methodology, with a team very conscious of a need to get it right.

If well aware of the dangers, prosecutors presented evidence of examinations that were probably never made, or, if made, not documented to basic standard, and conclusions which had not been subject to peer review. The prosecution seemed blissfully unaware of fundamental flaws in evidence gathering and record keeping, and bodgy results. A process of temper-tantrums and long delay by the leading forensic witness had the effect of having investigators and lawyers more focused on appeasing him than in asking the questions which should have been asked, and weren't.

The trial was also found to have miscarried because the defence was not made aware of evidence that was available to the prosecution of strong reservations about the forensic expert and his conclusions by independent scientist. But police, apparently, had neglected to tell the prosecution that the forensic scientist had been sacked by the Victoria Police scientific laboratory for professional and scientific misconduct.

The inquiry judge did not find that this material had been deliberately withheld from the defence by the prosecution, but thought that the "inadvertent" failure had nonetheless deprived the man of a fair chance of being acquitted on the facts.

Lawyers are not necessarily at fault if witnesses called by them lie, exaggerate their expertise, or draw conclusions going beyond the material in front of them. There is no suggestion that the prosecution knowingly put forward a liar, or an "expert" with a known propensity to take sides. But the prosecution function involves more than the idea of the lawyer as advocate dealing with the material given, and, it seems, the ACT system in operation lacked the checks and balances to make sure that this was so. A DPP or Crown prosecutor has been described as a minister of justice, a detached person with an obligation to put material fairly before a judge and jury, seeking a just result rather than being a partisan vigilante fashioning a case, and emphasising only the material suggesting guilt.

The faults in the prosecution were not those of Jon White but happened 20 years ago, under the watch of other DPPs, some of whom went on to be judges. But White strongly resisted any criticism whatever of the individuals involved in the prosecution, or his predecessors, or, it was quite clear, the systems and procedures of the institution over which he presides.

A team of lawyers, led by senior counsel, fought hard to restrict, or close down the inquiry, to protect the interests of anyone associated with the DPP, to prevent evidence being heard, particular lawyers appearing for the accused man, or conclusions drawn. These were counsel for the DPP, there to protect the interests of his office, not, as usually happens in a commission of inquiry, friends of the inquiry assisting in drawing out the evidence in the case.

It was likewise with the Australian Federal Police, which also engaged a formidable team, with leading counsel. It did not do so to assist the tribunal with any information it wanted. Instead it had a brief to protect the police at all costs. Not current police, or current policing methods — of which the inquiry heard nothing at all — but the senior officers, all now retired, involved in carrying out the original investigation. Loyalty to old officers was more important than loyalty to the truth.

The AFP team supported DPP efforts to narrow the inquiry, were initially slow and deliberately difficult with the production of relevant documents, and much of the most damaging material, including evidence of a Victoria Police tip only now being investigated, came to the inquiry only by accident. Though damning findings were made about the character, competence and reliability of some of the key witnesses, the AFP legal team continuing with a dogged defence of the good old boys who had investigated, as best they could, the murder of a man who had been, at least to most, a close mate.

The AFP had not had any occasion, over the past six months to ask itself what went wrong, whether there is anything to learn from it, or why (if nothing went wrong) a judge was so critical of the investigators and rejected submission from several million dollars worth of legal representation. Asked informally, some senior officers pretend, as do some DPP defenders, that the problem was with the inquiry not the police (or the DPP).

Ask formally, however and there's dead silence. And no need to cope with actual evidence that shows how flawed the police case, and the prosecution was.

First, there's the possibility of a fresh trial, so that it would be wrong to be raking the coals under potentially important witnesses, or doing anything that could possibly comprise the remaining case. I cannot see why not, myself, since, I would have thought, it is a continuing professional scepticism about itself that marks a good police force, and that "locking-in" on a case is deeply unprofessional.

Moreover, it is said, the AFP is now belatedly investigating information given to it by the Victoria Police which casts an interesting light on the suggestion, rejected by the AFP, of organised crime involvement). Even the DPP is now involved, having been given special permission to look at the file. The interesting thing about the fresh information is that it crosses over a tip AFP detectives were given in very early 1989, involving the presence, close to the murder scene of a number of organised crime figures. AFP detectives perfunctionarily checked this at the time, but all of the crime figures gave each other an alibi, so this line of inquiry was dropped. It is, I understand, the fact that the alibis are provably false, rather than evidence of what was really happening, that is at the heart of the new inquiry.

If the DPP has briefed outside counsel, no one knows. The DPP has not advised anyone about who is reviewing old evidence in the case, the availability of witnesses (including, if new questions are being asked whether they previously failed to disclose their blood relationships to particular senior investigators). It is not obvious, given the approach taken at the inquiry, that even a new generation of AFP detectives could be seen as detached.

A person who could be asking questions, and demanding answers, whether from the DPP or AFP, or even his own department is the Attorney-General, Simon Corbell, but doing so might put an unattractive light on how he himself, and some of his predecessors, have managed their functions. Corbell, of course, has no legal background or qualifications, and relies heavily on a few departmental and other advisers, some of whom have been advising on strategy and tactics in the matter for a very long period. One can imagine that they would not be advising their minister about the need for a far reaching and independent review of the judgment that has been brought to bear on the legal, administrative and practical lessons of the case.

If Mr Corbell needs a script to explain how convenient it is that the DPP is reviewing the case, he could perhaps repeat what he said, complacently, to journalist Bill Darcy about why there was no need for an ICAC in the ACT. The ALP did not believe an ICAC would be "a prudent use of the ACT resources". There's no evidence of any problem, and the ACT already, apparently, has a "comprehensive public integrity framework" in place.

We can, thus, be sure that nothing of the sort described above could ever occur, at least while Corbell is in charge.