In 1981 journalist David Hickie wrote that Sir Robert Askin, Liberal premier from 1965 to 1975, had received $100,000 a year in bribes for much of that period (the equivalent of some $1 million a year today) from gambling casinos run by Perce Galea and Joe Taylor. Moreover, he had played an active role in the running of their operations. The claims were repeated in Hickie’s 1985 book The Prince and the Premier. Despite the absence of named, living sources, they have been accepted by most writers since, and have shaped the view of Sydney and its politics in the 1960s and 1970s.
In a 2013 thesis for the University of New England, that view received sustained questioning for almost the first time from Paul Loughnan. Click on the link below to read a copy of Dr Loughlan’s thesis. It is published here with his permission, and copyright remains with the author.
A History of the Askin Government 1965-1975, PhD Thesis, Loughnan