COMPROMISED - The Vanishing

Griffith wasn’t just vineyards—it was an industrial drug economy hiding in plain sight. As Donald Mackay vanished, a syndicate led by Robert Trimbole—with names like Sergi, Barbaro and Tizzone—was cultivating cannabis on a massive scale, protected by silence and influence. Raids came and went. Files moved. People stopped asking questions.By 1977, law-enforcement estimates put the profits at $60–$80 million a year—nearly half a billion dollars in today’s terms—laundered through trucking firms, restaurants and real estate. This episode follows the money, the protection and the leaks that let the crops keep growing, and asks the question that still matters in 2025: when truth collides with power, who pays the price? For the Mackay family, the cost never ended.CreditsWritten & Produced by Stephen JohnsSound Design & Editing by Stephen JohnsArchival Research by Alex GArchival audio excerpts courtesy of ABC News.Used under Australian fair dealing provisions for news, reporting, and public interest analysis.© Compromised Podcast Series. All rights reserved.Music licensed via Uppbeat:Like a River — Danijel ZamboLicense: ZBUR1HQGWB9QNF8DBlur — Goods CargoLicense: QW3FGXP3VW0ZPYCWEndless Puzzle — AVBELicense: 6G9BN3TRTYTCDBRLSpring Coming — Enrique MolanoLicense: TMQZ5W2MAANQTUGEA New Chapter — LuminbirdLicense: IE7ZTC8BRCGTDDAFDon’t Let Go — Apex MusicLicense: CYOGRURAAB6M03TFIntriguing Case — Matt Stewart-EvansLicense: HFKUUE2XUQGLQBFLUnderworld — RevoLicense: ZGYJAN3ID11LOG67Maytan Risunchis — ArnitoLicense: KRW17THKJYCGKOTTElectromagnetic Interference — Adi GoldsteinLicense: 9VP5CGTC8PWXRZFONews You Can Trust — SoundrollLicense: MQ40T11AHMNQUXCWThe Heart of Silence — ArnitoLicense: L3CQPJASUHTDSRKITwo Worlds — TatamiLicense: IRYXNADNBHVFFQ8J

In 1979, Justice Philip Woodward’s Royal Commission promised light—and delivered language.The Law That Never Spoke follows the insiders who saw too much: a clerk who filed a brief that vanished, an AFP officer told to “stay in his lane,” and a system that learned how to silence itself by process, not threat.Featuring archival material, reconstructed testimony, and the quiet echoes of a nation still balancing its books, Episode 3 traces how the machinery of justice became the machinery of silence.Every system leaves a paper trail—if you know where to read between the lines. CreditsWritten & Produced by Stephen JohnsSound Design & Editing by Stephen JohnsArchival Research by Alex GArchival audio excerpts courtesy of ABC News.Used under Australian fair dealing provisions for news, reporting, and public interest analysis.© Compromised Podcast Series. All rights reserved.Music licensed via Uppbeat:Like a River — Danijel ZamboLicense: ZBUR1HQGWB9QNF8DBlur — Goods CargoLicense: QW3FGXP3VW0ZPYCWEndless Puzzle — AVBELicense: 6G9BN3TRTYTCDBRLSpring Coming — Enrique MolanoLicense: TMQZ5W2MAANQTUGEA New Chapter — LuminbirdLicense: IE7ZTC8BRCGTDDAFDon’t Let Go — Apex MusicLicense: CYOGRURAAB6M03TFIntriguing Case — Matt Stewart-EvansLicense: HFKUUE2XUQGLQBFLUnderworld — RevoLicense: ZGYJAN3ID11LOG67Maytan Risunchis — ArnitoLicense: KRW17THKJYCGKOTTElectromagnetic Interference — Adi GoldsteinLicense: 9VP5CGTC8PWXRZFONews You Can Trust — SoundrollLicense: MQ40T11AHMNQUXCWThe Heart of Silence — ArnitoLicense: L3CQPJASUHTDSRKITwo Worlds — TatamiLicense: IRYXNADNBHVFFQ8J

In Griffith, the books always balanced—even when nothing else did. Episode 4 follows the quiet figures who kept the region’s financial world running: a discreet accountant known only as Mr. G, and a young parish priest whose ledgers recorded donations no collection plate could explain. Their handwriting threaded through farms, co-ops, churches and political offices, mapping a silent economy that shifted cash from the Riverina to Sydney and, eventually, Canberra.Drawing from sworn evidence, financial records and contemporary reporting, this episode uncovers how ordinary accounting practices became the perfect language for extraordinary secrecy. Brown envelopes, blue-linen ledgers, vanished parish pages, and political “adjustments” formed a system where money entered clean channels and disappeared within weeks. No crimes proven—just patterns too precise to ignore.As investigators probed unexplained wealth, requests were dismissed as “out of scope,” and evidence quietly slipped through institutional cracks. What remained were traces: an initial in a commission appendix, missing microfilm, a priest’s private crisis of faith, and a ledger that briefly surfaced in Sydney before vanishing into the country’s political bloodstream.This is the story of the men who balanced the books—and what their numbers reveal about the cost of silence.CreditsWritten & Produced by Stephen JohnsSound Design & Editing by Stephen JohnsArchival Research by Alex GArchival audio excerpts courtesy of ABC News.Used under Australian fair dealing provisions for news, reporting, and public interest analysis.© Compromised Podcast Series. All rights reserved.Music licensed via Uppbeat:Like a River — Danijel ZamboLicense: ZBUR1HQGWB9QNF8DBlur — Goods CargoLicense: QW3FGXP3VW0ZPYCWEndless Puzzle — AVBELicense: 6G9BN3TRTYTCDBRLSpring Coming — Enrique MolanoLicense: TMQZ5W2MAANQTUGEA New Chapter — LuminbirdLicense: IE7ZTC8BRCGTDDAFDon’t Let Go — Apex MusicLicense: CYOGRURAAB6M03TFIntriguing Case — Matt Stewart-EvansLicense: HFKUUE2XUQGLQBFLUnderworld — RevoLicense: ZGYJAN3ID11LOG67Maytan Risunchis — ArnitoLicense: KRW17THKJYCGKOTTElectromagnetic Interference — Adi GoldsteinLicense: 9VP5CGTC8PWXRZFONews You Can Trust — SoundrollLicense: MQ40T11AHMNQUXCWThe Heart of Silence — ArnitoLicense: L3CQPJASUHTDSRKITwo Worlds — TatamiLicense: IRYXNADNBHVFFQ8J

When whispers from Griffith reached the nation’s capital, a handful of journalists thought they were chasing a story about corruption. What they uncovered was something far more dangerous — a ledger that could bring down men in power. But every attempt to print the truth met a sudden silence: editors leaned on, stories buried, presses mysteriously halted.The Paper Crown follows the reporters who refused to look away — those who risked careers, reputations, and safety to expose a network of influence stretching from the newsroom to Parliament. As the headlines closed in, they discovered that power doesn’t always wear a crown of gold. Sometimes, it’s made of paper — fragile, flammable, and easily torn apart.CreditsWritten & Produced by Stephen JohnsSound Design & Editing by Stephen JohnsArchival Research by Alex GArchival audio excerpts courtesy of ABC News.Used under Australian fair dealing provisions for news, reporting, and public interest analysis.© Compromised Podcast Series. All rights reserved.Music licensed via Uppbeat:Like a River — Danijel ZamboLicense: ZBUR1HQGWB9QNF8DBlur — Goods CargoLicense: QW3FGXP3VW0ZPYCWEndless Puzzle — AVBELicense: 6G9BN3TRTYTCDBRLSpring Coming — Enrique MolanoLicense: TMQZ5W2MAANQTUGEA New Chapter — LuminbirdLicense: IE7ZTC8BRCGTDDAFDon’t Let Go — Apex MusicLicense: CYOGRURAAB6M03TFIntriguing Case — Matt Stewart-EvansLicense: HFKUUE2XUQGLQBFLUnderworld — RevoLicense: ZGYJAN3ID11LOG67Maytan Risunchis — ArnitoLicense: KRW17THKJYCGKOTTElectromagnetic Interference — Adi GoldsteinLicense: 9VP5CGTC8PWXRZFONews You Can Trust — SoundrollLicense: MQ40T11AHMNQUXCWThe Heart of Silence — ArnitoLicense: L3CQPJASUHTDSRKITwo Worlds — TatamiLicense: IRYXNADNBHVFFQ8J

Nine years after Donald Mackay vanished, the story that Australia tried to bury starts clawing its way to the surface. As arrests turn into disappearances and files turn to ash, a handful of insiders and witnesses begin to crack under the pressure. From the arrest of a hitman in Melbourne to the mysterious flight of Robert Trimbole and the vanishing of Exhibit 47, The Politics of Forgetting exposes how power protects itself—through bureaucracy, silence, and fear.When leaked memos known as The Domino Files ignite a panic inside Parliament, journalists, clerks, and senators find themselves caught between duty and danger. Because in a country built on secrecy, remembering becomes an act of rebellion.This is the episode where the walls start to talk—and the cost of truth finally comes due.CreditsWritten & Produced by Stephen JohnsSound Design & Editing by Stephen JohnsArchival Research by Alex GArchival audio excerpts courtesy of ABC News.Used under Australian fair dealing provisions for news, reporting, and public interest analysis.© Compromised Podcast Series. All rights reserved.Music licensed via Uppbeat:Like a River — Danijel ZamboLicense: ZBUR1HQGWB9QNF8DBlur — Goods CargoLicense: QW3FGXP3VW0ZPYCWEndless Puzzle — AVBELicense: 6G9BN3TRTYTCDBRLSpring Coming — Enrique MolanoLicense: TMQZ5W2MAANQTUGEA New Chapter — LuminbirdLicense: IE7ZTC8BRCGTDDAFDon’t Let Go — Apex MusicLicense: CYOGRURAAB6M03TFIntriguing Case — Matt Stewart-EvansLicense: HFKUUE2XUQGLQBFLUnderworld — RevoLicense: ZGYJAN3ID11LOG67Maytan Risunchis — ArnitoLicense: KRW17THKJYCGKOTTElectromagnetic Interference — Adi GoldsteinLicense: 9VP5CGTC8PWXRZFONews You Can Trust — SoundrollLicense: MQ40T11AHMNQUXCWThe Heart of Silence — ArnitoLicense: L3CQPJASUHTDSRKITwo Worlds — TatamiLicense: IRYXNADNBHVFFQ8J

In 1987, long after the inquiries ended and the headlines faded, Canberra held its real hearings—off the books, after midnight, and far from the public eye. In Episode 7, we enter the shadow world of the Special Review Committee: no signage, no transcripts, and witnesses brought in not by subpoena, but persuasion. Files that vanished years earlier reappear in audit trails. A retired accountant presumed dead speaks again—his voice drifting from a tape mailed from Malta. And a records officer, Margaret Larkin, prepares to break her silence… before disappearing on the road to Canberra.What follows is a cascade of leaks, threats, and late-night broadcasts that ricochet through Parliament House. A federal investigator’s wire recordings are seized under national security—but not before a single duplicate escapes. Journalists are warned off. Civil servants vanish. And a micro-cassette carrying account numbers and transfer dates slips into the nation’s bloodstream, exposing a financial trail that runs from the Riverina to the Cabinet Room.As secrecy collapses into panic, a government attempts “strategic forgetting”—only to discover that not all records burn. Because from the archives to the coast of Queensland, one final reel remains alive, carrying a voice that survived its own erasure. And with it, the truth Australia tried to bury is about to surface.CreditsWritten & Produced by Stephen JohnsSound Design & Editing by Stephen JohnsArchival Research by Alex GArchival audio excerpts courtesy of ABC News.Used under Australian fair dealing provisions for news, reporting, and public interest analysis.© Compromised Podcast Series. All rights reserved.Music licensed via Uppbeat:Like a River — Danijel ZamboLicense: ZBUR1HQGWB9QNF8DBlur — Goods CargoLicense: QW3FGXP3VW0ZPYCWEndless Puzzle — AVBELicense: 6G9BN3TRTYTCDBRLSpring Coming — Enrique MolanoLicense: TMQZ5W2MAANQTUGEA New Chapter — LuminbirdLicense: IE7ZTC8BRCGTDDAFDon’t Let Go — Apex MusicLicense: CYOGRURAAB6M03TFIntriguing Case — Matt Stewart-EvansLicense: HFKUUE2XUQGLQBFLUnderworld — RevoLicense: ZGYJAN3ID11LOG67Maytan Risunchis — ArnitoLicense: KRW17THKJYCGKOTTElectromagnetic Interference — Adi GoldsteinLicense: 9VP5CGTC8PWXRZFONews You Can Trust — SoundrollLicense: MQ40T11AHMNQUXCWThe Heart of Silence — ArnitoLicense: L3CQPJASUHTDSRKITwo Worlds — TatamiLicense: IRYXNADNBHVFFQ8J