Bob Collins made some powerful enemies and now they want revenge

I sat at home this weekend reading countless newspaper reports of a man named Fred Cole who claimed to have shot the dingo who took Azaria. He also claimed his friends had disposed of her body. I had just returned from Adelaide where I had spent a couple of days assisting Bob's wife Rosemary and their children cope with the fallout from a venal smear campaign being waged against him. Bob was seriously ill in the Royal Adelaide Hospital with a morphine drip in his arm. His pelvis and his right hand femoral joint had been smashed to pieces in a car accident in Kakadu a fortnight ago. As he and the family struggled to come to terms with the grim reality of the accident a stream of headlines about sexual assault allegations against him flowed out of Darwin. They are said to have occurred in the Aboriginal community of Maningrida some 30 years ago.

The newspaper reports contained the heavy innuendo that the car crash was no accident. It was. A couple of days after the first newspaper reports appeared, Northern Territory police "raided" the empty Collins home in Darwin. The media were "on hand" to photograph detectives carrying away some computer equipment. His family were given no notice. A lock was broken to gain entry. Smear upon smear.

At the same time the Territory police were issuing media statements warning the newspapers not to conduct parallel investigations to their own. They have yet to talk to Collins. Bob Collins could not defend himself.

I'll leave the Northern Territory police to their investigation but after working with Collins and his family in Darwin and Canberra for more than 12 years and hearing from those who worked with him in his political stronghold of Maningrida, I'd be staggered if they prove to be anything but preposterous. It was becoming obvious by week's end that a number of Collins' old enemies are behind the allegations. One can only hope the cops do a better job than they did at Ayers Rock and Mount Isa all those years ago.

Dinny Barritt got it right first time on Azaria. The dingo did it. Frank Cole may have shot the culprit that took Azaria but the newspaper reports of the past fortnight have demonstrated there are still a lot of wild dogs in the Territory. The clarion call of the two-legged variety would appear to be: smear ye!. This howling pack ought to be muzzled.