It was the late 1970s, and members of the NSW police force were tapping phones, illegally, in the hopes of cracking down on organised crime. The sorts of people they had in their sights were well-known underworld figures, like Abe Saffron, known as “Mr Sin”, and drug boss Robert Trimbole.

But what they stumbled upon instead, shocked them.

Conversations between a high court justice and his well-placed friends that would implicate the judge, Lionel Murphy, for years, in corruption allegations. 

Today, Lindsay Murdoch, one of the two journalists who broke this story for The Age, on the secret tapes that unleashed one of the most controversial political sagas of the 1980s.

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