Tough and unfair, but that is cartoonists for you.

Shane Patton, Victoria’s suddenly temporary police commissioner, always looks the same, too. Stolid, grim and expressionless. A little like a startled rabbit, but without the cuddliness and popular appeal.

SHAMELESS

Well, what his part of the corrupt VicPol employment of Lawyer X, his shameless and illegal and immoral pursuit of George Pell and his oversight of the most brutal COVID policing in the world – including China – couldn’t do, a mere pay dispute with his officers’ union has done. (Yes, there were other issues).

Patton is for the plank. No iron-fisted Daniel Andrews to protect him now. Just a festy, lightweight bimbette called Jacinta Allan.

The union’s 87 per cent vote against him is sobering. They all hate him! We all hate him! A rare daily double.

Patton has been stoic in the face of almost universal internal condemnation.

Despite police union members having passed a vote of no confidence in Patton’s leadership, he said he would continue to “lead”.

Patton said the result was “obviously disappointing” but that his “commitment to the role of Chief Commissioner has not wavered”.

He said members had identified concerns, including rising crime rates and police vacancies, that he shared and was working to address.

Obviously “disappointing”. Like I say, a Barrie Unsworth pose. These people have no shame. A hide like Jesse the Elephant. Plough on through. Water off a duck’s back.

There is schadenfreude in the air. For Monica Smit, briefly but brutally imprisoned during COVID for advertising a protest rally on social media, the joy at Patton’s imminent demise is deeply personal.

Monica says: “You allowed rubber bullets to be shot indiscriminately into crowds of women and children. Your karma is coming mate.

“I wonder if it was you who authorised the kettling on cup day? If so, see you in court soon buddy.”

VicPol is a scumbag organisation. Patton’s most recent effort at damage control was his attempt to downplay the fact that hundreds of his officers were being investigated for child sex crimes, domestic violence and the like. I guess that was “disappointing” too.

Patton, of course, inherited a woke, DEI-driven, sickeningly corrupt, rainbow-friendly, politicised police force from his ghastly predecessors, Simon Overland, Christine Nixon and Graham Ashton.

But Patton did nothing to reverse VicPol’s direction.

He doubled down. He loaded the COVID weapons and employed them against his fellow innocent citizens.

The black clad men in uniform. The tasers. The arrest of pregnant mothers. The smashing of heads on concrete. Crushed grandmothers. Patton’s legacy. What a guy!

What an arsehole. Pardon the Gallic epithet. He was the perfect match for Daniel Andrews, probably the worst public figure in Australia’s history.

My personal gripe with Patton, a man less like his famous (and, yes, flawed) namesake you could not imagine, was his infamous trip to Rome to accompany his officers in their get Pell overseas trip.

NEVER

We still don’t know, and probably never will, why he was in Rome.

Reasonable speculation is that he was there to meet with senior vaticanistas to cement the deal on putting Pell away, down under. On cleaning house in Rome. With or without Pope Francis’ approval or knowledge.

Are there minutes of Patton’s meetings in the Eternal City? I am guessing not.

Several things are generally agreed by those with half a brain:

• Corrupt conspiracies are a thing;
• George Pell thought that Victoria’s corruption went right to the top;
• Money was transferred from the Vatican to Australia at a time that was adjacent to the timing of the put-up job of Operation Tethering and the Gillard approved Get-Pell Royal Commission, a transfer that has still to be explained;
• The put-up job that had a complainant (“victim”) come forward, to be tutored by Victorian cops over several years, ended in tears, with Witness JJ begging to be released from his “contract”;
• VicPol, the DPP and the whole Victorian “justice” system were humiliated, crushed, by the High Court’s utter evisceration of the prosecution case, in 2020;
• Cardinal Pell will be remembered as Australia’s white martyr.

As for Gobbo (Lawyer X), the police informer illegally doubling as a defence lawyer for some of Victoria’s biggest underworld crooks, Patton had this response: “The Lawyer X debacle has cost Victoria Police $64m, and there may be more costs to come.

“Of the $64m, $42m has been spent on legal costs.”

The top cop said a portion of the funds spent by Victoria Police were necessary to keep Nicola Gobbo safe.