Radio Australia Today Editorial

True Crime. The Life of Australia’s Mr Big.

31 July 2008

Today we’re talking to the son of Abe Saffron, Australia’s reputed Mr Sin.

Abe Saffron ran prostitution rackets and gambling dens in Sydney for many years, and had relationships with corrupt Australian politicans and police, back in the days of the 1960s and 1970s when politicians and police were corrupt and could get away with it.

They were incredibly brazen. Back in the early 1970s, the premier of the time, who was notoriously corrupt, was being interviewed live on television. He was in the middle of denying that any gambling dens existed in Sydney. Just then the TV host crossed to a reporter, who was standing on the roof across the road from one of those gambling dens that didn’t exist. The reporter was able to show the premier footage of the den, and just as he did it, the camera showed a senior police official going into the casino in his best dress-up clothes. Embarrassment, folks. The definition of embarrassment.

Sydney is now pretty clean, courtesy of some anti-corruption governments, decent police officers, and a population fed up with this corruption nonsense.

All that said, I met Abe Saffron some years back, and I was surprised at how gentle and warm he appeared to be. He was with his wife outside a court. If I remember rightly, they were in the middle of a defamation case against a newspaper. He claimed then, and maintained up to his death in 2006 that he never did anything illegal. As a young reporter generally used to people telling me the truth, I found it hard not to believe him, although I knew what he had done. He was very convincing.

So today’s interview with his son Alan will be enlightening. Basically he admits his father was the godfather of crime in Australia. Never violent like his American counterparts, but still the master of crime in Kings Cross.

This interview will reveal a bit of Australian history, a bit Sopranos, a bit glamorous, and a lot of bad behaviour.

– Phil