UNDERBELLY’S UNDERCURRENT

There’s a disturbing trend in this country that has been exacerbated by the avid reception to the gripping television series Underbelly on Channel Nine. A dramatic series on the gangland war in Melbourne that killed about thirty murderers, illegal drug makers and drug dealers in the recent underworld war.

The series has been seen legally by millions of TV viewers around the country. And here in Victoria thousands of people have seen bootlegged copies of it.

The disturbing trend has been the emergence of the celebrity gangster. The glamorisation of a criminal world filled with buckets of cash, flashy hotel suites, fast cars and even faster women.
In Underbelly there is so much graphic sex you wonder when they had time to fire real bullets rather than the other kind. And you wonder about people who try to emulate mobsters like those portrayed in the TV series The Sopranos. Alphonse Gangitano really thought if there were a movie about his life he should be played by Al Pacino. Mick Gatto said recently that he would have played himself in Underbelly  for a million dollars.

In the real world, Joe Caddy a maximum security prison chaplain tries to put it in perspective. In the Herald Sun today Caddy  writes ‘a trendy looking group of 20-sometings gathers on a street in Carlton during a night out. A young man in the group points towards a nearby restaurant, describing in detail the shooting that took place there during Melbourne’s recent gangland wars.

He had just got hold of a bootleg copy of the outlawed, ‘outlaw’ series Underbelly and is sharing the gruesome details with his mates.  Caddy says he is often asked about the true characters of ‘celebrity gangsters’.

In real life  he says, our jails look more like  society’s bottom drawer.’ Most have never driven a luxury car or eaten in a fancy restaurant’.

But it is the wealth-flaunting swaggering flashy tough guys that garner public attention and celeb status. And the media is largely to blame. Mick Gatto’s recent brief foray overseas chasing money after the collapse of Opes made Page One  headlines and led the TV news. Very little was focused on  Gatto’s thuggish image or criminal background.

In court recently  Gatto was  implicated in two gangland murders and the recruitment of hit-man Andrew ‘Benji’ Veniamin as a gun for hire. Those dead men were fruiterer Frank Benvenuto and cop-killer Victor Peirce.

A police  informer claimed  Gatto had found out that Veniamin and Peirce had taken a contract to kill him on Benvenuto's orders but turned the tables, confronted Veniamin, and ordered him to take care of  Benvenuto or else ‘cop it’ himself.

Years later Gatto would shoot Veniamin dead in the hallways of  that Carlton restaurant and be acquitted on the grounds of  self-defence.

The badly misguided media hero worship of Gatto goes on. Today for example in The Age  Diary column, Suzanne Carbone,  gushes about Gatto wearing the same t-shirt at a boxing match that  David Beckham and Madonna wear. Gosh, golly, gee. And there’s a smiling pic of  Rene Kink – who has never been choosy about his friends – and promoter Peter Maniatis and Gatto.

The Carlton Crew mobster apparently shelled out $1500 for a boxing glove signed by Muhammad Ali.  The money going to the Australian Cancer research Foundation. At least it didn’t go to Tobin Brothers.

Carbone writes. ‘That’s Mick: big wallet, big heart.’

She could have added ; ‘ Big thug. Big crim’.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2008