Published in Issue 13 of Paper Chained in March 2024.
Phillip Player served over seven in prison in NSW before being released in 1991. During that time he worked on InLimbo, the magazine for the remand section of Long Bay, before creating Rogues at the Central Industrial Prison, the main area for sentenced prisoners. Paper Chained Editor Damien Linnane talks to him about the magazines, and how they came to be banned.
So how did you end up at Long Bay?
I was a professional criminal. I don’t deny this fact. If you Google me you’ll find some articles describing me as a former underworld boss, which is partly true. I’ve lived by crime most of my life, but my legitimate profession was show business. I was a ring announcer for boxing and a sports and entertainment promoter. I have always lived either by crime or entertainment. That’s all I’ve ever enjoyed.
I did seven-and-a-half years in NSW, mostly at Long Bay, but I’d just done seven years in Perth before that sentence started, so I pretty much did fourteen years straight.
Tell me about InLimbo and Rogues.
InLimbo was the created and printed at the Metropolitan Remand Centre at Long Bay. It had only run for a couple issues before I took over as editor. Eventually I got transferred to the CIP [Central Industrial Prison at Long Bay]. Ken Horton was the Superintendent there, and probably the only decent Superintendent in the history of the New South Wales prison system at the time. I told him I wanted to start a magazine, and he said “InLimbo’s the only magazine that’s ever achieved anything at the MRC, so you can give it a try.” And so then I created Rogues.
Ken Horton wrote the introduction for the first issue of Rogues. Was content censored initially?
No. I made content in the magazines political whenever I got the opportunity. But if it was censored, I would not have printed it. I would have just fucking torn it up. I told Horton I wasn’t going to be censored. Free speech is legal. I’m lucky because I’ve had a lot of connections in the media over the years so we got lots of media coverage over both magazines, but I always said that if you try to censor me, when the media hear about it they will blow it completely up. The media supported me a lot.
How many copies were made?
Over 1000. They went to all cells in Long Bay, and to different jails in NSW. We also sent issues to politicians. The Prime Minister and the leader of the Opposition and different government bodies were sent them as well, because I wanted people outside to understand what was going on. It was the only voice from inside prison. And prisoners need a voice, because otherwise people don’t know what’s going on inside.
The leader of the Greens was a big supporter of the magazine, and so were some judges. Kep Enderby QC was a big supporter, so I sent him the magazine. I also deliberately sent it to judges who didn’t like me or the magazine, just to stir them up.
When did the trouble first start?
I put a dog in the witness box on the second cover. I did it in support of my friend Tom Domican, regarding a case he was involved in. The cover caused a whole lot of stir.
There was also an article in the magazine titled ‘In The Wild’, which was a satirical article about a type of animal called ‘mongrelous humananus caninious’, which was clearly aimed at informants, or ‘dogs’. What happened after the cover and article came out?
Michael Yabsley, the Minister for Corrections at the time, had us banned. Ken Horton actually stuck up for us and ended up getting a lot of shit from Yabsley. We took the case to the NSW Ombudsman.
I got the original report from the Ombudsman. They found that the decision to confiscate the second issue was justified, but the decision to ban future issues of the magazine, and also to ban InLimbo at the same time, was unreasonable. They also said the decision to transfer you to Goulburn after Rogues was banned was unreasonable.
What happened after the Ombudsman came out in support of you?
Nothing. Yabsley ignored the Ombudsman and continued to ban the magazine. After it was shut down, I started producing the magazine without approval. I still wrote it on the sly. I’d give the articles to a bloke in another slot, because my slot was always getting raided, and I’d send it out in legal mail to my lawyer, Daniel Brezniak, who was very supportive of us. Then my wife at the time, Renate, and a friend, Cass Chidiac, put it together as best they could.
The first two issues of Rogues were printed at the CIP. After the ban it was printed outside with funding from my lawyer. Brett Collins from Justice Action printed copies as well.
I just wanted prisoners to have a voice. I’ve always liked the battle for the little guy. If we can fight to get things better for us, we need to. When I was in prison in Western Australia, we had to fight to get rid of the shit buckets in cells and replace them with toilets, and to get hot water in the jails. I was put in solitary for six months in WA for making things difficult by fighting for better rights. If you were fighting for better rights in NSW though, they just shanghaied us from jail to jail, which made life really difficult.
Do you think you were sent to other prisons deliberately to make it difficult for you to keep producing Rogues underground?
Yeah, I was sent to Parklea, then Goulburn, Bathurst, Silverwater and Parramatta. It made it hard to keep editing a magazine, especially if you’re trying to write things then smuggle them out. I then had to get other people to send it to my lawyer as legal mail couldn’t be opened, but my mail was getting shredded half the time. I was released from prison in 1991 though, and that was the end of the magazine.
There wasn’t anyone willing to take it over?
No. After what Yabsley did, everybody sort of went to water on it, they were too afraid to take it on. The screws and welfare didn’t want to know anything about it because they always thought they were going to lose their jobs.
In Rogues underground, you wrote an open letter to Yabsley criticising him for cutting funding to a bus service run by the Community Restorative Centre that provided transport for families to visit prisons. I’ve also read that he banned educational materials in prisons.
Yabsley even banned Vegemite, because he thought we we’re going to turn it into home brew. He banned fresh fruit for a period of time as well. He just went completely ridiculous. One of the ideas he had was to transfer prisoners in containers. So when you got sentenced, you’d be put in a movable container cell, and that was going to be his answer to overcrowding. So if you got transferred, for example out of Long Bay, they’d just pick you up while you were in your container and fucking off you went. That never eventuated, but it was one of his ideas, and it was just fucking stupid. I think he was just a rich boy who got given a portfolio and it went to his head. He got power, and he realised all of a sudden that he could be in the papers every day if he kept being outrageous. I think his ego just got completely out of control. Even the staff hated him.
When I was in custody, I kept asking if there had ever been a prison magazine. Nobody could remember one, because there hadn’t been one in so long.
The population of prison has changed. Every ten years or so there’s a new wave of crims coming through and people forget the past. My glory days in the prisons were in the 70s, 80s and 90s. But now pretty much no one cares, no one gives a fuck. But that’s life with everything.
People over the years, like myself, like you and others, we have tried to get magazines out, and then as soon as it becomes too powerful or too embarrassing for the system, they crush it because they’re afraid of it. Because it gets a voice. Rogues and InLimbo had so much publicity, and that’s what the government and departments are afraid of.
We’ve both done something to help improve the system, we’ve done something for our fellow inmates and we’ve been creative, which is always good because my motto in jail and all the time I’ve done since I was a kid is “Don’t you work for time. Let time work for you.”
People often ask me what prison was like and I tell them that there were two really depressing things. Firstly, we were hardly given anything constructive to do. But the other thing I found depressing was that even if there were good, meaningful programs, half the people in there wouldn’t do them anyway.
Yeah, because it’s just easier not to do anything. I don’t regard a lot of people in prisons as crims. I was a professional criminal, we lived by crime, but a lot of them are just in jail because of drugs and they don’t give a fuck. But you’ve got to make time work for you. If you don’t do something positive, you’ll just come out of jail like, “Woe is me, what am I going to do? How am I going to survive?” You’ve got to get off your ass and fucking do something. Be positive. You know, even though it’s hard, sometimes you get knocked down, the screws can fucking beat you, you can get locked up, but you’ve got to come out and say, “I’m not going to let them beat me, I’m going to do something.” You’ve just got to keep going and find a way, which for me is writing.
What are you writing now?
I’ve released two books this year. The Matilda Man, which my mother started writing as a screenplay many years ago. I’ve turned it into a novel. The other is a children’s book called The Adventures of Milo and Clyde. I’ve written a play, The Last Hours of Morant and Handcock, and I’ve done a couple other stories that haven’t been published yet. But I’m leaving the autobiographies to guys like John Killick and Graham ‘Abo’ Henry.
