Amongst reporters who’ve been covering the Black Saturday Royal Commission from the start, Christine Nixon’s evidence to the inquiry was shocking – but not the outrage it has become.

The former police chief is perhaps the most powerful person to so far be called to account for her actions during Australia’s worst peacetime disaster. Her appearance at 222 Exhibition Street drew back a bevy of reporters from the commercial TV networks, most of whose newsrooms had long since lost interest in the inquiry’s painstaking daily machinations.

In giving evidence, Nixon joined the ranks of the other top emergency brass who’ve been made to squirm over their sins of mostly omission as the fires raged. She failed in the same places the fire chiefs had, in not checking the system was working as it should, particularly when it came to warning the community. She didn’t immediately request a briefing from her officers when she saw things were deteriorating, instead resorting to “looking over people’s shoulders”, overhearing snippets of conversation.

It was a passive, even meek, approach for the woman who was the state’s most senior law enforcer, who had, in her time, battled the formidable police union boss Paul Mullett and won.

“I didn’t need to waste their time by personally getting a detailed briefing,” she told the Commission. She was later briefed by both fire chiefs and her Assistant Commissioner Steve Fontana, as well as her Superintendent Rod Collins.

But where Christine Nixon got into real trouble was not in what she did in the coordination centres. It was that she went home minutes after being told lives would be lost in the escalating disaster. Make no mistake, Nixon was asked how she understood the situation at that time and she said, “We were facing a disaster.”

“I believed that as best I could I had understood the situation and that Assistant Commissioner Fontana and others were appropriately placed and I understood Deputy Commissioner Walshe would be arriving in the not too distant future,” she said.

“Would you be surprised if I suggested to you that some people might expect a little bit more than you assuming that people understand a situation? You are the chief commissioner of police?”

“I’m sure that some people would, but other people who have been involved and experienced in this situation would, I think, understand.”

Watching the former chief police commissioner give evidence was like seeing a car wreck happen in slow motion. This was Christine Nixon like you’d never seen her before, clearly rattled as she met her match in the form of the Commission’s caustic Counsel Assisting Rachel Doyle SC.

Before proceedings had begun, as the lawyers chattered and unpacked their weighty folders at the bar tables, Nixon had staked out her claim on the room, strolling down to the witness box and even venturing over to share a joke with journalists gathering at the back of the hearing room. But it was not the same person who left afterwards.

“It was all in the body language,” said one lawyer who was in the room.

“I’ve been doing this for years and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

In retrospect, Christine Nixon’s decision to go home has been all but impossible to justify. As 3AW’s Neil Mitchell delicately pointed out, even the “bloody media” knew enough to stay at work that day. Surely there’s no-one among us without regrets about how they handled Black Saturday. But when you’re the state’s police chief, leaving your post wouldn’t seem an option.

But this is not what sparked the furore.

Leaving work was one thing. It was when the Herald Sun got wind that Nixon had in fact gone out to dinner with friends that it became a massive frontpage affair. In her statement to the Commission she had said she had gone home, “had a meal”, and spent the evening monitoring the radio, internet and TV. In the witness box Nixon was asked directly, “Did you need to be somewhere that evening?”

“No,” she said.

Privy only to her evidence at the Commission ,The Age put the story on page three. It ran big, but not front page. And the headline related to Nixon assuming communities were being warned, not to her leaving her post. As the broadsheet was going to print, over at the Sun reporters were confronting Nixon’s advisers and threatening to publish regardless. Eventually Nixon “clarified” her movements. The sub-editors were tossing around headlines, and settled on “Out for Dinner”.

It was dynamite.

And once it exploded onto morning radio at 3AW, Neil Mitchell fanned the flames.

“Christine Nixon didn’t fiddle while Victoria burned, she went to dinner!”

He branded her decision to leave and go to dinner “extraordinary”, “mind-numbing” and “unforgiveable”. “She’s no leader,” Mitchell declared, calling for Nixon’s resignation from her current role as head of the Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority.

“I had to eat,” Nixon blundered in self-defence, and “I wasn’t supposed to be on duty.”

Over at the ABC, the questioning was more measured.

“Is the pressure that she’s under a little bit of a beat-up?” asked presenter Waleed Aly in his introduction.

“Does the fact she went out for dinner really matter?” But it was impossible to avoid deepening the hole.

“I simply had a meal,” Christine Nixon tried to explain, calling the Herald Sun’s coverage “over the top” and a “disgrace”.

“There was no celebration, there was no nothing else. I think this is just a way to attempt to undermine me to portray it in this fashion.”

Everyone’s a critic

Almost before Nixon had stepped out of the witness box her old foes were lining up.

The old enmity with Victoria’s Police Association stirred into life and the union’s press secretary courted journalists, eager to offer up secretary Greg Davies with ready comparisons to Nero. While calls to ABC talkback, at least, were mixed, there was strong criticism to be found in bushfire-affected communities, especially Marysville, where survivors have butted heads with a Reconstruction Authority they’ve long complained has nobbled their recovery with bureaucratic red tape and centralised control.

A Victorian Opposition until now reluctant to criticise the State Government, perhaps for fear of being seen to politicise the disaster, suddenly found its voice. Liberal leader Ted Baillieu declared Nixon’s position untenable.

And he was not alone. The Federal Member for McEwen, Fran Bailey, whose electorate encompasses the fire-ravaged towns, called Ms Nixon’s explanations a “pathetic excuse” and other federal politicians who’d never seen fit to comment on individual witnesses at the Royal Commission before, dived in.

Family First Senator Steve Fielding said Victorians were “enraged” and urged the Brumby Government to “have the guts” to sack Nixon. By Friday the former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett had weighed in, blasting Nixon for what he called “a failure to accept responsibility”. The Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott perhaps hit the nail on the head when he said, simply, it was “not a good look”.

The grabs were irresistible and the media lapped it up.

And there was an unsavoury relish in the attack, with cartoonists enjoying the moment and one newspaper reporter basing an entire article around Christine Nixon’s supposed preoccupation with feeding her face while all hell broke loose on Melbourne’s doorstep. As fire bore down and Victorians reached for their hoses, the article had Nixon “reaching for her fork”. The awful truth, perhaps, but still.

Commissioner Bernard Teague has previously thanked the media for its “sensitive” reporting of the inquiry’s proceedings – even when hauling Channel Nine before the inquiry in breach of a suppression order that had prohibited the naming of several child victims of the bushfires. But the last week has left at least one of those close to the process “appalled” at the unedifying feeding frenzy on Christine Nixon, fuelled at its worst by cheap shots referencing her weight as if it were somehow indicative of slothfulness, rather than real analysis of the role she played and the effect it had.

Nixon has admitted she made mistakes, not just in leaving the coordination centre but in failing to check on the warnings issued by the fire agencies. She told the Commission the atmosphere inside the coordination centre was intense, but said, “It isn’t an excuse, there should have been a follow-up, and I should have done it.”

In many ways the former police chief’s candour was refreshing. Such direct accountability for things that went wrong has been rare in the witness box. Remember, for instance, the reluctance of the fire chief Russell Rees to even use the word “failure” because, as he put it, “people were trying”.

There’s no getting away from the fact that Christine Nixon was the coordinator of the state’s emergency response plan, or DISPLAN on February 7. But what hasn’t received much airplay is that she had formally delegated all those powers to her Deputy Commissioner Kieran Walshe. She didn’t simply leave a vacuum behind her – there was a system in place. Walshe’s evidence has been that he was not on duty but on standby, and came in to the IECC about 7:00pm to deal with the media. Indeed it was Deputy Commissioner Walshe who appeared on TV that night, breaking the first news of deaths.

What’s also not usually emphasised is that the role of Victoria Police when it came to warnings was to check on them, not give them. Given the fire chiefs themselves, and all their deputies, failed to pick up the fact that those warnings were hopelessly late, lost and sometimes non-existent, you could say Christine Nixon’s chances of detecting the problem were fairly slim. Or were they? Perhaps someone with exactly her remove was in a perfect position to notice things others were too close to see?

Regardless, the fury unleashed on Christine Nixon seems out of proportion to her failings in the scheme of a disastrous day, particularly when compared to the mistakes made by others. Russell Rees is the obvious example. The CFA fire chief was the man at the helm of the firefight. He’s admitted he made no use of predictive maps that accurately forecast where the fires would go, even though fire prediction experts were sitting in his own building. His 2IC said neither man personally took any “proactive steps” to check Kinglake was warned. Rees described a management role that put him at arm’s length to most of the operational decision-making, adopting instead a “strategic” focus. In his own defence, Rees – and his deputies – made the same point that Nixon has – they trusted those below them were doing their jobs properly.

If the complaint is that she misled the Commission, here too things are less than clear. Nixon always said she had “had a meal”, she just didn’t specify where she ate it. But there is no lie in the evidence itself.

“In terms of your capacity to monitor the situation,” inquired Counsel Assisting Rachel Doyle SC, “is it something that you devoted the whole evening to or were you otherwise engaged and just checking on websites or emails?”

“No, I had a meal and then I went backwards and forwards,” came the answer.

“I was obviously listening to the radio, the ABC Radio as the broadcaster, I was aware of that, and watching television and also obviously, as it says there, other sources as well.”

What’s good for the goose

Most striking of all is the Premier’s response to all this.

When the fire chief was put under scrutiny and found wanting, John Brumby had nothing but praise and told Victorians they “couldn’t have expected more” from the fire leadership. The CFA renewed Russell Rees’ contract putting him squarely in charge for yet another fire season and the Premier endorsed the appointment, posing alongside him for the cameras.

Back then even the United Firefighters Union’s querulous Peter Marshall refrained from criticising Rees publicly, calculating there were bigger fish to fry in the form of a government that he believed had chronically underfunded the fire services. Even after the criticisms had crystallised into a damning interim report that said Rees had made no use of fire prediction expertise to the point where it was “difficult to understand how … (he)… could properly carry out a strategic statewide coordination”, John Brumby was unwavering.

The criticisms were only “preliminary observations” he said, and government lawyers continued to argue against them becoming anything more, saying the final report should contain no adverse findings against individuals or even mention individuals “in a negative context”.

But when it came to Christine Nixon, John Brumby wasn’t so steadfast. On the day the controversy erupted, he called a press conference where he repeatedly said she had made an “error of judgment” in leaving her post on Black Saturday. He said he hadn’t been aware of her whereabouts. While criticising Nixon, he did support her as head of the Reconstruction Authority, speaking of her empathy, hard work and compassion. But it was far from the ringing endorsement Rees had garnered.

Why John Brumby chose to back the fire chief 100 per cent but hang the police chief at least partially out to dry could have something to do with it now being an election year. Brumby told reporters he watched closely what Christine Nixon told the Commission and what she said in the media. He couldn’t fail to also notice the apparently intense community reaction, fanned by incendiary headlines and commentators baying for blood.

The failings of the fire chief and those around him had been undeniable, but the fire chief and his deputies preferred to point to the nebulous “system” and speak of “learnings”.

“Everyone tried their best” was the refrain. It’s a claim that wasn’t available to Christine Nixon once she walked out that door. After so much spin and downright complicated material brought before the Commission, the symbolism and the simplicity of the Nixon story cut through and connected – with reporters, members of the public and politicians. As one Commission insider put it, whatever you might think of the competence of the fire leadership, they never walked away.

Watching the fray from a vantage point six months out from the Victorian election, John Brumby no doubt made some shrewd calculations, coming up with considerably fewer than six degrees of separation between himself and the floundering Nixon.

While she had been in charge of the state’s emergency response plan on Black Saturday, the coordinator-in-chief was the Emergency Services Minister Bob Cameron. Perhaps the Premier figured the rage that’d been directed at Nixon ran deep enough to connect sooner or later with his Government. He had appointed Nixon to lead the recovery effort and couldn’t readily admit that had been a mistake, but at the same time he had to distance himself.

Real questions

What’s been lost in the hysteria is another, as yet unexplained, discrepancy in Christine Nixon’s evidence.

She may have chosen her words carefully when talking about her “meal”, but the former police chief flat changed her story when it came to whether or not she had spoken to the Minister as disaster unfolded on Black Saturday.

At the very start of her appearance at the inquiry, Nixon made a curious amendment to the statement she’d originally supplied. Her initial statement said, “I had a conversation with Mr Cameron at the Integrated Emergency Coordination Centre”.

It is routine for witnesses to fix typos or make minor corrections when asked in the witness box to formally attest to the truth and accuracy of their written statements. But Nixon’s changes completely reversed this aspect of her account, now asserting she had never spoken to the Minister, never seen him at the IECC. Rather she said she had asked her Assistant Commissioner Emergency Management and Counter-terrorism, Stephen Fontana, to brief Cameron at 5.40pm.

The change happened quickly enough to escape the notice of many reporters, who were still settling down for the day’s evidence and hadn’t seen the initial statement. Usually the first few minutes of evidence were nothing special.

But Counsel Assisting the Commission Rachel Doyle SC made several sideways references to the changed account as she went on to examine the former police chief. The upshot was that Nixon’s evidence now is she never spoke to Minister Cameron on Black Saturday, neither in person nor over the phone.

It seems odd that this is something you would forget or confuse, speaking to the Minister. But Nixon says she kept no log and hadn’t been sure about it.

Nixon: “It seemed to me that I knew he was advised and I assumed it must have been because he was there and I made inquiries to confirm that he wasn’t in fact there until some time after that.”

Doyle: “Inquiries with him or inquiries with Assistant Commissioner Fontana?”

Nixon: “Inquiries through Assistant Commissioner Fontana.”

Doyle: “Why didn’t you stay to brief the Minister or go with Assistant Commissioner Fontana to brief the Minister?”

Nixon: “I believed that the Minister would get the information off Assistant Commissioner Fontana. I believed also that the Minister was being briefed by a whole range of other people as he had been in normal practice otherwise.”

Doyle: “I just wonder then why you didn’t stay or search the Minister out and even sit in on the Minister, even if Assistant Commissioner Fontana did all the talking. Why would you not do that?”

Nixon: “It was a practice that I believed he would get the information and he and I often spoke on phones at various times in different cases. If he wanted to, he would call me up, or I would call him up. In this case I felt that was an appropriate response.”

Doyle: “But throughout the day of the 7th you didn’t call him?”

Nixon: “No.”

Doyle: “He didn’t call you?”

Nixon: “No.”

Doyle: “He was in Bendigo for most of the day?”

Nixon: “Right.”

Where Nixon had developed “a practice” of not keeping notes, apparently throughout her entire time as chief commissioner, the Commission heard her Assistant Commissioner Fontana was an assiduous, if sometimes illegible, note-taker. His log duly refers to the fact he briefed the Minister at 5:40pm. But it says nothing of the content of that briefing.

The haziness here prompted this exchange between Doyle and Nixon:

Doyle: “Did Assistant Commissioner Fontana tell you afterwards what he had told the Minister?”

Nixon: “No, but I understood that he would convey to him the current situation.”

Doyle: “You see, Assistant Commissioner Fontana’s log book just says ‘Briefed Minister Cameron at 5:40′, no content?”

Nixon: “Yes.”

Doyle: “You weren’t there?”

Nixon: “No.”

Doyle: “At this stage, short of asking the Minister, we don’t know what he was told, or Mr Fontana?”

Nixon: “I think it is reasonable to make an assumption that he was told there were serious fires.”

It was one of the prickliest moments in four hours of examination when Rachel Doyle then needled, “Sometimes assumptions aren’t correct, though?”

“I understand that,” bristled Nixon.

What is known is that, according to Nixon, it was her advice from the fire chiefs that lives would likely be lost, which caused her to conclude, “…we needed to speak to the Minister.”

“Who needed to speak to the Minister?” clarified Doyle.

“That’s when I asked the Assistant Commissioner to brief him because he had been involved in the briefings, the SEST briefings that had gone on, and I felt he had the detail and was able to inform the Minister.”

Emergency Services Commissioner Bruce Esplin was also present in the IECC when Nixon was there, but she told the inquiry she didn’t speak to him. She assumed he had spoken to the Minister, because, she said, “…that’s been the practice in previous occasions”. Esplin’s evidence is that he recalled speaking to the Minister a number of times during the day and sometime in the early evening he rang Bob Cameron, saying “It would be important for you to come down to the IECC,” and that the Minister then arrived.

Bob Cameron has so far flown under the radar as failure upon failure has been exposed at the Royal Commission. He was on leave as the former police chief was scheduled to give evidence, evidence that has now drawn so much venom. While Nixon has copped flak for knocking off in the early evening, Cameron didn’t arrive at the coordination centre until even later, having spent the day in country Victoria.

The Victorian Opposition has said it’s the Minister and the Premier who now need to be called before the inquiry to explain their movements on a day they had warned would be the worst the state had ever faced. John Brumby has said he will appear if asked.

The Commission’s legal team is taking one step at a time.

Assistant Commissioner Fontana will take the witness box on Wednesday. Known as a hard-working straight-shooter, his evidence could be revealing. He will be able to answer the questions Christine Nixon couldn’t about what the Minister was told and how Bob Cameron reacted – as Coordinator-in-Chief, after all.

Christine Nixon will also now make a second appearance, one that appears to have been brought on by the discrepancy between what she told the Commission on Tuesday about “going home” and what she subsequently told the media about “going out to dinner”. But where her new evidence could lead is anyone’s guess.

This story has some way yet to unravel.

Christine Nixon may or may not keep her current job. She may or may not remain the highest profile leader to be called to account.