FDS Insight Newsletter Oct-Dec 2020

19 Michael Coutts-Trotter’s journey from drug smuggler to head of the justice system Michael Koziol, Sydney Morning Herald (2/8/20) e is one of the most senior bureaucrats in NSW, in charge of the state’s court system and prisons. He’s married to Tanya Plibersek, one of Labor’s most prominent and powerful figures. He is also a convicted heroin smuggler. Justice Department secretary Michael Coutts-Trotter’s story is a rare account of rehabilitation and absolution in Australian public life, a journey he lays bare in a podcast released today. Michael Coutts-Trotter feels ‘deep regret’ that his past is still hung around his wife Tanya Plibersek’s neck as a criticism. Credit: Steven Siewert ‘For me, it was just the experience of being overwhelmed by opiates, by heroin,’ he says of his 17-year-old self injecting the drug in Sydney in the 1980s. ‘From the first moment I tried heroin, I became obsessed with using as much of it as I could.’ Mr Coutts-Trotter detailed his story to the program Bounce Back, a podcast series sponsored by DrinkWise. He also speaks about the impact his past still has on Ms Plibersek as she pursues her political career. ‘I really feel deep regret that my life and my history is too often hung around my wife’s neck by people who use it as some kind of criticism of her – that there’s something morally broken about her for her to choose to be with me,’ he says. ‘Which I just think is a) hurtful and b) probably a credit to her – if that’s the only point of criticism, well, she must be as brilliant as I think she is. But it just does seem wearing and unfair that she gets tagged with it 36 years after the event.’ An only child, Mr Coutts-Trotter moved to Australia with his parents at age 11. His British father died of cancer just months after their arrival. Though he had a privileged education at St Ignatius College Riverview, ‘I didn’t handle the uprooting and moving across the world, combined with the loss of my dad’. He started drinking at about 12, and by 17 he was addicted to heroin. He presents the events in his life as an explanation for his actions, not an excuse. ‘So many people experience changes in their lives that are much, much harder than that, much more brutal, and are resilient and make their way through it without self-medication,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t one of them. I was a person who H