The Law and Justice Institute of Queensland president has called on Queenslanders to “judge those who are ignorant of history” and call on the government to keep the Crime and Misconduct Commission independent.

Nearly 1000 people had signed a petition set up by barrister Peter Callaghan on Change.org in five days.

Mr Callaghan said many LJI members “were working in and around the legal system during the 1987 – 1989 Fitzgerald Inquiry” and living through it was akin to “watching a patient convulse as a toxin was expelled from their system”.

“It was horrifying to discover the extent of the sickness, and harrowing to endure the process by which it was purged,” he said in the petition, adding that the need for an independent crime watchdog “is greater now than it was in 1989”.

“We might still be concerned about a bottle of Scotch, an illegal brothel, or a bribe that can fit in a paper bag. But we do not have to look far south in order to contemplate the sorts of things that might be the subject of a corruption inquiry in the future. Like a coalmine.