Source : the age
One of the final acts of the Victorian parliament will be to give the state’s anti-corruption watchdog greater scope to hold public hearings and a broader remit to investigate misconduct after the government agreed to consider further changes to its proposed reforms.
Premier Ben Carroll’s office confirmed on Monday the government is likely to support amendments to its Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission reform bill currently before the upper house.
The changes would remove a long-standing “exceptional circumstances” test for IBAC to examine witnesses in public, and give the commission a broader working definition of corruption to define its jurisdiction and follow-the-money powers – reforms that were pushed for by integrity experts and championed by late Greens MP Tim Read.
A major sticking point is whether a public interest immunity provision, which enables current and former government ministers to hide behind cabinet confidentiality, should be scrubbed from the IBAC Act.
The opposition said it wanted to remove the provision so that former Labor premiers Daniel Andrews and Jacinta Allan could be compelled to appear before IBAC and answer questions about their knowledge of corruption on Big Build sites.
Shadow attorney-general James Newbury said that the government’s reform bill, as it is currently drafted, would prevent IBAC from applying its new jurisdiction and powers to matters it has already dealt with. He previously described the carve-out as a “shameful con”.
After the government opened the door to supporting the balance of his suggested changes to the bill on Monday, Newbury struck a more conciliatory tone.
“After claiming the bill doesn’t need fixing, Labor has conceded to the Coalition’s calls that it needs strengthening, which will include tougher retrospectivity,” he said.
“But one big sticking point is our calls to stop Daniel Andrews and Jacinta Allan from using privilege as a way to not cooperate with IBAC or the royal commission.”
Another point of contention is the government’s unwillingness to contemplate changes to how IBAC is funded. The Greens, Transparency International Australia, the Centre for Public Integrity and former IBAC commissioner Robert Redlich have all called for IBAC’s budget to be set by the parliament rather than cabinet.
However, sources from the government, the opposition and the Greens all speaking confidentially to discuss ongoing negotiations freely, expressed confidence that an agreement on the bill would be reached before the end of this week.
“We are diligently working through the proposed amendments with the parliament and discussions are ongoing,” a government spokesperson said.
“We are committed to passing a robust bill that gives IBAC the powers it needs.”
As parliament sits for its final sitting week before the November 28 state election, the lower house will suspend all government business on Tuesday to hear tributes to Read, who died on Saturday after battling an aggressive form of skin cancer.
A former GP first elected to the seat of Brunswick in 2018, Read used his final contribution to parliament on July 30 to urge Carroll to expand IBAC’s jurisdiction to enable it to investigate matters beyond conduct that would constitute an indictable criminal offence.
The upper house will also hear condolence motions for Read and sit for one hour to resume debate on the proposed changes to IBAC.
The Integrity Oversight Committee of parliament, which Read chaired, recommended the government broaden IBAC’s investigative powers and jurisdiction, which are the most limited of any comparable anti-corruption agency in Australia.
On the day he replaced Allan as premier, Carroll committed to legislating the most pressing of these changes in this term of parliament.
The government said it was open to accepting three changes suggested by the Liberal Party, which together would give IBAC greater flexibility to hold public hearings, fewer “natural justice” requirements to satisfy before it makes public its reports, and no restriction on the matters it can use its new powers to investigate.
The government is adamant that while IBAC should be able to hold more hearings in public, there needs to be a public-interest test to help balance the need for general deterrence against the reputational damage public hearings can cause to witnesses.
Former local government councillor Clifton Wong, a witness who appeared before the NSW ICAC in 2022, was found dead from suspected suicide two days after he testified.
“We don’t want a NSW situation where everything is public,” a government source said. “There still needs to be some discretion.”
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Chip Le Grand leads our state politics reporting team. He previously served as the paper’s chief reporter and is a journalist of 30 years’ experience.Connect via email.
