Source : the age
In the handful of sitting days left in the life of this state parliament, there is an opportunity to do something good that should have been done a long time ago.
It is an opportunity made possible by an alignment of political interests as rare as a solar eclipse. Miss it and we won’t see another one for years.
I’m talking about finally giving Victoria’s anti-corruption body, IBAC, the power it needs to do its job.
There is government legislation before parliament that almost gets us there, but not quite.
If passed, it will get rid of one of the great piss-takes of the Baillieu government and scrap the absurdly narrow definition of corrupt conduct that has prevented IBAC since its first day of operation in 2013 from investigating any allegations which fall short of an indictable criminal offence.
Australia’s leading integrity experts shake their heads whenever they are reminded of this straightjacket on IBAC’s work. It is the reason Victoria has the least effective anti-corruption agency of any state.
The government legislation would also give IBAC “follow the dollar” powers to investigate any businesses in receipt of public money. If applied to allegations of corruption across the Big Build, this would bring all those sub-contractors and labour hire companies set up by crooks and bikies into IBAC’s orbit.
These are changes Premier Ben Carroll is committed to making and the opposition and Greens support.
But if these are all the only changes to IBAC that we get from this round of reforms, the parliament will have failed the state. Again.
The missing piece here, the other fundamental flaw in IBAC’s design, is the heavy thumb on the scales against holding public hearings – arguably the most potent weapon any anti-corruption body has to deter politicians and public servants from doing the wrong thing.
IBAC has only been able to examine witnesses in public if it can show exceptional circumstances. In 2019, one of the first acts of the re-elected Andrews government was to add a swag of conditions and caveats which, in effect, prioritise the reputation of would-be witnesses above public scrutiny and accountability.
Since those changes came into effect on January 1, 2020, IBAC has conducted between 30 and 50 investigations a year but only four investigations in total have involved public hearings. IBAC’s most important work, including examining former premier Daniel Andrews under oath in four separate anti-corruption investigations, has been kept from public view.
This is where an unlikely planetary alignment in Spring Street offers rare opportunity.
The Coalition has circulated amendments that would remove the exceptional circumstances requirement for public hearings. The Greens support this change and will introduce amendments of their own once the legislation reaches the upper house.
The opposition and Greens are also comparing notes on a separate provision within the legislation that would prevent IBAC from using its new jurisdiction and powers on matters it has previously considered.
No one wants IBAC to spend the next five years re-litigating matters they have already looked at but equally, no one trusts the Labor government to set limits on what IBAC can and can’t investigate, particularly when it comes to corruption on Big Build sites.
Premier Carroll, having staked his leadership on restoring integrity to government, is in no position to play hardball on this.
If the Greens and Coalition team up in the upper house as expected to further enhance IBAC’s reach and powers, Carroll and his government will not want to be seen to be blocking changes that IBAC itself has asked for.
A long, frustrating stint in opposition has convinced the Liberal and National parties that Victoria needs a proper, anti-corruption watchdog in the yard. The prospect of spending the next four years on the opposition benches will tempt Carroll to let IBAC off the leash.
Carroll says he is open to giving IBAC greater capacity to hold public hearings but wants to hold off until next year pending expert advice. A promise to do anything after a state election shaping as the most volatile in recent living memory, is little more than aspiration.
The time to sort this out is now. If Carroll wants to be taken seriously on integrity, he cannot defer an important reform of IBAC to the next parliament, when One Nation will hold the balance of power in one house and possibly, both.
In Victoria, integrity reform usually happens when a government is trying to avoid something else.
The forerunner to IBAC, the Office of Police Integrity, was established by the Bracks government more than 20 years ago to stop calls for a royal commission into links between police corruption and the gangland war.
IBAC was established by the Baillieu government because it wanted to get rid of the OPI and needed to replace it with something more benign.
Former premier Jacinta Allan promised to bolster IBAC’s powers and broaden its jurisdiction in a fruitless bid to stop calls for a royal commission into Big Build corruption.
Premier Carroll established a royal commission and promised to bring forward some of the IBAC reforms to stop the political bleeding and give Labor some hope of clinging to power.
Through all this, IBAC commissioners, organisations such as the Centre for Public Integrity, Transparency International and Accountability Round Table have bent ears and banged keyboards about how best to fix IBAC.
When Carroll stood to introduce his IBAC legislation this week, he was armed with a note-to-self reminding him that parliamentarians are temporary custodians of our public institutions.
“Healthy democracies rely on principles of stewardship,” the handwritten note read. “Public office is sacred.”
In the short time this parliament has left, he should give Victoria the IBAC it needed from the start.
Chip Le Grand is state political editor.
The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.
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.
