Victoria to get ICAC as Premier backflips: will SA follow suit?

I've been on a brief visit to Melbourne. Yesterday morning I was pleasantly surprised to see the story about Premier Brumby's "backflip" on the front page of The Age


Just six months out from the state poll, the Premier has dumped his staunch opposition to a commission and will install an anti-corruption system with sweeping powers to investigate police, members of parliament, public servants and judges.

But the new Victorian Integrity and Anti-Corruption Commission will hold most of its hearings in private and the new integrity system will curtail the powers of the Ombudsman.

Mr Brumby has long argued independent corruption commissions were a ''lawyers' picnic'' but yesterday said an integrity review by former senior public servant Elizabeth Proust calling for a commission had changed his mind.

The obvious question for South Australia is: will the Premier follow suit? As the last Rann man standing so it's hard to see him holding out for much longer.

"Private matter" all above board?

From The Sunday Mail/Adelaide Now

Former Liberal Premier Dean Brown has been paid more than $800,000 for advice to the State Government on how to tackle the state's crippling drought.

The figure is more than double the amount that Deputy Premier and Treasurer Kevin Foley publicly stated last year.

The Sunday Mail has learned Mr Brown has received more than $800,000 over the past three years, working as chief strategist co-ordinating statewide responses to the drought and lobbying on behalf of communities along the River Murray.

Acting Premier Paul Holloway did not deny the $800,000 figure this week, but Mr Brown said he didn't think it was accurate.

A spokesman for Mr Foley said Mr Brown - who was appointed Special Adviser on Drought to Premier Mike Rann in October 2007 - had been paid by three government departments, but he refused to name them. In December, in his role as Acting Premier, Mr Foley approved a new $130 million copper-gold mine at Kanmantoo, in the Adelaide Hills, to be operated by Hillgrove Resources Ltd - a company chaired by Mr Brown.

The mining project was opposed by the operators of fertiliser company Neutrog, who feared their Kanmantoo plant would have to close because of the mine's impact.

Mr Holloway defended employing Mr Brown, saying this week that the Government's remuneration package with the former premier was a "private matter" and would not be released without Mr Brown's consent.

On tonight's Channel Nine TV news I heard Mr Brown describe himself as a "public servant". If that is correct shouldn't his remuneration package, like those of other public servants, be disclosed?

Mr Holloway (apart from having a name redolent of a minor Dickens character) looks and sounds out of his depth on TV, though in this matter he's more the messenger/monkey than the organ grinder. Definitely not Premier material though.

Ministerial accountability?

Today Michael Owen in The Advertiser/Adelaide Now reports on some discrepancies between a state government minister's statements and official records:

Families Minister Jennifer Rankine, under fire for using a consultant to help with her new portfolio, had 19 full-time personal staff to assist her, a government document shows

This is despite official 2008-09 Budget papers for Ministerial Office Resources stating Ms Rankine had 10 full-time equivalent staff, with a budget of $1.26 million.

A confidential government document obtained by the Opposition under Freedom of Information laws reveals Ms Rankine actually had 19 full-time personal staff. Among those listed as working in her office are a chief of staff, three ministerial officers, a media adviser, five ministerial liaison officers, and seven administrative staff.

Consultant Margaret Wagstaff completed a four-month contract, worth $80,000, in the minister's office on December 11.

Liberal Upper House MP Rob Lucas yesterday said Ms Rankine was either "extraordinarily wasteful of taxpayers' money or needs a lot of help".

"Minister Rankine should now explain why she has claimed to have only 10 FTE staff when in reality she has almost double that number," Mr Lucas, who obtained the FoI document, said.

"It is incomprehensible that a minister with so many personal staff to help her to be a minister should then have to spend $80,000 of taxpayers' money on a consultant to help her."

Ms Wagstaff is the partner of Philip Bentley, a long-time friend of Premier Mike Rann. Together they receive about $100,000 a year of taxpayers' money for government board and committee appointments. Ms Wagstaff last week was appointed to yet another committee position by the Premier, as chair of the Boundary Adjustment Facilitation Panel, for two years. She will be paid $190 a meeting.

A spokesman for Ms Rankine yesterday said she has 17 staff, including a trainee, for five portfolios, including the new Northern Suburbs portfolio.

Ms Wagstaff could not be contacted for comment.

The consultant story was first reported earlier this month .

All above board? These kind of matters often appear to be swept under the carpet here. Raising the issue again on Christmas Eve will restrict public discussion.

More allegations of corruption and intimidation

"Standover" is the page one headline on Miles Kemp's report in today's Advertiser

ADELAIDE'S crime gangs are using personal information leaked from the public service to harass people involved in court trials and their families.Acting Deputy Commissioner of Police Tony Harrison said it had been difficult to prosecute gang members because victims, witnesses or their family members had been the subject of intimidation or threats of violence.
Mr Harrison, who recently briefed MPs on the issue, said the gangs avoided prosecution by using tactics that included:
A CODE of silence among members;
INTIMIDATION and violence;
INSULATION of principal players in a crime;
CORRUPTION of the justicesystem;
EXPLOITATION of the operations of the justice system.
Notes from the briefing have been obtained by The Advertiser.
Mr Harrison said the corruption referred to were instances where department records had been accessed.
He said gangs in the past had gained access to personal records of people kept by government department databases through an intermediary person who may have been a friend or relative.

.....

Mr Harrison said police needed measures contained in the anti-gang Bill passed last night by the Upper House of Parliament, which would provide greater protection for people prosecuting serious organised crime, for example, "avoiding the stalking or intimidating of judicial officers or witnesses involved in prosecuting serious organised crime".
Mr Harrison said it was now "very, very difficult" to take gang extortion matters to trial because of intimidation.
"Invariably, somebody receives a threat . . . and invariably they decide not to proceed," he said.
Opposition legal affairs spokeswoman Isobel Redmond said the Opposition was strongly supportive of the Bill, which she said would make threats or reprisals against those involved in criminal investigations and proceedings punishable by up to seven years' jail.
But she said Mr Harrison's comments also showed the need for an independent commission against corruption in South Australia.
A spokesman for Attorney-General Michael Atkinson said the issues raised by Mr Harrison were being dealt with by legislation that had passed through parliament, was going through parliament, or being developed as part of the Government's criminal justice reforms.

For more on the legislation which has just been passed see here and here.

The shootings in the city at the weekend and other events indicate that matters are getting out of hand so I intend to refrain from comment for the time being to give the laws a chance to take effect, though IMO there are some interesting comments on the ABC News story (the second of the two links above).

A-G pooh-poohs call for SA anti-corruption commission

In this week's Independent Weekly Hendrik Gout reports that SA Attorney-General Michael Atkinson has brushed aside the call made by Peter Beattie (about which I posted recently) for an independent anti-corruption body in SA.

"There is no need to set up a separate body," Mr Atkinson's spokesman said. "There's no suggestion that there's any corruption in South Australia. No corruption has been uncovered."

He said SA had sufficient existing bodies to investigate allegations of corruption, including police, the police complaints authority, and the auditor-general.

"The public interest is better served by the anti-corruption functions not being monopolised," Mr Atkinson said. "If a local complainant is not satisfied with one agency's response, he can hawk it to another."

If this is so, can the Attorney say why the recently retired SA Auditor - General and a now retired federal MHR from his own Labor party have both supported the establishment of an anti-corruption body?

The Attorney also couldn't say when (or even if) SA would have a register of lobbyists along the lines proposed by Prime Minister Rudd:

Mr Atkinson could not say when SA would have a register of lobbyists. "Earlier in the year I asked the legislation and legal policy section of the Attorney-General's department to study regulation of lobbyists in other States and countries," Mr Atkinson told The Independent Weekly. "(This) section is nearing completion of that investigation.

"It is not possible to definitively place a time-frame on the measures until we have seen the implementation of these proposals at a federal level and see how they work in practice."

Another voice in support of anti-corruption commissions

In The Weekend Australian Peter Beattie the former Premier of Queensland has come out urging each state which doesn't yet have one to establish a crime and misconduct commission.

The Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission caused me, as premier, enormous political pain and, more than any other organisation, put my government at risk on several occasions. CMC investigations or inquiries caused me to lose a deputy premier and two members of state parliament, while one former minister went to jail, another is facing court and a couple of other ministers lost their portfolios. Since its inception in 1990, this standing royal commission has pursued crooked police officers, dishonest politicians and public officials.

.....

The CMC emerged from the Fitzgerald inquiry into corruption in Queensland which ran between 1987 and 1989. In May 1987 the then Queensland National Party government headed by Joh Bjelke-Petersen was forced by public and media pressure to set up a commission of inquiry into possible misconduct and illegal activities by police.

.....

Without the Fitzgerald report, this independent, standing royal commission would never have been created. Unlike politicians, commissioner Tony Fitzgerald QC did not depend on favourable media coverage for re-election, and the inquiry's public hearings and subsequent recommendations changed Queensland forever. Cleverly, he recommended that this independent watchdog be accountable, through an all-party committee, to the parliament, not to the executive government.

This safeguards the commission's independence. The executive is responsible only for the commission's budget, but this too is carefully watched by the estimates committee process and the parliament through the committee.

So, why am I consistently on the public record as one of the CMC's strongest supporters, and why did I, as premier, refer many of the matters to the CMC that subsequently caused me such pain? The answer is simple. Queensland needed, and indeed all states need, a watchdog beyond government control to maintain honesty and integrity in public administration.

NSW and Western Australia have similar powerful watchdogs. Even though in Queensland the CMC came about only as a result of the Fitzgerald inquiry, eventually other states, such as Victoria, will have to follow suit.

For politicians, these independent bodies are a political nightmare, but for public administration they act like a truth serum.

History has shown that a cosy link between politicians and corrupt police leads to corruption. Police power needs checks and balances. Internal police processes are not enough. There has to be external review, with the protection of the parliament.

More to the point, the public must be empowered to take allegations to an independent body to have their concerns fairly and properly investigated without the dead hand of political intervention from executive government to protect politicians, police or local government from the consequences of their misdeeds.

Here in South Australia Mr Rann and his government have consistently pooh-poohed the suggestion that we need a CMC or something like it. They believe that a combination of the Auditor- General and the police are sufficient to ensure to manage the kind of risks Mr Beattie outlines.

It must be said that there's not a lot of public interest in the matter, and the media attention has been limited: in July an editorial in The Advertiser/Adelaide Now supported the idea, but since then the paper/website have, as far as I can tell, been silent apart from publishing a couple of reader-generated comments on other stories.

If you want an example of a matter which a CMC could investigate here look at this . Unfortunately the Independent Weekly's website doesn't have the full story which it printed in last week's issue but if you read what's there you should be able to get an idea of what I'm talking about.

Update later 9 December

The Sunday Age refers to the story (which it describes as emanating from "a weekend newspaper"), and adds a terse comment :

Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu and the Victoria Police Association have now called for a commission. Premier John Brumby refused to comment yesterday, but last month described a commission as a "waste of taxpayers' money".

So far nothing from the News Ltd media here.

More good arguments for anti-corruption commissions

An editorial in today's Australian "Opposing the obvious" makes its point trenchantly:

If the first sign a premier has been in office too long is a statement that independent oversight of the government is unnecessary, it is time for Labor MPs in South Australia to start thinking about a successor for Mike Rann. Last week, Mr Rann suggested South Australia does not need an independent corruption commission because in other states such agencies spend a lot of money on lawyers. At best, this unforced error means Mr Rann is so unconcerned by what voters think that he now says the first thing that comes into his head.

At worst, it demonstrates that he is comfortable in power and so convinced of the probity of his ministers and mandarins that he genuinely does not see the need for independent investigators, including lawyers whose job it is to ask politicians and public servants hard questions.

But whatever Mr Rann thinks, from the wretched regime of Joh Bjelke-Petersen in Queensland a generation ago to the recent influence-peddling of Brian Burke in Western Australia, the evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of well-resourced corruption commissions. Certainly such agencies are a pain in the neck for ministers who have no case to answer. In NSW a few years back, Craig Knowles was hauled before the Independent Commission Against Corruption as part of a complex inquiry taht took a great deal of time and cost him political capital before finding him innocent of any wrongdoing. His boss, premier Bob Carr, got into strife with ICAC for saying he thought his minister had received a rough go.

Set against such irritations are the achievements of corruption commissions around the country. ICAC and the similar agency that oversees the police help keep corruption in NSW under control. In 1987, the Fitzgerald inquiry in Queensland began the process that saw four state ministers go to prison and unmasked the police commissioner as a crook. Some 20 years later we have seen three ministers in Western Australia resign over their relationships with Mr Burke.

Perhaps Mr Rann can explain what it is about Adelaide that makes politicians and public servants so pure there is no need for a corruption commission there. And perhaps John Brumby, the new premier of Victoria, who agrees with Mr Rann, can do the same, although evidence of police corruption in his state will make it a tough task.

Unless they are game to claim all is pure on their patches, both men must provide a sensible answer to a simple question: if they will not establish anti-corruption agencies, why not?