Need for a Victorian anti-corruption commission

Hansard: 19 September 2007 ASSEMBLY

Mr CLARK (Box Hill) — When I was a member of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee (PAEC) before it was destroyed by the man who is now Premier and turned into a rubber stamp under the chairmanship of the member for Burwood, who was his parliamentary secretary, we used to receive deputations and delegations from other commonwealth public accounts and estimates committees.

Ms Green interjected.

Mr CLARK — Their first question on many occasions, as the member for Yan Yean should well remember, was about how we tackled corruption in this state.

We used to reply that corruption was not a top priority and was not a major issue in the committee’s deliberations. We told them that if instances of corruption came to our attention, there were channels through which we could refer them. But I am starting to fear that the sorts of responses we gave were rather too glib and too self-confident.

Around the world corruption is probably the single greatest cause of human poverty. There is a well-established aspirational slogan which says ‘Make poverty history’. The best way to make poverty history is to make corruption history, and bodies such as Transparency International are growing in stature as they focus on such matters. We can be very smug in this country and say that we do not have anywhere near the problems that emerging democracies and other countries in various parts of the world are facing. That is true, but we must always remember not only that it has been a long and arduous process to get to where we in established Westminster democracies now are but also that what we have achieved can quickly be eroded.

One only needs to read documents such as the diaries of Samuel Pepys to see how just a few hundred years ago in England public officials like Pepys made no secret of the commissions and other payments they received for the issuing of public contracts.

If you look back through history, you find the instituting of parliamentary commissions of inquiry, the establishment of auditors-general, the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms and the establishment of an impartial and independent public service. You not only see how all those institutions have been built up over the years, you also recognise how careful you have to be to make sure that all the benefits we have enjoyed are not eroded.

In addressing the issue of corruption we need to recognise that there can be personal corruption in the sense of people being on the take for personal aggrandisement. There can also be institutional corruption where people, for their own organisational ends, subvert the institutions for which they have responsibility. That is a problem not just for the police force but beyond, in other aspects of the public sector. Of course it can be very much a slippery slope which starts with one departure from high standards and ends up much further down the track.

It can start with the belief that the end justifies the means — that to ensure a crook is jailed and justice is dispensed to them may involve taking a few shortcuts.

That can lead to a view that you need to protect your mates against outsiders or protect any exposure to shortcuts that they may have taken, which can lead to the view that you need to deal with anybody who dobs in someone who has not been fully complying with what is expected of them. It can lead on to a view that you can trade favours, trade information and trade intelligence with criminals, which of course happens in some instances properly in the course of police investigations in terms of garnering information, but it can very easily lead into something that is highly improper. So you can get a very slippery slope where one weakening leads to the next.

In particular, if you have a culture in which you feel that you need to protect your mates, it can lead to very bad results indeed, because it then leads to an institutional structure which does not expose very bad skulduggery and very bad malpractice.

As it happened I was approached, unsolicited, by a constituent just this weekend past, who told me he was a former police officer. He told of how he had reported someone who had been guilty of misappropriation within the police force and how other witnesses had lapses of memory in court. The case of the prosecution of the person he had reported was dismissed. He told how he had subsequently been harassed by other officers, with urine in his coffee and other maltreatment, and ended up leaving the police force. He also remarked to me that there were many instances where officers within the ethical standards division of the police force had their lives made a misery.

There is a really serious range of problems, and those problems are not just ones within the police force. There is corruption or the potential for corruption in a large swathe of the public sector. We have heard of serious allegations of corruption at local government level. There is the issue of what happened with Able Constructions early on in the term of this government, with phone calls being made from ministers’ offices. We have had subsequent phone calls to the police minister’s office, then calls made to the police force on the basis of that contact. There have been issues about the probity of public tendering processes, and of course we have had the secret deal with the police union. There is a wide range of issues that are a cause of real concern, and we just cannot afford to be complacent.

Some speakers on the government side appear to have misunderstood what we in the opposition are talking about.

We are talking about a standing commission along the lines of standing commissions in other states, and we are talking about having a strengthened Office of Police Integrity linked to that standing commission. When you look around other states of Australia you find that there are some common elements in the standing commissions that are being established. You find they have roles of exposure of corrupt conduct, prevention of corrupt conduct and education of the public and public officials about how to strengthen their institutional frameworks in order to avoid corruption and to establish a culture of exposing, reporting and dealing with corruption.

It is also interesting to note that in a speech given in November 2005 the head of the New South Wales ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption), talked about the importance of investigating probity around land-use planning in New South Wales. That is certainly an issue that needs attention here in Victoria as well, given the amounts of money that turn on zoning and other land-use decision making. That is what we believe is needed here in Victoria. It should be a body that is answerable to a parliamentary committee.

Again I refer to the work of the former Public Accounts and Estimates Committee and the report we delivered on independent officers of the Parliament and the need for them to have a working relationship with a parliamentary committee in the same way that the Auditor-General has a working relationship with the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee. The standing commission we are talking about would also have a similar working relationship with a parliamentary committee. The end result should be that an anticorruption commission should become part of the institutional structure of this state alongside other now well-established officers such as the Auditor-General, the Ombudsman and the Victorian Electoral Commissioner, and the accountability should be to the Parliament and certainly not to the executive.

We need to preserve what has been achieved in this nation and through the Westminster system over many hundreds of years of evolution. As I said at the outset, corruption is one of the single greatest causes of poverty and suffering around the world. We need to avoid any suggestion that we might be eroding the high standards that have been built up over many years. We need an anticorruption commission in Victoria so that Victorians can have confidence in a public sector and in public officials who are beyond reproach and deliver services with impartiality, with integrity and with honesty.