‘A pox on all of them’: Former IBAC chief slams major parties over integrity

Former IBAC commissioner Robert Redlich has taken aim at both major parties in Victoria for failing to put much-needed integrity reforms ahead of their own political interests.

As Premier Jacinta Allan was pressed in parliament over her decision to shelve long-awaited changes to IBAC’s powers until after the November state election, Redlich questioned the government’s delay and why Opposition Leader Jess Wilson opposed the most important reform: broadening the definition of corrupt conduct, which underpins IBAC’s work.

“Unfortunately, everything I saw in my period as commissioner points me in the same direction,” Redlich told The Age on Tuesday. “The enemy of integrity is party self-interest, protecting the party, advancing the party system.

“This is not an anti-Labor thing – it’s a pox on all of them.”

The government’s announcement this week that it would wait until the second half of next year to legislate to give IBAC follow-the-dollar powers, greater use of public hearings and, potentially, a more workable definition of corrupt conduct, was lambasted by the opposition as gaslighting and a sham.

But Allan in turn seized on Wilson’s admission during an interview on ABC Radio that she did not support changing the definition of corrupt conduct.

“In order for IBAC to have ... the most wide-ranging reforms since IBAC has been created, you have to look at expanding the definition of criminal conduct in order for those follow-the-money powers to be implemented effectively, something the leader of the Liberal Party does not support,” Allan told parliament.

IBAC can only investigate corrupt conduct that constitutes a relevant criminal offence. The National Anti Corruption Commission’s broader definition, which the federal Coalition supported, includes any serious or systemic behaviour that breaches the public trust.

Redlich agreed that, unless IBAC’s definition was changed and its jurisdiction increased to cover what he calls grey corruption, follow-the-dollar powers would make little difference.

IBAC’s inaugural chairman Stephen O’Bryan expressed his disappointment that both these reforms, which he and other integrity experts have called for since the early years of IBAC, were not already in place.

O’Bryan described the current requirement for IBAC to reasonably suspect a prescribed criminal offence has been committed before it investigates as the “most significant barrier” it faces to investigate public-sector entities other than Victoria Police.

“As early as April 2014, just 12 months into full operation, IBAC tabled a special report to parliament identifying key changes needed to strengthen its legislative framework and improve its ability to prevent and expose public sector corruption,” he told this masthead.

“That position was set out clearly in 2014 and has been consistently maintained by IBAC since; in its subsequent annual reports, in submissions to its parliamentary oversight committee, to responsible ministers, and to those conducting government reviews into its jurisdiction. Twelve years on, this fundamental obstacle remains, with no real clarity as to whether and when it will be removed.

“Among its clearest messages was a call to lower the threshold for investigations into suspected serious misconduct and corruption in the public sector.”

O’Bryan said the case for IBAC to have follow-the-dollar powers was plainly made in the agency’s 2015-16 annual report and had “only become more pressing” as successive governments outsourced more publicly funded projects to private companies and subcontractors.

“Without these two reforms, IBAC cannot do its job fully to prevent and expose corruption in the Victorian public sector,” he said. “That after more than a decade of clear and consistent, evidence-based calls for reform, action in the form of legislative reform has not already been taken is very disappointing and continues to leave Victoria’s public sector, and the public funds that support it, unnecessarily vulnerable to corruption.”

When the parliament’s integrity and oversight committee last year tabled a report into IBAC’s legislative framework, its first recommendation was to broaden the definition of corrupt conduct. The Victorian government in its formal response, tabled in parliament this week, gave in-principle support and committed to “consider legislative options”.

The political impetus for the government to belatedly embrace IBAC reform has been the fallout from the Building Bad scandal – union cronyism and criminal infiltration of publicly funded major infrastructure projects, which corruption-busting barrister Geoffrey Watson, SC, estimates has cost Victorian taxpayers $15 billion.

Shortly after an investigation by The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review and 60 Minutes exposed its first revelations about the involvement of bikie gangs and gangland figures on government projects, Allan referred the matter to IBAC, only to be told the agency had no jurisdiction to investigate.

Redlich said that on reflection, IBAC could have used its existing powers to investigate some of the allegations but it would take more to uncover the culture and practices within government departments and authorities that enabled the Building Bad scandal.

“It’s what the royal commission needs to look at,” he said. “It is only by looking at the grey corruption that you start to understand the practices that evolved, how these corrupt practices became so ingrained, how the CFMEU came to have such a stranglehold on the workplace.

“Public officers who are placing money in the hands of the contractors – what are they doing to discharge their responsibilities in a context where they must know what is going on? They have looked the other way, and a critical check and balance has failed.”

The opposition has pledged to establish a royal commission into the Building Bad scandal if elected. The government denies one is needed.

Redlich served as IBAC commissioner between 2018 and 2022 and said that during that time, the agency was not made aware of allegations of corruption on Big Build sites. He said a good case study of IBAC’s limitations was Operation Daintree, an investigation in which then-premier Daniel Andrews was privately examined under oath about political pressure put on public servants to award a particular union a lucrative training contract.

“Daintree is a glaring example of how we could have conducted the hearing in public,” Redlich said.

“All of that would have been out there in the open, there would have been nowhere for the ministers, for the ministerial advisers, and the senior public servants to go. It would have been there in the public domain.”

Andrews dismissed the Daintree findings as “educational”.

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