Only one side of politics is pledging to improve state’s political integrity

Voters who spoke to The Age for our Victoria’s Agenda project were loud and clear: they want a government that leads with integrity and a political system that prioritises transparency and accountability. Since the last federal election, when teal candidates barnstormed into Canberra, governments who ignore integrity as a high-priority issue will do so at their peril.

Victorians have good reason to consider this a matter of great importance. Since the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) was established by then-Liberal premier Ted Baillieu in 2012, it has had a steady diet of corruption allegations to investigate. Many have involved the public sector and police, but too often they have entrapped political figures.

Labor needs to do better in boosting the powers and funding the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission.Credit:The Age

IBAC has now questioned Premier Daniel Andrews four times over allegations including industrial-scale branch stacking by former Labor MP Adem Somyurek, dealings with the state’s firefighters’ union, allegedly corrupt suburban land deals at Casey Council and an inquiry into funds awarded to a Labor-linked unionin the dying days of the last term of parliament.

Incredibly, considering Victorians are only days away from an election, the findings of only one of those investigations has been made public.

Opposition Leader Matthew Guy has had his fair share of entanglements too. As planning minister, he was the subject of a series of scandals and, on a now infamous occasion, he stayed at a dinner and ate lobster with an alleged mafia boss.

After spending months talking up the need for higher standards in integrity, Guy has more recently refused to explain the actions of his former chief of staff, Mitch Catlin, who had asked a billionaire Liberal donor to pay more than $100,000 to his private marketing business (a plan that was ultimately not carried out). Last week, the Victorian Electoral Commission felt impelled to hand over its investigation to IBAC due to stalling by the Liberal Party, and the party’s immediate response was a legal letter demanding it “cease and desist”, accusing the commission of interference in the election. It does not speak well for Guy’s commitment to transparency.

The Age has repeatedly made the case that more needs to be done to bolster the state’s watchdogs. Several agencies – including IBAC, the ombudsman, the Parliamentary Budget Office and the Inspector-General for Emergency Management – have said they need more funding that is independent of the whims of politicians. The outgoing head of IBAC, Robert Redlich, has argued the integrity watchdog needs stronger powers – more public hearings, the ability to call out “grey corruption”. We back those calls.

The Coalition has committed to topping up IBAC’s budget by $10 million a year and the Ombudsman’s by $2 million, to hand over greater powers to IBAC to conduct more public hearings, and give a bipartisan parliamentary committee control over agencies’ funding. The Age supports these policies.

As for Labor, after a report from Victoria’s integrity watchdogs delivered a damning assessment of the party’s culture, outlining a “catalogue of unethical and inappropriate behaviour”, including misuse of public resources and ongoing corruption risks, Labor committed to a new parliamentary integrity commissioner to investigate complaints about MPs’ misconduct, a bipartisan parliamentary ethics committee and a ban on MPs employing close family members.

This, though, goes to the crux of the problem for Andrews. While he did ramp up IBAC’s powers when he first came into office, in recent years he has allowed Victoria, as IBAC and the Ombudsman declared recently, to become a “laggard rather than a leader in parliamentary integrity”.

Tackled on the issue in this week’s leaders’ debate, Andrews responded by saying he would see what proposals the integrity agencies advanced, then assert the right of the executive to approve or deny their requests.

The Age has serious misgivings about Guy’s record in government and his approach to the integrity issues he’s been confronted with. But taken at face value, his party’s policy platform for enhancing the state’s anti-corruption watchdogs is the more convincing of those advanced by the two parties.

Michael Bachelard sends an exclusive newsletter to subscribers each week. Sign up to receive his Note from the Editor.

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