Wednesday, 3 May 2023

Government integrity

Brad BATTIN (Berwick) (17:01): A definition of the Labor Party that could well and truly be added onto that is ‘corruption, crooks, crime, theft’ – the list goes on, and it does not even have to be us saying it. You can go on about what we are saying, but you have got to listen to the reports from those people that you have signed contracts with and put in place to uphold integrity here in this state. The Ombudsman on more than one occasion has had to come out and slam this government for behaviours that are inappropriate and would not be accepted in our community.

Listening to the contribution then from the member for Mordialloc, it highlighted one thing. When he said ‘Stop talking about 2014’, it is evidence of something I have been saying for a long time: the standard you walk past is the one you accept. And it is continuous – the Labor Party walk past this and start to see that the corruption and culture is now spreading not just within themselves but throughout the entire public sector. And how does it get into the public sector? It gets there because Daniel Andrews has appointed 90 of his own staff from his office to senior roles in the public sector. That is how you spread corruption. That is how you keep control. That is how you ensure that you can control everything that is happening throughout the entire system. A lot of it would be people who would not, should not and could not get a role like that ever but then have to do what they are told by the Premier to ensure that they can keep the pay cheque that is well and truly above their pay grade.

The Ombudsman slammed the Premier’s response to the damning IBAC report. When Daniel Andrews came out and said that Operation Daintree was an ‘educational report’, they came out and stated clearly that this was not an educational report, it was a damning report into the government on how they dealt with the Health Workers Union and had given funds to them before the last election. At the same time the Health Workers Union were making donations – sizeable donations – to the Labor Party. The question has to be: was that money from part of the grants that went through? It is a question that fairly should be raised, investigated and found out: what was the level of corruption that was involved in those deals?

Again, the member for Mordialloc is not going to like this part when we go back to 2014 and we talk about the red shirts rorts. The red shirts rorts I will continue to talk about because it absolutely makes me irate that anyone, including Victoria Police, could turn around and say that someone signing a document which allows a person to get paid to not do their job is not obtaining financial advantage by deception. To prove obtaining financial advantage by deception, you have got to prove the identity of the person, you have got to prove they dishonestly appropriated – that is pretty obvious; they signed documents. Some of them signed it without even knowing who they were signing for. They signed those documents. There has to be a financial exchange, and someone ended up with a financial advantage at the time. This went through the process of the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman referred it on to IBAC. It went through the Victoria Police. At the time no Labor person other than the Premier, who said they were going to all comply with this, said that they would comply with the full investigation. The Premier of this state said everyone should comply with that investigation and no-one did. It made it more and more difficult, and they intervened and stopped that investigation going through.

Then when it came out later on you had more whistleblowers come out, and before the 2022 state election you had a whistleblower come out with more evidence saying people needed to be interviewed, people needed to make sure that they were put on record – go through emails, look at some of the police data, look at some of the issues of who was investigating and how it happened. At the time – it is on record – that it was decided by the Office of Public Prosecutions to not proceed, who was the solicitor for public prosecutions at the time? John Cain Jr. John Cain Jr was there. It also went through to Victoria Police, and Shane Patton came out and went on record and said that there would be no further investigation from Victoria Police. It had been referred to the north-west metro region assistant commissioner, who had made a recommendation to not proceed with any more charges and not proceed with an investigation. Now, it will not surprise people – but it worries me, because I am a former police officer and I would hate the fact that there would be corruption in Victoria Police – but the assistant commissioner at the time who recommended that was Brett Curran. Brett Curran used to be the chief of staff in the Premier’s office and is now in Victoria Police. I cannot fathom that he did not step back from this at all and say, ‘I will have nothing to do with it.’ I cannot understand how Victoria Police can continue to come out and state that there is nothing to see here. A constable walking out of the academy tomorrow, I guarantee, could look at this investigation, look at the evidence, and people would be charged. There is nothing surer in my life. A constable who is just graduating could find this evidence and ensure someone is charged. Yet in Victoria we just walk past it, and we cannot continue to walk past this kind of behaviour. It is just simply not on.

As I have said continuously, and I will say again, we cannot continue to misuse people’s money, Victorians’ money, and expect them to believe that there is no corruption happening here in this state. In the time I have been here I would have to say this is one of the worst lots of corruption I have seen in this place – again, washed under the carpet: if anyone in this place makes a mistake on any of their finances, there is a 25 per cent penalty. Why? Because we had a Speaker and a Deputy Speaker whose corrupt behaviour stole money from this government, stole money from the taxpaying people. It was $113,000 to Don Nardella as the Deputy Speaker at the time, who was claiming to live in a caravan down in Ocean Grove – claiming to live in a caravan. He was not representing an area down there; he was representing Melton. So not only was he admitting that he would prefer to live in a caravan in Ocean Grove than live with the people he was supposed to represent, he was charging them an extra $113,000 on top of his wage for the privilege that they did not have to have him there. He was not even living in Melton. This man did everything he could. He got every rule in the book and broke them. And what was the outcome? What was the answer from the Premier? Apart from defending him for a long period time, when he eventually could no longer defend the indefensible, he sent him up to the backbench and he said, ‘You’re a naughty boy and we’re going to make you pay some of it back. But you don’t have to pay it all back straightaway – we don’t want to send you broke or anything. We’ll let you pay it off over time with zero penalty.’ Zero penalty. How can you reward corrupt behaviour like that and expect people to think there is not corruption in this state?

The Speaker took nearly $40,000. The corruption in that role – the person who is supposed to uphold the rights of this place, uphold the standards in this place, was the one that was breaching them and stole nearly $40,000. And do you know what frustrates me? It is after, when he turns around and he says, ‘I have a mental health issue.’ You stole money. Your problem was you got caught. The problem was not before, the problem was the day you got caught. And no person in Labor, Liberals, Nationals, independents or Greens can defend the behaviour of those two. No-one. Yet they both left this place quite happy with their lifetime pensions. They are still getting fully supported. They are still getting paid as much as probably us in here because they were in executive roles. Where is the fairness for all Victorians that the two people that stole $150,000-plus through corrupt behaviour, that Labor Speaker and Deputy Speaker, are not held to account? It simply does not make sense.

That is why Operation Daintree is so damning, and it is not an ‘educational report’. Operation Daintree highlights issues, major issues, within the government. It highlights them. You are calling it an educational report because it is the easiest way to push under the carpet the issues that you are continuing to have within government. Continually as these issues come up, the easiest way to solve them is to deny them and tell the community, ‘We’re going to do the right thing, and then we’ll bring in new penalties in the future.’

Then the newest one: grey corruption. What a crock! It is corruption or it is not. There is no grey corruption; it is corruption or it is not. Daintree highlights the fact of this so-called grey corruption. I think by admission that means there is corruption. Again, why isn’t this being investigated? Why is this not now going? Why isn’t IBAC following through on this? Why aren’t Victoria Police looking at some of the corruption allegations that are in there? I mean, it just does not make sense to me. I look out into the community and I hear some, and I know – we are not silly – that there are some conspiracy theorists out there that will come up with some wonderful things about what has or has not happened in government, but there has got to be a time when eventually the community turn around and say, ‘Why aren’t these people being investigated?’

I also want to go back to another one that I know, Operation Richmond. Operation Richmond is an investigation into dealings between the Victorian government, the Premier’s office, Peter Marshall and United Firefighters Union management. I think it is really important that we do highlight it is United Firefighters Union management, because there are a lot of United Firefighters Union members who do not trust Peter Marshall. There are plenty of them, because they have managed to speak to us a fair bit now. It is a huge concern that the Victorian government signed an enterprise bargaining agreement and signed away powers that you should never hand over to a union, and no-one knows what the impact of that is long term. Peter Marshall gets what he wants when he wants. People say, ‘What have they got over him? What is it?’ I do not believe Peter Marshall has got anything over Daniel Andrews. I think Daniel Andrews enjoys giving away to some of his mates the power that they can then use to the best of their ability to win him elections in the future.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Juliana Addison): Please refer to members by the correct titles rather than by their names.

Brad BATTIN: The Premier. So the Premier enjoys giving away to his mates the powers that were gifted to him by the Victorian people so they can use them for evil rather than good. Peter Marshall over his time and the union management over time, I do not think anyone can argue, have achieved some amazing outcomes in relation to safety. I do not think anyone could argue with that. But when they start putting in place things like ‘consult and agree’ and removing the power from management of the fire services, what do we end up with? We ended up with a fire chief who came over here from the United Kingdom who was absolutely outstanding in his role. Peter Marshall did not want him here, so he made sure that when they changed from CFA–MFB through to FRV he could no longer apply for a role that he already had in writing was going to be for five years. So the minister had said, ‘Here’s your contract. Five years. At one point in time you’re going to change to FRV. We’re going to make sure that you’re all good, no dramas at all.’ Peter Marshall said, ‘No, don’t like that. Consult and agree clause. We won’t be sticking with that one. Please move him on.’ And we lost a genuinely good fire chief.

Then we got Ken Block. I do not know Ken Block personally, but let me assure you, Ken Block was not here for the fire services. He was here because he was Peter Marshall’s mate. He was pushed into that role, and he came across from Canada. He has now gone home. He has obviously resigned or retired – and I know he has got family issues with his wife over there, so I am going to be a fair bit nice on it – but whilst he was here, let me assure you, Ken Block did nothing to stop the power that was there from Peter Marshall. He got out of the way to allow Peter Marshall to do what he wanted – and he hated it. He hated it. He hated the fact that he came here to run a fire service and he could not do it because he had no power, he had no authority.

That is what happens when you end up with corruption in the government services, and it starts from the top. You have got a Premier who simply does not care. He is so power driven – and I will go back to the member for Mordialloc, who I cannot believe defended him – he did everything he could to destroy one faction of the Labor Party so he could have absolute power in the Labor Party. And with absolute power not only is he destroying the Labor Party, the impact is across our entire state, and the costs are going to be horrendous. We see it in Big Build projects – cost blowouts. We see it in some of the prices it is now costing to run the fire services. We are seeing how much it costs – $5000 a day – to keep a kid in youth detention. Why? Because the costs are out of control because this government do not know how to control them because they are now absolutely out of control with the corruption they have started at the top.

Daniel Andrews – I do not care if he resigns, to be honest. I really could not care less. But what he does need to do is come out and admit that his corruption is the reason that Victoria is heading down the path it is heading, and it is not a good goal at the end that he is aiming for. We need to make sure these investigations take place, and the only outcome that will be a positive one is when someone on that side is eventually charged.