Wednesday, 2 August 2023

Integrity and Oversight Committee

The Independent Performance Audits of the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission and the Victorian Inspectorate

Chris CREWTHER (Mornington) (10:28): Today I rise again to speak on committee reports, and I would particularly like to home in again on The Independent Performance Audits of the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission and the Victorian Inspectorate. I would particularly like to focus on the minority report prepared by the deputy chair, the member for Sandringham, and the member for Rowville.

The minority report discusses significant challenges throughout the performance audit processes: the performance auditors’ inability to do what both the law and the committee required and that the legislative framework underpinning the performance audit process is simply inadequate. A particularly salient topic of discussion in the minority report was the conduct of the Labor chair of the audit subcommittee in writing to the auditor expressing the committee’s clear directions to Callida. The full email was attached to the report at appendix A. It essentially directed the independent performance auditor to remove any references to the Andrews government underfunding or under-resourcing IBAC. My colleagues the members for Sandringham and Rowville noted in the report:

This email from the Chair of the Subcommittee demonstrates the level of direct engagement and assistance – one may even assert ‘interference’ – in order to arrive at the final reports. It also further demonstrates Callida’s inability to undertake the performance audit themselves.

The minority report concludes that:

… due principally to the misrepresentations of the auditor’s capacity to undertake this audit, their final reports contained in the Majority Report are not independent …

and also discusses concerns about the quality of work undertaken by the auditor. The auditors’ plans were said to be well short of the committee’s expectations. At the conclusion of the audits the auditors themselves acknowledged that they were ineffective and unable to undertake the audits to an acceptable standard. The report summarises that absolute independence cannot be ensured for the audit under the current system. The minority report by the member for Sandringham and the member for Rowville is not asking for wide-sweeping legislative changes but calls for further clarity and allowing for an audit to function as it normally would.

This comes after the 2023–24 budget allocated IBAC less money than the corruption watchdog spent in the last year. While IBAC received a $300,000 year-on-year funding increase in the budget, it only received $62.2 million in funding despite the anti-corruption agency actually spending $62.9 million in the last financial year. IBAC is not the only target under this Andrews Labor government; it seems that it is integrity agencies across all of this Parliament, from the Parliamentary Budget Office to the Auditor-General, the Victorian Inspectorate and the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner. The Auditor-General’s funding has fallen from $33.7 million to $29.8 million, OVIC from $21.1 million to $20.1 million and the PBO from $3.9 million to $3.4 million. This quite literally is a starvation of these independent agencies’ integrity functions – a coordinated campaign by this government to hide the truth from Victorians.

I want to take some time also to reflect on some concerns raised by the former anti-corruption chief of Victoria Robert Redlich prior to the 2022 Victorian state election. Essentially he cited a disturbing trend of soft corruption at a national level but particularly in Victoria. He named his concerns as the centralisation of power, the growth in influence of ministerial advisers and the reduction in the level of responsibility of individual ministers.

Now, consider the fact that the Andrews government has been scrutinised in five IBAC reports in 12 months, each time with no adverse findings towards the Premier, where there is a rotten culture of corruption and secrecy involved in decisions made on behalf of Victorians day in and day out. The fabric of democracy is fragile because its survival is dependent on the will of the public. The moment public trust begins to erode, when citizens become scared of their government’s ability to tell the truth and their ability to govern, it can go rapidly. While it may seem like hyperbole, we must have the utmost respect for our democracy and its various wings. Time and time again overt and callous disregard for our democracy has come to categorise this Andrews Labor government.