Wednesday, 30 July 2025

Integrity and Oversight Committee

Performance of the Victorian Integrity Agencies 2022/23

Tim READ (Brunswick) (10:20): Today I will address the Integrity and Oversight Committee’s recently tabled report, Performance of the Victorian Integrity Agencies 2022/23. A number of recommendations in the report concern the funding of integrity agencies. Recommendation 8, for example, calls for the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner to be funded in a similar way to IBAC, Integrity Oversight Victoria and the Ombudsman, whereas in the same inquiry the Ombudsman explained to the committee that her office had taken on some new functions, such as conciliation, while still dealing with 18,000 complaints in a year, without a commensurate increase in funding. She also detailed the problems created by parliamentary referrals for inquiries, which require them to hire additional staff for the inquiry. This is funded by ad hoc Treasurer’s advances, but hiring and training capable staff for episodic inquiries is difficult and disruptive. Recommendation 11 encourages the government to have another look at a joint report by the Ombudsman, IBAC and the Auditor-General that calls for an independent funding mechanism for these agencies. All governments should understand that they will not be in power forever, and at some future time they or their successors will wish we had powerful, well-funded, independent integrity agencies.

Let us look at budgetary independence in a bit more detail. At present the Treasurer decides the funding level for integrity agencies like IBAC and the Ombudsman. These agencies investigate complaints about the government and its departments, but they rely on the same government for funding, which sets up a conflict of interest that operates in both directions: an agency may not want to upset its funder, the government, and a government angered, for example, by an integrity agency may be less generous with funding. That is why the Auditor-General, the Ombudsman and IBAC jointly called in 2022 for an independent body to make funding decisions, in a similar manner to the determination of MPs’ salaries. If the government does not feel like doing that, at least it could publish each agency’s budget bid along with the final amount funded, allowing public scrutiny, as has been recently legislated in New South Wales. The New South Wales Treasurer must write to the head of each integrity agency and the relevant oversight committee with the amount to be appropriated for that agency. The oversight committee reviews the funding and reports back to Parliament. Integrity agencies are excluded from any demands for efficiency dividends, and there is a unit within Treasury that liaises with the agencies. To remove the obvious conflicts of interest, Victoria should set up an independent funding mechanism or at the very least adopt the New South Wales system. Well-funded, independent integrity agencies are an investment towards ensuring fair, efficient and transparent governments in the future.

I would like to thank my fellow committee members for their help in this inquiry, and I would like to acknowledge the hard work of the secretariat. I would like to thank the integrity agencies, who ensured our questions on notice were answered and who attended the public hearings. I would particularly like to single out Dr Stephen James, senior research officer of the Integrity and Oversight Committee, who will finish work on Friday when he retires. He has been with the committee and its predecessor, the IBAC committee, for nine years and is regarded as an authority on the legislation governing our work and the integrity agencies. Committee members past and present have been very grateful for his advice. Stephen’s contributions have shaped the IOC’s reports and recommendations and will be a permanent record of his scholarship and service to the Victorian public.