Wednesday, 4 February 2026

 Mathew HILAKARI (Point Cook) (10:15): I align myself with the words of the member for Preston in recognising Tim Picton and his family earlier in his members statement. I rise to speak on the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee’s inquiry into fraud and corruption control in local government, a follow-up of two Auditor-General reports. I know listeners will be very keen to understand what those Auditor-General reports were. They were of course audit report 40, Fraud and Corruption Control – Local Government of 2019, and audit report 316, Fraud Control Over Local Government Grants in 2022. You will be glad to hear that of those reports, even though they were limited in their scope on the number of councils that they looked at, those recommendations have in the main been undertaken and completed by councils. But that is limited to those councils that were looked at in these Auditor-General reports, not the broader local government sector, which is the guts of the report that we have delivered.

I would like to acknowledge the chair of the committee, Sarah Connolly, the member for Laverton. We appreciate all the work that you do.

A member interjected.

Mathew HILAKARI: I will make sure, Deputy Speaker, that I do use titles as appropriate in this place. That is why I acknowledge Nicholas McGowan, the deputy chair from the other place, member for the North-Eastern Metropolitan Region. One thing: I did see Mr McGowan this morning in Queen’s Hall, and I did note that I have always appreciated his good humour, candour and engagement on this committee, which is something that I hope all deputy chairs aspire to on their committees as well.

The chair provided a terrific foreword to this report, and I would like to quote from it. This report had 31 recommendations and 58 findings; there was a lot of meat in this report. The chair said:

Fraud and corruption controls are the quiet machinery of integrity. When controls are weak, allowing fraud and corruption to occur, the consequences reach far beyond Council offices; they erode public confidence, weaken financial management, and diminish the standing of local government itself.

I think that encapsulates it very well, so I thank the chair for providing those very starting words, because we all know how important local government is. We all know how difficult it is when local government goes wrong and how much our communities feel it, because local government is so close to people and the services that they need on a regular basis. As I said earlier, on the 2019 and 2022 reports by the Auditor-General, we found that the implementation had been successful of these reports – limited in scope and number of councils as they were. Those audits at the time, however, had identified serious weaknesses in oversight, transparency and prevention of fraud and corruption at the local government level. That is a sector issue, which has been dealt with by some in the sector but not the sector as a whole.

During the hearings themselves one thing that we noted of significance was the real challenges of rural and regional councils in delivering the protections that the community deserves and the ratepayers deserve, and this is a systemic barrier. It is something for all of us in this place to consider, that the size of councils has prevented them from doing some of the work that they need to do in preventing fraud and corruption. We did hear, from a number of CEOs of those people who assisted councils with those protections, that there was a challenge in both providing those services in the time that they had on any given day but also in getting the quality staff that they needed, particularly in rural and regional areas, those staff with the skills and the training and the aptitude to provide the services to those councils where, in the main, councils are working very hard to achieve these outcomes and to protect the finances of the community.

A reoccurring theme in the inquiry, as the chair noted, was the need for stronger coordination, leadership and legislative compliance. That is a challenge to this place, that the legislative compliance was not always up to date and in line with the legislation passed here, and it is something that we need to be mindful of going forward in the legislation that we implement but also how we seek to ensure that it is complied with. I am running out of time, but this is, as I said, a lengthy report with 31 recommendations and 58 findings. I look forward to going into more depth on a future occasion.