Wednesday, 18 February 2026

 Mathew HILAKARI (Point Cook) (10:16): I rise to speak on the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee’s Fraud and Corruption Control in Local Government: A Follow up of Two Auditor-General Reports. This is the second time I have spoken on this report, and I am so proud to do so, because it is a substantial and weighty report which has a series of recommendations, 31 in fact, and 58 findings.

One of the things that has happened since the time that I last spoke on this report is unfortunately the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee has lost its deputy chair. The member for South-West Coast had three months of service as the deputy chair on the committee, and her presence was very hard to miss at all points on the committee. We do have the opportunity, however, to welcome the member for Hawthorn as the new deputy chair, and we hope to look forward to such long service as well for the member for Hawthorn. I do want to acknowledge that this report actually featured neither of those deputy chairs, unfortunately. I did acknowledge the previous deputy chair Nicholas McGowan. I think that is three in about 3½ months. I saw Nick McGowan last night, and we had a good discussion. We did not cross this too much in fact. I would say that there have been some steadying hands on this committee, including Jade Benham, the member for Mildura, and member for North-Eastern Metropolitan Region Mr Welch from the other place. You will get your chance to be deputy chair at some point as well, so I look forward to that.

Steve McGhie: They turn them over.

Mathew HILAKARI: I will take your interjection, member for Melton. They do turn over leadership positions, and we have seen a few of them in this place and up in Canberra recently as well.

As I said, there were 31 recommendations and 58 findings. I did talk about some of them last time I was in this place, and you will remember well particularly the discussions around regional and rural councils. We have 79 councils across this state, and those councils in particular identified – those regional and rural councils, those smaller councils – the real challenges with dealing with corruption and fraud control within local government. They had some real challenges particularly around finding the right personnel – because it comes with a particular skill set – and providing the training to those in local government. Particularly when we have a large turnover of members of local government, providing that training is incredibly important.

I will take us to recommendation 2, which is that:

Local Government Victoria update the Guidance on the mandatory training for Mayors, Deputy Mayors and Councillors to make the learning domain on ‘Preventing fraud and corruption’ a mandatory part of Councillor induction training.

I think this is one of those recommendations that would strike us as just absolutely normal, something that we would have thought would be part of the systems already at all councils. Not all councils have been providing prevention of fraud and corruption training as part of their induction of new councillors, and new councillors do have a really significant role to play in the building of infrastructure and in making decisions about who runs that local infrastructure. I know in the community that I represent the very first basketball court, a single basketball court only, was opened in Point Cook, and a community group is running that at the moment. Making sure that fraud and corruption control is at the heart of the decision-making of local councillors, particularly where there is a conflict of interest that may be at stake – it is really important that that is part of the mandatory training. This is a really strong recommendation about how people can just better understand their obligations to the community, because it is ratepayer funds. Everything that councils do is related back to ratepayer funds and should always be in the interest of the communities that councils represent.

Recommendation 3 is:

Local Government Victoria should consult with sector stakeholders to facilitate a more streamlined approach to the provision of training on fraud and corruption prevention and awareness that:

•   avoids duplication of effort –

if we can do this across one government body rather than 79, that is an important way that we can save money for all ratepayers across our community –

•   optimises cost efficiency for council

•   ensures a minimum standard of quality –

and I would always like to see that as the maximum standard of quality, not the minimum standard of quality –

•   is scalable across the various council contexts –

for example, if you are one of the very small councils, you may have different requirements and those councils that spend, in a literal sense, hundreds of millions of dollars every year – I will come back to this. (Time expired)