Wednesday, 18 March 2026

 Mathew HILAKARI (Point Cook) (10:39): You will be very pleased to hear that I am talking on the Fraud and Corruption Control in Local Government: A Follow up of Two Auditor‑General Reports report. This is my third crack at this one. There is lots to be said in this report, and I look forward to enlightening this house and this chamber a little bit more on a wonderful report that goes into one of those things that affects all of us, which is local government and making sure that they have the appropriate levels of accountability built into their systems.

Just before I get to that I do want to acknowledge the PAEC report previously on tobacco and vaping controls and the wonderful announcement from the Minister for Casino, Gaming and Liquor Regulation just this week around businesses and landlords being held responsible for selling illegal tobacco in their properties and also the ability to close down those sites that are selling illegal tobacco ‍– a real step forward, something that intersects with local government historically around their inspectors but is now being taken up by the state government inspectors, who have been doing a great deal of work, including seizing more than $5 million worth of illegal tobacco in their first month alone. So all strength to their arm, and these new laws will go some way to supporting the work that they do.

The fraud and corruption report that I speak to is a follow-up on VAGO’s report 40, Fraud and Corruption Control: Local Government of 2019, and the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office report ‍316, Fraud Control Over Local Government Grants of 2022, something that many members in this house will be very familiar with. I want to thank the other members on this committee: the member for Mildura; Michael Galea, member for South-Eastern Metropolitan Region; my chamber neighbour the member for Yan Yean; Aiv Puglielli, member for North-Eastern Metropolitan Region; the member for Clarinda, who I always welcome and thank for his contributions, particularly to this inquiry; and member for North-Eastern Metropolitan Richard Welch from the other place. I remind members here that there were 31 recommendations and 58 findings – real substance that the member for Clarinda and others put forward. I have acknowledged previously the chair and deputy chair as appropriate. The deputy chair made a contribution to this report in her three months as deputy chair of PAEC, and we hope that the new deputy chair the member for Hawthorn makes a similar weighty contribution.

Recommendation 8, which is an important one that I thought the deputy chair may be interested in, is that:

Local Government Victoria … undertake or commission a risk assessment for shared services across Councils ‍…

particularly related to communications technology. Smaller councils, those councils who do not cover particularly significant populations but often cover very wide regions, do not always have the resources to put into their IT services. I know the deputy chair’s background in IT and probably his view, and I do not want to put words in his mouth, but my view is that IT security is important but you do not really notice it until it goes wrong. Then it goes from important to a whole lot of concerns that are shared by community members, particularly where local councils hold a lot of information about members of our community.

I am just looking at the time, and I will jump forward in a moment, but I would like to speak to recommendation 19, which is that the Victorian government seek to amend the privacy and data protection laws. This follows on from the previous recommendation in making sure that there are specific efforts to make sure that privacy and data protection is in place, because it is not easy for smaller councils representing some thousands of people to have them in line, and it is important that councils share those services. They absolutely should share those services that are at the back end of council operations.

I am just going to step forward a little bit. I know I will be back on this one, but recommendation 14 is that:

The Victorian Government consider making changes that increase the level of detail provided by Councils in their budgets …

For anyone who has looked at a budget before – and others have described it in this way – it is like the profit and loss statement of a milk bar. They really do not give you any detail whatsoever. We had line items in budgets from councils of multibillions of dollars – $3 billion or $4 billion – with no description of what they were there for. The state government does not do this. We do detailed analysis of our budget and public reporting on the line items that we are going to spend. Local council must do it. They should adopt it straightaway, because citizens can and should know where their money is being spent.