Wednesday, 8 February 2023

Parliamentary Committees Amendment (Preventing Government Dominated Investigatory Committees) Bill 2022

Statement of compatibility

Samantha RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (10:08): I lay on the table the statement of compatibility with the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006:

In accordance with section 28 of the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (the Charter), I make this statement of compatibility with respect to Parliamentary Committees Amendment (Preventing Government Dominated Investigatory Committees) Bill 2022.

In my opinion, the bill, as introduced to the Legislative Council, is compatible with the human rights protected by the Charter.

Second reading

Samantha RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (10:08): I move:

That the bill be now read a second time.

This bill makes important changes to the Parliamentary Committees Act 2003 to ensure a government that is currently in power at the same time also does not dominate the composition of the Victorian Parliament’s joint investigatory committees.

Parliament has five statutory joint investigatory committees upon which important oversight functions are conferred under the Parliamentary Committees Act.

Like all investigatory bodies, both the independence and the perceived independence of these committees is critically important for them to properly fulfil their functions on behalf of all Victorians.

More often than not, joint investigatory committees will inquire into, scrutinise, and report upon the actions and decisions of the government and executive of the day.

For example, the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee is charged with conducting detailed scrutiny of the government’s annual spending and revenue in the budget papers, worth tens of billions of dollars, and holds hearings where it questions the executive on these matters.

Despite this, the chairperson of all investigatory committees has also historically been appointed from the ranks of the very government that it seeks to scrutinise, while the composition of committee membership is made up of a majority of government MPs either in absolute terms or by way of holding the chairperson’s casting vote where membership numbers are even.

This obvious conflict of interest, where members are expected to serve the Parliament impartially, whilst simultaneously remaining loyal servants to their political party and their executive leadership, casts serious doubts on the committees’ effectiveness in scrutinising government policy and decision making.

As Catherine Williams, from the Centre for Public Integrity has said, I quote:

Scrutiny by an executive-dominated parliamentary committee is not real scrutiny.

And such real or perceived conflicts, and accusations of executive interference, have proven more than just academic in recent years.

For example, last year the chairperson of the Integrity and Oversight Committee bizarrely prevented the IBAC Commissioner from giving evidence to an inquiry on the grounds he may prejudice his own investigations, which many suspected was actually to prevent any inference of the Premier’s involvement with IBAC for political reasons.

It was also disclosed last year that the previous chairperson of the same committee had told supposedly independent auditors reviewing Victoria’s integrity agencies to remove any references to the Andrews government underfunding or under-resourcing the state’s anti-corruption body in their final report.

We also saw back in 2020 the chairperson of the Electoral Matters Committee railroading witnesses during hearings into the 2018 election, effectively banning them from giving the evidence they wanted on the issue of upper house voting reform, because confronting these issues was, and here I quote from a November 2022 article in the Age:

… the delicate manoeuvre that would inevitably upset key crossbenchers whose votes the government needed to pass laws.

During the pandemic, the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee was also criticised by the Centre for Public Integrity for not undertaking any review of public health directions or at the very least inquiring as to whether such directions constituted legislative instruments for the purposes of the Subordinate Legislation Act 1994 (Vic).

Finally, in a report of 13 August 2022, Paul Sakkal, writing for the Age, quoted two anonymous government MPs who confirmed it was common for the Premier’s staffers to be involved in the affairs of a committee, including giving overbearing directions on key decisions and recommendations in policy reports. One of the MPs described the situation as, I quote, ‘part of the command-and-control model. It’s about knowing what’s being said, controlling the flow of information and managing the story.’

All this seems to confirm the claim from Associate Professor William Partlett of Melbourne University, who is an expert in constitutional law, and I quote:

Parliamentary committees (are) … being openly, or behind the scenes, directed by the executive.

But despite these examples, this bill today is not partisan political or about the current government, because it is naive to think that committee members from any other political party forming the government would somehow be immune from the same conflicts and pressures that currently apply to Labor MPs.

Indeed, albeit only when forced to, this government has recognised and addressed this very problem in one instance, when in 2021 it legislated that the Pandemic Declaration Accountability and Oversight Committee should have a non-government chairperson, with no more than half of the members of that committee to be government MPs.

Yet this is only one of five committees.

It is obviously incongruent to recognise the importance of independent investigatory committees for a solitary committee while at the same time permitting all the other, arguably more critical, committees to continue being government dominated.

In simplest terms, this bill proposes to make the rules on the composition of committees that currently only apply to the Pandemic Declaration Accountability and Oversight Committee apply consistently across all the statutory joint investigative committees.

The proposed changes will improve the impartiality and general investigatory functions of the committees.

But also, in the case of the Integrity and Oversight Committee, it will remove any real or perceived political conflict of interest in the appointment of a new IBAC Commissioner, a process that is scheduled to occur in the first half of this year.

The IBAC Commissioner is appointed by the Governor in Council on the recommendation of the minister under section 20 of the Independent Broad-Based Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2011.

However, section 21 of this act also outlines a process by which the minister’s recommendation can be vetoed by the Integrity and Oversight Committee prior to appointment by the Governor in Council.

Given the IBAC Commissioner’s broad powers to investigate government corruption, section 21 is intended to provide Parliament’s protection from a government potentially appointing a partisan commissioner as a means of protecting itself from IBAC investigations.

However, obviously this veto power is moot when the Integrity and Oversight Committee is dominated by MPs from the same government that recommends the appointment.

So this is an important bill right now, while also being an important bill for future parliaments.

And for these reasons I commend this bill to the house.

Jaclyn SYMES (Northern Victoria – Attorney-General, Minister for Emergency Services) (10:15): I move:

That debate be adjourned for two weeks.

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned for two weeks.