Wednesday, 16 August 2023

Bills

Operation Daintree Implementation (No. 1) Bill 2023

Second reading

Debate resumed.

Jacinta ERMACORA (Western Victoria) (14:03): This bill does very little more than critique the government, without actually doing anything productive. What this bill fails to do is put in the hard yards of policy review, analysis and consultation. It merely reads the findings of the Operation Daintree report and transcribes it into a few clauses to amend a couple of acts, in the hope that that will work. This bill is nothing more than an opportunity to criticise and whinge, and it will make not one iota of difference to the people of Victoria.

We are grateful for the work IBAC conducted through Operation Daintree and the recommendations made in the final report. It would be a disservice to the work of IBAC to misrepresent the report and allege that corruption occurred, because that is not the case. The final Daintree report outlined a number of issues, none of which met the threshold definition of ‘corruption’, which is why not one of the recommendations in the report suggests action against any individual person.

The government did not shy away from the recommendations, instead agreeing that there is more that can be done to provide greater clarity and transparency around the working arrangements between departments and ministerial officers. Each of the recommendations is being carefully considered as part of the usual process. In July this year the government announced sweeping reforms, currently in the pipeline, to the integrity system, which will include working with Parliament, including representatives of the opposition and crossbench, to establish an ethics committee comprised of equal numbers of members from the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council, which satisfies recommendation 1. It will also include developing legislation to establish a parliamentary integrity commissioner. The commissioner will be armed with robust powers and resources, including the power to recommend sanctions, which satisfies recommendation 2. The government have also gone further and announced that the parliamentary integrity committee will be able to receive and investigate complaints about possible misconduct from MPs and examine the behaviour of MPs, including bullying, harassment, sexual harassment and victimisation, providing a crucial avenue for complaints to be heard and investigated.

The government is committed to ensuring that workplace safety is non-negotiable and is therefore committed to establishing the new parliamentary integrity framework as recommended by Operation Watts. A part of this includes $8.52 million towards the Department of Parliamentary Services to support implementing recommendations from the Operation Watts final report.

The Andrews Labor government is committed to delivering integrity reforms, and this is proven through a number of initiatives to this end. The government has legislated for stronger powers for IBAC and our integrity bodies by broadening IBAC’s responsibilities to investigate all corrupt conduct, including police corruption and misconduct in public office, as part of their corrupt conduct jurisdiction and also providing IBAC with significant coercive powers and unbinding them from the rules of evidence. There are also strong protections on the use of IBAC’s investigative powers to ensure that a balance is maintained between IBAC being able to do its important work and the proper protection of individuals’ rights and their welfare.

This government is also committed to ensuring that IBAC can continue to weed out corruption without being encumbered by financial barriers. Since coming to office the government has delivered record funding to IBAC, and by the end of the forward estimates IBAC’s funding will be double what it was when Labor came to government in 2014. In addition to that, the Victorian budget 2022–23 invested $32.1 million in additional funding for IBAC as well as a further $8.6 million in its annual base funding, which in proportion to the public sector workforces they hold an account for, is higher in Victoria than in any other state.

The government has also implemented tough and more transparent political donation laws – in fact the toughest in Australia. This has resulted in a drastic reduction in the size of donations and provides transparency to Victorians so they can be certain of who makes and receives donations as they happen. The donation reforms are currently the subject of a legislated periodic review, and a report should be provided to the government imminently. These legislated periodic reviews ensure the donation laws remain fit for purpose over time. The government has also implemented major reforms to freedom of information by creating a single body to oversee Victoria’s FOI public sector privacy and data protection laws, making it easier to access government information.

The information commissioner also has more investigative powers than its predecessor and has introduced faster response time frames for all FOI applications. This has been a great success. According to the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner’s 2021–22 annual report, of the 43,978 freedom-of-information access decisions made across government, nearly 80 per cent of FOI requests were processed within the time lines required by the FOI act.

Regarding the Ombudsman, the government have expanded the authority for the Ombudsman to take complaints over the phone rather than only in writing and reduced the barriers to information sharing between the Ombudsman and other integrity bodies. This allows all Victorians to contribute to contacting the Ombudsman and expressing their concerns, whether they can write down their concerns or whether they can only do it orally.

The second-reading speech delivered by Mr Davis, who has just come in, bluntly states:

The clauses in this bill do not deal with all of the issues raised in Operation Daintree …

As I said earlier, this bill simply reads selected findings of the Operation Daintree report and transcribes them into a few clauses to amend relevant acts. This bill desperately tries to squeeze controversy out of the Daintree report. The bill ignores the parliamentary integrity commission and parliamentary ethics committee that we have committed to establishing. The bill also gives a role to the Privileges Committee in preparing and issuing guidance on ministerial accountability, despite that committee not featuring in the report recommendations.

It surprises me that those opposite want to score political points on integrity in light of the latest IBAC inquiry in Operation Sandon, which I must say only commenced because of the corruption of Liberal party councillors’ sophisticated arrangements to circumvent donations laws and bags of cash being given to Liberal Party councillors. IBAC’s inquiry contained revelations of an intercepted phone call between Mr Woodman and the Liberal Party fundraising arm, Enterprise Victoria, in which Enterprise Victoria sought to illegally launder money through the federal Liberal Party. This appears on page 146 of the Operation Sandon report, where IBAC writes:

Enterprise Victoria’s Executive Director assured Mr Woodman that the amended donation laws had a ‘loophole’, whereby donations could be made to a federal account subject to the federal disclosure limit, which was $14,300 – higher than the Victorian limit, but could be diverted to Enterprise Victoria. During examination, the Executive Director asserted that the meetings they had offered did not take place.

So I would suggest that those opposite are quite brazen to stand in this chamber and place this integrity bill before us for debate in light of what has happened in recent weeks.

In conclusion, I oppose this bill because it is a political stunt. This bill is poorly drafted, without foresight for the practical aspects of implementing these recommendations. It does no more than copy and paste and constitutes lazy governance from those opposite. This government is proud to have increased funding to IBAC. This government is proud to take action to strengthen integrity frameworks. This government is not shy about improving the way things are done. What this government is not doing is using legislation as a topic heading and using legislation as an excuse to talk inaccurately about the work of the independent IBAC.

Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (14:13): I rise to lend my support to this bill, and in doing so I would like to thank Mr Davis for his hard work in ensuring that we have some semblance of integrity in this state – not something, unfortunately, with sadness, that we hear from the other side of the chamber. This bill is indeed vitally needed to ensure integrity in Victoria by ensuring that all the recommendations from Operation Daintree are implemented in full and enshrined in legislation. This is important because of what Operation Daintree actually found. The investigation ultimately interviewed Premier Daniel Andrews, former health ministers the Honourable Jenny Mikakos and the Honourable Jill Hennessy and ministerial staff working in the offices of these ministers and the Premier. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) employees and Health Workers Union officials were also interviewed.

While the investigation found the conduct did not reach the very high threshold of corrupt conduct as defined in section 4 of the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission Act 2011, it did make serious findings of fact. The investigation substantiated factual allegations in the original complaint. It also substantiated the suspicion in the Ombudsman’s notification that a ministerial adviser working in the health minister’s office exerted pressure on DHHS staff to award the contract to the Health Education Federation. It also found that an adviser in the office of the subsequent health minister and an adviser in the office of the Premier, acting through the health minister’s office, intruded into DHHS’s management of the contract in ways favourable to the HEF and against the public interest, which of course is a shocking scandal. While not meeting that higher threshold, I do believe unethical practices have occurred.

The need for integrity to be improved in Victoria has been actually demonstrated once again by the Labor Party in a turn of events this week that will shock no-one. We have seen past IBAC reports like Operation Watts detailing systemic branch stacking going on within the Labor Party. A lot of systemic branch stacking and corruption going on with the Labor Party seems to be directed at Victoria’s vibrant multicultural communities. I tell you what, I am getting pretty sick and tired of the Victorian Labor Party using and abusing multicultural communities for their own grubby factional purposes. It is wrong and it needs to stop.

As revealed in the Australian, we have seen serious allegations that a Labor branch in the northern suburbs has been forging signatures and renewing the memberships of dead people, and allegedly some of that may have taken place in an electorate office. Many of them actually were elderly members of my community in the northern suburbs, the Italian community. Tom Donato, whose father Antonio died in 2017, said that he was shocked to learn and not aware of him actually being a member of the Labor Party. He said:

‘I’m shocked. I wasn’t aware of him being a member of the Labor Party. He wasn’t that way inclined. He wasn’t an Australian citizen, so he couldn’t vote …

He said he was aware that Ms D’Ambrosio would often speak at the Italian club with which his parents had been involved. What I want to know is: how do you go from speaking to a member of an Italian club to their becoming a paid-up member of the Victorian Labor Party without them even knowing about it?

Mary, the daughter of another man who had his membership fees paid for posthumously, Celestino Nigro, said:

I cannot believe that the Labor Party would go to the extent of forging my deceased father’s name to use that for their party benefit. If they are capable of doing this, what else are they capable of?

It also appears that some members used to be under the impression that memberships to the Labor Party were free, despite them never being free. One such example is a constituent of mine actually in the electorate of Thomastown, an 83-year-old woman who had become a member of the Labor Party before the member for Mill Park entered Parliament. She said that neither she nor her husband had ever paid for a membership and that it was Lily D’Ambrosio, the lady who is a minister now, who had signed them up. In fact leaked records show that 86 per cent of that particular branch were paying concession rates and all membership fees were paid by non-traceable means, also known as cash. Now, I understand the Italian community, being half Italian myself. Many Italians in my electorate love using cash. They still use cash to this day. But you actually have to pay yourself, being aware of what you pay for and actually be alive for a transaction to occur.

Tom Donato said the member for Mill Park would often speak at the Italian club with which his parents had been involved. In March I had the great pleasure of speaking at the opening of new sporting facilities at the Casa D’Abruzzo Club in Epping actually alongside Ms D’Ambrosio. For too long those opposite have been going to community facilities like the Casa D’Abruzzo Club and taking advantage of members of our multicultural communities, particularly elderly members of the multicultural communities, for their own factional power and their own political benefit. It is funny that with the South Lalor branch they did a review and it went from 132 members to just 13 once they tried to clean up all the mess they were making. You had IBAC look into one faction and not another faction; that is a whole other story. It is clear that the signatures of Mr Donato and Mr Nigro were forged on membership forms, which represents a falsification of documents under the Crimes Act 1958.

I also want to know: what role did possibly the member for Scullin have in all of this? Was he aware of systemic branch stacking going on within his own electorate and was he actually comfortable with it because it is his own Socialist Left faction? It is easy for a reasonable observer to draw parallels with the sort of behaviour which was uncovered by IBAC and the Ombudsman’s Operation Watts investigation. The report described forging of signatures as ‘obviously serious misconduct’. Following that investigation, Mr Somyurek resigned and ultimately Robin Scott, Luke Donnellan and Marlene Kairouz were all disendorsed as part of a stitch-up to allegedly rid the Labor Party of its ills, but it is interesting to see now there is a difference in treatment of those on the right of the Premier and those that are in the same Socialist Left faction as him.

We saw the Premier: ‘There’s nothing to see here. The member is a person of integrity.’ I do not think Victorians want to hear that kind of assessment of what look like very, very serious allegations. There is a common thread with all of these cases: using and abusing our multicultural communities for their own political ends. Our multicultural communities deserve to be treated with respect, deserve to be appreciated, deserve to be embraced for the significant value they provide our society, not just as a means to the Labor Party’s ends, not just for their own factional benefit to pump up their numbers at Labor’s conference, which they are all planning on going to this weekend. That is the means to the end of what they do when they sign people up with cash, forge the signatures of dead people in my electorate and keep renewing them for years after they have died. Mr Donato had been diagnosed with dementia about seven years prior. This is the kind of activity that is going on on the other side.

I note I saw just earlier today from an interface councils meeting comments from the Labor mayor of Hume City Council earlier this year, Joseph Haweil, who recently told the Age:

Internally within the Labor Party, multicultural communities have been used as electoral fodder for decades and for factional reasons.

I agree. Labor opportunistically uses our multicultural community for their own political purposes. I understand from Labor staffers that whisper a lot around the Parliament that the mayor of Hume was actually called into Labor Party head office and warned for that comment. ‘How dare you tell the truth! Never do that again,’ he was probably told. But it is the truth, because we see it all the time, and I am here to warn the Labor Party, the Victorian Labor Party, I am not going to let this go. I am not going to abide while I see my community in the north, the Italian community, used by Labor for their own factional purposes. They should be ashamed.

And do not think I do not hear the conversations from members of my multicultural community and what they say they hear from figures within the Labor Party: ‘Wink, wink, nod, nod. You’ll get this multicultural grant if you play ball with us, if you support us.’ That is no way to treat our multicultural communities. It is an outrage, and what we have seen recently is an outrage. Multicultural communities are not the sole property of and owned by the Victorian Labor Party to branch stack, forge signatures and continue to renew memberships after they have died. What an insult to the families. What an insult to our multicultural communities in the northern suburbs. It has got to stop. It has to stop. The Premier has presided over a government that is riddled with corruption and which IBAC report after IBAC report has condemned. Recently he described a report which found government staff pressured the health department to award a $1.2 million contract as ‘educational’. He described Robert Redlich, an eminent Victorian, former Supreme Court judge and former head of IBAC, as some bloke:

… who used to do a job [who has] written a letter that apparently says a whole bunch of stuff …

and sent his lackeys into a committee hearing in an absolutely disgraceful attempt to discredit him. I will tell you what: members of the press gallery, eminent Victorians, people in the law and I think a majority of this chamber were watching that and there were only four people that were discredited in that hearing, and those were the members of the Labor Party in the Integrity and Oversight Committee (IOC) that discredited themselves. If there is any justice, that disgraceful act will follow them for the rest of their careers – an absolute smear against an eminent Victorian like Robert Redlich, which is what we saw.

Georgie Crozier: No apology.

Evan MULHOLLAND: Still no apology. But we have seen that before with the IOC, when presumably the Premier’s private office gave the lackeys on the committee instructions to smear, to put unsubstantiated allegations to someone like Robert Redlich. This is the kind of thing we see over and over again.

I tell you what, the Victorian people are seeing through this. You go through corruption scandal after corruption scandal and try to shrug it off. The Victorian people have had enough of this. The Victorian people have had enough of cancelling the Commonwealth Games and not giving proper explanations. The Victorian people have had enough of cancelling train lines and not giving proper explanations, cancelling the airport rail and not giving a proper explanation as to why. But this is what we get. This is the kind of integrity the Labor Party values – the integrity of just not saying anything and trying to move on to the next story.

I urge the house to support this bill. We need to come together as sensible, mature elected representatives to act on the Operation Daintree report by supporting this bill, and we need the Premier, I believe, to make another IBAC referral, as he did with Mr Somyurek. We must rid Victoria of the government’s cancerous corruption, and I commend this bill to the house.

Samantha RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (14:28): I rise to speak on this private members bill introduced by the opposition, the Operation Daintree Implementation (No. 1) Bill 2023. Operation Daintree was an investigation by IBAC highlighting how improper influence compromised the procurement process for a $1.2 million contract and compromised the management of the contract. To quote former IBAC Commissioner Redlich, in Operation Daintree:

… we found serious misconduct at every level of executive movement which led to the granting of a contract which should never have been made, and which didn’t serve the public interest. That’s corruption.

As the house is aware, the Greens share the opinion of the former commissioner. Daintree did find corruption, which is why the Greens have introduced our Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission Amendment (Ending Political Corruption) Bill 2023 into the house, which we will be debating a bit later on, so I will not anticipate it.

Turning to this bill from the opposition, it is one of a number of integrity bills that the opposition have introduced. The Greens position on these bills has been consistent: that we will support these bills despite the fact that they are not perfect, that they are piecemeal and that they often do not prioritise the most important integrity reforms we desperately need to clean up state politics in Victoria. Take clauses 5 and 6 of this bill, which propose making small improvements to the development of the ministerial code of conduct. We recognise these are small improvements, but looking at the bigger picture we could ask: what good is having improved ministerial codes of conduct if IBAC or another independent authority does not have sufficient jurisdiction to investigate these and expose breaches of the code and, if necessary, call it out as corruption? I would refer the house and opposition to our Anti-corruption and Higher Parliamentary Standards (Strengthening Integrity) Bill 2022, which proposed, amongst other things, to legislate the code of conduct for ministers, impose real sanctions for breaches, expand the jurisdiction of IBAC and create a parliamentary integrity commissioner as an example of what is really required if we are genuine about improving the conduct of members, ministers and governments.

As I have said already many times, the government can critique these integrity bills from the opposition on similar grounds to what I just have, but it is on their watch that integrity standards have fallen and they are the ones that have failed to act by failing to introduce any meaningful reform in close to a decade. The Greens and, I must say, most of us in this house appear to be in agreement that some progress on integrity and anti-corruption legislation, imperfect as it may be, is a better option than the tumbleweeds and the ‘Nothing to see here. Who cares about corruption when I get stuff done?’ attitude from the government. That is why we are supporting this bill.

Sonja TERPSTRA (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (14:31): I rise to make a contribution on the Operation Daintree Implementation (No. 1) Bill 2023. I oppose this bill as a government member and obviously encourage others to oppose this bill, and I know government members will be speaking in opposition to this bill as well. I have had the benefit or otherwise of listening to the contributions of those opposite on this, and I know they have used it as an opportunity to really highlight everything that has been in the paper in the last couple of days. But really Operation Daintree was actually about something else. It was certainly about the questions that remained around a procurement process and the awarding of a contract. Really, the contribution from Mr Mulholland was completely irrelevant to the point and the contents of this bill. I know it might be easy just to read articles in the Herald Sun for your contribution, but it really missed the mark in terms of the actual content of this bill.

I will go through and outline what the government has actually said in response to this bill. As the government has said, we thank IBAC for the Operation Daintree report, and we again note that there were no findings of corruption against anyone in this report, despite the line that those opposite want to run. I might remind Mr Mulholland that we were again returned to government just recently, no more than about eight or nine months ago, with an increased majority. So to say that the community are sick of all manner of things is such a stretch and an exaggeration, but that is what we get from those opposite, because they just like talking to themselves on this sort of stuff. Again, there were no findings of corruption against anyone in this report. The issues outlined in this report did not meet the threshold for corruption, and that is why there were no recommendations in this report for action against any individual.

If you look at the history of this report, it was referred to IBAC originally. They dismissed it, saying that it did not meet the threshold. Then it went to the Ombudsman; they found something, and then they referred it back to IBAC. They are the facts and the truth of the matter, despite what those opposite might actually want to say. IBAC originally dismissed it. The interesting thing is that if you want to have a debate about these sorts of things, the issue really is about the threshold for investigating corruption, if those opposite want to have a proper conversation about it. IBAC has a threshold for investigating matters, and some of these matters that the Liberals opposite talk about are matters that did not meet the threshold. Again, there were no findings of any corruption against anyone in this particular report, and some of the other reports also have not had any findings of corruption against people. There are issues that IBAC wanted to point out and raise because they thought this might be something that people might find interesting and that should be talked about, but the fact of the matter is if it does not meet the threshold, it does not meet the threshold, no matter how much you wish it would or would like it to. The threshold is the threshold. You can talk about it all you like, but the bottom line is there were no findings of corruption against anybody. The bottom line was, again, the report was released and our government said, ‘Thank you very much for your report.’ We noted there were no findings of corruption. The issues outlined in the report did not meet the threshold, and that is why there was no recommendation in the report for actions against any individual. Again I make that point.

As we said when the report was released, there are ways in which we can do more to clarify working arrangements between departments and ministerial officers. That is something that we said that we would look at. Those staff who were referred to in the report are no longer working for the government, and they have not done so for many years. The two ministers who were the subject of the report are no longer in the Parliament, so if things are highlighted to this government we are very happy to take action to ensure that these things do not happen, and we are considering the 17 recommendations as part of the cabinet process. Again, it is something we take very seriously, and in an earlier contribution on another matter in this chamber today I noted that the government have made considerable funds available to IBAC so that it can undertake its important work. We continue to fund it at record levels because we know how important the work is that IBAC does, because rooting out systemic public sector corruption is in everyone’s interests to make sure that that does not proliferate.

I think I remarked in my earlier contribution that when those opposite were in government they were famous – I think it was the Ventnor land deal. And I will talk about Ventnor all the time, because with Ventnor it was a disgrace what happened there. So we know what would happen if those opposite ever got into government. I do not think IBAC would receive the funding that it receives under this government, and again they want to cast aspersions on us. Nevertheless I think our credentials in this area are beyond reproach when we talk about the levels of funding that IBAC got –

Georgie Crozier interjected.

Sonja TERPSTRA: You would defund them straightaway, Ms Crozier, and you know it. You know it, and you can throw insults from the cheap seats all you like, but the record speaks for itself when we talk about the record levels of funding that this government gives to IBAC to make sure that it does its important work, and that is ensuring that public sector corruption is investigated. As I said, when recommendations are –

Georgie Crozier interjected.

Sonja TERPSTRA: You should be careful not to cast aspersions on the public service too, Ms Crozier, because again you are –

Georgie Crozier interjected.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order! Ms Terpstra, without assistance.

Sonja TERPSTRA: Thank you, Deputy President. Again, with the record funding levels that this government commits to IBAC, we know it is important work that they need to do, and again, I really distance myself from the interjections of Ms Crozier opposite making out that there is widespread public sector corruption throughout the public service. The public service is a very important institution.

Georgie Crozier interjected.

Sonja TERPSTRA: The public service is a very important institution, and I completely reject Ms Crozier’s interjections saying that –

Georgie Crozier interjected.

Sonja TERPSTRA: I reject those assertions from Ms Crozier saying that there is widespread corruption, because if there was IBAC would certainly find it, because that is what they are actually tasked to do. That is what they are tasked to do, and they are funded appropriately to do that. As I said, this report was targeted at an interaction and a very finite interaction – it was about a procurement process. So as I said, we are considering the 17 recommendations carefully as part of the cabinet process. As part of our response further to this, to Operation Watts in 2022, we announced sweeping reforms to our integrity system. So when things are brought to our attention by the relevant bodies – not those opposite, who want to carp on about imaginary things – we consider those recommendations, and we will make changes where we can and where required to. We take those recommendations very seriously. As I was saying, after Operation Watts in 2022 we announced sweeping reforms to our integrity system, including developing legislation to establish a parliamentary integrity commission and a parliamentary ethics committee to implement recommendations 1 and 2 of Operation Watts. So when things are brought to our attention we make sure we implement them.

As I have said, workplace safety is also not negotiable, and we have committed to establishing the new parliamentary integrity framework, including in legislation, which will acquit a major recommendation of Operation Watts. We have provided $8.52 million to the Department of Parliamentary Services to support implementation of the Operation Watts recommendations relating to the Parliament, and that work is happening now. So there is a lot of work to do. We are not wasting a minute. We are getting on with it, and we have funded the Department of Parliamentary Services to support the implementation of the recommendations of Operation Watts.

I will go on as well to outline the government’s record on delivering stronger powers for IBAC and very important integrity reforms, because as I said, we know what would happen if those opposite ever got into government. We know that they would defund IBAC, and we would have a very different landscape. So in terms of IBAC, we have delivered stronger powers for our integrity bodies and we will continue to work on ensuring that IBAC and other integrity bodies have very strong support from this government so they can do the important work that they need to do. In 2016 the government broadened IBAC’s responsibilities to investigate all corrupt conduct, including police corruption and misconduct in public office, as part of their corrupt conduct jurisdiction, again recognising that we need to make sure that the public service are supported to ensure they have the best environment they can work in and that, where people want to report issues of corruption or concern, they are able to do that.

IBAC has significant coercive powers and is not bound by the rules of evidence. Earlier today we had an interesting debate in this chamber about aspects of procedural fairness relating to an earlier bill that Mr Davis brought to this chamber. Again we know that procedural fairness, when you balance it with some of the coercive powers that IBAC have, is something that needs to be taken very seriously and that a person who may be the subject of an investigation has a right to procedural fairness. But as we have seen, there have been some fairly dire consequences as a result of some other investigations, and we want to make sure that that balance is the right balance for people who may be subject to an investigation. As I said, the balance is about ensuring that IBAC can undertake the important function that it needs to whilst balancing proper protection of individual rights and witness welfare. We will continue with IBAC and consider their suggestions to make sure that they have everything they need to do their important work. As I said earlier, we understand how important it is to make sure that the integrity framework is an appropriate one. It allows IBAC to do the work that they need to do whilst supporting witnesses who may be the subject of an investigation and protecting their rights as well.

In terms of donation law reform, the government has implemented the toughest political donation laws in Australia, and our reforms have drastically reduced the size of donations and made sure Victorians know who makes them and who receives them in real time. Anyone can go to the Victorian Electoral Commission website and look at that in real time if they want to have a look – and I think, if memory serves me correctly, there were some questions about some donations to those opposite in the last election campaign; I am not sure where any of that got up to. Certainly because of that transparency people are able to ask questions, and appropriately so. These reforms are currently the subject of a legislative periodic review, and the government looks forward to receiving a report about that in due course.

In terms of freedom of information we made major reforms to freedom of information in 2017, and thanks to that work we have a single body now to oversee Victoria’s FOI, public sector, privacy and data protection laws, making it easier to access government information. We gave the information commissioner more investigative powers than its predecessor and introduced faster response time frames for all FOI applications, and what we see is this system is working. According to the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner’s 2021–22 annual report, of the 43,978 FOI access decisions made across government in that period, more than 96 per cent were granted access to documents in full or in part and less than 4 per cent of all decisions were denied access in full. Nearly 80 per cent of FOI requests were processed within the time lines required by the Freedom of Information Act 1982.

I have about 2½ minutes left on the clock, so I might just skip to the funding for IBAC, because I think it is more relevant to this bill. I did mention the FOI commissioner, but I think some of this is more relevant in terms of IBAC. As I said, the 2022–23 budget was $61.9 million – I said this in my earlier contribution – and then the 2023–24 budget is $62.2 million. That is an increase of $300,000. The actual spending for IBAC in 2022–23 was $62.9 million, which is $1 million higher than their budget. In the Victorian budget 2022–23 we invested $32.1 million in additional funding for IBAC as well as a further $8.6 million in its annual base funding. So funding for IBAC in proportion to the public sector workforce they hold to account is higher in Victoria than any other state.

I might leave my contribution there. I know Mr Galea has a very good contribution he wishes to make on this bill as well. But as I said at the commencement of my contribution, I speak in opposition to this bill, and I also encourage others in this chamber to oppose this bill.

Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (14:44): With that encouraging introduction I also do rise to speak on the Operation Daintree Implementation (No. 1) Bill 2023 and in doing so also affirm that I will be speaking against the bill introduced by Mr Davis. Unsurprisingly, the opposition does not seem to take these matters very seriously. They do not consider it important to introduce a bill based on good policy work or detail, or to take any other balanced considerations into account – the policy work that any well-crafted bill would have if it were introduced by someone with a serious desire for reform and an idea of what reforms are needed. This bill is unfortunately not a serious bill seeking to implement earnest reforms. As with previous IBAC-related bills and motions introduced by the opposition in this place, this is yet another political stunt, primarily concerned with garnering column inches in tomorrow’s newspaper. I wish them all the best with that.

The bill seeks to commence the implementation of the recommendations made by IBAC, the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission, in the Operation Daintree: Special Report, including by amending the Public Administration Act 2004 and the Parliamentary Committees Act 2003.

In previous debates on other matters the opposition all got the same false talking points out – that is, the lack of consultation, not enough consultation and the scope of the consultation was too narrow. Of course these talking points either ignore the extensive consultation or wilfully do not consider the further consultation that has taken place, which is often part of the reforms introduced by government. I make this point because consultation is important in reforming and updating legislation. We have had some very interesting pieces of legislation through this chamber already in this term and what you could perhaps call, not to be too uncharitable, some relatively dull pieces of legislation too. But whether dull or exciting, everything that is put through this place is for a particular reason. As I said in a contribution on a different bill yesterday, it is important that our legislation is at pace, keeps pace, and reforms with our state and its changing needs. I spoke at great length yesterday about the energy field in that respect, and so it is today as well. It is important for this legislation to be put through properly, but it must be done in a considered manner. Implementing reforms requires consideration, deliberation and planning. With any reform, various processes should be followed, with factors considered and taken into account, including how those reforms could impact other aspects of government or related policy arrangements. You cannot rush into these changes because it is politically expedient to do so.

All that those opposite want to do is to attack their political opponents. They are only concerned about getting that so-called fabled win. And wasn’t the Leader of the Opposition so excited about his so-called win the other week, when he appeared on ABC radio crowing on Virginia Trioli’s show about how for the first time the crossbench was united against the government. The only problem is he actually got the vote wrong. He said the crossbench was united on the government’s proposal to refer the Commonwealth Games investigation to the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office. It actually was a vote much later in the day when the crossbench voted as one. We know that Mr Pesutto, the Leader of the Opposition, is not good with his numbers, and we know that for a fact because Mrs McArthur seems to be excellent at outwitting him at every opportunity. The Warrandyte preselection was another example of that too. The Leader of the Opposition blatantly made a false statement on radio, crowing about his so-called win, but he could not even do that right because he got the actual vote wrong. So I would suggest to the perfidious Mr Pesutto that he check his facts next time before he goes off making such statements. It is another example of why you need to take these things seriously and take them into proper consideration, rather than just focusing on the wins you can get and then mucking them up when you go on Virginia Trioli’s show to talk about them as well.

Matthew Bach: Like free kinder.

Michael GALEA: I would be more than happy to debate free kinder with you, Dr Bach – I am not sure if I would be pulled up on relevance for that – and the atrocious actions of one of the councils in my region, Knox City Council, despite all the reforms made by Minister Stitt in that field. We have had other councils absolutely excelling in expanding their services, so I am very disappointed in the City of Knox.

But for the purpose of relevance, I will return to this bill. I know the opposition might not be interested in hard work, but this government is, and it has repeatedly proven that it is committed to doing the hard work and doing what matters in the integrity space and in other areas as well. Clearly Mr Davis has not done the legwork, nor does he desire to take the necessary steps to implement the recommendations of a report in the proper manner. Looking at the proposed bill, you can see that:

The clauses in this bill do not deal with all of the issues raised in Operation Daintree …

As has been pointed out, you cannot implement a report, such as the one on Operation Daintree, by simply inserting the recommendations into a bill. Frankly, this should be very clear to a member who has been in Parliament since 1996, when I was four years old – a member who will have been in Parliament for more than 30 years by the end of this Parliament. Implementing the recommendations requires more than just inserting the report and copying and pasting it word for word into a bill. It requires proper hard work, proper consultation and proper policy work, the rigour of which we absolutely do not see in this bill put to the house today. Unfortunately, as I say, it is emblematic and a bit of a pattern with a number of these bills which are put to the house as well.

The bill entirely ignores some of the aspects of the Operation Daintree report because they relate to matters the government is working on now already, such as the parliamentary integrity commissioner and the parliamentary ethics committee, which we have already committed to establish. The bill will also give a role to the Privileges Committee in preparing and issuing guidance on ministerial responsibility despite the committee not featuring in the report recommendations. Instead the report recommended that the parliamentary ethics committee, when established, prepare guidance about the current scope of the convention on ministerial accountability and its application to Victorian government ministers.

To go a little bit further into Operation Daintree, I also do wish to reiterate the fact that no corruption findings were found in this report against anyone. The subject of the report did not meet the threshold for there to be recommendations in the report for actions to be taken indeed against any individual. I am aware that the staff referred to in the report have not worked for the government for several years since, and that is also true for the two ministers, who are no longer in Parliament. Of the recommendations in the report on Operation Daintree, the government is currently actively considering all 17 recommendations carefully as part of the cabinet process and indeed as recommended by the report itself. I do note that the deadline for a government response is still some months away too, and that is a deadline that was actually initiated and recommended by IBAC’s report in the first place. This process aligns with aspects of the Victorian government’s response to Operation Watts in 2022. In the government’s response sweeping reforms were announced to our state’s integrity system, including developing legislation to establish a parliamentary integrity commission and a parliamentary ethics committee to acquit recommendations 1 and 2 of Operation Watts.

The government’s commitment to integrity goes further, with a decision announced that the parliamentary integrity commission will be able to examine the behaviour of MPs, including bullying, harassment, sexual harassment and victimisation, providing a crucial avenue for complaints to be heard and investigated. The government is committed to the principle that workplace harassment is never appropriate. This is a principle that should apply to us equally in Parliament, our departments, the public service and indeed all workplaces across Victoria. I also believe that this extends to harassment at the workplace that comes from outside the workplace – from customers, from clients and other members of the public, who are not part of the internal workplace structure. Whether you are a paramedic or a retail worker, you deserve never to be harassed, bullied or assaulted at work. All workplaces should be a safe place for workers. In my previous career in the Australian trade union movement, which, Acting President McArthur, I know you are so fond of, one of the most meaningful aspects of the role that I got to undertake was to support people going through awful and traumatic experiences when they had been the victims of such harassment or bullying. I hope to achieve lots of things in this place, but being able to be there for someone and to support them throughout that process is something that is indeed quite special and probably very, very unique as well. I reiterate my support for those tougher penalties that we did bring in for assaulting emergency services workers in this state, and it will also be good to see further action into the future in other critical industries.

As I say, we have committed to establishing this new parliamentary integrity framework, including in legislation that has already been before this chamber, which will acquit a major recommendation of Operation Watts. We have also provided $8.52 million to the Department of Parliamentary Services to support the implementation of the Operation Watts recommendations relating to Parliament. It is worth reiterating that the Victorian government has consistently supported IBAC, including through funding support and increases and by delivering more substantial powers for IBAC and our various other integrity agencies. In 2016 the government broadened IBAC’s responsibilities to investigate all corrupt conduct, including police corruption and misconduct in public office, as part of their jurisdiction. Strong protections on the use of IBAC’s investigative powers ensure that a balance is maintained between IBAC being able to do its important work and the proper protection of individuals’ rights and welfare.

We will continue to work with IBAC in appropriate means to consider their suggestions to ensure that they have the resources they need to continue their important work. Since coming to office this government has delivered record funding to IBAC so it can do its important functions. By the end of the forward estimates, IBAC’s funding will be double what it was when we came to government in 2014. In IBAC’s 2022–23 budget it was $61.9 million, with the current forward estimates putting it up to $62.2 million for this financial year, an increase of $300,000. The actual spending for IBAC in the last financial year was $62.9 million, with $1 million allocated to them above their budget. The Victorian budget of last year also invested $32.1 million in additional funding for IBAC and a further $8.6 million in its annual base funding. So in proportion to the public sector workforces they hold to account, funding in Victoria to our integrity agencies, as I have said in other contributions, is indeed higher than it is in other states.

Of course we have brought in nation-leading donation reforms as well. I know some in the media political establishment have not been big fans of that, but it is really important to have these caps in place to enable a fairer democratic process, and I note that it has also been well received by a large number of Victorians. We also made significant reforms to the Freedom of Information Act 1982 in 2017, gave the information commissioner more investigative powers than their predecessor and introduced faster response time frames for all FOI applications. I note that in the information commissioner annual report two years ago, of the 43,978 FOI access decisions made across the government in that period, more than 96 per cent granted access to documents in full or in part, with less than 4 per cent of decisions denied access in full. Nearly 80 per cent of FOI requests were also processed within the time lines as stipulated by the FOI act.

We have also bolstered the Ombudsman. We have permitted the Ombudsman to take complaints over the phone – previously it was only allowed in writing – and reduced the barriers to information sharing between the Ombudsman and other integrity bodies. Regarding the Auditor-General, we have reduced the barriers to information sharing between the Auditor-General and other integrity agencies as well.

So I do not support this bill, for the reasons I have detailed during my speech and also for the reasons that other members have gone over in their contributions. This motion frankly, as we know, is a political stunt. In introducing this bill the opposition has not done its work. The bill is essentially a copy-and-paste job from recommendations in a report with no due diligence, no consultation and no real work or policy rigour behind the creation of this bill. It is not real reform. It is not even half-baked, it is barely in the pan.

I do want to pick up on something from Mr Mulholland’s speech, I believe it was, earlier, again pushing the limits of relevance for what is a bill about Operation Daintree. He launched a further extraordinary attack against certain members of the Integrity and Oversight Committee. I have got to say I am not a member of the committee, but it is appalling to see members criticised for doing their job. It is not the role of committee members to say, ‘Here’s a witness. You’ve got carte blanche to say whatever you want.’ It is the responsibility of every member of a committee to ask rigorous questions. To see a censure motion attacking them in the other place is appalling – attacking them for basically doing their jobs. It is quite frankly a disgusting thing that demands a rebuttal. So even though it is not relevant to this bill, if Mr Mulholland saw fit to mention it I think that deserves a response. In closing, with my final few seconds, for the reasons I have outlined in the previous minutes of this debate I will not be supporting this bill.

Joe McCRACKEN (Western Victoria) (15:00): I move:

That debate on this matter be adjourned until later today.

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned until later this day.