Wednesday, 4 March 2026

 Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (14:51): I rise to speak on the Greens bill, the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission Amendment (Ending Political Corruption) Bill 2024, which has sat in this place for some time. I do thank the Greens for bringing this important bill forward. We have seen some really, really shocking allegations of corruption over the last month – over the last couple of years, even, but I think what has come to light in the last month is the biggest corruption scandal this state has ever seen. The fact that those opposite are still avoiding accountability and denying it is even an issue I think says a lot about their character. It says a lot about the state of this government, that it thinks it can just brush this scandal under the carpet. Some of the evidence that we have seen – the allegations that have been made about taxpayer dollars going to bikies, to underworld figures, to criminals, and spent on all sorts of things like strippers on worksites; we have seen drug deals on worksites, we have seen women bashed and abused on worksites. We have seen government cars used for criminal hits.

The level of corruption that has gone on has been quantified to a conservative estimate of $15 billion. I think the fact that this government is not willing to take steps to deal with this issue is appalling. We saw today that over two-thirds of Victorians support a royal commission into CFMEU misconduct on construction sites – so pretty much everyone except the Premier supports a royal commission. We know that even two Labor ministers and many of their backbench support a royal commission, because a royal commission is what we need to shine a light on CFMEU corruption. The people most affected by this are the workers and good contractors that have been kicked off construction sites, that just go to work on a construction site for a hard day’s work. We back those workers in every single day of the week. They should not have to pay $5000 as an entry fee to go work on the North East Link. They should not, as has happened on the Suburban Rail Loop sites, be forced to partake in bribes to work as a contractor on a government Big Build site. It should not be happening, but it still is.

The Queensland government is now ruling out working with Mick Gatto-linked companies.

I want to know: do M Group companies currently have work on Victorian construction sites? That is what we need to know. This government will not be forthcoming about that – of course they will not. They will not follow the lead of the Queensland government – of course they will not – and you have to wonder why.

I spoke at great length earlier today about the need for follow-the-money powers. These are powers that have been requested by IBAC for some time to enable money to be traced to the contractor level and to follow taxpayer dollars where they land, because there is basically no oversight in government money. As Ronnie Hayden has even said, once it gets to the contractor level there is basically no oversight of taxpayer dollars. Is it any wonder why the Ombudsman has called out the Victorian Infrastructure Delivery Authority and their record keeping as abysmal today? Is it any wonder why taxpayers money has been rorted to such a degree that we have seen when the record keeping of the infrastructure delivery authority responsible is a sham?

So we do support giving IBAC follow-the-money powers. We also have announced that we will establish Construction Enforcement Victoria to enforce a renewed construction code as a tough cop on the beat, we will stamp out organised crime on government-funded worksites and we will introduce tough new laws modelled on the racketeer influenced and corrupt organisations laws in the United States that will target criminal bosses who run organised crime networks. We will enforce the law, we will find the money and we will stop the rorts in this state. That is our plan to clean up Victoria under a Jess Wilson government. Those opposite want to pull the wool over their ears and bury their head in the sand and continue on like nothing has happened, like we have not just had the biggest corruption scandal in Victorian history where we have lost, taxpayers have lost, $15 billion. That is 130,000 new nurses, teachers or coppers to keep the community safe. That is the equivalent of what we have lost in taxpayer money. We need to have strong follow-the-money powers.

As we have mentioned in previous debates and flagged in debate on a previous bill that the government had to shelve, we think there is more work to do on the definitional change of ‘corruption’. We would support the Integrity and Oversight Committee having a deeper look at those particular changes. Until that time we are not in a position to support those changes, but the general principle of what the Greens are trying to do is good. We need stronger laws in this state, and when IBAC makes recommendations we do need to take them very, very seriously, unlike this government. We saw an extraordinary joint statement from our integrity agencies for better management and more transparency over how our integrity agencies are funded, to be more transparent and for government to state reasons why funding, delivery and budgeted items are not met year on year.

As I mentioned, we do have some issues with the definitional change. In broad principle we support where the Greens are going with this bill. We would not be in a position to support it, because of those changes, but I am looking forward to hearing more in the debate and hearing from the government in their defence of what is, as I said, the biggest corruption scandal we have ever seen in the history of this state. We have seen scandal after scandal. We have seen women abused on construction sites. We have seen a woman bashed by a health and safety officer who had been released from prison not long prior. We have seen some pretty shocking allegations of corruption which has resulted in $15 billion rorted on government construction sites. There have been reports of drugs, strippers and violence against women and Indigenous Victorians that have come at a cost, and I did call the Premier out on it when she was transport infrastructure minister. A good Indigenous business, for no reason, was kicked off the Mickleham Road site in Greenvale in my electorate, up the road from my electorate office. Why? Could not provide a reason. Who replaced that good Indigenous business? A company that was linked to Mick Gatto that did not seem to have any Indigenous affiliation at all. The company that got kicked off is affiliated to Kinaway. We have had many members on that side speak positively about Kinaway and the peak body and what they do, yet this is consistently happening on government construction sites, whether it is a level crossing in Mordialloc, whether it is Mickleham Road in Greenvale or whether it is the North East Link, which seems to be the epicentre of the corruption that is going on. These people are calling the shots through the North East Link by saying, ‘If you don’t take this particular business off this level crossing project, you’re going to lose work on the North East Link.’ They are doing it over and over again, and the Suburban Rail Loop is the next epicentre they are going to use to command and control construction sites across Victoria.

Now, IBAC does need the power to follow money where it goes, but that is only one part of the solution. The other part of the solution is a royal commission to really get to the bottom of the conduct of the CFMEU. Let us remember: the only reason that we are now hearing about the $15 billion lost in Victoria is because of 18 months worth of work that Geoffrey Watson did that was submitted to the Queensland royal commission into the CFMEU. We should not have to find out this information from a Queensland royal commission; we should be having our own. We also need to bring back the construction code with a Construction Enforcement Victoria body that is the tough cop on the beat. The federal government, as soon as they were able to get their mitts on it, defunded the Australian Building and Construction Commission at a federal level, and while it was defunded and not yet abolished Jacinta Allan was still referring industrial relations issues on construction sites that she was responsible for to the ABCC, knowing it could not and did not have the ability to investigate. She would respond to me, like she did on Mickleham Road matters, that industrial relations are a matter for the Commonwealth. It was only when she was exposed and embarrassed by articles in the ‘Building bad’ series in the Age that she all of a sudden saw the logic of doing something about it. She has not gone far enough. We need to clean up Victoria. We need to enforce the law, we need to find the money and we need to stop the rorts.

 Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (15:04): I rise to speak on the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission Amendment (Ending Political Corruption) Bill 2024, introduced to this place by my colleague Dr Sarah Mansfield. This is the Greens’ latest attempt to give our integrity agencies the powers that they need to ensure that public projects are being administered correctly, to ensure that governments are acting with integrity and to ensure that our public funds are being disbursed not only in the public interest but in the way that the government claims and intends for them to be spent. We have known for a long time that the powers our integrity agencies hold are currently insufficient, and the integrity of our government depends on IBAC being given the teeth it needs to root out corruption – corruption like we have seen recently revealed and alleged on the Big Build project. The bill that we have brought to this place and the amendments that I will introduce today to that bill will achieve just that.

The majority of Victorians clearly want and support further investigation into corruption on Labor’s Big Build projects, but not just on that; they want confidence across the government’s whole big-spending infrastructure agenda that we are seeing the public benefit delivered that these projects claim to deliver. The only people who are standing in the way of that happening currently are Jacinta Allan’s Labor government. It is seriously concerning how desperately Labor have been trying over the past sitting week and this week to prevent our integrity agencies from gaining these powers. It does raise the query of why, when we have heard for years from the agencies themselves and from Parliament’s Independent Oversight Committee that these powers are needed, that they are necessary, the government is dragging its feet. It raises the query in the minds of those of us in this place and in the population of Victoria: do they have something to hide? Do they know more about what has been going on? Let me be clear, though: these powers are important beyond the scandal of today. They are important and have been important for decades to enable our integrity agencies to do the job that they are set up to do.

Today we are debating our bill to give IBAC the powers it needs. We are supportive of many, many actions to try and rectify this issue, but only the bill that the Greens are putting forward gets to the root of this problem and tackles grey corruption. I heard Mr Mulholland’s contribution and about the difficulty that the Liberals face with some of that, but it is an essential improvement to our integrity agencies and one that IBAC has repeatedly asked for itself. It is only the Greens who are putting that solution on the table at the moment to get to the root of that problem.

The bill will expand the definition of ‘corrupt conduct’ so that IBAC is no longer restricted to investigating serious indictable crimes or common-law offences like misconduct in public office, bribery or perverting the course of justice. This would empower IBAC to identify, investigate and expose corrupt conduct of public officers that does not in itself constitute a criminal offence. That is things such as serious breaches of codes of conduct of MPs and ministers, really egregious pork-barrelling or the awarding of non-competitive tenders and appointments to public positions that are not informed by a competitive process. The bill will also, crucially, make provision for investigations of conduct that occurred before the commencement of the bill, and it would allow IBAC to re-examine matters that it has previously dismissed or referred to another agency. That is really crucial when you consider the events that have led us to this place today in relation to Big Build corruption allegations.

If we genuinely want to fix this and stop this problem happening again not just in the current instance but over time and going forward, we must give IBAC the powers that it has been begging for, and anything less than that really is a cop-out.

We have heard some comments on the need for a royal commission, and obviously the scale of this scandal deserves serious investigation. I will make the comment that IBAC was essentially set up to be a standing royal commission but it has deliberately not been given the powers akin to that investigating body – the powers that it needs to do its job. If we want to investigate this current crisis properly now, we need to give IBAC the proper powers, because this is not the first political scandal that we have seen with the integrity agency – with its hands tied – unable to get to the bottom of it. And if we do not fix the problem, it will not be the last; this will happen again. We have a huge spending agenda from the Labor government, some of it undoubtedly going into very worthy projects. But we need to have the scrutiny and the accountability for the public to feel confident that that is being delivered effectively.

The bill that we have before the house, crucially, will actually just bring IBAC’s powers into line with those of most other anti-corruption watchdogs across the nation, including the new National Anti-Corruption Commission. I will observe that we have some integrity bodies here in Victoria but they have been hamstrung because of a deliberate decision to withhold from them the powers that they need to root out corruption and to stop it before it starts. And if the Allan Labor government opposes these really sorely needed reforms, we can only reach one logical conclusion: that the Premier does not want the Victorian public to know about the full truth and the depth and the breadth of corruption on the Big Build. So I truly hope that we will take the opportunity that is contained in this crisis and actually finally act to give our integrity agencies the powers that they have been calling for for years.

As I said in commencing my speech today, we also have some amendments that are in my name, and I ask that those be circulated now. These amendments turn to some of the issues and solutions that have been broadly canvassed in the media and in this chamber in recent times. The first of these is on KC70C, the sheet in my name, which provides the follow-the-dollar powers. This will give IBAC the power to follow the money all the way through publicly funded projects and into the private sector and organised crime, where currently it does not have the power. To get to the bottom of the Big Build scandal, IBAC must be given the power to investigate the corrupt conduct of third parties and of private subcontractors, including dodgy developers, the firms that are run by organised crime, the bikies hired as health and safety reps and standover men who are working as industrial dispute mediators. These are some of the allegations that we have heard, and at the moment they just stand and cannot be properly investigated because IBAC lacks the power to follow the money. This amendment will also vest IBAC with strengthened powers to explicitly authorise someone who has made a complaint to IBAC to communicate to someone else about IBAC’s response to that complaint – for example, to be able to communicate that IBAC has decided whether to dismiss or investigate the complaint.

The second function of these amendments, on KC75C, is to amend the Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2011 to remove the exceptional circumstances threshold that IBAC needs to satisfy in order to hold public hearings. IBAC recently told the Integrity and Oversight Committee that the exceptional circumstances requirement for holding a public examination ‘imposes an additional and unnecessary constraint on IBAC’s ability to inform the public and promote accountability’. Put simply, Victorians have a right to see with their own eyes where the Big Build billions went, including what the Premier knew and when she knew it. I want to emphasise that this amendment will not remove important safeguards on public hearings, including that it allows IBAC to maintain discretion, to hold private hearings where necessary, to protect the identity of whistleblowers or to protect the reputation, safety or wellbeing of a witness. But it provides that ability for them to conduct public hearings without having to satisfy exceptional circumstances, which will improve the transparency and the confidence of the public both in IBAC’s exercising of its duties and in turn in the administration of public funds.

Our final amendment is a clarification of the meaning of ‘corrupt conduct’, which is on sheet KC76C. This is new to this place. The amendment clarifies that a finding of corrupt conduct is not a finding of criminal misconduct. Currently section 162(6) of the IBAC Act states that IBAC cannot find that someone is guilty of a criminal or disciplinary offence. IBAC currently employs a conservative reading of the IBAC act 2011, to avoid breaching section 162(6), that the definition of corrupt conduct is limited to serious indictable offending or common-law offences. That is why Victoria’s anti-corruption commission does not make findings of corrupt conduct. As such, IBAC proposed to the Integrity and Oversight Committee that the IBAC act could simply be amended to clarify that a finding of corrupt conduct is not a finding of guilt but simply establishes jurisdiction. IBAC is of the view that this would let it report more clearly on corrupt conduct, it would sharpen its recommendations in relation to prevention without prejudicing criminal investigations and prosecutions and it would help build public trust. The effect of this amendment is empowering IBAC to do just this.

We actually have the power today to start giving Victorians the answers that they seek and that they deserve on the full extent, the cost and the criminality involved in what has been going on. I do urge all members to do the right thing for Victorians today and in the future by supporting our bill and amendments. I note we have had some pretty incredible conduct from the government. It is vital that we actually get a resolution to this. These are not new issues, as I have said. We have been seeking to expand this jurisdiction and give IBAC the teeth that it has needed essentially since the agency’s creation. The gap that was left in IBAC’s abilities has meant that over time it has done very good work in improving transparency, accountability and oversight but there has always been this glaring gap that means that incidents like those that the government has spent many weeks now trying to defend and bat off have continued. We just must not allow that situation to go into the future. We have the ability to fix the jurisdictional issues that IBAC has come up against.

The Greens have been consistent in bringing laws on this topic to this place. We were also consistent in putting forward amendments, as has been mentioned, to the omnibus bill that the government currently has waiting in the wings. We believe that these are vital fixes to our integrity and oversight bodies. We have not just brought this up as part of the latest crisis. It is something that Tim Read, my colleague in the other place, our integrity spokesperson, has been diligent on, and it is something that my predecessors in this place also raised on behalf of the Greens over many, many years.

It is time to actually bring this saga to a close and give our integrity agencies the powers that they need to ensure that Victorians have confidence in the administration of public funds, in the government’s decision-making around that, in its implementation of what are huge, eye-watering sums of public funds. The allegations around $15 billion are serious, and if the government were really serious about getting to the bottom of that, I would think that they would want to know what has happened with the huge amounts of expenditure that are currently committed. We need to have confidence in the way that these funds have been administered. I would hope that all parties could agree on that principle and provide our integrity agencies with the powers that they need in order to address the gaps that they currently face and that allow situations like corruption on the Big Build to flourish. I would ask all parties to give serious consideration to our amendments and the bill before the house. This is a necessary fix, and I commend the bill to the house.

 Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (15:19): I am very pleased to rise to speak on the private members bill seeking to make amendments to the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission Act 2011 and to consider the amendments which have been circulated. This is a complex area of law and public administration that I think requires and deserves careful and detailed attention. I am going to spend quite a bit of time today going through some of the issues that I think present themselves in considering some of the precise issues that are raised by either the bill or the proposed amendments, and I hope that in doing so the contributions that I make are not wilfully mischaracterised by others as being anything less than taking these issues exceptionally seriously.

As someone who has served on the Integrity and Oversight Committee (IOC) for the duration of this Parliament, the 60th Parliament, and has spent many hours discussing and debating with colleagues on that committee, interviewing witnesses and preparing reports on a wide range of issues, these are complex matters that require careful consideration. I do not think that the text of the amendments proposed today give due consideration to the complexity of those issues. There are a series of questions that remain significantly unanswered about the operation of the precise amendments that are being proposed today that I think warrant further consideration, and we should not characterise them as simple things that we can just implement because they tick a recommendation from the IOC’s report, which I will get to and question in many respects, and that we can just put through and it is really simple. This is a very complex piece of public administration and public law. It involves the granting of exceptional powers to a body. I think we have to be very, very, careful in how we as legislators consider changing that legislative framework, and I will get to that in the course of this contribution today. I take this very seriously, and I hope that people understand and appreciate this contribution as being in that vein.

I want to make some broad comments at the start about the context that sits around the legislation before us today, because obviously the motivation of various people making various speeches and various contributions is for them to articulate. What you have seen from the government since the serious allegations of systemic improper and illegal conduct on construction sites here in Victoria were brought into the public domain with such force back in mid-2024 is an absolute and unwavering commitment to ensuring that illegal activity on our construction sites is stamped out.

The best way for illegal activity to be dealt with is by Victoria Police bringing charges in a court of law against the criminal, and that is exactly what Victoria Police have done. Taskforce Hawk has made 17 arrests. Nearly 70 charges have been laid against individuals involved in the building and construction industry here in Victoria as a result of their work. That is how seriously the government takes these issues. We have referred matters to Victoria Police. Matters have been investigated; charges have been laid.

There are a range of other measures that the government has taken, principally on matters to do with labour hire licensing that are within the jurisdiction of the state, to ensure that standards are lifted and that we have the capacity and the legislative framework, through the appropriate regulators at a state level, to weed out bad characters from regulated industries here in Victoria. We have debated on prior occasions the significant new powers that have been given to things like the Labour Hire Authority to weed out bad actors from those particular industries. There are also a range of issues which need dealing with at the Fair Work level because, as we know, things like the regulation and the approval of enterprise bargaining agreements in the state of Victoria are powers that are referred to the Commonwealth and it is the Fair Work Commission that has responsibility for dealing with some of the issues that have been raised with respect to irregularities or alleged irregularities around the registration of enterprise bargaining agreements, and I hope that takes place.

We have also seen swift and strong action from the Commonwealth government, as the level of government responsible for the regulation of registered organisations, to appoint an independent administrator to the CFMEU to clean out the bad actors. That has all happened. That is the context for this debate. This legislation before us today is seeking to do a number of things in that context, and some of them, as both Dr Mansfield and Ms Copsey have articulated in their contributions, are matters of reform that they suggested should occur prior to these revelations, so they are not solely a response to the contemporary revelations with respect to the building and construction industry, and others feature with more prominence.

I want to get to the bill and to the amendments in particular. There are a series of questions raised by the particulars of the amendments that have been circulated today when considered alongside the report of the Integrity and Oversight Committee. Obviously, the Integrity and Oversight Committee in December last year released quite a substantial report – I would do the page count – of a couple of hundred pages with a considerable number of recommendations. The inquiry itself took us, as a committee, a long time, and it was a thorough piece of work. That report contains a series of recommendations that traverse matters broader than those which the Greens have proposed in this legislation before us today and touches on a number of matters that have not been brought up in these amendments, but it also deals with other factors that some of these amendments do raise that have not been considered by the Greens, and I will get to some of those. So there are both matters that have not been dealt with by these proposed amendments arising out of the IOC’s report and other matters that have been dealt with, but the depth and the complexity of the issues that the IOC raised have not been dealt with by these proposed amendments.

The first I want to go to is what is in the substantive bill, and that is effectively the change that is sought to be made with respect to the definition of what constitutes corrupt conduct. The bill itself seeks to make amendments to section 4, where the definitions of ‘corrupt conduct’ are in the IBAC act, to remove the requirement that conduct needs to constitute a relevant criminal offence in order to be investigated by IBAC as corrupt conduct. Obviously the definitions of ‘corrupt conduct’ in the IBAC act have not been static since the IBAC legislation was brought in in 2011 and passed in 2012. There were a series of amendments brought forward in 2015 and 2016 by the government that broadened IBAC’s scope of powers and that removed restrictions that had been put in there by the previous Liberal government when they established the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission. They made a series of changes to the laws in 2016, and there were further amendments to a lot of issues made in 2019. So it is not as if there have not been amendments to IBAC’s legislation over the course of this government. That is one matter.

The second is that the proposed amendment here in its particular form does raise a series of issues that I think need further and better explanation. One of the challenges that we encounter in dealing with this particular space is, both in Dr Mansfield’s second-reading speech, which was delivered I think last year, and in Ms Copsey’s contribution today, the intended effect of these amendments. This is important because when there are ambiguous phrases in legislation, the contributions in the second-reading debates and particularly in the second-reading speeches of those who moved them are really critical to aiding statutory interpretation. So I think it is really important that we understand what is meant.

Both Dr Mansfield and Ms Copsey talked about this bill seeking to give IBAC the power to eradicate and deal with grey corruption. The reason I find this challenging is because of the evidence that our committee, the Integrity and Oversight Committee, received from a range of legal experts about the difficulties in determining workable legal definitions for the concept of grey corruption. To quote from page 22 of the IOC’s report:

Some scholars have noted that including acts of ‘grey corruption’ may be difficult to define legally. For example, Professor Tim Prenzler notes that ‘[t]he term “grey corruption” appears to have utility in political discourse in describing areas of minor corruption and/or unethical but legally ambiguous practice’.

In doing so, he is basically saying that grey corruption is a useful term for political discourse but it is not a particularly useful term if you want to start putting definitions into acts. That is one of the reasons that the IOC, in its consideration of these issues, made the following comments, and I quote from page 24 of the IOC’s review of IBAC’s laws:

The Committee recognises the difficulty in settling on a workable legal test for a definition of serious corrupt conduct in the political context that falls short of a criminal offence, and notes the lack of substantive definition, and even consistent definition between witnesses, on what would constitute ‘grey corruption’. The Committee does not consider that the term ‘grey corruption’ is helpful in guiding reforms to the IBAC’s legislation.

I think this is incredibly important because it does present to us a real challenge in supporting today the proposal that the Greens have put forward when the second-reading speech and the contribution from Ms Copsey said that this is designed to target grey corruption but the evidence the committee received was that it is exceptionally challenging to form that legal definition. One of the things that the New South Wales ICAC has looked at is particularly how to define the term ‘pork-barrelling’, which is one of the things, again, that Dr Mansfield in her second-reading speech said this bill would be designed to deal with. The New South Wales ICAC’s report on Operation Jersey, which delved into questions about how to define what pork-barrelling is, basically said there were challenges in finding definitions and that it essentially amounted to conduct that generates partisan benefit.

I think what we find from evidence that was certainly presented by certain witnesses, including Clancy Moore from Transparency International, at the IOC’s hearings was that there are lines that are difficult to define about what is normal horsetrading in the course of political agreement – agreements that might be sought to be made by people who sit in a chamber like this about whether they would support particular legislation – and the extent to which those discussions would constitute pork-barrelling or grey corruption for the purposes of defining IBAC’s proposed powers. What we may be doing by proposing the amendments as they are drafted here today is capturing conduct that many of us might regard as being a normal part of trying to pass legislation through the Parliament, because if a deal was done between parties to block or not block, pass or not pass legislation through the Parliament that in some way was regarded as offering a partisan benefit, which is what the New South Wales ICAC in its discussion of these issues in Operation Jersey said was one of the things that constituted pork-barrelling, then we would run a serious and significant risk of introducing legislation that would render –

Members interjecting.

Jacinta Ermacora: On a point of order, Acting President, Mr Batchelor is engaging respectfully and deeply with this bill, and I think the noise, even though it is not as loud as usual, still makes it difficult to hear.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Gaelle Broad): I will just ask for the interjections to be kept to a minimum or a reasonable level.

Ryan BATCHELOR: I think one of the issues that the people interjecting are talking about is that the words in the bill are not the words that were put in the second-reading speech, and the point I am making is that the words in the bill are ambiguous. The words are ambiguous about what would fall within the definition of ‘corrupt conduct’, and to determine what those words meant and what those words mean, courts will look to the second-reading speeches, particularly the second-reading speech of the member who introduced the bill, as informative extrinsic evidence to determine what is meant by ambiguous words in legislation. It is a very simple principle of statutory construction that the High Court itself, in understanding what some particular provisions of the IBAC act mean, looked at in the last few years. I know people do not think these are serious issues because of the way that they are interjecting, but I think that understanding the implications of legislation that we seek to pass is the fundamental job of us as legislators. If members wish to clarify what they mean by the words that they propose and the words that they say, they will have opportunity, I suspect, in the course of the debate to do that.

There are a couple of other matters I want to get to here. One of them relates to the amendment on sheet KC75C which is proposed by Ms Copsey to repeal section 117(1)(a) of the IBAC act, which is the provision that public hearings should only occur in exceptional circumstances. I think we should at the start make it pretty clear, because there has been some misreporting in the media, what the IOC report recommended. The IOC did not recommend this change to the IBAC’s legislation. The IOC gave careful consideration to these issues and formed a position that this amendment was not something that should be proceeded with. I want to give some context from the report as to why that is the case, because I think it is important in the course of this debate. In dealing with examinations I think one of the things that people do not have an appreciation for routinely is the exceptional nature of IBAC’s powers. This is a passage from page 56 of the IOC’s report:

IBAC’s examination process is notably different than the court process for giving evidence. Aside from the abrogation of privilege discussed above, submissions have also highlighted that while witnesses in IBAC examinations are able to have a lawyer present, their lawyer is not able to speak, and there is no opportunity for cross‑examination to enable a right of reply. It has also been stated that ‘[e]xhibits used by IBAC lawyers in examinations are not provided to witnesses or their lawyers prior to the commencement of the examination, which is distinctive from court processes. Additionally, an IBAC investigation is identifying whether corrupt conduct has occurred is a truth‑finding exercise, which is a lower threshold than the finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal court hearings. It is also necessary to ensure IBAC’s examination process is consistent with the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 …

I am not aware, although I might have missed it in Ms Copsey’s contribution, of whether there has been a statement detailing the compatibility of these amendments to the charter of human rights. If there has been, I would be willing to read it. But I am concerned that there has not been, because the charter of human rights – at right 13, ‘Privacy and reputation’, subsection (b) – says that the person has the right not to have their reputation unlawfully attacked. IBAC’s examination process is one where you do not have the right to silence, you do not have a privilege against self-incrimination, you do not see evidence before it is presented to you and your lawyer cannot object during the processes. This is an extraordinary set of powers that has the potential to extraordinarily impact on witnesses. The legislation, as it is framed, draws strength from the charter of human rights to protect an individual’s right not to have their reputation unlawfully attacked. The committee, in determining its position on this question, said:

While the Committee acknowledges that the exceptional circumstances test in section 117 of the IBAC Act … provides a high threshold for an examination in public, the Committee considers that this is appropriate when considering the risks associated with IBAC’s public examinations, including reputational damage.

I would be interested to understand the perspective of the people who are proposing this change and what impact it has in an assessment against the charter of human rights – also because the statement of compatibility with human rights that was tendered with the original bill relied upon this section being present in the act as evidence that the proposed changes to section 6 on corrupt conduct did not abrogate an individual’s human rights. The statement of compatibility tabled with the bill said that the changes to section 6 did not abrogate human rights because of protections in section 8(a) and also because of protections in section 117, but the amendments that are being moved by Ms Copsey take away one of the things that their own statement of compatibility with human rights says protects human rights. So I think we need an explanation about how these changes uphold the charter of human rights.

We also have the evidence from the chief inspector of Integrity Oversight Victoria, who gave evidence to the IOC’s inquiry on 25 August last year and said:

We have had the experience of individuals who have found that the damage to their reputation is such that they are not able to get banking, finance and the like, and they are looking to get confirmation that what they have done is actually not a finding of being associated with corrupt conduct.

I will come to this question as well, because one of the other changes that Ms Copsey has proposed in her set of amendments is to enable IBAC to make findings of corrupt conduct about an individual. As was explained earlier in the debate, because of the requirement that corrupt conduct constitutes a criminal offence, IBAC is precluded from detailing findings of corrupt conduct against individuals. The proposal from Ms Copsey seeks to make that change consistent with the recommendation from the IOC. But the problem that we have with the amendment that is being moved is that it cherrypicks one recommendation and ignores two other recommendations related to exactly the same issue that provide protections to individuals who may be the subject of such findings. They also run contrary to the submissions of IBAC itself to the IOC, and I will go through that in just a moment.

The concerns about these sections were expressed by the Law Institute of Victoria in their submission to the inquiry, which said:

A public finding of corrupt conduct or police personnel misconduct against an individual inherently impacts on the person’s right to privacy and reputation, particularly where such findings have been made in the absence of the same procedural fairness safeguards that would have been provided in the judicial system. Arguably, in the social media age, public findings of corrupt conduct or police personnel misconduct are likely to have long lasting reputational impacts for the individual, which may culminate in severe impacts to the person’s future employment and overall health and wellbeing.

In order to prevent people’s human rights being severely abrogated, IBAC said in its submission:

IBAC seeks an amendment to the IBAC Act to provide it with the express power to make findings about, and form and express opinions of, corrupt conduct and police personnel misconduct consistent with the powers of other Australian anti-corruption commissions. Any such amendment should include a provision clarifying that a finding or opinion that corrupt conduct has occurred is not a finding of guilt or proof of the commission of a criminal offence and serves solely to establish jurisdiction for the purpose of enabling IBAC to perform its functions under the Act. This approach aligns with administrative law principles and reinforces the distinction between IBAC’s investigative jurisdiction and the role of the courts in determining criminal liability.

Why does this matter? Because the amendments before us today, whilst purporting, I expect, to pick up recommendation 24 of the IOC’s report, ignore recommendation 25 and recommendation 26. Recommendation 25 is:

That the Victorian Government seek to amend the IBAC Act 2011 (Vic) to require that IBAC implement additional procedural fairness requirements in respect of findings of corrupt conduct, including in respect of (but not limited to) confidentiality, timeliness and providing individuals with an opportunity to respond.

Recommendation 26 is:

That the Victorian Government seek to amend the IBAC Act 2011 (Vic) to require that IBAC, in relevant reports, expressly states that findings in respect of corrupt conduct and police personnel misconduct do not amount to findings of guilt.

What the Greens amendments do is ignore those protections. What the Greens amendments do is ignore the further protections that were recommended by the law institute, recommended by IBAC and recommended by the IOC. I think it does demonstrate that on this particular issue there is more work that needs to be done – that the totality of the response to the IOC’s recommendations needs to be properly considered by government. That is exactly what the government is doing. The government has had this report since it was tabled in the Parliament in early December.

What I have hopefully demonstrated over the course of my contribution today is some of the complexity that exists in this area of law, how the IOC in its report sought to work its way through some of that complexity and how the Greens in their amendments have ignored complexity, have ignored the issues and the implications and the consequences for things like human rights and have failed to provide a comprehensive suite of legislative amendments that are necessary and required to see how we can improve IBAC’s performance in this state. As I said at the start of my contribution, what I have tried to demonstrate today is that there is significant work that has gone into this by the Integrity and Oversight Committee in its report. Sadly, the amendments before us today ignore a lot of it and run contrary to some of it. What the government has said is that it is carefully considering the report and will provide a comprehensive response to all of these issues so that when we make amendments to an exceptionally complex piece of law that has the effect of abrogating the rights of citizens, including their right to silence and their fundamental human rights, we do so carefully and in a considered way. This is what this legislation is about. This is what we should have as our standard for amending integrity legislation in Victoria.

 Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (15:49): There is a lot you could take from that speech. After all the talking down that we get from a member representing the government, you would never know that the biggest financial corruption scandal in history happened under their watch. You would never know that. Some of these things are quite ironic, and I will quote Mr Batchelor saying he thinks people just do not appreciate IBAC’s powers. I would agree with him, because it seems the Premier certainly did not when she referred the biggest financial corruption scandal in history to IBAC, a body that does not have follow-the-money powers.

Last month brought to light the biggest corruption scandal in this state’s history, the biggest that has ever been seen. I just want to state plainly that when Victorians are facing a cost-of-living crisis, when there is not enough money to fund police, when there is not enough money to fund ambulance services – the very basics of what this government should provide – we have heard that $15 billion has been lost to corruption. That would have funded every one of those services that I just mentioned. It is pretty upsetting that Victoria has become a state where parents are pulling their kids out of ballet and soccer due to cost-of-living pressures and due to the unbearable tax burden that it requires to live in this state. While parents are pulling their kids out of sport, people are accessing state-sponsored strippers. It is unbelievable. Can you believe that? When in Victoria we are short of 2000 police because of Labor’s mismanaged budget and because we are consistently running in the red, crooks are using state-sponsored strippers. Just let that sink in. While ambulances in my area cannot be manned, due to this budget crisis, government cars are being used for hits. It is actually true.

When we hear the government speak about International Women’s Day, women are being bashed on state Big Build sites. In fact here are two case studies. A woman was locked in a small room at a half-built state government hospital by a man previously jailed for violence against women, who smoked ice as he detained her. Another woman was bashed by a bikie-linked health and safety representative – which is ironic in itself, to be bashed by a health and safety representative – on his lunchbreak from a government-funded project. It was caught on camera. While the government have treated anyone – and we have just seen the best example of it in the last speech – who questions them as less, as conspiracy theorists, as somehow not quite as enlightened as they are, government construction sites have become the business headquarters for drug deals. That is the reality in this state: government construction sites have become the home of drug deals, threats and crime.

What I have found really upsetting is how lightly this government seems to be treating this matter. We are now into the second sitting week where we have been asking questions in question time, and I have just found the posture of this government amazing. It has been staggering to witness how the government have responded when asked questions – when asked what they knew, what went wrong. It seems like they have found it extremely funny, hilarious even, and whoever raises facts has been essentially called a liar. This is not the transparency that Victorians deserve. Every Victorian has the right to know what is happening with their taxpayer dollars. It is unbelievable that the government, who seem to have lost $15 billion of somebody else’s money –

Nick McGowan interjected.

Renee HEATH: Exactly, our money – are turning their nose up at a royal commission when their own government members, who obviously are too afraid to say who they are, are supporting that. This government has made light of it once again and treated everyone else like idiots – the public; the Greens, who are bringing this bill today; the members on this side who have raised questions and spoken in favour of a lot of what they are saying – when the Premier herself referred this issue to an agency which did not even have the powers to follow the money and to look into it. It is outside their scope. So enough fake outrage, I think. It is time to actually face up. This government has been given a very important job. You hold the purse, and you have lost $15 billion. It is time to enforce the law, find the money and stop the rorts.

 Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:55): I rise to make a brief contribution to the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission Amendment (Ending Political Corruption) Bill 2024, brought to this chamber by my Greens colleague Dr Mansfield, just to provide some further remarks to those made by one of my other colleagues Ms Copsey. It is quite an astonishing experience being able to follow Mr Batchelor’s remarks earlier. He managed, from the government side, as a Labor member, to speak for 30 minutes on this bill effectively just to say that the matters are complex and also to dwell for minutes on end, minutes at a time, on a definition in the bill that actually is not there if you look at page 2. I was trying to keep track of how many times the member used the word ‘serious’ – it was dozens and dozens; I lost track – when ultimately, if the government has not been forthcoming with its own solutions to this problem, how seriously is it taking the issue? It is performative. $15 billion – that is the number that is not going away. It is the number that is keeping this Labor government up at night – $15 billion in public money allegedly lost in rorts, public money allegedly used to fund criminal activity, organised crime, on government construction sites. Yet this Labor government refuses to take any accountability for this gross level of corruption. They refuse to give our anti-corruption bodies the powers that they need to investigate. It is little wonder then that a majority of voters have said this betrayal will influence their vote this November. That is what we have learned from polls just this morning.

That is $15 billion that could have been spent on funding our hospitals. It could have been spent on Victorian schoolkids, who, let us not forget, receive the least per student amount of funding in this country. It is $15 billion that could have been spent on improving our transport network. It could have been spent helping people with their medical costs or putting food on the table – $15 billion. These laws that the Greens have brought before this Parliament to stop this dodgy behaviour, this waste of taxpayer money, cannot wait. It is incumbent on every member of this chamber to support these laws – laws to stop the rorts, laws to stop the kickbacks – and these Greens amendments to follow the money. We need these laws now more than ever, and I commend them to the house.

 Jacinta ERMACORA (Western Victoria) (15:58): As you probably know, we are not in a position to support this private members bill moved by the Greens. The bill is characterised like a silver bullet to end political corruption. The reality is that there is no silver bullet when it comes to integrity reform. Complex problems in our democratic institutions do not have simple one-line solutions, and they certainly cannot be solved through a political stunt. Even after multiple royal commissions and decades of regulatory reform, complex issues cannot be solved in a single measure. The same is true when it comes to integrity reform. Strong integrity systems are built carefully over time through consultation, proper legislative design and effective oversight of institutions. They are not built through rushed amendments presented as a silver bullet, yet that is precisely what we see in the bill before the chamber today.

[The Legislative Council report is being published progressively.]