Wednesday, 22 February 2023

Statements on parliamentary committee reports

Integrity and Oversight Committee

Performance of the Victorian Integrity Agencies 2020/21: Focus on Witness Welfare

Kim WELLS (Rowville) (10:12): I rise to talk about the Integrity and Oversight Committee report Performance of the Victorian Integrity Agencies 2020/21: Focus on Witness Welfare. As I said last time we spoke on IOC committee reports, the only constant with this whole committee was that the deputy chair, the member for Sandringham, remained there for the entire four years, whereas the chair – I think we decided that we had five. The genesis of this report is so, so incredibly sad. The reason why it started was because of the suicide of Amanda Stapledon, a former mayor in Casey and a former Liberal candidate in 2014. I remember doorknocking for days with Amanda, and I always found her to be an incredible person. She was devoted to her son Pete and just devoted to her community. But that aside, she was one of a group that was being investigated by IBAC over dealings with developer John Woodman, who had a lot of property interests in that area.

The issue that the Integrity and Oversight Committee had to consider was when witness evidence should be heard in private or in public, and not everyone will agree with me in regard to my interpretation of this investigation that was being held by the IOC. There are very good reasons why IBAC should hold examinations in public – because it sends a very, very clear message to anyone in the public service, a local council or any government authority that you must do the right thing in all cases and that if you do not, there are very severe consequences. If you are brought before IBAC and you are questioned in public, it is very, very big news in this state, and we saw what happened with the Department of Education and Training.

The issue then moves on to who should be brought before a public examination, and the IBAC Commissioner will make that determination. Witness welfare must be considered in determining public or private examination – which one it should be. The Commissioner needs to decide, based on real evidence, who should be examined in public and who should be examined in private. The other obvious question is: how is it that Casey councillors are examined in public but on numerous occasions when Premier Andrews has been questioned by IBAC over numerous allegations of corruption it was all done in private? When you look at the ICAC in New South Wales, Gladys Berejiklian, the Premier at the time, was front and centre in a public examination. Yet in Victoria, if IBAC are going to ask the Premier questions, in every example he is examined in private, and that is a significant difference.

In a public hearing with the member for Sandringham, the then deputy chair of this committee, I directly asked the Commissioner why it was that Premier Andrews was only examined in private and never in public. The Commissioner gave a very clear indication that he wanted to answer the question; I think the member for Sandringham would agree. The Commissioner stated to the chair that he was prepared to answer that question about why Premier Andrews was only being questioned in private when the chair insisted that the feed be cut.

The chair relied on section 7(2) of the Parliamentary Committees Act 2003. The Commissioner was well aware of that section, very well aware of 7(2), and arrangements should have been made between the chair and the Commissioner on his ability to answer the question without breaching section 7(2). As a result, we never received an answer, so the question remains part of this report: why does the Premier of Victoria only have to give evidence to IBAC in private and never in public? I hope that the new IOC does further work in this area.