INDEPENDENT COMMISSION AGAINST CRIME AND CORRUPTION BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 18 October 2007. Page 1143.)

Mr RAU (Enfield) (11:11): I am pleased to see that this matter has been brought forward for discussion in the parliament because I think it is an important issue. Whilst at the end of the day I find myself not necessarily in agreement with the specifics that are provided in the proposal, I think the issue is one that needs to be debated publicly, and it is an issue which has several important strands to it and, for what it is worth, I want to make a few remarks about that.

Before doing that, I have to say to the member for Unley that his dissertation on the internal mechanics of the ALP was similar to the sort of contribution I would make on quantum mechanics; anyway, that is by the by. It always must be more mysterious from the outside than it is from the inside.

Mr Hanna: Very tawdry and mundane on the inside.

Mr RAU: Yes; I might invite him to come along as a visiting fellow or something for a while so that he can get a feel for it.

Mr Hanna interjecting:

Mr RAU: Indeed; it might actually make him feel less threatened by the whole thing. In terms of the issue about the independent commission, I think a number of areas in the administration of the state necessarily require oversight, and I would like to touch on a couple. The first one, and in my mind the one which is the gaping hole in administration at the moment, is local government because local government is basically a law unto itself. The LGA is nothing more than a lobby group for the administrations of councils and, occasionally, they put a mascot up at the front who happens to be an elected person and they are at the head of the Mardi Gras when they go off to their conferences but, in fact, the whole of the LGA's agenda is driven by the needs, wants and requirements of the administrations of councils.

Of course, they do not want other people looking over their shoulder and seeing what they are doing. We heard the great cacophony of complaint from local government at apparently this preposterous suggestion by the Auditor-General in his last report that he should have the right, if necessary, to have a look at them.

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: Paul Perry is on his way to the Local Government Association as we speak.

Mr RAU: Yes, and I am reminded that Mr Paul Perry, formerly an officer of some note in the City of Charles Sturt, is moving to the LGA to assist it in understanding governance, and that is the most eloquent statement I can imagine about the direction the LGA is taking because anything he might have to say about governance is going to be a problem. Anyway, let me move on.

I do want to pay tribute where it is due in the local government sector to Councillor Joanna McCluskey and her colleagues of the City of Port Adelaide Enfield, because they have actually moved to have some sort of oversight of local government. Indeed, I think at their recent conference it was decided that some oversight is needed. Whether that turns out to be a genuine recommendation or a figleaf remains to be seen, but at least there appears to be some movement.

The second area of interest, of course, is the police. The police do need to be overseen, for obvious reasons, and there is legitimate debate about whether the Police Complaints Authority is adequately discharging that function. I do not have a firm view about that one way or the other, but there is a debate and possibly it is a debate that needs to occur.

The state Public Service obviously needs to be subject to scrutiny, as does the executive arm of government. These things are important, and I think it is important periodically for us to have a debate about these issues and work out how we are going to deal with them. In recognising the problem that the member for Mitchell has identified, and in acknowledging—as I happily do—that he makes a very good point that these things need to be looked at and examined, I find myself having a problem with the ICAC proposal, and I would like to explain why. I have a number of reasons. The first is that, in setting up some sort of overarching, all-powerful body, one creates the inevitable problem of who watches the watchers. Who is keeping an eye on those who are keeping an eye on everybody else? How far back do we remove that? Who watches the watchers of the watchers of the watchers? It gets to the point—

The Hon. R.B. Such: You're in parliament and you don't know.

Mr RAU: Possibly. It gets to the point where layer upon layer of bureaucracy is intruding upon the layer below and, at the end of the day, if we do not have it right at any one of those points, the whole system fails. In my mind, an ICAC proposal carries the very real risk that, if the wrong person is put in charge of it, we risk either having some person who sees himself as some sort of potentate who can run the whole show and go around pushing people around, or having somebody who plays to the theatre all the time in order to get the public acclamation that they might receive.

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: Can you think of a statutory official who does that?

Mr RAU: I can't, but maybe others can. We risk finding somebody who has a tendency to justify their own existence and to justify budget claims by finding new witch-hunts to explore and develop as and when budgetary requirements dictate, and so on. So, we could actually have a budget and empire-building driven management of this very powerful and potentially very damaging institution. I remind members of the parliament that institutions such as the NKVD (later the KGB), the CIA and the FBI all began, basically within the context of their own systems, with an intention to do this sort of thing. I will not pick the extreme of the NKVD, but let us have a look at the FBI. Anybody who is interested in how these things can go off the rails should read about J. Edgar Hoover, who was the unchallenged leader of that outfit for many years and who died in the position. He was able to extract an enormous amount of political influence out of that outfit because of the way it conducted itself.

Mr Hanna interjecting:

Mr RAU: That is not a reason not to have somebody looking over people's shoulders. I agree with the member for Mitchell: there is a need for oversight. I absolutely agree with that, but I am very concerned that, if such an oversight is to be established, improved or developed, it has to be in a way which is not going to create a monster that is bigger than the one we are trying to defeat. That is really the core issue here.

In summary, I say this: by all means, let us review all these issues, such as government corruption, of which there is plenty, in my opinion. I could give examples here for a couple of hours, which would make people's hair stand on end but, luckily, Mr Perry will be able to explain those things to people in local government.

An honourable member: The police.

Mr RAU: The police—obviously there are problems with the police, the Public Service and the executive. All those things are admitted—they are known problems—but, in order to solve a problem, it is dangerous to jump in a reactive way into a solution which may actually make the problem you are trying to solve worse and create a completely new layer of problems over and above that problem.

So, I commend the member for Mitchell for bringing this forward. I genuinely support the idea of a reasoned, well thought out, well-considered review of the ways in which all of these government agencies are overseen. That review might mean that there will need to be changes to the Auditor-General's and the Ombudsman's powers. There could be any number of reasons why a different solution is appropriate. I do not want to close off those options by zeroing in on a particular formula which has been tried elsewhere and which, in varying degrees, has or has not worked. We need to look at New South Wales and Western Australia to see contrasts in the way these things function.

As I said, I commend the member for Mitchell for what he has brought forward. I think it is excellent that the parliament is debating this; but, unfortunately, I think it is too early yet to be prescriptive about a solution in the way in which this proposal has been brought forward.

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (11:21): I rise to indicate my support for the bill. The disappointing aspect about the debate in this matter to date, and in particular the government's position—

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Ms CHAPMAN: —is that we hear submissions put to the parliament about how this bill contains merit and some good features and yet no-one in the government is prepared to stand up and actually support it. The Attorney-General has repeatedly made public that South Australia does not need an ICAC. Notwithstanding that, yesterday we heard Premier Iemma announce at the major ICAC conference that anyone in Australia who does not have an ICAC is, to use his specific quote, 'crazy', and if they do not think they need one they are kidding themselves. He made it absolutely clear, as other premiers have around the country in their adoption of ICACs, of the importance of having one. So, for South Australia to sit out on its own, with its lurid history, as a government, and not address this issue I think is quite scandalous.

The opposition has considered what form an ICAC could take, who should be on it, how it should be reviewed, what powers it should have, and in doing so has carefully examined who they are and how it operates in other states. There is one aspect that the government has raised, and that is an important one; namely—you have to answer the question positive if you are going to support this initiative—is it going to be money well spent? Are you going to get some return for the investment? Because these things are not cheap, they are expensive, no matter what model you use.

The experience interstate is: New South Sales Independent Commission Against Corruption established in 1988. It has a staff of 110 and a budget of $15.6 million. The Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission (replacing the Criminal Justice Commission) was formed as a result of the Fitzgerald royal commission. It has a staff of 300 and a budget of $35 million per annum. WA's Corruption and Crime Commission grew out of the aftermath of the WA Inc. and Kennedy royal commissions, and it has a staff of 150 and a budget of $25.5 million. In Victoria, the then Bracks government, under strong pressure from the police union, refused to establish a royal commission into corruption; rather, the Victorian government gave additional, but limited, powers to the Ombudsman to investigate police corruption.

So, they have considered it and many have made the decision that it is money well spent and it is necessary to ensure that we do maintain a standard in public office at all levels of government and public service. The history in South Australia is well known. We have had the Premier's senior adviser (Randall Ashbourne) charged with corruption in relation to an incident involving the Attorney-General. We have had two protracted investigations by the police anti-corruption squad on the unsavoury activities in Veale Gardens. We have had the alleged police incompetence or corruption in the McGee hit and run investigation, necessitating the establishment of a royal commission. We have had the 'stashed cash' affair involving—

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: I rise on a point of order. I have a twofold point of order. The first is that the matter of the Veale Gardens allegations is currently before the criminal courts and we have a strict sub judice rule in this house. The second thing is that under the Evidence Act there is a provision that, where publicity is given to a person being charged, as the member for Bragg just did, it is an offence not to mention that they were acquitted.

The SPEAKER: I do caution the Deputy Leader of the Opposition about mentioning matters that are sub judice in the course of her speech. Regarding the Evidence Act, that does not apply, to my knowledge, to parliament because of parliamentary privilege, unless it specifically mentions the parliament, and I do not think it does. I do, nonetheless, caution the deputy leader about mentioning matters in her speech that are before the courts.

Ms CHAPMAN: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am mindful of that advice, and I have taken it. I am not only mindful of it but careful to ensure that there is not a breach. Nick Niarchos comes to mind, as a person named in this house. Mr Speaker, you would well know of the determinations that were made in the Supreme Court on that matter, which involved the Attorney-General and questions of parliamentary privilege.

We had, of course, the former speaker demanding a royal commission into alleged public and judicial malfeasance on issues that never saw the light of day. We had the long saga concerning the sexual abuse of wards of the state, with the government eventually establishing the Mullighan inquiry. The Premier and ministers regularly attacked and sought to undermine the independence of the Director of Public Prosecutions, and, most recently, the questions of conflict of interest of one of the ministers of this government have been brushed aside by the Premier. So, anyone who purports to suggest that we do not need an ICAC in this state is, as Premier Iemma says, crazy. We certainly need it.

This government has brushed aside criticism. It has placed things under the carpet. It has refused to establish an ICAC to deal with this matter. When we view collectively the sorts of issues that have arisen just in the brief five years of this government, we understand why it is so important that we have an ICAC, and the case for it is compelling.

We announced, as an opposition, that if elected in 2006 that we would investigate the establishment of a commission, and we have done so, and our shadow attorney-general, the member for Heysen, and her predecessor representing legal matters for the opposition in another place, the Hon. Rob Lawson, have done an immense amount of work on this and have, I think, had an opportunity to properly advise our party and have received endorsement of the need for it. It is only the Premier and his Attorney-General who seem to be so hell bent on hiding from it.

Some of the features in this bill are ones which we think perhaps could go a little further or be a little different, but on balance we support the bill and we would seek its passage. It is important that there is clear identification of functions and that the jurisdiction of an ICAC has clear limits. If one has committed a criminal offence, there are processes for it to go to the DPP for prosecution—and we are mindful of that. It must have powers of examination, otherwise there is the capacity for it to be impotent.

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Ms CHAPMAN: In my view, there must be no publication of very high-level offences. The way to manage and operate an ICAC is to have high penalties for anyone who discloses information and, in order to be genuinely successful, we must have a high standards for personnel appointed to it.

Debate adjourned.