Independent Commissioner Against Corruption Annual Report 2014-15

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:49): I have a further question to the Attorney-General, if I may, sir. When did the Attorney receive advice from the ICAC commissioner recommending that lobbyists be considered public officers for the purposes of the ICAC Act?

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform) (14:49): The exact date, I am not able to say with any absolute certainty, but it would be some months back. I, from time to time, meet with the commissioner because it is appropriate, under that legislation, for the attorney-general of the day and the commissioner to meet from time to time to discuss matters that might be of interest to one or other or both of them.

It was in the context of one of those meetings that I indicated to the commissioner, as a matter of courtesy, that the government, as part and parcel of our ongoing public integrity agenda, was looking at introducing a number of different measures into the parliament. Some of those measures, I indicated to him, would include an attempt to make more transparent the remuneration of members of parliament. Other parts of those things would involve attempting to make more transparent the decisions by the planning minister of the day to change the boundary of the urban zone of the city without recourse to some publicly exposed conversation.

I said we also intended, as a public integrity measure, to have a more formal and transparent arrangement with respect to lobbyists. I provided him, if I recall correctly, with information about the fact that we were so doing. I think, at that stage, I might have even provided him, on a for-comment basis, with a draft bill and invited him to consider whether there was anything he thought we might usefully add to that legislation or that bill.

In that context, if I remember correctly, the conversation turned to the question as to whether lobbyists would necessarily be captured by the legislation as it presently stood. I asked the question of the commissioner that, given the fact that a lobbyist by definition is a person whose business it is to communicate with a public official, who by definition is a person who is capable of being overseen by the ICAC commissioner, then it should be the case that most of those transactions would be collected. I asked him to reflect on that.

He did reflect on that, and he said to me that he thought there might be some circumstances where that was not a complete cover of the field and that, in any event, from a public integrity point of view, there may be merit in considering them being a stand-alone proposition as being within the jurisdiction of the commission to investigate per se. That was a matter that, as I recall, unfolded in that fashion, and my intention is that we will go ahead and do that.