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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2008-11-27 Daily Xml
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INDEPENDENT COMMISSION AGAINST CORRUPTION BILL

Introduction and First Reading

Mrs REDMOND (Heysen) (10:31): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to establish the Independent Commission Against Corruption; to define its functions and powers; and for other purposes. Read a first time.

Second Reading

Mrs REDMOND (Heysen) (10:32): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

It is a great pleasure this morning for me, on behalf of the Liberal opposition, to be introducing this bill for the establishment of an Independent Commission Against Corruption in the state of South Australia. I always think that this chamber is a great place for the contest of ideas, and there is certainly a contest of ideas in relation to the establishment of such a commission in this state.

It has been clear to me for some time, in fact, that this state needs an Independent Commission Against Corruption and that the government remains implacably opposed to creating one. The Liberal Party is, of course, on the record, and has been for some considerable time, as being committed to the establishment of an ICAC. I will use the term 'ICAC' rather than continually the long form of Independent Commission Against Corruption, but that is what I am meaning whenever I use the term 'ICAC'.

I anticipate that the government will oppose the bill, but there are numerous other examples, of course, in the life of this government, where the government has come out in the first instance opposing a good idea initiated by someone else, only to reintroduce it later, always amidst great fanfare, as its own idea. Examples are the member for Schubert's bill for drug testing of drivers, which the government initially rejected; or Andrew Evans' proposal in another place to remove the 1982 limitation date for action against people who had committed sex offences; or, indeed, the Liberals' proposal for a desalination plant for Adelaide; or the harvest and storage of stormwater; or, most recently, amendments giving victims more rights. So, given its track record, I invite the government to think about this now and to support it now, rather than introducing it as its idea later.

Why does the Liberal opposition say that we need an ICAC? I have to say that I was actually at Australia's first anti-corruption conference in Sydney in about October of last year. Morris Iemma, who was the then Labor premier of New South Wales, opened that conference. In his opening address he said, 'Any state that thinks they don't need one is crazy.' It does not take much to think of the types of matters that come to mind. Most recently, of course, we have had the Brian Burke issue in Western Australia and the Wollongong Council in New South Wales.

I want to take a few minutes to go through some of the issues that have come before ICACs—and they are given various names in other states, but I am using that term, as I said—to generally speak about those corruption commissions. First, the Wollongong situation resulted in the ICAC making 24 corrupt conduct findings against 10 people. It recommended seeking advice from the Director of Public Prosecutions with respect to prosecuting 11 individuals for 139 criminal offences following corruption allegations against the Wollongong City Council, notably, a senior development project officer, Beth Morgan, who abused her position at the council to provide favours to developers with whom she was intimately involved by improperly approving applications for excessive development, providing monetary concessions and leaking council information.

There were also findings against two of the developers that Ms Morgan assisted and three of her superiors at the council, who ignored evidence of her misconduct and also themselves provided unduly favourable treatment to Mr Vellar and Mr Tabak, who were the people involved as developers. Mr Scimone's conduct (he was one of the council staff) was influenced by his undisclosed receipt of a $10,000 watch from Mr Tabak. Former councillor, Valerio Zanotto, engaged in corrupt conduct by leaking confidential information to Mr Vellar.

Moving on from there, we have a former RailCorp employee. The ICAC has found that a former RailCorp employee, Guy Hetman, received more than $110,000 in corrupt payments from his friend Domenic Murdocca in return for awarding Mr Murdocca's company, Sage Civil Engineering Pty Ltd, RailCorp work to the value of $3.7 million.

ICAC found that the Department of Housing's senior client services officer, Douglas Norris, engaged in corrupt conduct by accepting money in return for allocating public housing in the Miller/Cartwright area in south-west Sydney, allowing housing properties to be used for illegal drug dealing and passing on confidential police information to two department tenants. Mr Norris sought payment from prospective tenants to fast-track their applications, often in collusion with tenants Bruce Murray and, later, Gary Hogan who would facilitate the deals. Payments varied from between $500 and $700 for a bed-sit to between $1,500 and $1,700 for a two or three-bedroom apartment.

The ICAC's report on corrupt manipulation of contract procurement procedures at Bankstown and Strathfield councils finds that Mr Freeman arranged for Mr Stepto to submit dummy quotes and forged false quotes at both councils. They found that Paul McPherson of the RTA Registry Services Manager at Botany—that is, the road transport people—engaged in corrupt conduct with driving instructor Komate Jaturawong and restaurant owner Victor Phomsavanh by unlawfully helping applicants to obtain drivers licences.

It does not take a great imagination to imagine the danger created by putting people who cannot actually drive—and have not passed the test—onto the road as licensed drivers. The ICAC found that the former Parramatta City Council Compliance Services Team Leader, Wade Fryar, engaged in corrupt conduct by seeking sexual favours and up to $40,000 in cash payments from a number of sex workers and brothel operators in the area in return for taking no action to curtail their unauthorised use of premises for prostitution.

The ICAC found that the RailCorp Maintenance Engineer, Said Marcos, and contractors Tony Mourched and Sami Mikhail engaged in corrupt conduct in relation to air conditioning maintenance contracts that enabled Mr Marcos to improperly obtain more than $710,000 over a six-year period. It found that a New South Wales Department of Housing officer, Graham Wade, and two real estate agents engaged in corrupt conduct in relation to the sale of public housing between 1999 and 2004. They arranged for five properties to be sold 'at under-value' through real estate agents, Ken Williams or John Ashe, to companies controlled by Wade's friends. The properties were shortly thereafter resold for $299,000 more than what was previously paid, with net profits shared amongst the people involved.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption also found that nine people engaged in corrupt conduct in the non-performance of community service orders, and has uncovered 'systemic flaws' in the scheme that gives offenders alternatives to prison. I will not go on with the New South Wales inquiries. I will move quickly to the Queensland and Western Australian ones.

The Queensland inquiry, for instance, found that there was misconduct by the former director-general of the Department of Employment and Training, Scott Flavell. It examined his role and possible conflicts of interest in the establishment and development of a private skills training company while he was director-general, including the alleged provision of departmental information, which led to the private company negotiating registered training organisations' ability to purchase.

Regarding the Gold Coast, there were complaints against various people such as the director-general of the department of the premier and cabinet, although the inquiry decided that, in that case, it did not find any evidence to pursue a case against the person. The CMC—this is the Queensland version—revealed that secrecy, deceit and misinformation during the Gold Coast City Council election of 2004 corrupted the electoral process. I could go on and on but, given the short time that I have, I want to cover a few things further. Suffice to say, it would be naive in the extreme to suggest that, in this state, none of those sorts of things could eventuate.

Why do we say that the provisions in South Australia under the current legislation are not enough? This government consistently says that we already have an Anti-Corruption Branch, we already have an Ombudsman and we already have a Police Complaints Authority. We say that, quite apart from the argument that it is more sensible and a clear advantage to have a single independent organisation to deal with these matters, the reality is that there are shortcomings in those existing structures in terms of their ability to investigate and deal with corruption. I am not blaming those organisations in the least; I am quite convinced that they do the best that they can do within the constraints of the legislation.

Our legislation still requires things to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt and, believe me, corruption can occur without an offence that is proven beyond reasonable doubt. The Police Complaints Authority is seen as the police investigating themselves and, whether or not that is justified, there is a perception in the community of a lack of independence and transparency. The Ombudsman is a toothless tiger, largely, I think, due to lack of resources, but also due to limits on the investigative powers.

For instance, how would we deal with the situation in South Australia? A local government senior planner for a council develops a cosy relationship with a developer in return for favourable interpretations as to the category of development—because some categories do not require notification to neighbours, and so on, and some do—and for favourable suggestions as to conditions for approvals and, in exchange, no money changes hands, but the planning officer receives some sort of benefit: maybe improvements built on a house which is not even owned by him but by another family member, or he gets a long-term lease gratis on a beautiful apartment in another state. There are numerous other examples.

What about trees, for instance? They are so often a problem for local councils. What if you are engaged in the business of tree felling and tree trimming and you are a trained, qualified arborist? What if the council officer consistently tells those in need of council approval to consult another arborist or tree person and explains to them that that is the person they have to use if they want to get it through the council? Your business is going down the drain, and you suspect that there is a cosy arrangement behind the scenes between the council officer and the other arborist; what can you do?

Effectively, I say that, without an Independent Commission against Corruption in this state you are virtually powerless. There is no paper trail and no proof beyond reasonable doubt of criminal behaviour for the Anti-Corruption Branch, so you are stuffed even though, clearly, this is the sort of thing that I would call smelly. The Acting Ombudsman himself has even suggested that we need an ICAC, because he says that he cannot get to the bottom of things, especially when he is investigating councils.

We do need an ICAC. The government complains that such a body will be a lawyers' picnic, but the reality of its structure is that very few lawyers are involved. Most of the staff are likely to be anything but lawyers. Our ICAC, which is based very much on the New South Wales model, in general terms will have three main functions. The first function is investigation, including the power to do undercover or covert operations. Only by listening in on conversations between people when they think no-one is listening, or sometimes observing and photographing meetings with people, is one able to gather necessary information. Once a case has been investigated and developed, it goes off to the DPP for prosecution.

The second major arm of this ICAC involves the identification of possibilities for corruption and the development of new systems to minimise risk. There are numerous studies to demonstrate that, in order for corruption to occur, two ingredients are required, namely, motive and opportunity. One will never completely get rid of motive. There will always be those who, because of greed, an addiction or just a lack of moral fibre—whatever the reason—will be motivated to enrich themselves illicitly. We need to minimise the opportunity and make it as difficult as possible. The simplest example, of course, is by always having two signatures on a cheque, but as technology develops we need to concentrate on how to minimise risk in a much more technologically savvy society.

The third arm of our ICAC concentrates on education. It never ceases to amaze me how many people are ignorant of ethical obligations and conflict of interest issues. They arise every day and people can easily be caught unaware, not because they have done anything with a corrupt motive but, rather, because, in their lack of perception about ethics and conflict of interest issues, they do not realise that their behaviour may either amount to corruption or, at the very least, give the appearance or perception of corruption. If the public at large is to maintain confidence in the honesty and integrity of our officials—be they public servants or elected members—then every action must be open, transparent and accountable. So the three components are investigation, looking at the systems to minimise the risk, and education.

The government complains that it will cost too much. We have put a figure on it of $15 million. The current estimates forward projections give us a budget in this state of $15 billion, so $15 million is a small amount. On our part we believe that it is an over-estimation of the amount involved because we have based it on the model in New South Wales—a much bigger state than South Australia. We have done that so that there cannot be a complaint that we have underestimated the amount it will cost. It will actually start out, of course, in the first year or two, much lower than that as it is set up, but we believe that it is a good investment in our future.

Politicians have been reluctant to introduce ICACs for fear of attack by persons claiming to make a report or an allegation to an ICAC and the publicity that may then follow. We have tried to put in place restrictions to minimise the risk of problems relating to that situation.

Time expired.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mrs Geraghty.

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