Victoria’s anti-corruption watchdog finally has teeth. These are its new powers

Victoria will finally have an anti-corruption watchdog with the authority and powers it needs to do its job after the parliament on its last sitting day before the state election agreed to the most substantial changes to IBAC since its inception.

The long-awaited reforms, supported by the government, the Greens and the opposition, give the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission a broader remit to investigate corruption across the public sector, greater use of public hearings to expose and deter wrongdoing, follow-the-dollar powers, and protection against politically motivated appointments.

Together, they represent the state’s most significant integrity reform since 2012, when IBAC was first established as a core election promise of the then Baillieu government.

“With the passage of these reforms, Victoria finally has a fit-for-purpose integrity commission,” Centre for Public Integrity chief executive Catherine Williams told The Age.

“The expansion of IBAC’s jurisdiction and its power to hold public hearings, as well as the conferral upon it of power to follow the money, are significant reforms that have been long-fought for. There of course remains more to do, but the significance of what has been achieved this week is momentous.”

These are changes that successive IBAC commissioners and integrity advocates have spent years arguing for. Greens MP Tim Read and Stephen Charles, KC, a judge, barrister and chair of an independent panel which advised the Baillieu government on how to set up IBAC and warned about the deficiencies in its design, died waiting to see reform.

Premier Ben Carroll called Read shortly before his death from cancer on Saturday to assure him the government would deliver the changes that Read helped usher in as chair of the parliament’s Integrity Oversight Committee (IOC), which last year recommended a substantial overhaul of IBAC’s legislative framework.

The numbers required to support the changes were clinched late on Wednesday night, when the government agreed to a list of further amendments proposed by the Greens.

“Today, long-overdue reforms to Victoria’s anti-corruption watchdog will pass the parliament,” Greens leader Ellen Sandell declared on Thursday morning, as MPs were filing into the building for the last session before the November 28 election. “This is in no small part due to the work of our beloved colleague.”

Under the consensus reached between the centre-left parties and ultimately supported by the Coalition, the new-look IBAC will:

• Have a broader jurisdiction, similar to the NSW ICAC, to investigate corruption without being limited to matters where the allegations, if proven, would constitute a criminal offence.
• Be able to hold public hearings in the normal course of its work without having to demonstrate “exceptional circumstances”.
• Be able to “follow-the-dollar” to investigate any business or individual who receives public money to provide services – such as subcontractors on Big Build projects.
• Have discretion on whether to apply these new powers to matters it has already considered.
• Be free to publish its submissions to cabinet about IBAC’s budget.
• Be able to publish more timely reports.
• Be led by a commissioner chosen by an independent panel of experts, with minimum statutory qualifications to do the job.

The Coalition was incensed that one of its further proposed reforms – a bold idea to prevent current and former ministers from refusing to answer IBAC’s questions on the grounds of cabinet confidentiality – was left on the shelf by the agreement between the government and the Greens.

Victoria, had it taken this step, would have become the first jurisdiction in Australia to allow anti-corruption investigators to circumvent this age-old Westminister privilege. No former IBAC commissioner has called for it to be removed.

The opposition characterised this as a dirty deal to protect former premiers Daniel Andrews and Jacinta Allan from any future IBAC hearings about Big Build corruption.

Opposition Leader Jess Wilson described it as a “dodgy, 11th hour deal”, and shadow attorney-general James Newbury as a “grubby cover-up”.

” Labor has never wanted to be held accountable for the worst corruption scandal our state’s ever seen,” Newbury said. “They want to make sure that when they’re called into the dock they don’t have to answer questions.”

Greens MP Sarah Mansfield, after introducing her party’s amendments in the upper house, said it was galling listening to Labor and Liberal MPs belatedly champion reforms that should have been enacted years ago.

“Where have you been for the last 12 years?” she said. “The cognitive dissonance of Liberal and Labor members here is truly astounding.”

The road to this reform was circuitous. It began in December 2022, in the first month of this parliament, when then IBAC commissioner Robert Redlich wrote a letter to both chambers raising concerns about the politicisation of the IOC and the need for the committee to be led by a non-government chair.

Redlich’s letter, which included inflammatory allegations that the IOC had instructed a consultant to “find dirt on IBAC”, prompted a furore when it was published. This was the episode in which Andrews dismissively described the renowned jurist as “a bloke who used to do a job”.

To avoid a potentially embarrassing inquiry into whether the IOC had been secretly working to undermine IBAC, the government agreed to reconstitute the IOC with a non-government chair and majority. This is how Read became chair and set in motion the inquiry which made the case for Thursday’s changes to IBAC’s jurisdiction and powers.

The only hold up on Thursday was that, due to the time it took for the government and Greens to come to agreement on reforms that Carroll promised on his first day in the job to legislate, the government needed most of the day to draft its own amendments.

But the final legislation, which passed on Thursday evening, goes beyond what Carroll promised and will remake IBAC beyond even Read’s most fervent dreams. Redlich said before Thursday’s decisive vote that the changed definition in corruption and freer access to public hearings would put IBAC on a par with its NSW cousin, ICAC, and ahead of its federal counterpart, the NACC.

The changes to IBAC were the last and some of the least likely laws made by Victoria’s 60th parliament. Whoever next governs Victoria will have a proper anti-corruption agency on its case.

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