Councils are arguably the government level most prone to corruption. The risk remains unaddressed

It’s almost eight years since I was part of a reporting team that revealed the outsized political influence of developer and planning consultant John Woodman at local and state government levels in Melbourne’s sprawling south-east.

Those and other stories about integrity issues at the City of Casey, dating back to 2011, were key to the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission’s (IBAC’s) long-running Operation Sandon investigation.

Sandon was the most lengthy, costly and sweeping investigation of raw corruption in Victoria since IBAC was established and included allegations ranging from cash drops in brown paper bags in suburban Subway outlets to schmoozy lunches at the Flower Drum in Chinatown.

It centred on alleged corruption which led to the council’s sacking and the tabling of reports in 2022 and 2023 calling for sweeping reform of planning, lobbying and donation laws.

In a painfully slow legal process, IBAC in September finally pressed charges against two players in the Casey saga — Woodman and former mayor Sam Aziz.

They are to appear in the Magistrates’ Court later this month, where they have vowed to contest the allegations, 15 years after issues at Casey were first publicly raised by this masthead.

But all these years later, there remains a gaping hole in the government’s response to Casey and the Sandon recommendations – the risk of corruption through donations at the local level.

The Allan government could have addressed this key integrity weakness in December through its rewrite of planning laws, by capping donations in general and/or banning developer donations.

Instead, the government chose to ignore two formal levels of expert advice that had called for an end to property industry contributions.

Then, on Thursday, the government tabled its Local Government Legislation Amendment (Stronger Communities) Bill 2026, arguing that it would address issues raised by Sandon including around management of councillor conflicts.

Local Government Minister Paul Hamer claimed his bill would implement recommendations from the Sandon report, and another inquiry into the City of Whittlesea, and “enhance council governance and processes”.

He said it was “essential that the lessons from these independent inquiries are adopted to prevent similar failures from occurring again”. Alas, there is still no action to rein in local political money.

Labor quietly acknowledged it had no plans for local donation reform before this year’s state poll.

The omission leaves developers and land speculators free to shower council candidates with as much money as they wish, leaving Victoria way behind other states, including NSW and Queensland, on local donations. Ditto on lobbying laws.

It leaves open the possibility of a saga like that at Casey being repeatable.

Victoria has had two rounds of council elections since IBAC first made Sandon public in 2019.

After last year’s election, this masthead highlighted the problems of unfettered donations at the City of Melbourne, where Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece and his team face multiple conflicts of interest over the $950,484 raised for the 2024 election campaign.

Political donations tend to be more problematic at the local than state or federal level, both because the money goes directly to individuals who make decisions – planning decisions in particular – that can deliver huge windfalls to property owners and speculators.

The valuer-general has found that a rezoning that turns a humble cattle or vegetable paddock into a residential housing estate can produce a more than 60-fold increase in value.

The government has told this masthead that reform of local donations law is still possible before the 2028 elections, but Labor has not publicly committed to such reform.

As for the opposition and the rampaging One Nation, who knows?

The truth is that after years of scandal, media revelation and calls for reform from integrity bodies, and councils themselves, a major corruption risk at the level of government arguably most prone to corruption, remains unaddressed.

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