Victorian Premier Dan Andrews is called ‘Teflon Dan’ for a reason. He is a masterful politician and nothing ever sticks. Nothing is ever his fault.
Andrews strengthened his parliamentary majority in last year’s Victorian State Election despite multiple corruption scandals, hotel quarantine breaches, the world’s longest Covid lockdowns, egregious infrastructure rorting and waste, and the state budget plunging deep into debt.
The Andrews’ government has again been mired in controversy amid allegations that factional ally, Lily D’Ambrosio, was involved in branch-stacking.
It has been revealed that D’Ambrosio’s Lalor South branch had 132 financial members in 2019, but this has fallen to just 13 in the wake of a 2020 investigation into branch-stacking within the Victorian Labor Party.
Nine of these members have indicated that they do not recall ever paying a Labor membership fee.
It has also been revealed that the branch had forged the signatures of at least two dead people on party membership forms.
Premier Daniel Andrews rushed to his ally’s defence, stating that “when it comes to the integrity of Ms D’Ambrosio, and this assertion that she’s somehow not focused on her ministerial duties. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone more focused on the ministerial duties”.
“She’s a person of character, hard work”, he said.
Despite the fact that no specific charges have been laid against the Andrews government, Robert Redlich, Victoria’s former integrity watchdog chief and Supreme Court Judge, has accused it of “corruption”.
Earlier this month, Redlich told the state parliament’s integrity and oversight committee that the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) should be allowed to investigate alleged corruption without the “far too onerous” condition that a crime be committed:
“The most dangerous forms of integrity breaches are breaches of codes of conduct, or not following the prescribed process, because political gain overrides doing the right thing”.
“It’s not money in a bag, but it’s just as dangerous – the endpoint is the public interest not being served”.
“We’ve got to stop talking about this notion, as the premier does, that if there’s no crime, there’s nothing to be seen here”.
“Operation Daintree is the most glaring example of that – we found no crime, but we found serious misconduct at every level of executive government which led to the granting of a contract which should never have been made, and which didn’t serve the public interest. That’s corruption”.
Redlich also argued that the proliferation of consultants indicates that decisions are being made for political gain rather than in the best interests of the public:
“Political gain has been allowed over time to become more important than making decisions in the public interest. That is in large part due to the growth of ministerial advisers”.
“As the growth of ministerial advisers has increased, so has the intrusion of politics into the way executive government operates”.
Victoria’s IBAC is required to meet a higher bar than NSW’s ICAC in order to open an investigation into alleged corrupt behaviour.
In NSW, corruption is defined as dishonesty or a breach of public trust. But in Victoria, it is limited to behaviour that would constitute a relevant criminal offence.
“Not all corruption involves the commission of a criminal offence. IBAC’s jurisdiction must be expanded to bring it into line with best practice around the country”, Catherine Williams, research director at the Centre for Public Integrity, said recently.
According to the Victorian IBAC’s Operation Daintree inquiry, Andrews Government officials acted against the public interest by granting public contracts to the Health Workers Union without competitive bidding ahead of the 2018 election.
The Victorian Government was also chastised in the IBAC’s corruption report on Operation Watts and the independent review into the Hotel Quarantine scandal.
However, Premier Dan Andrews dismissed IBAC’s findings, characterising to them as an “educational report” rather than a report produced because wrongdoing was discovered.
Dan Andrews’ flippant dismissal was rebuked by Griffith University professor AJ Brown, a member of Transparency International Australia’s board of directors and an integrity expert, who claimed that IBAC found “plenty of wrongdoing”.
Former Court of Appeal judge Stephen Charles, who sits on the boards of two national integrity think tanks, agreed that the IBAC findings would have resulted in corrupt conduct judgements in the majority of other Australian jurisdictions.
For his part, Charles referred to the Victorian Andrews Government as “crooked.”
Charles wants Victoria to accept Transparency International’s broad definition of corruption, which includes “the abuse of entrusted power for personal or political gain”.
Clearly, the Andrews Government should not be allowed to get away with repeated questionable conduct. It is not above the law.
IBAC should be strengthened in accordance with the ICAC in NSW.
