*Pic: ABC pic of Integrity Commission CEO Diane Merryfull …
The Joint Select Committee on Integrity has missed an important opportunity to adequately strengthen the investigative powers of the Integrity Commission.
The Report should have recommended that the Criminal Code Act 1924 be amended to create the crime of Misconduct in Public Office. Its failure to do this will leave Tasmania as the only jurisdiction in Australia without this offense, and means that actions which involve misconduct rather than corruption may be unable to be prosecuted.
The Commission has requested this change, stating that ‘The Commission believes that providing it with the option to recommend consideration of criminal charges in cases of the most serious misconduct would enable it to more effectively meet the objectives of the IC Act.’
The Report should have also recommended that the Integrity Commission be given the status of a law enforcement agency, which would have assisted it to obtain essential telecommunications information. The Integrity Commission submitted to the Committee that relevant legislation be amended to give it law enforcement status, which would ‘significantly enhance the Commission’s ability to carry out its investigative functions’.
We need continued vigilance against corruption in Tasmania, and the best way to do that is to ensure that the Integrity Commission has the powers it has asked for.
The Committee has made some recommendations that will, if implemented, improve the investigative functions of the Commission. But taken as a whole it leaves the Commission somewhat hamstrung, and lacking the powers necessary for it to be a strong anti-corruption watchdog.
Thankfully the Committee recommended the retention of the investigative function of the Integrity Commission. It is now incumbent on the Premier and the Attorney-General to ditch their controversial policy of stripping the Commission of its investigative powers.
The Final Report, including Mr McKim’s Dissenting Report, can be found here:
http://www.parliament.tas.gov.au/ctee/Joint/Reports/Final%20Report%203%20Year%20Review%20-%20Tabled%20version.pdf
• Lara Giddings: Integrity Commission must retain investigative powers
EARLIER on Tasmanian Times …
• John Hawkins in Comments: When Hall and Wilkinson drew up the guidelines for a Tasmanian Integrity Commission it was as a small Sop to the public Cerberus. A sop created to assuage discontent over perceived endemic corruption involving the abuse of due process by the then Lennon government in its promotion and facilitation of a proposed Pulp Mill. With considered political intent the Integrity Commission was given absolutely no teeth. Its role was one of political window dressing. It was created by our Pollies to give comfort to an easily appeased public, who believed in them thinking, incorrectly, that they had their interests at heart. Yet a small but influential group of Tasmanians were and have been baying loudly from outside the political door. Faced with a truculent collusive and abusive body politic the first CEO promptly resigned when she realised that the toothless tiger known as the Tasmanian Integrity Commission had been from the outset both hog tied and powerless, as was the intent of our political masters. It was and is the creation of a corrupt Tasmanian body politic set only on protecting its arse. All that is required of its Commissioner is to maintain the status quo and protect those within the Tasmanian political system from an increasingly restive public. That the status quo must be preserved at all costs is now becoming evident to all Tasmanians. Those who have been concerned in the creation, execution and preservation of this peculiarly Tasmanian fiasco should be ashamed. Yet shame is a little understood word in Tasmania for it is seemingly outside the lexicon of the Tasmanian body politic.
• O’Brien in Comments: … Every further day the corruption commission fails to utter a response to the member for Denison’s call for an inquiry into Forestry Tasmania the more compromised they appear. Apart from the ongoing looting of our taxes by rogues, frauds, liars, cheats and career bastards who seem to excel in Tasmania’s publicly funded arenas we have very little to show for such tremendous expenditure. Tasmania’s corruption commission is a failed exercise in futility and waste and should be dissolved asap. It only serves to remind us how utterly bedrock corrupt Tasmania has been and shall remain, it’s in the DNA, Britain transported it’s most detested criminals and screws to the other side of the world for good reason. Not to mention the implications of iodine deficient soils. The good guys don’t always win. How can any of us be proud of such a legacy?
