Government response to Joint Standing Committee on Integrity Report

The Government has tabled its response to the Joint Standing Committee on Integrity’s three year review of the Integrity Commission, confirming our position that the Integrity Commission should continue to play an investigative role beyond the upcoming five year review.

In our response to the JSC report, the Tasmanian Government notes the findings and recommendations of the Three Year Review, in particular that a number of the major policy and legal issues highlighted by the work of the Committee should be considered by the Five Year Independent Review.

We support the JSC recommendation that the concerns which have been raised by various stakeholders around process, timeliness and interaction with existing investigative processes should be addressed by the Five Year Independent Review. However, as we have previously stated, the Government’s view is that the Integrity Commission will continue to play an investigative role after the Five Year Review.

The Government considers that the Integrity Commission must also maintain a strong focus on education and prevention in relation to public sector misconduct and work collaboratively with public entities to strengthen standards of integrity and ethics and improve the understanding of misconduct and how to prevent it.

Section 106 of the Integrity Commission Act 2009 provides for an independent review of that Act, to be undertaken by a person appointed by the Governor, and that person must be, or previously have held office as, a judge of a court of the Commonwealth or of an Australian State or Territory.

The five year independent review of the Integrity Commission is due to commence early in 2016.
Vanessa Goodwin, Attorney-General