Page 5145 - Week 13 - Thursday, 29 November 2018
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There must be some reasonable suspicion of corrupt conduct beyond the judgement itself, and if a party to court proceedings disagrees with the judgement the appropriate action is to appeal. For those reasons we will not be supporting this amendment.
MR RATTENBURY (Kurrajong) (5.28): The Greens will not be supporting this amendment. Whilst we wholeheartedly support the inclusion of the judiciary in the remit of the integrity commission and believe that it is fundamentally important that no public official be excluded from being investigated for corruption, we share the view of the Chief Minister that this infringes on issues related to the separation of powers. We hold the view that we should only look at judges if the issue relates to their conduct and not the merits of their decisions. As the Chief Minister has rightly pointed out, the merits of the decisions can be dealt with through the normal appeals process in the legal system.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (5.28): The Assembly should be supporting this amendment. During the discussions on this I have noticed a couple of times the government has said, “Oh, we can’t do this in relation to the judiciary because it’s a separation of powers issue.” On a number of these issues they have stepped back from that and this is another occasion where the government has blandly said this is a separation of powers issue. It is not. The amendment is very carefully worded. It does not say they must investigate these matters; it says the commission need not investigate these matters. It leaves it open to the discretion of the commission to investigate something where corrupt conduct may be indicated by the sort of judgement a judicial officer has given.
This is the sort of thing you would find in civil cases, rather than criminal cases. But the fact that once you point to a judgement you make it impossible for the commissioner to investigate is a retrograde step. It is clear that the government and the crossbench—so the government and the government—will not support this amendment and I think the committee and other people overseeing this will have to look at it very carefully. I suspect that this is one of the ones that will come back at some stage in the future for review and revision.
Amendment negatived.
MR COE (Yerrabi—Leader of the Opposition) (5.31): I move amendment No 3 circulated in my name [see schedule 1 at page 5200]. This amendment deals with whether a previous investigatory body should bar future investigations by the commission. The select committee’s report was very clear that previous investigations should not be a bar to the commission deciding to investigate a corruption report.
While the bill has improved from the original exposure draft there is still a risk that previous investigations may be seen to be a bar through the inclusion of this provision. We need an integrity commission because other investigative bodies, like the Auditor-General, do not do the work of an ICAC. Therefore, we should not put any restriction on past investigations impacting possible future investigations.
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