An inquiry into Queensland’s corruption watchdog could provide a blueprint for a federal Icac and its equivalents across the country, a leading integrity expert says.
The Griffith University integrity expert, Prof AJ Brown, said the report paved the way for a watchdog led by trained anti-corruption professionals, rather than seconded cops and civilians learning their craft on the job.
The inquiry into the state’s Crime and Corruption Commission was led by Tony Fitzgerald and came 33 years after his watershed inquiry into police corruption brought about the downfall of Joh Bjelke-Petersen and ushered in a new era in Queensland politics.
The report given to the premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, on Tuesday, made clear it was not “Fitzgerald 2.0”.
“We were not asked to consider questions involving the CCC’s existence, its purpose or its continuity,” the report reads. “Rather, we were charged with examining and reporting upon quite specific aspects of its operations.”
Fitzgerald and co-author, former judge Alan Wilson, recommended the CCC seek the opinion of the Director of Public Prosecutions, “except in exceptional circumstances”, before laying charges in a corruption investigation.
But their report did not go as far as the watchdog’s most strident critics sought, which was to either strip the CCC of the power to charge or make it seek the consent of the DPP, moves which Brown believes would have “effectively nobbled” the CCC.
The inquiry found the use of seconded police remained appropriate. But it recommended more and better-trained civilians take lead of the watchdog to avoid its “institutional capture” by police and “the risk of corruption investigations placing undue emphasis on a ‘law enforcement’ approach”.
Brown said this recommendation – to have a watchdog’s staff from both civilian and police backgrounds be trained beyond simple law enforcement – could be applied to anti-corruption bodies across the country, including at the federal level.
“Up until now we’ve got away with a lot of informal, on-the-job training,” Brown said.
“Now is the time to recognise that the skills and the capabilities of anti-corruption professions, investigators, prevention officers, is broader than any one skill set.”
“It’s broader than police training. It’s broader than legal training and fraud and forensic accounting – it involves all of those, plus policy and administration and management skills. That all needs to be properly developed and institutionalised.
“It’s not very sexy, but it’s very significant.”
The terms given to Fitzgerald and Wilson arose from a parliamentary inquiry that focused on the CCC’s investigation into former councillors of Logan city council. Seven councillors and the former mayor Luke Smith were charged with fraud but, in a huge blow to the CCC’s public standing, those fraud charges were later dropped. Smith is still before the courts after being charged with a corruption offence.
The report did not “revisit or re‐examine the events” which led to the Logan council debacle.
But Fitzgerald and Wilson examined the CCC’s use of seconded police officers, its power to press charges of criminal offence for serious crime and corruption and whether additional oversight of its decision‐making in corruption investigations was required.
Brown, a long-serving board member of Transparency International, said this amounted to a “health check” of the integrity landscape envisaged in the 1989 Fitzgerald report.
Brown was critical of the parliamentary inquiry into the CCC’s Logan investigation.
“The allegation that the CCC was out of control was always overblown,” Brown said.
Brown said Fitzgerald’s “very sound and thorough” report was vindication that the “wildly out of control CCC” narrative was always false.
