How Victoria has fallen behind other states on integrity

Political cash

Money is, of course, integral to such questions.

To its credit – and in part as a response to controversies revealed by this masthead – the Andrews government in 2018 introduced Victoria’s first-ever real-time campaign funding laws, including caps on donations for state elections.

While Labor spruiked its 2018 reforms as the toughest in the country, they have since been found lacking, including by the government’s own integrity agencies and appointed experts, and lagging other states. There is no donations cap at local council level, for instance.

In two reports in 2022 and 2023, the Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission pointed to weaknesses in the donations regime highlighted in its investigation of allegedly corrupt land deals in Melbourne’s south-east, known as Operation Sandon.

It called for changes, including donation caps for council elections and on campaign spending at state and local levels, and consideration of a ban on developer donations. If acted on, said then IBAC commissioner Robert Redlich, the recommendations would “move Victoria into line with other states”.

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Then premier Daniel Andrews promised to act on the 2022 recommendations but did so by referring them to an independent expert panel commissioned to review the 2018 donation laws.

That three-person panel – two of whom were former Labor and Liberal senators – made 77 recommendations for change, including removal of the loophole that allowed political parties to receive funds from special investment bodies known as “nominated entities”, the matter now before the High Court.

But more than three years after the IBAC donations report and more than two years after the Sandon and expert panel reports were finalised, there has been no change to Victoria’s donation rules.

The government is seeking to address at least one of the 34 Sandon recommendations in a bill now before the parliament that requires planning applicants to declare gifts or donations at council level. Even then, the proposed changes have been slammed as an unworkable mess by senior local government figures and council peak group the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV).

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The lack of government action on donations has meant the gap between Victoria and other states on donation laws has widened. In 2024, for example, South Australia’s Labor government banned donations altogether, with limited exemptions for political newcomers.

Integrity experts are perplexed at Victoria’s failure to clean up the state’s donation regime. Dr Catherine Williams, executive director of the Centre for Public Integrity, says that, in particular, the government must “remove the very significant advantages the major parties currently have”.

Former Liberal senator Helen Kroger was a member of the three-person expert panel from 2023 and is among those scratching their heads at the lack of response.

She says failure to formally respond to her panel’s two-year-old findings would be a “significant oversight” and “amount to a breach of the Electoral Act”.

The government did not respond to questions about the donations regime and progress on reform.

Lobbying

The Victorian lobbyist code – established by the Brumby government in 2009 – has long been regarded as ineffectual. Unlike Queensland, NSW, South Australia and WA, our lobbying rules are not enshrined in legislation; the only penalty for contravention is the loss of a lobbyist’s registration.

The Age confirmed that there has not been a single deregistration since the register was created.

An IBAC report in 2022 slammed the lobbying rules as “weak”, noting, for example, that they did not cover lobbying at local council level. It called for a legislated regime that captured all those who lobby at the state and local level, not just third-party professional lobbyists. Redlich warned that “corruption risks around lobbying were not only real but imminent”.

In response, Andrews promised to work on implementation of all the recommendations if re-elected, “in the next term of government”; the current term, that is.

Labor has made some progress; in 2022 it published its ministerial staff code of conduct, and in 2023 it started quarterly publishing of ministerial diaries, including meetings with lobbyists.

But there has been no more action on reforms sought by IBAC and integrity experts.

In January this year – an odd time for serious policy work – the government ran a brief public consultation on related reform. It promised to release a subsequent “engagement report” and to have legislation developed by October.

But no engagement paper was released and no legislation has appeared. The government did not respond to questions about further lobbying reform.

Freedom of information?

In the Cain years of the 1980s, Victoria was a Freedom of Information (FOI) trailblazer. It now lags far behind other states, which have embraced the principle that governments should proactively release information unless there is good reason not to.

FOI rules in Queensland, NSW and Tasmania now emphasise proactive disclosure, reducing the need for specific, formal requests, and frustrating delays.

Victoria operates in reverse, hence more FOI requests are generated here than any other state or territory and even the Commonwealth. There were almost 60,000 requests received by about 950 public agencies in 2024-25, according to new figures, an almost 10 per cent increase on the previous year and a record high.

Our FOI system is infamously clogged and delayed. As of June 30 this year there were 9673 FOI requests outstanding, a more than 11 per cent increase on the same time in 2024.

At the behest of the government, the parliamentary integrity committee ran a comprehensive inquiry through 2024, finally tabling a report that year calling for a complete rebuild of the FOI regime.

Fifteen months later, the Allan government has not acted on the committee’s recommendations.

The government did not respond to questions about the prospect of an FOI rework.

Nor is integrity committee chair and Greens MP Tim Read confident of reform before next year’s election.

“It just seems like the government has stalled on FOI and put it on the back burner, if not walked away from it entirely,” he said.

Given the parlous state of FOI, opposition and crossbench MPs often seek release of documents in the upper house (Legislative Council), where governments tend not to have a majority.

William Partlett is an associate professor at Melbourne Law School and a specialist in integrity matters. He says it is “one of the few ways to get information out that the government does not necessarily want out”.

But non-government MPs are constantly frustrated by the government’s refusal to produce documents to parliament, including around big issues like the rationale for controversial COVID-19 decisions and, more recently, what the government knew about abuses in childcare.

Partlett says the gold standard in parliamentary document production is NSW, where disputes over release are decided by an independent arbiter. The Victorian Parliament’s standing orders establish an identical arbiter, but no government of any persuasion has complied with those orders.

The integrity agencies

Like donation laws, Victoria was late to embrace the idea of a dedicated anti-corruption watchdog, the Baillieu Coalition government establishing IBAC – so weak as not to be worthy of its name – in 2012, long after more powerful agencies in NSW (1988) and Queensland (2002).

Thirteen years later, the Victorian watchdog is regarded by integrity practitioners and experts as the poor cousin of Australian corruption-busting. Victorians would seem to agree.

In October, Transparency International Australia released findings of a national survey that found public confidence in this state’s capacity to fight corruption was lower than for any other state.

In her first ever media interview, current IBAC commissioner Victoria Elliott last weekend told The Age that her agency was hamstrung by legislation that required excessive secrecy and limited its power by setting the bar too high for investigations and public examinations.

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Corruption in Victoria is defined as conduct that would constitute a “relevant” or serious criminal offence. It prevents IBAC from chasing more prevalent jobs-for-political-mates-style “soft” or “grey” corruption.

In their submissions to the integrity committee’s review of the IBAC Act, Victoria’s integrity agencies – including IBAC, the Auditor-General and the Victorian Ombudsman – have been at one in their call for IBAC’s powers to be widened.

IBAC’s NSW equivalent, the Independent Commission Against Corruption, has a broader remit, stretching to dishonesty, breaches of public trust and the MPs’ code of conduct. The new National Anti-Corruption Commission has adopted a lower threshold for investigations, closer to NSW’s.

In 2021, for example, Gladys Berejiklian resigned as NSW premier after ICAC revealed she was being investigated. Two years later the NSW watchdog found Berejiklian engaged in “serious corrupt conduct” through her secret relationship with ex-MP Daryl Maguire.

Had it been Victoria, it is unlikely an investigation would have been launched at all. And if it had, it is doubtful the premier would have been examined in public, as Berejiklian was.

In NSW, a public inquiry only requires that two of three ICAC commissioners agree it is in the public interest. In Victoria, private hearings are the default and public interrogation only possible in “exceptional circumstances”.

Some change at least may be coming. On Thursday, the integrity committee tabled its recommendations from its review of the IBAC Act, including removing the requirement that IBAC only investigate criminal conduct.

However, the committee – which includes Labor, opposition and crossbench MPs – stopped short of supporting a lower bar for public examinations.

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Its recommendations were unanimous, meaning the major parties are committed, in principle at least, to widening IBAC’s powers.

Williams told The Age that given the “unanimity among key stakeholders” on the issue of IBAC’s powers it was “difficult to see how the committee could have recommended otherwise”.

Whether the government acts is another matter altogether, as we have seen with FOI. Asked for its response to the committee’s recommendations, the government on Friday would only say that it will consider them.

The integrity agencies are also pushing for parliament – instead of the government – to set their annual funding, a call they have been making since 2022. Ombudsman Marlo Baragwanath tells The Age: “As officers of the Parliament, Parliament should have some input into our budgets, so the public can be confident that we’re adequately funded to do our jobs.”

To date, the government has not agreed to change the way the agencies are funded.

Integrity and real politics

The government did not respond directly to a long list of integrity-related questions from The Age, instead issuing a brief statement noting that Victorians “deserve to have confidence in the political parties and public institutions that serve them”.

“It is our expectation that everyone in public office is held to the highest standards of integrity,” said the spokesperson.

The statement highlights integrity reforms, including establishment of the Parliamentary Workplace Standards and Integrity Commission, the Parliamentary Integrity Adviser and Parliamentary Ethics Committee.

The statement also notes that Labor has provided record funding for IBAC and significantly improved parliamentary oversight.

Williams, of the Centre for Public Integrity, welcomes “progress” on some fronts, including disclosure of ministerial diaries and the government’s agreement to allow a crossbench MP to chair the parliament’s integrity committee.

“But there remains a great deal to be done in Victoria, from lobbying and donations to the role of parliament, transparency and addressing what former ombudsman Deborah Glass described as the ‘creeping politicisation’ of the public service.”

Integrity chiefs acknowledge however that for many Victorians, living costs are a higher-order issue than government accountability; that makes integrity reform a lower political priority.

“Integrity in institutions, oversight, accountability, it’s all really important,” Baragwanath says. “But how do you get people’s attention when they’re busy paying the mortgage and putting food on the table?”

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Greens MP Read fears that as we approach an election year, integrity is slipping to the back of the policy reform queue.

He wonders if Labor may be asking itself why it would invest energy in legislation that allows journalists, opposition parties and integrity agencies to find out matters it would prefer kept behind closed doors.

“To that I would remind Labor that governments are almost always certain to be in opposition one day.”

Indeed. But even those in opposition can be wary of too much light being shone in the places they aspire to occupy one day – maybe even one day next year.

Shadow attorney-general James Newbury says Labor has “actively undermined the scope, funding, and work of Victoria’s integrity agencies”. But he does not provide details when asked about his side’s position on IBAC’s powers, donations, lobbying and FOI, instead offering that the Coalition will “take a comprehensive suite of policies to the next election which will restore integrity to public office in Victoria”.

It is notable that, like Labor, opposition MPs on the integrity committee did not support NSW-style anti-corruption examinations in public. Even high-minded opposition MPs can imagine what it would be like to face a Berejiklian-style public grilling.

Still, as seasoned observers know, we are always just one major scandal away from politicians of all persuasions earnestly re-prioritising integrity and accountability as a top-order issue.

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