From today’s Crikey:
There has been a certain feeling in the air of deja vu over the past fortnight in Queensland. The jailing of a former Minister, allegations that government was far too close to business, a government sinking rapidly in the polls while making “tough decisions” and, the piece de resistance, the exposure of systemic misconduct in the elite Armed Robbery Squad of the Queensland Police.
The timing of this sequence of supposedly unlikely events was interesting. Much is being made of the 20th anniversary of the release of the Fitzgerald Report. The date falls this Thursday, and Tony Fitzgerald QC himself will be commemorating the occasion with a public lecture at Griffith University.
So is something again rotten in the state of Queensland?
Lurid stories of convicted criminals wining, dining and bonking on dodgy day release jaunts supposedly to gather intelligence for the coppers dominated local press coverage. This a week after revelations of the jailed Gordon Nuttall’s bizarre plans to make himself premier — shades of Russ Hinze perhaps.
The reality, though, is more prosaic.
Premier Anna Bligh claimed that Nuttall’s sentencing and the CMC report into police misconduct were proof that the system was working. A new Queensland would shed light on the malfeasance of a few. A number of voices were raised to accuse Bligh of dangerous complacency.
There’s merit in that claim.
In truth, as veteran civil libertarian lawyer Terry O’Gorman argued, echoed by a chorus of retired judges, the impetus behind the anti-corruption agenda had begun to dissipate long ago. Landmarks were the amalgamation of the Crime Commission and the CJC into the CMC, and the practice of outsourcing inquiries into misconduct back to the departments concerned. The CMC conducts few investigations, and a huge majority of complaints against police are referred back to the QPS’ Ethical Standards Command. The watchers are watching themselves.
The CJC, and it successor, the CMC, have never been popular with pollies. Signs that the Fitzgerald agenda was being watered down go back to the Goss era. The cavalier practice of using the corruption watchdog as a pawn in the political chess game hasn’t helped matters. Nor has, some would suggest, the secrecy surrounding the CMC itself.
Openness and transparency are key to an ethical political — and police — culture. The Bligh government has taken some steps in this direction, but much could still be done. Fitzgerald pointed to the faults of a supine media in his report. In the two decades since, Brisbane’s print landscape has narrowed to one paper, the Courier-Mail, whose tabloidisation is mirrored by the current affairs coverage on ABC Local Radio. The state based 7.30 Report has long gone, and there’s no new Quentin Dempster to put the pollies and coppers under the microscope. Brisbane media over the last fortnight has concentrated on the sensational aspects of the scandalous revelations at the expense of hard-headed analysis and investigative reporting.
That probably won’t change.
So it’s even more important that Bligh and her government ditch the soundbites which appear to come naturally to a government on the ropes and attend to the culture of complacency that has grown up. We don’t need another Fitzgerald Inquiry — things aren’t that bad. But we do need some serious thought and analysis about opening up the Queensland political and police cultures, and about reform of the CMC itself.
thanx for this. absolutely on the ball – “serious thought and analysis about opening up the Queensland political and police cultures, and about reform of the CMC itself”. qld remains the most deeply conservative state in a conservative nation. remember this is where kevin comes from, he lives and breathes qld christian fundamentalism. we hope bligh has the guts to cut thru eventually, but it seems unlikely…qld runs on fear….
“Complexiosity”, as coined in an old loose carol, is the problem for all contemporary democratic governments. The problem is that in this age, where a zillion things can happen in a blink of an eye (especially a corrupt one) and where relevant issues must fight there way up through the layers of public servants before they reach the notice of a premier, cabinet minister, or a police commissioner, no wonder important issues get delayed, side tracked, and perhaps garbled before a sharp press reporter says “Ah! Here’s an issue we can beat up.” Add to that our ministers, premier, police commissioner, and so forth, have only the usual human-being’s number of brain cells and the capacity to use them within, say, a twenty-hour day, no wonder things go wildly wrong in our state. “How to fix” is the big problem. Our system of government in Queensland has evolved over one-and-half centuries in a largely non-electronic world and any quick fiddle with it would be at our peril. But surely there are ways? We just have to find them.
I’m sure Quentin Dempster can be secconded up to Queensland for a while – you see NSW doesn’t have any corruption anywhere anymore.
Isn’t that right Liam?
It’s a pity his efforts from the 70’s and 80’s are not recognised by enough people.
Actually, Murph, the Police Integrity Commission down here is one of the State’s more trustworthy institutions, and I can’t think of an instance in which it’s been politicised in the same way as Queenslanders accuse each other of CMC involvement. I have it on fair authority that they also refer to themselves internally as “PICniks”, which if true is alone a worthy justification for existence.
Quentin Dempster you can’t have. Do you want Alex Mitchell or Simon Benson instead?
At least Qld has progressed to the point where the politician receiving the suspect payment goes to jail. However, this doesn’t mean that we have a healthy system of checks and balances in Qld or any where else in Australia. We have libel laws that protect pollies from investigation. We have freedom of information systems that make it very easy for governments to hide information when they choose.
We have a criminal law system that will prosecute public servants who try to get information to the public that is outside government’s selected leaks system. We have an election funding system where political success is helped enormously by a supply of funds from vested interests. In Qld we don’t have an upper house to provide some restraint on the excesses of the government of the day.
It is mot enough to complain about culture or the behaviour of our opponents or to claim that the solution is a more independant CMC. We need to indentify all the factors contributing to dodgy government and start applying pressure to have them changed.
I know Brendan Butler personally (though I haven’t seen him in a while). He was Chair of the CMC for 6 years up to 2004. IMO he was the first in that position to get the organisation off the front pages. This exit interview doesn’t say much, but what it says, I think, is straight down the line and the truth, which was Brendan’s style.
I’d agree with Mark’s conclusion. Things are not all that bad, but we do need thought about where we are and how we might best proceed. For the CMC it’s a matter of what it’s role should be and how it is resourced.
But I think it is a problem that the State’s administrative style is managerial and deeply authoritarian. That was true of Peter Beattie too, who told the Nuttall trial that they always had cabinet consensus, but it was he alone who decided what the consensus would be.
John D, freedom of information is always considered an unmitigated public good and the more the better, but as an ex public servant I can assure you that you can’t do your work in a fish bowl. Just can’t. I don’t know what the ideal would be.
I much favour importing anti-corruption systems. It’s not that hard to find places with better systems than Australia and many of them don’t pay as well as we do. Hiring a few of them and putting them in a room with a few Australian legal weasels to come up with something shouldn’t be too hard.
Actually, the hard part would be getting the result implemented.
The trouble with this post is in the title. It makes the spurious assumption that something’s fresh.
It never ceases to amaze how the Police Unions are the first cab off the rank to defend those who are in the frame for major misdemeanours.
It must really rankle the vast majority of honest, hard-working and dedicated coppers to know that their elected organisation can engage in such vitriol, rather than even being just a little circumspect in how they stand up for members investigated for misconduct. That kind of appearance of a union official in front of the media seems like a reminder of all those years when wearing a police uniform was akin to a badge of membership of a political street gang.
As a NSW observer of events over the border I’m still recovering from the Nuttall case. That this guy could sit in Cabinet on his developers/bite/retainer and still plead his innocence.. breathtaking.
But having just watched 4Corners on immigration scams and mainly Federal Government irresponsibility, what can I say. That things are not all that bad is relative.
Several Victorian Labor govts have refused to set up similar bodies. Shame, Brumby, shame!
Things are a disgrace in Queensland.
The judiciary, the crown and the parliament are a single government entity; without the checks and balances you would expect in a democracy.
Mark, the tabloidisation of The Courier-Mail has not stopped the paper from doing much more than any of our competitors to hold the Bligh Government, including the Quensland Police Service, to account. Sniffy references to a supine media in Queensland are usually made by journalists and commentators who only take an interest when something happens to confirm their preconceived and dreadfully outdated idea of the state as a hillbilly backwater. It would be great if the 20-year-old prism through which a lot of the analysis of the Queensland story is written was finally ditched.
What’s your take on it, then, Craig? I do read the C-M regularly. It seems to me that a lot of the ‘accountability’ consists of stories about Ministerial expenses, cost overruns or health disasters. It may be worthy, but the choice is skewed towards what can be presented in a populist way. Not so different from what you get on 4KQ. An awful lot that happens in state politics simply goes unreported.
Nor am I in any way arguing that the state is a hillbilly backwater. That should be clear from reading my Crikey piece, and indeed from what I’ve written previously – particularly in the leadup to the federal election, where I made much of the impact of shifts in demographics, political culture and social attitudes on Queenslanders’ voting patterns.
I tend to agree with Craig on the outdated prism needing to be ditched but that should start in the MSM too.
Also, many more blowtorches need to be put to, as Mark rightly puts, “systemic misconduct in the elite Armed Robbery Squad of the Queensland Police”. The head of which has what could only be described as ’stinking’ links to a senior QLD Government Minister.
From another tabloid?
Qld Labor defends undeclared $225,000 state election campaign donation.
Of course they do. When you’re that far gone you don’t even recognise the problem. Russ Hinze’s ghost has made his way into ALP.
http://news.brisbanetimes.com.au/breaking-news-national/qld-labor-defends-225000-donation-20090728-dz7m.html
I find it more than disturbing that the Premier expects us to believe the South East Queensland Regional Plan has been described as a ‘green plan’ when even a quick glance at the lobbyist register reveals who she has let through the ‘green backdoor’ to develop in places like let’s say…smack bang in the middle of Koala corridors for example.
Maybe someone here could answer a question for me. If Gordon Nuttall is guilty of receiving bribes, why haven’t those that gave the bribes been charged?
Debbieanne asks “why haven’t those that gave the bribes been charged?” because they haven’t been brought to trial yet.
Charges are being laid.
It must really rankle the vast majority of honest, hard-working and dedicated coppers
.
Yes it does. Very much so. But considering that this majority adds up to 3% of the force than the union tends to disregard them.
Thanks Mark @ 20.
No worries!
Even honest pollies are wary about independent investigators since Hick Greiner got pinged (infairly, IIRC) by ICAC, the body that he himself set up.
QLD is the most freightening State to live in, U live in fear here. It reminds me of the Robert Askin days in NSW. We wanted to complain to the CMC about Senior Police & Police harrassment from the South Side of Brisbane, & were told by a Solicitor from O’Gormans office, ‘Don’t say anything to them, U won’t get anywhere’. ‘Best place in the world to come to’? We don’t think so. They forgot to tell the tourists about the sticky Flies.
According to Peter Beattie this morning on AM, Fitzgerald is being unfair because they have monthly Community Cabinet meetings. So everything is a beat up. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Well, its no surprise to me. The relationship between the Brisbane City Council and developers is essentially corrupt – always was, always has been, with no “fitzgerald style” interruptus at any point – so much so that its considered absolutely friggin normal for big developers to donate piles of cash to ALP and LNP campaigns.
Somehow, this is considered sane in Quinceland. But its clearly CORRUPTION. NSW was the same in the Askin era – dont know about now. But VIC is really notihign like it in terms of an instituionalised sublation to developers.
Part of the problem is that the majors dominate Council elections – unlike pretty much everywhere else in the country.
Lefty E, looks like it is beyond just the old run of the mill developer connections in QLD now. We’re looking at widespread corruption right through to the police force and beyond. It is quickly becoming clear that the QLD Labor Party is unlike anything this country has seen for two decades.
Mark do you know what is happening with Yungaba?
Or anyone else? That was a development proposal that truly stank.
Today’s (Oz) Strewth column has a <a href=’Brissy broadcast bypass’ snippet providing an insight into the fundamental workings of Qld’s rotteness:
That conference is an initiative of the QLD, NSW, and WA’s CMC ICAC CCC bodies, the conference web page advertised Tony Fitzgerald’s lecture, the conference proper didn’t start till the next morning, which is when the program indicated Anna Bligh would be opening the conference.
The only conference thing that was on while Tony Fitzgerald was giving his speech was the opening cocktail party, obviously a much more attractive proposition for the news crews than a dry as dust lecture.
Usually it’s turning up even at the opening of an envelope, with Qld’s fourth estate it’s turning up only at the opening of a bottle. I’m sure Craig (13) was at Tony’s talk, not the canapes.
But you gotta give it to Quincies for their sense of humour: nominating Terry Mackenroth as a Q150 State Icon shows a certain chutzpah: The Big Brown Paper Bag perhaps?
Typical redneck reply from Beattie:
“That’s bullshit. No-one on my staff would have said that to him and if he’s talking to the sort of people that said that, I mean he’s talking to drug-affected people in the Valley,”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/31/2642095.htm
Marching the streets of this City against a militant Nationals regime I found myself spending a night (and half a day) in a cell with people who went on to shape some of the most far reaching reforms Queensland has ever seen. I guess I get to do som marching of that kind again before I leave this world. Sadly it is against a political party in government I once respected.
Steve, you mentioned, ‘the militant Nationals Regime’. When I stood for office out in their, ‘Western Queensland Inc.’ Territory, you couldn’t help but notice the blatant corruption, it was everywhere. Not surprisingly, we come across some very seriously, agitated people who were grumbling about, ‘Taking up arms against these detractors’. We must sweep Queensland clean, right down into the Cellar of Parliament House.
Wayne Goss agrees with Fitzgerald.
Is not it interesting that Fitzgerald was accused of having “sour grapes” as was various developers and journalists and everyday citizens. Looks like the dying days of a less than admirable government to me.
Now that a number of people have had a spray about how dodgy the government in Queensland is, (and we may add to that, ‘how dodgy all longterm governments get’) what is the best way of ensuring that one reconciles the need for competent and professional government — which requires a degree of continuity — with openness and accountability — which implies a degree of churning — a.k.a. renewal?
Clearly, changing governments every two terms is not a sufficient answer, and certainly not in an Australian context since, fairly obviously
a) People are quite rightly reluctant to vote someone in who is politically incoherent or favours undesirable policies. That’s one reason why we have governments that stay in for successive terms. Moreover as Fitzgerald noted, the defeat of Goss after an unholy alliance between the conservatives and the police unions was a setback to reform and good government, and presaged the return of the ALP which he now sees as contiunuing that unhealthy trend
and
b) There’s no institutional way to force out governments who have stayed on too long or to compel people to chuck them out. You can’t really allow government power to pass to the judiciary. That would be to create a kind of secular theocracy, if one can utter such a thing.
It seems to me that the real questions concern the processes *antecedent* to government — selection of candidates and of course, the contexts in which they are selected and secondly, the extent to which governments in partnership with business can hide its activities in real time.
On this latter point, I am heartily sick of the whole ‘commercial in confidence’ thing. It seems to me that the only people who can’t know what is going on are the people who most need to. Most tenderers would have a very good idea about the terms of rival bids — and indeed, sometimes they have themselves colluded. Were I in charge, anyone tendering for government work would be told at the oputset that the documents would be public knowledge from the outset. If they didn’t like that — too bad. All contacts between ministers, regulators and potential suppliers would be on the public record. And while cabinet discussions would be in-confidence until a decision was made, the criteria for selction would be transparent from the start.
It could well be that such provisions might lead, in some instances, to the public getting a worse deal than they could through existing usages, but it seems to me that even if this were so, it would be a price well worth paying in the long run, since we could have greater scope to critique peoposals and improve them before literally and figuratively, these were set in cement.
It is important, IMO, for those of us who favour a strong public sector, to ensure that its operations both in practice and in perception, have the highest standards of probity and that there is no room in practice for anyone to claim that leaving delivery of important public goods to the private sector will produce superior outcomes in virtue of being private alone. Disgust and apathy are corrosive of good public administration, however well-founded these attitudes might be.
Fran
From down south, (which probably means the most complete coverage I get of corruption in Qld. state politics is what I read on LP,) Queensland doesn’t seem anywhere near as bad as NSW, but Governments down here just muddle, or brazen through. I’m probably getting cynical in my old age, but don’t ALL politcians behave that way once they get into office? Spoils to the victor, and all that?
Since we are discussing corruptionj I thought it might be useful to look at the other side of the issue.
Earlier this week it turns out that couple of Geelong Council workers were sacked for corrupt conduct over what amounts to using some leftover bitumen to fill a pothole in a non-profit club’s carpark for which they did nopt seek but later recieved — a free steak sandwich.
Now while at one level one can see the principle involved, and perhapos a general caution was in order, it seems to me that this fails a number of tests of criminal conduct. Where was mens rea? They didn’t contemplate a reward, and initially declined it when offered it sometime later, did the work in their lunch break and used resources that would have had to have been discarded. They could easily have believed their work was a public service. As far as I can tell, no person was harmed by the acts. There was at worst, a potential for harm, which could have been addressed by a memo to all staff — a teachable moment to quote a currently popular phrase.
If it was a crime, it was an utterly trivial one and the sanction was out of all proportion to what happened.
Danny,
not sure if this will make you feel any better, but while Quinceland journos were failing to cover Mr Fitzgerald’s speech, it got plenty of coverage in Victoria, and nationally (ABC news etc, Australian).
As long as youse have the internet up there, or can listen in to radio broadcasts from over the border (like Eastern Europeans secretly listening to BBC or ‘Voice of America’?) you’ll be able to keep up.
If you see editions of the “SMH” or “Age” with whole sections blacked out on the news-stands, be alarmed.
I’m recalling what happened to Time Magazine (or was it the FEER?) in Jakarta, when it ran a story about “Madam Tien Percent”.