Daniel Wills: The secrecy by the SA Government over the Oakden scandal could well have election consequences
YOU’D struggle to find anyone in SA, apart from the MPs in Labor’s Caucus and three independents, who believes forcing the Independent Commission Against Corruption to hold its Oakden inquiry in secret is a good idea, says Daniel Wills.
YOU’D struggle to find a single person in SA, apart from the 31 MPs in Labor’s Caucus and three so-called independents who voted with them this week, who believes forcing the Independent Commission Against Corruption to hold its Oakden inquiry in secret is a good idea.
Open and transparent government is a cherished principle of a free democracy.
It’s the top line in the social contract. People hand over power to their leaders on the condition that it’s exercised fairly and transparently in the service of their collective best interests.
The people who pay the bills rightly demand to know what they’re getting for their money.
In a case where some of the most vulnerable in society have been shamefully treated, getting to, and exposing, the ugly truth of how it came to be is critical to stopping it happening again.
Premier Jay Weatherill and Labor this week made a decision to put their own political self-interest over that of the community at large, and continued a toxic culture of cover-up.
Faced with a simple choice between open hearings or a closed shop, they took the latter.
The political benefits are obvious. The public will be barred from watching ministers and officials squirm in the chair as they are compelled to answer questions about who knew what and when.
The media will be blocked from taking footage of witnesses in the dock, and what they say will only ever become public if ICAC boss Bruce Lander decides to reproduce it in a report.
By foreshadowing that he would refuse the ICAC access to Cabinet documents, which were critical sources for the Gillman inquiry, Mr Weatherill has also limited its ability to get to the rock bottom of this shameful episode.
It is an effective concealment of evidence, that forces Mr Lander to rely instead on the word of witnesses and their faded memories of the time.
Put together, these actions make it more likely that the ICAC will return inconclusive or incomplete findings and people in high office will get off lighter than they otherwise would.
But that possible long-term political gain comes with proportionate immediate pain.
The Government, and its independent collaborators, are defenceless to accusations that they back a secret state. And that could yet have some savage long-term electoral consequences.
Labor’s path to victory at the state election next year is narrow and dimly lit. But it’s there, and the Government’s survival relies heavily on both independent ministers making it through.
Labor currently has 23 seats in its own right. With former Labor MP now independent Frances Bedford offering reliable support for confidence and supply, it has a functional majority.
The Liberals need to gain four seats at the election to govern in their own right. On current boundaries and trends, they can probably expect to pick up two inner-suburban city seats and either defeat former Liberal Duncan McFetridge in the south or accept his vote to form government.
Labor is gearing up to campaign strongly in the Liberal seat of Adelaide, where it has spent billions on infrastructure over the past few years, and Nick Xenophon remains a wildcard.
So, as the Liberals search for the pieces needed to imagine themselves in government, it seems they will need at least one of the two seats held by the independent ministers to grab power.
Both Mr Brock’s Port Pirie-based seat and Mr Hamilton-Smith’s foothills electorate are traditional Liberal territory. If Opposition Leader Steven Marshall can be denied there, and those two seats effectively remain in the Labor column, Mr Weatherill could do the impossible.
But both independents look to have badly wounded themselves by doubling down on secrecy.
Mr Hamilton-Smith finds himself in a familiarly awkward position this weekend. As an early advocate for an ICAC in SA, he has now played a decisive roll in tying its hands.
His line of defence is that it is better for the process to produce a considered and balanced report, rather than allow a rolling broadcast that could threaten people’s reputations.
The objection may be genuine, but many will read it as a limp excuse from someone who feels bound to follow the Labor line on every issue, even ones he passionately pushed in the past.
The same is true for Mr Brock, who said secret hearings “allow people to come forward and give evidence in confidence when they might be reluctant to do so in an open forum”.
Both men said they accepted positions in the Labor Cabinet to bring new representation to forgotten communities and promised to remain fiercely principled and independent.
There has been no other issue come before the Parliament in this term where the front bar opinion has been so lopsided in favour of one side of the argument, or the public interest so clearly crushed by political expediency.
If ever there was a time for the two independents to put daylight between themselves and a diminishing Labor government, it was in Thursday’s vote.
You just need to skim Chief Psychiatrist Aaron Groves’ report, with its warnings of a culture of cover-up and finding that the “fish rots from the head”, to know secret hearings are no solution.
The “independents” will have a hard time explaining to constituents why they chose secrecy over transparency and Labor’s line over the popular will. And they can expect to be regularly reminded in the run-up to voting day, as the Liberals paint them in Labor’s embrace.