Des Houghton: QBCC needs royal commission as state bodies let Queenslanders down
It is clear the role of Queensland’s statutory bodies is no longer to protect citizens’ rights, but to conceal government mistakes and wrongdoing, writes Des Houghton. VOTE IN OUR POLL
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The state government construction watchdog regularly set aside orders by building inspectors to rectify defective work by builders. This potentially left homeowners thousands of dollars out of pocket.
An executive warned that “the uncontrolled practice of changing DTR (directive to rectify) decisions” was “likely to provoke justifiable complaints from affected persons”.
The executive also said there were “complex issues” around “procedural fairness” and “perceived bias”.
The revelations are a serious blow to the credibility of the state government and the union-led Queensland Building and Construction Commission.
The QBCC is a statutory body whose watchdog role is to protect home builders, not work against them.
If ever there was evidence for a royal commission, this is it.
It also seems to me the QBCC has a massive conflict of interest.
It receives the insurance premiums under the Queensland home warranty scheme, but also assesses claims against the scheme.
The internal documents suggest it is in the financial interests of the QBCC and the state government to avoid valid insurance claims and to negate them by overturning defect notices.
The Courier-Mail has for years reported complaints from homeowners whose defective work was not properly investigated.
The internal documents were found in a Right to Information search by Brisbane surgeon Shaun McCrystal.
I believe the documents also raise disturbing legal and ethical questions the State Cabinet and the Crime and Corruption Commission can no longer ignore.
McCrystal has been battling the QBCC and other government departments and agencies for eight years, after he says the regulator ignored his complaints that it allowed an unlicensed and bankrupt builder to construct apartments close to his home that are fire hazards.
McCrystal told me the QBCC failed to act on wrongdoing while “meddling in defect rectification”.
He said a unit block next door to his home was a fire risk because it was being built too close.
Worse, the block was built with materials that were not fire resistant in accord with the Building Code of Australia.
He said the QBCC not only failed its watchdog role but repeatedly blocked his efforts to seek full information.
Former state archivist Mike Summerell agreed, referring the matter to the CCC after certain files went missing.
Dave Stewart, the then director-general of the Department of Premier and Cabinet, also referred the case to the CCC after McCrystal wrote a letter to Annastacia Palaszczuk pointing out failures in the system and making allegations of ineptitude and wrongdoing.
An independent fire and building expert backed McCrystal.
Stephen Burton’s peer review assessment of fire safety at the apartment block pinpointed serious flaws.
Burton said the block posed a real fire threat to McCrystal’s home next door.
McCrystal has taken his complaints to various government bodies and officials – and was failed by all of them.
He said he was not only let down by the QBCC but the Ombudsman, Crime and Corruption Commission, Queensland Fire and Emergency Services, the Office of the information Commissioner and the government including cabinet ministers.
They all flick-passed the problem to someone else because, I suspect, it was just too hot to handle.
“These documents show a systemic failure of the regulator to comply with its own legislation,” McCrystal said.
“These decisions were being changed behind the scenes without oversight or compliance with the proper review process.
“Since the QBCC is both the regulator and the insurer, my concern is that this is a widespread, uncontrolled, and probably untraceable practice by the QBCC.
“It’s an industry-sized scandal.
“The serious questions the QBCC needs to answer include how many people were affected by the practice, how many decisions were affected, and how many genuine insurance claims have been wrongly denied?”
McCrystal took 12 months to have the documents released.
At first, the QBCC point-blank refused his Right to Information requests.
“The Office of the Information Commissioner had to intervene, and my application was processed only after I agreed to restrict the scope,” he said.
Even then some documents were still withheld or heavily redacted.
One internal document that was released shows then QBCC commissioner Brett Bassett signing off on a special “Changing DTR Decisions” directive, drafted by the former director of the QBCC’s Ethics and Standards Unit, Geoff Airo-Farulla, in December 2018.
According to the documents, the intent was to “provide direction to all officers of the QBCC in relation to amending or setting aside original decisions made under s72 of the QBCC Act”.
“Some time ago, as an outcome of my investigation of a customer complaint, Brett (Bassett) asked me to prepare the attached commissioner’s directive to regulate/end the fairly common practice of BATS (building and technical services inspectors) changing DTR (directive to rectify) decisions outside of the review process,” Airo-Farulla wrote in an internal email.
He was clearly disturbed that defect work orders had been pushed aside. And he warned of the “inherent legal risk” for the commission with “DTR decisions being changed in an uncontrolled fashion”.
Those words will send alarm bells ringing in several ministerial officers in the Tower of Power.
Works Minister Mick de Brenni should especially find it hard to fob off McCrystal again.
Under the changes, it was also decided that apart from an outside review process, “an original decision to issue the direction or not issue the direction, must only be amended or set aside with approval in writing of the Assistant Commissioner”.
McCrystal is concerned with other issues at the heart of governance.
“What’s also disturbing is that under (the) directive, the assistant commissioner was elevated to a position that had more power than the QCAT and judiciary to receive, consider, and decide on these matters”.
“On top of that, despite first complaining in 2014, my family and I are still being forced to live next to deathtraps,” McCrystal claims.
Earlier this year the Palaszczuk government paid former Beattie government bureaucrat Jim Varghese $380,000 to examine the QBCC.
He recommended the home warranty scheme be transferred to another department, such as Treasury.
This would allow the regulator to focus on its licensing and compliance functions.
Mc Crystal added: “The problem dragged on because it was not properly investigated by the QBCC at the outset.
“As a part of the development phase Queensland Fire reviewed the building plans and approved it. But they even wrote – and I found this under RTI – their building assessment officers wrote ‘type of construction c should be a’.
“So they didn’t stop the design phase when they knew it did not comply.
“That was raised with Queensland Fire and Emergency Services and I was blown away; dismissed out of hand.’’
The QBCC also told him the certifier didn’t do anything wrong, even though they had not investigated him.
The Courier-Mail has invited the QBCC to comment on the documents.
IMPROPER CONDUCT CASES REPORTED
Parliament has been told of 37 new notifications of suspected improper conduct by Crime and Corruption Commission officers in the last year. What kind of improper conduct we may never know.
But no details were provided in a report tabled in the House by Jon Krause, chairman of the parliamentary crime and corruption committee, the CCC’s oversight body.
To my mind the report was too sketchy.
The CCC has done some good work, but its reputation will remain under a cloud unless allegations of wrongdoing are properly ventilated.
Meanwhile, the CCC chairman Bruce Barbour has sent a cheerio call to Alan MacSporran QC in his annual report to parliament.
“I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge our former chairperson, Alan MacSporran QC, who left the CCC earlier this year. On behalf of the commission, I thank Alan for his contribution and leadership during his six-year tenure,’’ Barbour wrote.
I found this strange considering MacSporran was forced out of the same job earlier this year. MacSporran had presided over what was described in parliament as a “travesty of justice” involving botched investigations that ruined the lives of Logan and Ipswich councillors unfairly forced from office.
Ousted Moreton Bay mayor Allan Sutherland also suffered, and his case is far from over.
And he is not happy that his submission to the recent Fitzgerald inquiry had key sentences blacked out before it was released to the public.
Sutherland was cleared of misconduct after a long CCC investigation.
STATUTORY BODIES HIJACKED
It has become clear to me that many of the statutory bodies set up to safeguard citizens against overbearing governments have been hijacked, and their watchdog role neutered.
Their role is not to protect our rights, but to conceal government mistakes and wrongdoing.
I know this by the extraordinary length the politicians and bureaucrats and others go to dismiss and even ridicule people with legitimate complaints.
Both sides of politics have let us down, but Palaszczuk’s Labor government has made it an art form in recent years.
A surgeon, telecommunications engineer, a retired underground coal miner and safety officer, a builder and his son a financial planner, flood victims and a mother pushing her disabled daughter in a wheelchair are just some of the people who have visited these pages with legitimate grievances ignored or dismissed by government regulators, including the Crime and Corruption Commission.
Auditor-General Brendan Worrall told it like it is in a report last week in which he said public entities were “unwilling to learn” from mistakes of the past.
I think Worrall was being too kind.
LNP Member for Burleigh Heads Michael Hart was outspoken in Parliament recently in describing tactics used by the government in silencing critics.
It came during debate on industrial relations laws designed to curtail independent unions that will not affiliate with the ALP.
He said: “The Labor Party goes straight back to the old Labor Party playbook.
“They do not like competition. They do not like anything being on a level playing field. They want to take every advantage they can get.
“They use this parliament as their own personal plaything. They rig inquiries. They rig the committee system. They rig everything.”
He said Labor only assisted “vested interests” and said there was a “conga line of union organisers” on the government benches.
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