Opinion: MPs in a bind as past misbehaviour comes back to bite

Will Queensland’s jails soon be stuffed with dodgy politicians under tough new integrity laws being peddled by Crime and Corruption Commission chair Alan MacSporran, asks Jessica Marszalek.

IT IS a pity Queensland’s jails are so overcrowded because we may soon need a new VIP wing for criminal politicians.

That is the joke one political insider made after Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC) chair Alan MacSporran’s mic drop last week over planned integrity laws stemming from Deputy Premier Jackie Trad’s failure to properly declare an investment house bought near the planned Cross River Rail.

LGAQ argues stronger integrity laws proposed by CCC would criminalise innocent mistakes

Even before he swept into parliament for Monday’s hearing on the laws, political pundits were captivated by what Queensland’s corruption-buster would say.

Crime and Corruption Commission chair Alan MacSporran QC (AAP Image/Attila Csaszar)

He had already penned a scathing submission that slammed Labor’s draft laws as weak, ineffective and not reflective of his recommendations delivered after his assessment of the Trad case.

Instead of just capturing cases for which dishonest intention can be proven, as is proposed, failures to disclose relevant interests where the person knew, or ought to have known, of the relevant interest should also be severely punished, he had written. Intentional or not.

But for those who thought that was harsh, there was more to come. Because he now felt that not only should ministers face two years jail if they did not declare conflicts while running the state – as he originally proposed – but so too should backbenchers.

Huh?!?

That’s was pretty much the response from the slack-jawed backbenchers running the committee as they disputed they had any real power – they were not “executive decision-makers” after all.

Ah, but they could become decision-makers, or have a word in the ear of someone who was, and so wasn’t it best the bar was set high and everyone was captured by these new laws, MacSporran (pictured) asked.

Corruption watchdog savages draft of ‘Trad laws’

Turns out that for a lot of MPs and councillors, that answer is a resounding no.
The Local Government Association of Queensland has implored Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk not to bend to MacSporran’s will, lest politicians be made criminals for innocent mistakes, errors of judgment and paperwork blunders.

Privately, MPs on both sides are saying the same thing, questioning how many of their colleagues would have already fallen foul of the criminal law if these measures were in place now.

Certainly Trad’s name comes up, but so too do others. There are currently two other inquiries in train into alleged failures to register an interest being examined by parliament’s powerful ethics committee.

MPs continually update their register of interests, sometimes late.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk (AAP Image/Josh Woning)

Queensland Integrity Commissioner Nikola Stepanov – whose job it is to provide advice to politicians, their staff and senior public servants about ethics and integrity matters – revealed even she is struggling with more and more complex scenarios amid an “unprecedented” 600 per cent increase in cases.

“Issues, in general, across the board are becoming more complex and less visible, even to experts such as us,” she said, referring to MacSporran.

“It is not uncommon that we disagree about whether a conflict of interest may exist based on a particular set of facts.”

So if that is the case, is it unreasonable there are very real fears non-expert politicians will not always get these questions right?

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has promised to check out the committee's recommendations, but how much has she backed herself into a corner by earlier promising to deliver MacSporran’s wishes completely?

Could Labor and the LNP work together to constrain the laws, which could threaten the careers of MPs on all sides of politics for years to come if they go through?

As one veteran MP put it: “Who would go up against MacSporran?”

Jackie Trad to be referred to CCC over appointment of school principal in her electorate

But it is a bind of their own making, or at least that is how MacSporran sees it.

In the past, it has been the historic convention that politicians' behaviour has been governed by longstanding conventions and rules like those in the ministerial handbook.

An errant minister might, for example, be sent for a spell on the backbench, free to return if cleared in an investigation.

Or perhaps their behaviour would be so unacceptable to the public, they had to be sent there for good. That’s not happened so much lately.

“The trouble with that is that, with respect, they do not necessarily work,” MacSporran said of these conventions.

“People feel freer, it seems, to ignore the convention and the consequences might be minor, if any.

“That cannot be in the public interest, with respect.”
You reap what you sow, it seems.