ICAC Commissioner seeking legal advice after junk mail blunder

The Commissioner of the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption is seeking legal advice after wrongly outing two people after failing to check his junk mail.

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THE Commissioner of the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption is seeking legal advice after wrongly outing two people after failing to check his junk mail.

Two people were named in a report, released on Tuesday, about a procurement matter at the City of Darwin.

Independent Commissioner Against Corruption Ken Fleming. Picture: Keri Megelus

ICAC Commissioner Kenneth Fleming QC has apologised “unconditionally” to the two people named who were “denied natural justice”.

Yesterday a report was released regarding an investigation into the City of Darwin’s THRIVE public art management procurement processes.

A statement from the ICAC office released Tuesday afternoon alluded to issues around a letter being sent to a junk email box from one of the named individuals, which the Commission was only made aware of following contact from the person’s lawyer.

In light of this Mr Fleming has requested that junk mail folders be regularly checked.

“The first issue related to the receipt of a document from one person. The document was a response to the process of natural justice.

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“The Northern Territory Government has filters in respect of material received via email. The document from the person was filtered out and placed into the ‘junk’ email folder because it contained filterable material.

“My office did not review the junk email folder and so the email was not detected.

“Consequently, the person did not receive the natural justice dictated by section 50 of the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption Act 2017 (“the ICAC Act”).

“The second person had no finding of improper conduct made in the report, in the sense that there were no findings of corrupt conduct, misconduct or unsatisfactory conduct in terms of the ICAC Act.

“However, I accept that some comments in the findings may be considered to be adverse to the person.”

The Commission has removed the report from online and retracted all findings, “that have been made adverse to those people’s right to natural justice”.

ICAC has also requested that there be no public reference to the findings in the report.

The Commissioner will also seek to change procedures around reporting to ensure a person’s right to reply is properly sought and that “each and every adverse finding has been included in the natural justice process, and no finding is omitted from that process”.

The Commissioner will also report the noncompliance to the Inspector under Part 7 Division 4 of the ICAC Act.

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