Labor must be clear on plan for federal ICAC

Federal Labor leader Anthony Albanese. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Damian Shaw

Now that the problems of the state-based anti-corruption commissions are clear, the community deserves some answers – not from the states, but from Anthony Albanese and his legal affairs spokesman, Mark Dreyfus.

Before people vote at the election, they need to know if Labor plans to stitch together a federal ICAC based on those aspects of the state-based commissions that are clearly on the nose.

Will Labor follow the NSW model that has caused so much harm to the innocent? Or will it learn from South Australia and Tasmania, the two states that have most clearly rejected the trouble-prone NSW model.

Dreyfus is committed to establishing a federal ICAC that will be “powerful, transparent and independent”.

Will there be NSW-style show trials where witnesses are forced to perform for the media by answering questions at public hearings that have already been asked and answered in private?

Before the last election, Dreyfus said public hearings would be held from time to time. But if that is the case, how will his commission avoid unjustified public shaming of people who turn out to be innocent?

And how would federal Labor hold its new agency to account? Would it copy the mechanism in Victoria that was blamed this week for inaction after being warned of a potential suicide?

And will there be a Queensland-style confusion of functions in which a federal ICAC would run investigations as well as launching prosecutions, bypassing the independent scrutiny of the Director of Public Prosecutions?

Federal Labor might care to do a little background reading on Tony Fitzgerald, who has been brought in to investigate Queensland’s Crime and Corruption Commission. Fitzgerald’s bona fides as a corruption buster are beyond dispute. Yet he has previously expressed serious concerns about independent commissions against corruption.

His 1989 report on corruption in Queensland says: “There is nothing in the experience, demonstrated capacities and structures of ICACs which warrants the adoption of the approach in Queensland. The idea of an autonomous body can at first be comforting, because it is beyond the control of those in power who may be corrupt. However, just as such a body is (theoretically at least) beyond the reach of illegitimate power, it is also beyond the reach of practical proper control.”

Chris Merritt is vice-president of the Rule of Law Institute of Australia