Ex-premiers urge revamp of Queensland CCC watchdog

Four-time state election winner Peter Beattie wants to strip politicians of the power to appoint the head of Queensland’s statutory anti-corruption agency.

Peter Beattie says the CCC had become a ‘political football’. Picture: Mike Burton

Four-time state election winner Peter Beattie wants to strip politicians of the power to appoint the head of Queensland’s statutory anti-corruption agency in a call to arms by post-Fitzgerald inquiry premiers to reset the troubled watchdog.

Campbell Newman, Rob Borbidge and Russell Cooper agree with Mr Beattie that the re-emergence of 1980s graft-buster Tony Fitzgerald to co-chair a judicial ­review of the troubled Crime and Corruption Commission is a historic opportunity that must not be squandered.

The CCC is central to the ­integrity crisis that has rocked Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Labor government and opened the door this week for 80-year-old Mr Fitzgerald to revive the reform program he kicked off a generation ago.

The retired judge is already being urged to demand broadened terms of reference to cover the resignation last month of ­integrity commissioner Nikola Stepanov, after she complained of political interference, and allegations by former state archivist Mike Summerell that he was instructed to alter reports to parliament to avoid embarrassing the government.

Mr Beattie, whose nine years in office from 1998-2007 made him Queensland’s second-longest serving Labor premier, said the CCC had become a “political football” and weakened since its ­establishment as the Criminal Justice Commission in 1989 on Mr Fitzgerald’s recommendation. Mr Beattie revamped and renamed it the Crime and Misconduct Commission in 2001.

He told The Weekend Australian that the appointment of the CCC chair – vacated last week by barrister Alan MacSporran after the agency’s overseeing parliamentary committee savaged him for failing to act “independently and impartially” in a local government investigation – should be taken out of the hands of MPs and vested in an outside selection panel.

This could comprise the chief justice, the president of the Queensland Court of Appeal and the Speaker of parliament who would choose the CCC boss and commissioners from candidates put up by the attorney-general after consultation with the opposition leader and parliamentary crime and corruption committee. Appointments are currently made by the government of the day, though it is required to run them past the parliamentary committee.

“This puts the commissioners and chair above politics and gives both sides of politics a vested interest in the success of the CCC,” Mr Beattie said.

“Because the CCC is an independent body, I don’t believe this approach would breach the separation of powers principle.

“If constitutional lawyers are concerned about the separation of power issues for the chief justice and the (Court of Appeal) president, the selection panel could consist of two former Queensland governors and the Speaker of parliament.”

Mr Beattie also called for codification of the rules for public hearings by the CCC and so-called star-chamber sessions where witnesses are grilled under oath in closed proceedings without legal representation and sworn to secrecy afterwards. These new rules, inscribed in legislation, “should especially apply to the CCC’s public hearings, their use and operation which needs to be seen as fair, consistent and non-political”, he said.

Mr Borbidge, National Party premier for two years between the collapse of the Wayne Goss’s Labor government in 1996 and Mr Beattie’s narrow initial election win in 1998, said the oversight role performed by the CCC’s parliamentary committee should be beefed up by an independent ­office, modelled on the federal government’s Inspector-General of Intelligence Security, which keeps tabs on Australia’s spy agencies.

“Whether you are talking about the CJC, the CMC or the CCC, the organisation has, quite frankly, been out of control and a failure for many years,” Mr ­Borbidge said.

“Parliament has got to get its role right … there’s got to be ­appropriate oversight. I don’t think the existing mechanisms have worked.”

Mr Cooper was a Nationals’ minister under Joh Bjelke-­Petersen and lost as premier to Goss in 1989, only to be forced to resign as opposition leader after the CJC went after MPs from both sides for alleged misuse of travel entitlements.

He backed Mr Beattie’s proposals, adding a mechanism should be established for a statutory right of appeal against CCC decisions.

“My experience was they were always playing politics. You have got to have an independent committee to watch the watchdog, and I’m not sure we’ve had that,” Mr Cooper said. “In NSW, the ICAC seems to have run riot. Here in Queensland, we all would be happy if we could have a body that was fair and not as vindictive and vicious as it has been in the past.”

Having led the Liberal National Party to a landslide election ­victory in 2012, Mr Newman ­replaced the CMC with the CCC in yet another shake-up that was partly reversed by Ms Palaszczuk three years later. During his time as premier, the oversight committee was “co-opted” and did not hold the agency to account, he said.

“You know, I agree with Peter, there needs to be a different process,” Mr Newman said. “Some of the politicians … had the wool pulled over their eyes.”

Mr Beattie said the CCC should be made “more internally accountable” through the ­appointment of a sixth commissioner with organisational psychology qualifications to manage internal culture and avoid an “Eliot Ness” mindset among ­investigators and staff.

Bringing on the Speaker of parliament to chair the PCCC could improve the quality and performance of the parliamentary committee given this was “almost as important” as the commission itself.

“There is no point in Tony Fitzgerald just looking in isolation at how the CCC exercises its powers to charge people with corruption-related offences,” Mr Beattie said.

“The success of any future recommendations will depend on how they are implemented and how the CCC is accountable in the future.”