Changes to Queensland CCC obstruct public accountability

Former Queensland deputy premier Jackie Trad. Picture: Richard Gosling

Queensland’s integrity body, the Crime and Corruption Commission, has just been cut off at the knees.

Born out of the dark days of the Fitzgerald Inquiry, which shone a glaring light into systematic corruption across police and the Bjelke-Petersen government of the 1980s, it is supposed to be a watchdog against wrongdoing in politics and public institutions.

Its various iterations have investigated and jailed elected officials and bureaucrats to serve as a compelling deterrent to corruption. But when it doesn’t have the evidence to charge, and its probes detect dodgy behaviour, the CCC has aired its findings in reports to parliament that have served as a platform for public debate and, sometimes, a trigger for change.

Over more than 30 tabled reports, politicians, police and bureaucrats have been the subject of criticisms that they probably didn’t like.

It’s called scrutiny, delivered openly and transparently.

The recommendations of former chief justice Catherine Holmes goes against that simple premise of holding those who choose public life publicly accountable. Under her changes, the CCC will still be able to prepare a report from a corruption investigation.

But, in the case of a politician, if there is no conviction, the watchdog can’t make any “critical commentary, expression of opinion or recommendation based on their conduct”. In other words, the CCC is gagged unless it’s got a brown-paper-bag case of official corruption.

At the heart of this decision is former deputy premier and treasurer Jackie Trad and the secretive taxpayer-funded legal action she took to stop the publication of a CCC investigation report into allegations she improperly interfered in the 2019 appointment of under treasurer Frankie Carroll.

Trad’s legal action piggybacked off a High Court decision to block the release of a CCC report into former Queensland public trustee Peter Carne. No charges were recommended against Trad, who always denied any wrongdoing. But the CCC, which later widened its probe into senior public service appointments across the government back to 2015, was understood to be critical of the former deputy premier among others, including senior bureaucrats.

In July 2021, the Public Service Commission confirmed that the CCC’s report into the Trad investigation was the basis for a formal directive in the Government Gazette dictating that “chief executive” level public servant appointments must be “merit-based” and properly documented by selection panels. It appeared to be a tacit admission that the government had politicised the highest levels of Queensland’s public service. But under the new reporting rules gagging the CCC, the public may never know what it was all about because it might offend those at the centre of their findings.