Daniel Andrews must be called to IBAC public hearing

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews in question time on Tuesday. Picture: Wayne Taylor

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews is a beneficiary of the state anti-corruption commission’s failure to investigate fully each major faction and the way they function.

There have been two critical moments in the public hearings where both the IBAC commissioner and counsel assisting have missed opportunities to test what role Andrews played in factional activities in southeastern Melbourne and party head office.

The first opportunity was on Monday when commissioner Robert Redlich QC told Labor’s Anthony Byrne that the commission was not interested in the identities from the Socialist Left faction that Byrne dealt with in 2002 and “for a period of time thereafter”.

While Redlich asked whether people Byrne dealt with factionally at the time were MPs, he did not pursue their name or names, even though Byrne responded: “One was a member of parliament, commissioner, in particular.”

This is the exact time nearly 20 years ago that Andrews was entering the Victorian parliament.

Andrews, a former ALP assistant state secretary, was factionally active and part of the Socialist Left group aligned to former federal MP Alan Griffin. The two have since fallen out bitterly.

Why wouldn’t we want to know everything about the SL’s activities and, more explicitly, what Andrews knew and when about what was going on?

It is impossible for anyone working in ALP headquarters and running for parliament not to know how the factional system was working.

The second critical moment was on Tuesday when counsel assisting IBAC, Chris Carr SC, asked Byrne whether he was aware of methods being employed by other factions in southeastern Melbourne in recent years.

Byrne then referred to the Socialist Left and alleged branch stacking but Carr did not use the opportunity to explore the who, what, where, how and when of the SL operation in the southeast.

It’s a critical failure of the IBAC process. It means, in a public sense at the very least, that the opportunity to provide a broad investigation has been narrowed effectively to one side of the Labor political divide with potentially critical details around Andrews, missing.

We don’t know what has been uttered in confidential hearings but IBAC appears locked into what looks to be a one-sided take-down of large parts of the Victorian ALP.

The ministerial resignations are from the Right and public deliberations have focused heavily on Right identities, including ­former senior MPs who have long left the federal parliament.

While discussions segued on Tuesday afternoon into the role of the Industrial Left faction, it was part of the moderate Right group led by former ALP minister Adem Somyurek.

It is not possible to tell the full story without examining the sum of both parts.

The Victorian ALP is complex in many ways but the basic systems, including a mud map of key factional players and groupings, can be learnt in an afternoon.

It’s the history that is hard to digest and is often not documented. It is a lived experience.

Andrews has been at the centre of that history for 20 years. He and his faction deserve the same level of public scrutiny as Byrne and Somyurek.

For the sake of IBAC’s credibility, Andrews should be called to give public evidence.