Thursday, 29 August 2024
Bills
Justice Legislation Amendment (Integrity, Defamation and Other Matters) Bill 2024
Justice Legislation Amendment (Integrity, Defamation and Other Matters) Bill 2024
Council’s amendments
The ACTING SPEAKER (Daniela De Martino) (15:05): I have received a message from the Legislative Council agreeing to the Justice Legislation Amendment (Integrity, Defamation and Other Matters) Bill 2024 with amendments.
Ordered that amendments be taken into consideration immediately.
Message from Council relating to following amendments considered:
1. Clause 50, page 50, line 4, after “64(6)” insert “of the Freedom of Information Act 1982”.
2. Clause 108, page 85, lines 24 to 26, omit all words and expressions on those lines and insert –
‘(k) disclosure for the purposes of making a complaint to the Integrity and Oversight Committee; or
(l) disclosure as is otherwise authorised or required to be made by or under this Act.
Note
See also sections 39 and 40 of the Public Interest Disclosures Act 2012.”.’.
That the amendments be agreed to.
In speaking to these amendments, can I just say that the Integrity and Oversight Committee can accept complaints about the Victorian Inspectorate in very limited circumstances in relation to the committee’s monitoring and review function. The intention of the offence provision is not to displace this function but to ensure that the intent of the offence is clear. The Council passed a house amendment to clause 108 of the bill to explicitly provide an exception to the offence for disclosure to the Integrity and Oversight Committee – that is the parliamentary committee – for the purposes of making a complaint about the Victorian Inspectorate. The IOC can also receive, handle and investigate public interest disclosures about the Victorian Inspectorate. The Public Interest Disclosures Act 2012 is clear that a discloser is not bound by a provision of any act that imposes a duty to maintain confidentiality with respect to a matter or any other restriction on the disclosure of information. The bill does not amend these protections in the Public Interest Disclosures Act. The house amendment passed by the Council references the relevant rights under the Public Interest Disclosures Act in sections 39 and 40 to ensure that this is clear.
I would like to thank members of the Integrity and Oversight Committee for their consideration and feedback on the integrity amendments in this bill, particularly the member for Brunswick, who is the chair of the Integrity and Oversight Committee. I will leave my comments there for other members to make contributions. I commend the amendments to the house.
Michael O’BRIEN (Malvern) (15:08): The opposition is pleased to support these amendments given that they are in the exact same terms as amendments that we circulated in this house when the bill first came before us a number of weeks ago. I am pleased to see that the government accepted the wisdom that was inherent in the amendments that we circulated. They were drafted by the Office of the Chief Parliamentary Counsel, and I will take this opportunity to thank the Office of the Chief Parliamentary Counsel for the great work they do. They not only work with governments, as I know from when I was a minister, but also work with the opposition, independent members and crossbench members of Parliament. They do an excellent job. Thank you very much to the OCPC for all your great work.
We do think it is important that integrity bodies have appropriate abilities to receive disclosures in a way which encourages people who want to blow whistles to come forward. We did think that this was a gap in the bill as it was originally drafted by the government, so we are pleased to see that these additional opportunities for disclosure to the Integrity and Oversight Committee have been put into place. I note that there has been a change to the membership of the IOC. The member for Mulgrave has understandably stepped away and the member for Tarneit I think has come on board, so there will be more three-piece suits and Carlton supporters on the IOC, and that can only be a good thing I am sure.
We were slightly disappointed that some amendments that were moved by my colleague Mr Mulholland in the other place did not receive the support of the other place. There were amendments because the government drafted in this bill the ability for the Premier to receive advance copies of all integrity agency reports before they are tabled in the Parliament. I just wonder why it is that the Premier feels that she needs to have advance notice of what integrity agencies report. The Premier is first among equals, but she is among equals. Why shouldn’t the Premier be receiving this information at the same time as everybody else? This seems to be a case of the government choosing to stack the deck with integrity reports to guarantee the Premier can receive advance notice of what is coming. Given that we are talking about a 10-year-old government, the chances are that integrity reports are not likely to be about the opposition and are not likely to be about crossbenchers; they are far more likely to be about members of the government of the day. We understand the politics of this, but I do not know that it really enhances the integrity of the process at all. Having said that, the particular amendment we are considering is one that was drafted and initiated by the opposition, and to that extent we certainly support it. We wish the rest of the bill a speedy passage.
Motion agreed to.
The ACTING SPEAKER (Daniela De Martino): A message will now be sent to the Legislative Council informing them of the house’s decision.