Wednesday, 11 May 2022

Motions

Premier

Debate resumed.

Ms CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (12:36): As I was saying prior to question time in relation to the Premier being before IBAC, what a very important issue this is for all Victorians, because they do want integrity in government, and they want to be able to trust the man who is leading the state, or the person who is leading the state. I do not think many Victorians do. I think they see the Premier as somebody that they cannot trust because of how he has behaved and operated, particularly over the past two years, and what we see on a daily basis with some of his commentary. I note that in recent reports it has been confirmed that he has been grilled by IBAC in the past two weeks. This is from an article that came out in the Australian just yesterday:

In the past two weeks, it has been confirmed that Mr Andrews has twice been grilled in secret by IBAC as the agency explored his links to Mr Woodman and in Operation Watts, which was investigating ALP branch stacking and misuse of public funds.

That, as I previously said, is a very serious issue. We know what happened in the last Parliament around the red shirts and around what the government did—the obfuscation and the quite disgraceful disregard for proper process, actually, in not cooperating with these very important agencies that were investigating whether this misuse of public funds had taken place. Well, we know it did. We know what the Ombudsman said about it and we know what a former ALP member, Mr Somyurek, has said. He has said that it was systematic fraud that had occurred. He said that in public, and yet we do not know what the government’s, and particularly the Premier’s, involvement has been in that. We do know, according to Mr Somyurek, that the Premier had been at the head of a lot of these branch activities for many, many years prior to him taking on the lofty heights of Premier, and you would think that we need to have the utmost trust and integrity in that high office, because it is incredibly important.

We have seen this state get absolutely smashed over the last two years, a state that has got an increasing debt greater than that of a number of states combined. People are very concerned about that, but they are also concerned about what happened over the last two years in relation to the government’s response to COVID, with the harshest of restrictions, the longest of lockdowns and the implications that we are seeing, whether it is in the health system—that we have just been talking about in question time—or the impacts of those significant lockdowns that have occurred and what has happened to Victorians who have got sicker over that time, who have not had their cancer screenings take place and who are needing care now.

What we get from the government is blame. They are either blaming Victorians for frivolously ringing an ambulance or blaming Scott Morrison for some other reason. I mean, this is just extraordinary, and this is what I think says so much about the Premier. He refuses to take responsibility—no accountability for the hundreds of deaths that occurred under his watch as a result of hotel quarantine failures and, as I referred to prior to question time, a lack of ability to recall or remember through the Coate inquiry.

I say again: those New South Wales premiers who took their position very seriously, when they were questioned and there was a question mark around the integrity of their position as premier, resigned and stood down. Barry O’Farrell stood down because he could not recall—he had a massive memory fail—whether he had received a bottle of wine. He stood down on the basis that it was the right thing to do. He was honest. His colleagues described him as being honest and a man of integrity doing the right thing in the interests of the public.

This is in the interests of the public, and that is why this motion is incredibly important. It is the heart of what we need to have to enable our public to have confidence in the system that we all have the privilege of serving—our Parliament, the laws that come through this place, the legislation that is put in place and what we are asking Victorians to do on behalf of this Parliament—yet we have a Premier who has been embroiled in these very serious matters, Operation Sandon and Operation Watts, who refuses to stand aside while these inquiries are going on.

Mr Davis articulated in his contribution that this is very simple. It is just asking him to stand aside while this integrity investigation is taking place. If there was any ounce of integrity in the Premier, he would do that on behalf of every Victorian. Every Victorian deserves that because of what has gone on, and they do lack trust in what he says, whether it is the ‘Can’t remember; can’t recall’, the deflection, the blame or the lack of taking responsibility and accountability for the multiple failures—the litany of failures—that are occurring across our health system. He is more interested in sticking on a hard hat and a hi-vis vest or a mask behind closed doors than walking around in the community and hearing from real people. If he did, he would probably get an earful. I again say this is a simple motion, and I urge the house to support what is in the best interests of Victoria’s integrity.

Dr CUMMING (Western Metropolitan) (12:43): I, like many Victorians, have yelled out ‘Sack Dan Andrews’. Sack him. That is what every Victorian wants. If we cannot sack him—and I guess it is going to be the next election—then do the right thing, Mr Andrews, and stand down. Stand down now. Why won’t you stand down? Is it your arrogance? Is it that you believe that the truth will never be seen? Do you believe that you have buried the truth down deep enough? Do you believe that you have got rid of all your enemies—that you have dismissed them—and that you will not be found out? Do you believe that it is because of the bills that you have brought into this place to give you more power? The bills that you bring into this place actually give people like the chief health officer legal indemnity—allow them off the hook. You have that power to do that. You can bring bills into this place to make sure that things are buried and that you will have more power.

You must know that you have failed Victorians. You must know that during this pandemic you have actually failed every single Victorian. You locked us up. You did not allow us to visit our loved ones. You did not allow us to go to funerals. You stopped children from going to school, to playgrounds. You must know you have failed us. You must realise that we all know that the propaganda that you have pushed on us is all untrue. You are being investigated and you are being investigated in the dark, in the silence, in quiet, when what Victorians want is accountability, transparency and the truth. You have not allowed us to have any inquiries on COVID or any of your misgivings. You have not allowed us to actually get a royal commission. When the media and the public begged for you to stand down to give us a fighting chance to get back onto our feet, you refused. And you know four other premiers across Australia have stood down within this time, so why don’t you? Why don’t you give us all a break, Daniel Andrews? Give us the break that Victoria deserves.

We all know that the mandates currently for every single employee have nothing to do with science. You do not listen to the science. You have not listened to anyone. You have not listened to anyone in Parliament. You have not listened to anyone in your cabinet. You surely do not listen to the community, because they have protested. They have protested in the hundreds of thousands, and you have ignored them. You are just waiting for the election in November. You did not need to have these mandates for the last six months, and you are going to double down and continue them until everybody who has the opportunity to leave Victoria has left and the ones that are left behind only have the chance to vote you out in November. Fine—I think every Victorian cannot wait for November; they are looking forward to November. But for us now, why don’t you actually listen to Victorians and stand down? Just step aside, allow the corruption commission to do the job that they need to do, allow us all to actually see what has been said, bring it out into the open, stop hiding and stop allowing others to allow you to hide.

For Victorians, that is all they wish—for someone to actually hold you to account, to get some justice, for them to see what you have done to every Victorian and for all of that information to be brought to the surface. For me, really, just stepping aside is not enough. Being sacked is not enough. The community wants justice. They want you to be held accountable for everything that you have done to them, for every business that you have ruined, for all the time that we have lost in our lives due to you locking us down for no reason whatsoever, for all the suicides and the deaths that did not need to occur, for you stopping the community from having a choice in this time and for enforcing vaccines that really, we all know, do not stop you from getting it, do not stop you from spreading it and have caused numerous vaccine injuries and long-term health effects—so many people unwell at this point in time. You need to admit your mistakes. Anyone who is half decent admits their mistakes and apologises or stands aside and allows somebody else to do a better job, someone who has actually got integrity and honesty. That is all we want in the way of a Premier, someone who will actually give us the information that we have been wanting from the start—just honesty, not propaganda, not spin. But all we have received for the last two years are lies—lies upon lies.

We only wanted a message of hope. We wanted a way forward, a plan. Dan has not given us any plan whatsoever, and he continues to bury the truth and not admit his faults. For my community this is not even enough—to stand aside. They want the truth to be put to the front. They want the Premier to be held to account. IBAC seriously is a toothless tiger. They want the full weight of the law to be put on top of him for everything that he has done to everybody. Standing aside is not good enough, actually, not good enough at all. They want justice. They want justice for everyone that has been killed, hurt or injured during this time that never needed to be because of this government’s absolute arrogance and the way that it refuses to actually be transparent and inclusive and have the whole community talking together with its decision-making. Not once have you actually listened to the whole of the Victorian community about decisions that have been made, nor have you at any time actually given us the medical information, the background—anything—for us to know why you have done what you have done to us.

Sack Dan Andrews. That is what the community wants. They will get it in November. It will not come soon enough, but it will come. He will not do the honourable thing; he is far too arrogant. But sack Dan Andrews.

Mr ATKINSON (Eastern Metropolitan) (12:52): This is a most unfortunate motion coming to the Parliament today. I have got to say that I reluctantly enter the debate because there are matters here that I can understand—certainly not to barge in on some of the matters that are before the public at this time and for proper process to take its place. I was particularly alarmed when I noted that the IBAC draft report had somehow found its way into the public arena. It is my understanding that the way that IBAC operates is that it provides some information from a draft report to those people who are likely to be named in that report, for them to have an opportunity to respond and for IBAC then to actually give further consideration to the evidence that it has considered and to the response that is made, and then it reaches a definitive position and develops the final report, which does become public and which is presented to this Parliament to allow an opportunity for a considered position to be developed by the Parliament.

It was alarming to see that that report had made its way into the public arena without that sort of process being pursued. Indeed the fact that it has puts all of those people who are covered by the draft report in an invidious position, a position where I do not think that they necessarily ought to comment on the draft report itself and the matters canvassed in the draft report. If I was one of those people named, which I hasten to add I am not, then I would be basically withholding my position in terms of a response in the public arena until the final report was issued. So I can understand the invidious position of a number of people.

I am concerned, though, and where this motion does have some relevance to the process and is—whilst unfortunate that it has to be brought to the house today—a motion that needs to be considered carefully is the fact that sadly we have had a situation where the government has been reluctant to respond to matters of inquiry about some very serious matters in the public arena. The red shirts was simply a classic case in terms of being taken all the way to the High Court by the government to try and prevent a thorough investigation of that matter, where members who were involved in that program—and perhaps not by their own volition, perhaps forced by a party requirement to participate in a scheme that I know for a fact some of them questioned—were prevented by the party. They were gagged by the party and by the party’s legal representatives and told not to cooperate with any investigation, which included an investigation with the police.

As I have said before in this chamber, we make the laws, so we ought to be the very first people to abide by the laws. In the context of police investigations, we expect people to cooperate with the police and to own up for their wrongdoings. Indeed our legal system offers certain concessions to people who plead guilty or who make admissions that show some remorse, that show some regret, that show that they understand that what they did was wrong. In our laws we provide concessions. Here, back at that particular incident—the red shirts—there were no admissions, there was no cooperation with police or indeed with other investigations, including that of the Ombudsman, and there was every attempt to prevent any inquiry into that matter all the way up to the High Court, which was extraordinary. It was at a great cost to the taxpayers as well—$1 million effectively in legal fees—and the response of the government is, ‘Oh, look, you know, yeah, we made a mistake. We pushed the envelope’. I guess it goes back to that old saying ‘It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission’, because they then sent a cheque back as quickly as they could to try and shut the matter down. But as has been indicated already—$1 million in legal fees.

We have then gone on to some other matters where there has been evident corruption, and it included some officers within our electorate offices who were found to have done the wrong thing by an examination by the Parliament. That indeed went on to further inquiries by the appropriate agencies. We have the matters that were raised by Mr Somyurek and have been covered by an IBAC investigation. We have now had the Ombudsman announcing yesterday that she has brought in a former ombudsman from New South Wales to investigate political appointments, partly on matters that have been raised by me, Mr Hayes and some other members of this chamber, partly by some sections of the media and indeed confirmed, if you will, by Mr Somyurek in his recent explanations to this Parliament.

It is interesting that we reflect, and Ms Crozier particularly reflected, on a Premier that stood aside in New South Wales, Barry O’Farrell, over a bottle of wine that had been presented to him and that he had not declared. It is interesting that on that occasion he did step aside and took full responsibility, despite the fact that subsequently he was essentially exonerated after the public persecution of an ICAC process. But there have been other premiers who have also stood aside when matters have come into the public domain and there have been questions about the way in which they have responded to matters.

Here we have a number of inquiries that are being made by IBAC, some in concert with the Ombudsman, and certainly the public does need some satisfaction about where those matters lie. I personally do not expect the Premier to make full statements on what he has discussed with IBAC. I believe that it would be appropriate for him to indicate the number of matters in which he has—the word I would use would be—assisted IBAC, because I do not know that he is the subject specifically of investigations; he may well be simply assisting. But the point is that whilst I do not expect him to comment in full verse on the matters of the draft report that has been issued or indeed on other matters that might be before IBAC, because I would not want to prejudice, from my perspective, the processes of IBAC and the Ombudsman, which I think are sacrosanct—I think they are very important processes and they should not be subject to any other interventions—I think that there is a need for some explanation by the Premier.

Can I just go back very quickly. Whilst we had one Premier with a bottle of wine, can I mention, which I meant to a few moments ago, that we also had another Premier in New South Wales—in fact the very one that set up their ICAC— (Time expired)

Sitting suspended 1.03 pm until 2.05 pm.

Mr SOMYUREK (South Eastern Metropolitan) (14:05): I support the motion in the name of Mr Davis. Before I do, if I could just commend the Ombudsman for her judgement in bringing in someone from another state to do the investigation into the stacking of the Victorian public service. I think that shows a lot of good judgement by the Ombudsman, let us put it that way. I think we might have just dodged a bullet by moving the motion that we did in February earlier this year.

In determining whether to support this motion here today, I have gone over what has actually happened to me. I see some parallels with the predicament that Mr Andrews finds himself in and what I actually went through. Let us recap. On 14 June 2020 a highly sensationalist television program ran an absolute hatchet job on me. It claimed essentially that I got into Parliament by branch stacking on an industrial scale, which is not true. The people that were branch stacking there—an IBAC investigation has actually proven this—were Anthony Byrne on one side and Daniel Andrews on the other side. Both of these gentlemen were on the public payroll. They were paid full time to stack branches, Mr Andrews and Mr Byrne. This was demonstrated at IBAC. I was a mere observer.

The narrative goes that after getting into Parliament, with my new-found status as an MP, I went even more crazy in stacking branches. Over the next 20 years I stacked on an industrial scale and took over branch after branch after branch across Victoria in the Labor Party to the point where I got to controlling two-thirds of the membership, which was 11 000 members. Those members had to be paid for somehow, so there were all types of suggestions about where the money came from. They were all scurrilous and defamatory suggestions. That is why I am taking to those publications with a defamation case.

I rocked up the next day to see Mr Andrews in his office, and he said to me that he cannot have me under an IBAC investigation and remain a minister of the Crown. In fact he said I cannot be a member of his team on the backbench in his caucus and have an IBAC investigation into me. I thought, ‘Fair enough’. In politics it is all about optics. There was no natural justice. A fact-finding mission in a couple of weeks would have shown that the program was wrong, but in politics it is about optics. We were going to have an IBAC investigation into me, it was going to drag on for a year or so and he could not afford to have me in his cabinet or in his caucus. I get that. I respect that in politics it is all about the optics.

So I went away and I tweeted that I would no longer be voting. I would be disenfranchising myself, because I thought it was inappropriate to be under an IBAC investigation and voting in this place. So I disenfranchised myself. I did not want to, because there were a lot of important things happening in this chamber at that particular point in time, but I did. I thought that was the right thing to do. That is what I did.

A year and a half later, in November 2021, I was publicly grilled for four days. All the nonsense that was put out by the Sunday program was proven to be false. They had seven years of text messages, seven years of WhatsApp messages, 20 years of email messages, telephone intercepts. My best friends in politics of 25 years were recording unlawfully my telephone conversations in order to compromise me. Yet there was nothing. Over seven years there were about a handful of incidents, prima facie evidence, of staff members running errands around. That is all they had. So the fact is there was a public examination, I was grilled publicly and the public were given the opportunity to hear what IBAC had on me. After these four days I felt vindicated. I came back into this place, and I exercised my vote. I told everyone that I was going to vote, and I saved Victoria from tyranny, I reckon, by helping to dilute the Public Health and Wellbeing Amendment (Pandemic Management) Bill 2021.

Just like I sat in Mr Andrew’s office on 15 June 2020 when he told me that the optics of an IBAC investigation into me were so bad that he could not sustain me in his cabinet or on his backbench or in the party, I say to Dan this: it is about the optics, stupid. You cannot have a Premier of a state entangled in three corruption inquiries and expect that that is okay. You cannot. When people are looking to invest in this country and in Victoria from overseas jurisdictions, what they will do is they will have a look at advanced economies with comparable settings and they will look at Victoria. We have got a Premier that has got the watchdog with three separate corruption inquiries on him. It is about the optics. You cannot have a Premier of a state being entangled in three separate corruption inquiries. It is a shocking look. He needs to stand aside. I am not even saying step down; I am saying stand aside. He needs to stand aside for the sake of his party too. He is not the popular, rockstar Premier he was. He is a drag on the party’s vote. He can give a clean start to the next leader that can take over and lead the party to government. He needs to do the right thing by his party as well.

I do not know what the three inquiries are about. What I do know from when I was a minister is what the backbenchers and the fellow ministers were saying about the United Firefighters Union inquiry, and what I do know from when I was a shadow minister—I will not go into all of that, because I will not have enough time—is we were concerned that it was a blackmail attempt on the Premier. We were concerned that hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers money was being misdirected to pay for this blackmail attempt. I was a minister. We were concerned as ministers. IBAC are playing all types of funny buggers here. He needs to be grilled publicly. It was liberating for me to be grilled publicly when I had all these nasty allegations made about me. The Premier needs to be grilled publicly. Maybe it will do him good. Maybe we will all see there is nothing there. But the fact of the matter is he needs to be grilled publicly so we all know and so that his fellow ministers and backbenchers know that he is not paying off a blackmail attempt.

In terms of Operation Watts the Premier’s faction was not investigated. There was a report in the Age, a draft report, which said that all of the factions have been involved, and that would be right—plus some. Daniel Andrews is the leader of the Socialist Left—not in name, but he is. I was the leader of the right. He is the leader of the left. He does not have that in his title as the Premier. Is Operation Watts grilling him on the $500 000 of branch stacking money that is required to sustain the Premier’s faction machine? Where is that money coming from? Is it coming from Woodman? This bloke is allegedly known to carry suitcases full of money and cash. Is it coming from fundraisers, where developers such as Woodman are contributing? Is it coming from powerbroker faction leaders that are giving kickbacks to the Socialist Left to pay for the branch memberships? Is it coming from printers? Where is the money coming from?

What we need is for the Premier, on behalf of the Socialist Left, to be grilled publicly by IBAC—not sit down and maybe over a bottle of wine shoot the breeze with the commissioner. IBAC is either devious, corrupt, stupid or incompetent. They need to be speaking to these witnesses, like New South Wales do, in public. It is about confidence. It is about the trust that the public have in their elected leaders. It is about community trust in IBAC as well. At the moment they have really, really let a body that should be beyond reproach down.

Ms BURNETT-WAKE (Eastern Victoria) (14:15): I rise in support of Mr Davis’s motion. The Premier has twice now been given the right to be examined in private hearings before IBAC. We do not know whether he is under investigation or whether he was there in a witness capacity, because he refuses to answer basic questions from concerned Victorians. What we do know is that he has been given special treatment, and there is a real question around why he has been questioned privately when so many other hearings are in the public domain.

When we look to what is right, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian stood down immediately after the New South Wales state anti-corruption watchdog, ICAC, revealed she was under investigation. This was at the height of the pandemic, when the role of the Premier was integral. Because the Australian public deserves to have confidence in their leaders, she walked away from all official responsibilities.

Like our neighbours in New South Wales, Victorians also deserve to have confidence in their leaders, and from the general public I have spoken to there simply is not confidence in Mr Andrews’s leadership. We have seen with Operation Sandon there have been numerous public hearings, but the Premier has had the right to speak in private. His contempt towards the general democratic processes is quite frankly outrageous in that he refuses to let Victorians know why he presented to IBAC or even when that occurred. He and his government are determined to block any questions, which led of course to the shameful situation on Monday this week.

I was perplexed at Ms Shing cutting the feed during the Integrity and Oversight Committee hearings. Democracy thrives when people can see, understand and participate in decisions that affect their lives. It is about leaders acting with integrity and being accountable for their actions. When we start closing doors and cutting feeds there is a real problem and misunderstanding of transparent government. The burning question is: what are they hiding? This was Victoria’s first opportunity to gain some clarity into these matters, and the government’s response was to cut the public feed. I think that says all we need to know about the Andrews Labor government’s position on transparency: there is none. This is just sheer arrogance from the Andrews Labor government and a completely shameful disregard of the principles of open, accountable and transparent government.

Victorians are completely shocked at how this government have been able to do the things they are doing—lockdowns, mandates, not releasing information on which they have based their decisions, removal of our personal freedoms and liberties—and they just keep on doing it. The best thing the Premier can do is stand aside from all responsibilities until IBAC tables its report in Parliament. As the Premier of our state, he is the one making decisions that affect the lives of every Victorian. Victorians deserve confidence in their leaders. At the very least they deserve answers from the person who is making decisions impacting their lives. But what they get is feeds being cut and an arrogant refusal to answer questions in the public interest. We cannot have confidence in the Premier when he refuses to come clean about what he is attending IBAC for. I commend this motion calling on the Premier to stand aside.

Mr DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:19): This is a very important motion. It is a very simple motion on one level, calling on the Premier to stand aside from all official responsibilities until the Independent Broad-Based Anti-Corruption Commission report on Operation Sandon has been tabled and not to participate in any executive or administrative decisions. Many have spoken today, notably just one from the government, but the truth of the matter is this motion is important to ensure that decisions made by government are beyond question. It is important to make sure that decisions made by government are beyond reproach.

The truth here is that with the Premier it seems very clear—increasingly clear as the debate goes on—that it is likely that he is involved in at least three outings with IBAC. A frequent flyer at IBAC, a Premier at IBAC—as Mr Somyurek made very clear, overseas investors looking at this state will see the Premier of the state embroiled in corruption allegations and embroiled in hearings at a corruption board. These are very serious points. You cannot have the leader of the state—the leader of the government and the leader of the cabinet—in a position where they are being perceived as in fact corrupt and involved in the corruption that has gone on.

I say the sensible, the prudent, thing to do is for the Premier to step aside. If it is the case that he is cleared by these probes, if it is the case that he is not guilty, if it is the case that he is not corrupt and it is found that he is not corrupt, then I have to say he should return. But as has been laid out by a number in this chamber—Mr Atkinson made the point very eloquently—there is history here: the misbehaviour with red shirts, the refusal to cooperate and, I think eloquently picked up by Mr Somyurek, the Premier’s own standard about corruption allegations with others.

In this case the Premier is subject to visits to IBAC. He may or he may not be the actual person who is under investigation in a number of these investigations—three: Richmond, Watts and Sandon—serious matters of corruption in this state. He is either up to his neck in it or he is not, but either way he needs to step aside until he is cleared. That is the prudent way forward for our state. That is the prudent way forward; that is the fair way forward. He needs to be beyond reproach. Currently, with his refusal to answer and his refusal to be direct and honest with the people of Victoria, he is not beyond reproach. In fact it looks more and more like he is up to his neck in these corruption matters.

House divided on motion:

Motion negatived.