Wednesday, 29 May 2024
Motions
Government accountability
Government accountability
Moira DEEMING (Western Metropolitan) (15:50): I move:
That this house:
(1) affirms that the public have a right to know how their tax dollars are spent by the Victorian government, Victorian government departments and local government councils;
(2) calls on the government to establish, as a matter of principle and practice, that disclosure of specific information about government-funded projects, programs and services be made publicly available, including:
(a) unredacted contracts, unless specific information can be objectively proven to necessitate redaction;
(b) conflict of interest disclosures;
(c) annual expenditure data;
(d) annual performance reviews; and
(e) statutes under which programs and services are authorised.
It is my pleasure and honour to put to the house today my motion, which essentially states that the public have a right to know how their tax dollars are spent – exactly. Just because Victorians vote a government in does not mean that there is a blanket mandate for it to do whatever it likes, however it likes, with taxpayer dollars. An election once every four years is not good enough. Democracy and accountability are owed to every single Victorian every single day. As the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner acknowledges, the interests of the government are distinct from those of the public.
We all know that Victoria is mired in debt due to financial mismanagement and poorly restrained corruption. The truth is Victorians are not even shocked anymore when we find out about corruption and misuse of our taxpayer dollars. We do not even raise an eyebrow when the next IBAC investigation reveals negligent and corrupt procurement processes involving unions, and we cannot even be bothered to roll our eyes when we hear that nobody in the government can recall how it all went wrong or who was responsible for the creeping assumptions that led them all innocently astray. We laugh so that we do not cry when we find out yet again that a quick tidy refund to taxpayers or a single-sentence apology will do for consequences because so-and-so does not even work there anymore, and they promise Victorians hand over heart that they will learn from all these very educational investigation reports.
But honestly, I am not even interested in simply complaining and scoring political points. I actually want solutions. So I want to put it to you all here today that we need to start being proactive and stop being reactive when it comes to ensuring our taxes are not wasted or corrupted. I am not even asking for anything radical. In fact the principles for public transparency under the Local Government Act 2020, which this government introduced, state that under the previous act certain matters were automatically considered confidential. This new act assumes instead that all matters must be public, except in very specific and limited circumstances, and the reason that is given is that openness, accountability and honesty are essential to build higher levels of accountability and trust amongst citizens and enable fully informed engagement in the democratic process. I could not have put it better myself.
Unfortunately, there is a paragraph allowing this principle of transparency to be overridden if it is deemed to be ‘contrary to the public interest’. Who decides what is in the public interest? Not the public, that is for sure. The government, government agencies and government employees decide. Of course little plebs and journalists can challenge them through the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner and VCAT, but even there we find that there is no objective definition of the public interest, just a list of possible considerations to work through when ruling on a case-by-case basis whether the public has a right to know.
Apparently Victorian government contract management disclosures only cover high-level details for contracts over $100,000, and they are published within 60 days on the TendersVIC website. They include things like contract and subcontract numbers, titles, types, estimated value, start date, terms and categories, and disclosures for organisation supplier details include name and details of the contact person and ABN. Obviously trade secrets and genuinely confidential business information can be withheld from voluntary disclosure, but then again, there is that little term ‘and whatever else is deemed to be in the public interest’.
The first contract that we need to fix is the social contract. Victorians have faithfully paid their taxes, their local government rates, their parking fines and their levies. Small businesses and big businesses alike have faithfully paid the mental health levy and the payroll taxes and spent extra money to meet the ever-increasing red tape requirements of this government. For decade after decade, Victorians have had to watch more and more of their hard-earned money go out of their own pockets into the government coffers. They have fulfilled their half of the social contract and the government claims to have fulfilled theirs, but we all know that it does not really feel like that to the struggling families out there, and there is not any easy way for them to tell. The fact is that it is not in the public interest that the burden of proof, time, effort and money is on them to show that they have a right to know how their tax dollars are being spent. That burden should be shifted to the government and those who they enter into contracts with.
The Center for Global Development is a world-renowned authority advising countries both rich and poor on how to maximise development. Almost 10 years ago now they published a report on government contracts, and the main conclusion was that government contracts regarding the use of public property and finances should be published by default. They concluded that publishing government contracts has a number of potential benefits that justify its limited cost. These include improved design, tendering and price forecasting, increased quality and extent of competition, and improved monitoring of value for money and service delivery. Some of the actual examples from their research on the benefits of contract transparency included a 50 per cent increase in competition for government tenders in Slovakia, reduced variation and lower average prices in hospital supplies in Latin America, lower costs for social housing in France, the exposure of significant political party funding by sole-source contract winners in Georgia and civil society monitoring of a social development fund by a mining company in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Many countries have already advanced towards this way of running government, including the United Kingdom. Given the billions and billions of dollars spent by local government, state government and all of their departments on contracts, transparency reduces the risk of error, failure and corruption and ensures that our taxpayers are getting value for money, so I commend this motion to the house.
Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (15:57): I am really pleased, actually, to be able to make a contribution on Mrs Deeming’s motion in relation to government transparency, because particularly in a week or a month where we have been dealing with budget bills and the appropriation bills it is important that the public does have confidence that they are able to find out how public money is spent. That is absolutely true. So I thought it was important to step through in a little bit of detail how the financial management arrangements currently work in the state of Victoria and how the Financial Management Act 1994 and the standing directions issued by this Treasurer underneath that act operate to put a great deal of the information that Mrs Deeming’s motion, in substance, seeks to have on the public domain and the extent to which a lot of that information is already available publicly on our websites for everyone to look at at their leisure and in a great deal of detail.
I think the first place to start is the legislation. A law of this state passed by this Parliament – the Financial Management Act 1994 – sets out in quite a lot of detail the level of public reporting and accountability that is required from government departments and agencies about the reporting on how public money is spent and the purposes for which that is spent, and agency by agency, department by department, what the financial reporting standards are so that public money is able to be accounted for and that everyone, including members of Parliament but also members of the public, are able to go through in great detail and see those.
Sitting under the Financial Management Act 1994 are a range of standing directions that are issued under the Financial Management Act, and in a variety of areas – and I will not have time here to go through all of them, but I am always willing to do that – they set out a range of matters under which departments and agencies are supposed to report, and every year those departments report back to the Department of Treasury and Finance, and senior managers in those departments have to attest that they are complying with those standards. At the end of all of that process there is a compliance report prepared by the Department of Treasury and Finance, which is publicly available, to detail exactly how well government departments are accounting for the funds they have been provided with. To quote from the 2021–22 report on compliance with the standing directions under the Financial Management Act 1994, the Department of Treasury and Finance said:
Overall there was another reduction in the number of departments and agencies reporting material compliance deficiencies; this trend is in line with the expectation that departments and agencies focus on rectifying … material issues.
We are seeing a comprehensive reporting framework and reporting on the reporting framework which demonstrates that there is a reduction year on year in the number of deficiencies against those standards. What are some of those standards? I will go to probably the most important one, which is financial reporting direction 22. These are the standard disclosures that are required to be made by departments and agencies in their report of operations. They go to things like appropriate financial standards and reporting, disclosure of contracts, the amount of money spent under those contracts, how they have been acquitted and the purposes for which those contracts have been let, including who they have been let to. For example, if someone was interested in finding out what contracts, say, the Department of Health, to take one example, had entered into above a certain value threshold – because you cannot report every contract amount; I think it is a $10,000 value threshold that gets reported – they could go to the Department of Health’s annual report, which details in aggregate that amount of spending. That annual report will direct you to the department’s website, so the health department’s website – I will not read out the URL, but you can go and find it – where there is a list, in machine-readable format, of the number of consultancies, for example, that the department has entered into in the 2022–23 financial year.
Why that is important is that if you go there, you can not only see detail on the amount of the contract but who it has been contracted to, the purposes for which the contract was entered into, the sum total of the contract and how much of that spending has been made to date. You can see progress under each of these contracts in terms of how much expenditure been made to date, how much is left to go and the purposes for which it is there. For example, you can go right now to the Department of Health’s website and find all that information, and you can do that for all of the other government departments and agencies that are covered by the standing directions issued under the Financial Management Act.
A great deal of the sort of information that Mrs Deeming is seeking in relation to the expenditure of public money is already publicly available. It is on departmental websites, because this government believes in effective government and it believes in transparent government. It has consistently throughout its tenure been publishing this sort of material not only in the annual reports but also in things like machine-readable format so that it can be more easily analysed by those people who wish to do so. They are not just getting hard copies of reports, they can actually get a computer file already loaded up so they can plug it into an Excel spreadsheet and do the kind of analysis which is readily available.
But of course if we are interested in what contracts there are – not only what expenditure has been made but also what contracts there are – we do have a whole of Victorian government procurement function sitting in the newly formed Department of Government Services, which is a new agency created since the last election, designed to bring a whole range of coordination and operation of government services functions into the same place and which has responsibility, amongst other things, for whole of Victorian government procurement. Part of the procurement framework which is overseen by the department are the state purchasing contracts, which provide a framework by which government departments are required to do things like find value for money in the contracting that they undertake. We use publicly available, on the Buying for Victoria website, contract and tender portals so that relevant suppliers can see what contracts are out to tender. And that information will include things like the services and suppliers that are covered in the contract, so you could right now log onto this website and find out where we buy all our pens and paper from – that level of detail. Government stationery is just one example of the things that are covered by the state purchasing contract, right through to legal services, right through to professional services, right through to information technology services and a whole range of other purchasing services which are publicly available on the internet right now on the Buying for Victoria website.
One of the other things which we do – again, an innovation of this government to be more transparent and accountable with the expenditure of public money – is the government’s IT dashboard, which lists all of the government information technology projects, their purpose, how much their contracting is and progress against meeting the milestones under those projects and under that contract. Again, it is updated on a regular basis and made publicly available so that people understand exactly where the government is spending its money. You can go through and search by portfolio or search by contract and see how many of them are on track or how many of them are not on track.
There are a range of other things that the government is doing to ensure transparency with the expenditure of public money. One of the critical ones is the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee process that this Parliament goes through. A lot of this information is in the public domain. A lot of this information is already on government websites. A lot of this information is already available in machine-readable and accessible forms so that every Victorian, should they desire, can sit down and find out where public money is being spent right now. This government believes in transparency and accountability and is demonstrating it by the way it runs this government.
Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (16:07): I am very delighted to speak on Mrs Deeming’s motion on financial transparency. This is a pretty straightforward motion that the Liberals and Nationals will be supporting because Victorians do have a right to know how their tax dollars are being spent by the Victorian government, Victorian government departments and local councils. I think it raises really good points about unredacted documents but also conflict-of-interest disclosures, annual expenditure data, annual performance reviews and statutes under which programs and services are authorised. It goes to the heart of transparency in our state. The government spends hard-earned money from Victorian taxpayers, so it is of the utmost importance that Victorians know how this money is actually being spent. Not only does this financial transparency improve governance, but it is the bedrock of a healthy and functioning democracy and fosters trust. The government is one of the least transparent governments we have ever seen.
We see it in freedom-of-information laws, where Victoria has more requests each year than even Commonwealth agencies, more than double WA, with departments and agencies taking longer and longer to release documents and fewer requests released in full. Often documents are redacted for the most trivial reasons, like it would cause unnecessary public debate. They find every excuse under the sun. One example: Victoria Police have a standard 36-week response time, as advised, in response to any FOI requests no matter how narrow the scope.
We have had some ridiculous cases with FOI requests. You have simple requests. I sent one in asking for legal costs for the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority and what they were spending on high-end lawyers to shake down young families who had lost all of their deposits and as a result going to VCAT would actually cost them more than what they were seeking in return. So I thought it appropriate to ask what that would cost – because it is a very important point. It was denied by the VMIA. Then I went to the information commissioner, and the information commissioner said, ‘Actually several other government departments have given up legal costs, so we think this is appropriate.’ VMIA then looks back into and reopens the request, only to again deny it. Under this government our freedom-of-information laws continue to fail. Many people have to travel all the way to VCAT to fight this government for documents. I know my colleague Mr Davis is a frequent flyer there, fighting this government to release documents that should be public and open to the Victorian community but are not. Dozens of FOI documents have been refused in full and scores refused in part since January 2024.
This government requires more accountability. It has a shameful record. It is a government that recently tried to kill the Public Records Advisory Council, which plays an important role in keeping government documents for places like the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission, the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office and Parliament. It wanted to get rid of that. It wanted to abolish that completely. Were it not for the opposition, that would have happened. It is the government run by those opposite – whose former leader, and we should not forget this, treats reports like those by the Ombudsman as educational. ‘Educational’ is the way he views things. It is the government that set aside a $75.7 billion slush fund on the budget, which RMIT Emeritus Professor David Hayward said makes the budget position look ‘very rubbery’ and about which respected economist Saul Eslake said, ‘Anything that is hidden in there is a transparency issue.’ Of course it is. You know, when a project is not yet announced, it is a massive transparency issue. We ought to know the full facts behind the creation of the Suburban Rail Loop, which was dreamt up inside PwC without a single expert supporting it. These are the kinds of things we need to get to the bottom of.
When we have $40 billion of blowouts, surely it gets to, like, one or two and you get in a room and think, ‘What’s going to go on here?’ Obviously those opposite have never worked a day in business in their life, because if you are in a business and you are responsible for that amount of money in blowouts, you would not be keeping your job; your board would be tapping you on the shoulder, but also the board would probably have to go as well for overseeing it. And yet somehow Jacinta Allan fell upwards into the premiership even though there has been that amount of blowouts.
But it is also about getting to the bottom of those blowouts. Why did they occur? Why do they keep occurring? Can we look at the cost-plus scenario? Can we look at what is happening on our construction sites? Can we look at the fact that you have alleged standover tactics from the CFMEU going on on several government sites, including the Suburban Rail Loop and the Mickleham Road project, which has been covered to a great extent by the Australian Financial Review, where they kicked off a whole bunch of Indigenous labour hire firms and replaced them with a new firm, a Mick Gatto linked Indigenous firm, on the upgrade. We see the Premier was actually warned about CFMEU coercion of Indigenous firms. But what was the Premier’s response – what was the then minister’s response? Her response was to send it to the Australian Building and Construction Commission, which had had all its funding removed and whose abolition was pending. That was the Premier’s response – outrageous.
So we need some accountability mechanism as well. I know the Liberals and Nationals have announced an intention to bring back the construction code that was abolished by those opposite, and include a new body, construction enforcement Victoria, so that we can actually get to the bottom of these cost blowouts. We want to build infrastructure – we want to build a lot of infrastructure – but we do not want cost blowouts added in, as seems to be happening with this government because they cannot say no to the union bosses. As we know, because Jacinta Allan was warned, they turned a blind eye when they were warned by experts within the public service that there was corruption going on, that there were standover tactics going on. They turned a blind eye because they cannot stand up to the CFMEU. The Andrews government was warned about illegal CFMEU activity:
Victorian Deputy Premier Jacinta Allan was warned about “illegal” CFMEU coercion of Indigenous firms on the state’s infrastructure projects last year, sparking alerts across political offices.
Emails released under freedom of information laws show a state infrastructure executive briefed Ms Allan about an unnamed Indigenous labour hire firm that the CFMEU allegedly kicked off nine government projects, including the state’s signature … Suburban Rail Loop.
It is just ridiculous. I know the Victorian Indigenous business chamber raised the issue and said the government did nothing about it. They referred it to the Australian Building and Construction Commission, which lost all funding and is now abolished. You cannot have situations like this. The Victorian government need to do better. We see issues and we know their opinion on grey corruption, they think it is not a thing. Here we go:
Senior staff in Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’s government interfered and pressured public servants to ensure lucrative contracts were awarded to a key Labor Party ally without competitive tender, the state’s anti-corruption watchdog has found.
The Health Workers Union was awarded a $1.2 million contract on the eve of the 2018 election …
and later were found to be ‘not equipped’ for that particular program. You have a situation where public servants are getting pressured by probably 22-year-old pimply-faced staffers in the Premier’s office – just ridiculous. So I support this motion. It is a good motion.
Sheena WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (16:17): I rise today to speak against the motion before us from Mrs Deeming. Let me just say this government provides effective and transparent processes in all that it does, which is why we have created the Department of Government Services, which brought together a range of the different functions across government to better support the coordination and general operation of government services. We did this with effectiveness and transparency at the forefront. For the whole of the Victorian government’s procurement function, which manages over 35 state purchasing contracts – and that is quite a lot when you are thinking across the broad depth of the procurement of our state – all of these 35 state purchasing contracts are available on the Buying for Victoria website. These are publicly available to anyone with an internet connection to go and have a browse and see what this government is doing and the services and suppliers that are covered under the contract, and that is the 35 state purchasing contracts. All this information is transparent, it is clear and it is available. If you want to see where the government gets its pens and paper, you can do that just by clicking online to the Buying for Victoria website.
We understand that transparent procurement information fosters improved purchasing practices and results in significant savings for government buyers, who can capitalise on the collective purchasing power of the entire Victorian government. To support this, our government is continually enhancing the Buying for Victoria platform, as I mentioned. This platform simplifies the processes of doing business with the government and offers a centralised hub for all procurement information, benefiting both the suppliers and the buyers. By streamlining the access to procurement data, the platform aims to promote fairness, efficiency and economic opportunity within the state’s procurement landscape. Buying for Victoria includes details on all active tenders and recently awarded contracts, so you can see exactly what government is purchasing from whom, and this is clear and effectively the most important of the transparent processes.
Can I also make mention that this is how this government is using its buying power to deliver really social and sustainable outcomes for all Victorians. We have established a whole-of-government approach to social procurement, which is an Australian first, through the social procurement framework – or SPF as it is known – which ensures that all government procurement activities are aligned to social procurement outcomes. This means that businesses who use social and disability enterprises or Aboriginal businesses in their tenders for government contracts have a competitive edge, giving more opportunities to often-overlooked sections of our community. The Allan Labor government knows the importance of creating jobs for those facing barriers to employment, including First Nations people and businesses, long-term jobseekers, at-risk women, victims and survivors of family violence, people with a disability and even younger Victorians.
I am also very proud to report that the 2024–25 budget continues our government’s investment in and commitment to providing funding to the Kinaway Aboriginal chamber of commerce and social traders to support businesses and to work with the departments to promote procurement of Aboriginal enterprises and Victorian Aboriginal businesses. In fact I had the good fortune on Monday evening of heading along to the Melbourne Museum to see an exhibition of First Nations organisations in the fashion industry. As many would know, Victoria has quite a thriving fashion industry. With the support of Kinaway as the Aboriginal chamber of commerce we were able to see some Victorian-based fashion businesses – of course those that are creating jobs here, those organisations that are manufacturing their clothing here. They are now on the runways of the most lucrative fashion shows in the world. They have come from very humble beginnings, with incredible support from the Allan Labor government for those businesses and those brands currently being showcased at the Melbourne Museum. I encourage you all to get along there and see that exhibition.
There are other organisations that I am very proud to hear have done some incredible, incredible work, including some in the building and construction industry but also right across the field. Only last week, on Saturday, I was with some business leaders who were for the first time looking at traditional owner engagement in the mining and resource industry here in Victoria. As is known and has been discussed, there are enormous opportunities here in Victoria, and some of the traditional owners are getting onboard with that, including the Dja Dja Wurrung and their goldmining operations. Congratulations to them, and I look forward to seeing those businesses go from strength to strength.
The government’s procurement processes have never been stronger or more transparent. Any information that someone would want to know is online because of the Allan Labor government’s commitment to good governance. It is in fact good for business and good for Victorians.
Another example that comes to mind, one that I am less across, is IT procurement. I do know how enormously challenging that can be. This government is showing transparency in the way it does business in the IT world with the creation of the IT dashboard, which is where every government department reports to the Department of Government Services on all the IT projects – those that are over $1 million – and it shows information on the progress and the costings. Look, it is a really simple and practical function that is part of our commitment to transparency. I encourage you all to have a look at that dashboard if that is of interest to you. You can go on to the dashboard, search by the department, by the area, and if you are wondering if that is about health, IT infrastructure or transport, it does not matter – you can go and select your category of IT projects online. For each project you can see the project status, the projected costs and whether or not they are off track, reported details as to why if that is indeed the case and what is being done to address the issue.
This is a central government database with transparency baked into the design so that the public, including those in this place, can access it. The Department of Government Services has designed the dashboard in a user-centred way so that all Victorians can search and track projects that are of interest. The dashboard is updated regularly so that anyone who wants an update can get one. I am very proud to report the latest statistics on that dashboard, which says that there were a total of 308 projects reported in the last quarter. The majority – 74 per cent in this case – are on track. We are committed to providing transparent information, and that is why we established and are continuing to maintain the dashboard, so that anyone can see what the government is doing, where we are spending our money, how much progress we are making and of course which departments are doing that. That, particularly going back to the IT dashboard, is for those projects over $1 million.
Transparency is something that is key to this government’s operation. Our procurement and contractual processes are an ideal example of how the Allan Labor government is committed to ethical, sustainable and socially responsible procurement, and we expect the same high standards of any business that supplies services and goods to the government. That is why we have implemented a supplier code of conduct which includes the minimum ethical standards we expect from suppliers, because ensuring that this government only does business with companies that have the best interests of the government and Victorians in mind is something that we strive for.
I have got the good fortune of having a history with the anti-slavery taskforce, which I know is doing some incredible work to make sure that government procurement includes products that are free from the slavery trade. I am looking forward to continuing to follow that work and seeing how we can strengthen that here in this state. This work I am talking about, the supplier code of conduct, includes standards in ethics and conduct, conflicts of interest, gifts, benefits and of course hospitality. It also looks at corporate governance. It looks at labour rights, human rights, health and safety and environmental management. Within that, as I said, is the commitment around anti-slavery.
There are things that all suppliers who contact with government must do, like declare any actual, perceived or potential conflicts of interest and that they will avoid financial, business or other relationships that may compromise the performance of their duties or present a conflict of interest. The state expects all existing and new suppliers to commit to the code, and conflicts of interest are identified during the procurement process. This maintains transparency in all things that the government does.
This motion is really doing nothing more than asking for documents and information that is already available for anyone, including those within this place, to access whenever and wherever they wish to. Restating already public information in this place is a waste of everybody’s time, frankly, and that is why I will not be supporting the motion before us.
Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (16:27): I rise to speak to motion 435, which is really looking at government accountability, transparency and scrutiny. The motion points outs:
That this house:
(1) affirms that the public have a right to know how their tax dollars are spent by the Victorian government, Victorian government departments and local government councils …
And it calls on the government to establish a number of things in principle and practice around disclosure and public information to be made available and looks at contracts and conflict of interest disclosures and the like.
There is a lot to say on this matter with this Labor government – under this current leadership but also under the former leadership of Daniel Andrews. I was just listening to Ms Watt, some of the contribution she was making, and she mentioned Kinaway, which is the Victorian Indigenous business chamber, which raised an issue around illegal CFMEU activity and the government did not do anything about those allegations. Instead it referred it on to what was soon to be scrapped – a body that they were going to scrap. So Ms Watt referred to this Indigenous outfit. When they raised concerns the government said, ‘Go over there to the ABCC to have it checked out.’ It was a body that they were scrapping. That is what we get with this government. It is very dubious, how they actually follow through. What they say is one thing, but what they do is completely the opposite.
We know there have been huge issues around corruption under Labor. We have seen it rife. It is throughout a number of industries, and there have been many people that have spoken out. A former IBAC commissioner has talked about the issues and the Ombudsman. The grey corruption has permeated throughout many agencies and large parts of government administration. The previous government under Daniel Andrews was rotten to the core. You heard me say that a number of times, and it was. We have still got Operation Richmond, which is the United Firefighters Union being investigated by IBAC. That report still has not been released because of where it is at in the Supreme Court, and the release being fought off. Why? If there is nothing to hide, why are they fighting having that report released? This is a huge issue, and it involves – I have no doubt when that report finally comes out – issues with the UFU and members of the Labor Party, very senior members of the Labor Party. I think that will expose what everyone basically knows – that this corruption and the ongoing issue around decency and transparency are just things that do not resonate with the former Andrews government but now the Allan government, because their issues are still going on. The corruption is still there within the building industry, and as I said, that building commission was abolished. Things were referred off to it, but they are abolishing that very body. It just demonstrates how serious they are about stamping out corruption.
An article just a few weeks ago by Matt Johnston and Carly Douglas talks about the union saying allegations ‘stink worse than a bag of prawns in the sun’, a very substantive allegation by those union members that are talking about what is going on, and I commend them for talking about what is actually happening. They talk about dodgy deals, standover tactics and alleged corruption on Victoria’s Big Build sites that have been or will be referred to IBAC:
The Australian Workers’ Union –
that is the union that says this –
says the allegations “stink worse than a bag of prawns in the sun” and are costing taxpayers “tens of millions of dollars”.
They are right. We know; we have seen it. Look at Operation Daintree. Look at all these issues around what has happened with IBAC, how the former Premier himself was involved. He had his fingers in every pie, up to his neck in this. Seriously, that has left a nasty waft around the state in terms of the allegations.
Georgie CROZIER: Well, yes.
Georgie CROZIER: It is; it is corrupt. The Allan government is corrupt. How many times was the Labor government before IBAC? At least four times that we know about, Mr McIntosh. You were not here. Now you are.
Georgie CROZIER: Well, it stinks, and the AWU is right – the standover tactics, the corruption and the dodgy deals done on the Big Build, that is your Labor mates in the union saying it. What did they say? It stinks worse than a bag of prawns in the sun. That is what the union is saying about the Big Build dodgy deals that are going on, the standover tactics and the corruption. These are deals that were signed on by the current Premier. She was the Minister for Transport Infrastructure, and she is responsible for a lot of the dodgy deals and allowing them to permeate in the way they have, because there has been no pulling back of what has gone on. This is why we have got billions of dollars in cost blowouts and projects running out of control. People come to us and talk about it. I have had people that have come to me and talked about the prostitution that has gone on, the drug deals that have gone on on these Big Build sites –
Members interjecting.
Georgie CROZIER: You hold your head in your hands. I am telling you, people have come to me and have said what has gone on in these works with some of these people that are running it. Prostitution –
Georgie CROZIER: Well, it is happening. That is what whistleblowers are saying, and I am using privilege to call it out. You guys will not. You are too gutless. You are covering it up, and you are allowing –
Georgie CROZIER: You are allowing –
Georgie CROZIER: Not members here. I am talking about what is happening in the Big Build.
Georgie CROZIER: No, that is your inference, Ms Shing. I am saying that the drug deals –
Georgie CROZIER: I have got no idea what you are talking about, no idea. What I am talking about is the dodgy deals, the drug deals and the prostitution that have gone on in the Big Build sites. I do not know what you are talking about. What I am talking about is the corruption that is occurring in the Big Build, and the AWU –
Members interjecting.
Georgie CROZIER: People sleeping in their cars to do double shifts, the ghost shifting that was going on – all of this stuff has cost the taxpayer so much money, and your government has done nothing to clean it up. You have turned a blind eye, and it is the current Premier, who is a former minister, who allowed all this to occur under her watch. She was the minister when this corruption and the blowouts and the mismanagement went on. It has been reported in papers what has gone on.
Members interjecting.
Georgie CROZIER: Well, I am sure IBAC is probably having a look. I am sure IBAC is probably having a good look at what is going on in the Big Build, and so they should.
This government, the Labor government, has overseen corruption and a dismantling of decency in government. There has been no oversight. As I said, a government being in IBAC four times – four times in IBAC, this government – and where is Operation Richmond? Still in the courts. We need to see that. The conflict, the public disclosures and all of these issues that have been raised in this motion, this government is responsible for. There are dodgy deals going on that they have turned a blind eye to. They have not pulled up what has gone on. They have abolished the watchdog that will oversee it. As I said, they were so slow to act, and Daniel Andrews had his fingers all into it – he is up to his neck in some of these decisions around why this corruption was allowed to go on. He did not pull it up, and no-one in the current government has either, and it is the Victorian taxpayers that are paying the price for that in huge budget blowouts, mismanagement and the billions of dollars of waste. Labor members over on the other side, for anyone who is watching this, are very curious – they seem not to understand that having government be accountable and responsible is absolutely critical. This government – (Time expired)
Tom McINTOSH (Eastern Victoria) (16:37): I do not really know where to start after that tirade. That was quite some contribution, so I will gather my thoughts. To be clear, to start, I rise to oppose this motion, and I will go through a number of measures that the government put in place for transparency and accountability. I do want to start off by addressing some of the wild, wild claims coming from the other side. I am proud to be part of a government that is here to deliver a better quality of life for Victorians, to ensure that all Victorians enjoy a better quality of life than those that came before, and that is exactly what this side gets up and gets on with every single day. It is about ensuring there are jobs, and we see it in record levels of employment. I will talk later about the diversity of our workforce and getting a diverse range of people into the workforce, whether that is women, whether that is people with disabilities or whether it is First Nations people, and making sure that the workforce is paid well so when they finish a day’s work and when they get their pay cheque, they have got the funds to make sure they can buy or rent a house, to make sure that they can contribute, whether that is supporting a family, supporting extended family or being able to support their lives in a way that contributes to the local community and contributes to our economy. We know when people are paid well, and we on this side believe in that – there may be others who want to demonise workers, who hate the idea of workers being paid well. There is this sort of Thatcheresque, Reaganesque, trickle-down economics sort of mentality on that side out of student university politics.
There is this hatred for workers, this ideological, pathological hatred for workers by those opposite. This side is based in community. It is based in people being able to go to work safely, come home safely with a good pay cheque at the end of the week, support their loved ones and contribute to our community. It is ensuring that the health services are there, that there is a quality health service infrastructure, that there are the workers within it and that we have an education system – a world-leading education system. We can go through all the investments we are making in new schools, all the investments that we are making in upgrades to schools, supporting our teachers and making sure that our kids go into education. When they come out, if they want going into training and skills for the abundant number of jobs that are in this state, they are getting trained up in a quality TAFE system that again has the investment in infrastructure and the investment in our teachers. For those that want to go to university, there is a strong economy for them to get employed in right here in Victoria. For many of those people that go through those training or education pathways, do you know what they find? They find jobs, because we are investing in infrastructure, incredible levels of infrastructure that will set us up for generations to come.
Mr Mulholland was making assertions earlier in a previous speech, or maybe it was in this debate. I do not know; there have been so many assertions. He is constantly speaking against jobs and constantly speaking against infrastructure. He does not understand the flow-on effect of moving people around and the benefits to our economy of getting people onto trains, getting the transport infrastructure moving. Whether it is our agricultural product, whether it is our manufacturing output and product, we need to move our people and we need to move our goods from A to B. And we need to do so effectively. That is exactly what this side has done.
I am not even going to mention Jeff Kennett, because all of you opposite know about Kennett and people remember. But Dolittle and Nap Time – we know what happened for four years. For four years in this state, nothing happened.
Tom McINTOSH: I remember what happened under Kennett. I remember the train lines around us were ripped out. The services were cut to shreds. I may have been young, but it was imprinted on me. I remember. But back to 2010 to 2014. Victorians know that if those opposite get in again, nothing will happen because all that you understand is opposition – opposition to any action, any activity. There is no plan. There is no desire to see a better quality of life for all Victorians, to ensure that every generation has a better quality of life than those before. That is exactly what we are committed to. To hear this demonisation of workers from those opposite is absolutely shocking.
This motion, as I said before, we will not be supporting it. We have got a range of measures in place that deliver accountability and transparency in government, to ensure that whether it is procurement or whether it is, as I was talking about before, getting people into the workforce, getting that diversity of people into the workforce, we are getting better outcomes for Victoria. When we do that, we get that diversity of skills, that diversity of lived experience, of lived ideas. And do you know what? We get better outcomes collectively for our state. That is our strength. You can see our state’s strength with record low unemployment numbers, with businesses opening and with jobs coming on. This is what we see day in, day out. Our expenditure for data, IT and projects with our IT dashboards –
Nick McGowan: What has that got to do with anything?
Tom McINTOSH: We are talking about transparency and we are talking about accountability. There are a range of measures the government has put in – for example, the government’s IT dashboard supports transparency in its procurement activities and publicly discloses specific information about funded projects. Every government department is required to report to the Department of Government Services on all IT projects over $1 million and provide information on how the projects are progressing and their costs. This is part of our government’s commitment to transparency. If you would like to – I was going to say Mr Mulholand or Mr McCracken; help me out here – Mr McGowan, you can go to the dashboard and search by department or by area. You can look at health, transport or IT projects. Mr McGowan, I apologise; it has been a long wacky Wednesday. For each project you can see the project’s status and projected cost. You can stay up to date because it is all there, it is all open and it is all transparent.
I think this has been a very wideranging and at times bizarre debate on this motion.
Nick McGowan: What’s your date of birth? What’s your year of birth?
Tom McINTOSH: I won’t be sharing that, Mr McGowan. I think the Victorian people know that on this side the government are based in community and working for community to deliver better outcomes, better lived experience and better quality of life for every generation than the one before it. We will continue building the infrastructure and we will continue ensuring there are the jobs – quality jobs – the health services, the education and everything that Victorians want, need and deserve.
Nick McGOWAN (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:47): It is my great pleasure to rise and speak in support of Mrs Moira Deeming’s bill – or in fact her motion today. I wish it was a bill.
Tom McIntosh: Where’s your belt?
Nick McGOWAN: These pants don’t require a belt. They are belt-free. But they are also very transparent, I think you will notice – incredibly transparent. It is a great irony that in your speech about transparency in this place and in this Parliament you even refused to tell the people of Victoria your year of birth – not your date of birth, not the day of birth and not the time of birth. When I asked a simple question, ‘What’s the year of your birth?’, that was all too difficult. Straight down to typical Labor form: ‘I can’t tell you that. That’s a confidential item.’ Mr McIntosh, my name is member McGowan, or you can call me Nick, just in case you need reminding. I also love the fact that you referenced a member of Parliament that has not even been here all week. My good colleague Mr McCracken is not well.
Tom McIntosh: I didn’t even know he hadn’t been here.
Nick McGOWAN: I will send your good wishes to him. But it is comical at the same time as it is very sad that you filibustered your entire speech. I will filibuster just a little bit of mine in response to your silliness because there is an underlying current and a very serious underlying theme here from Mrs Deeming and one that I support wholeheartedly. It is something I preach and it is something that I hope I practise as much as possible, and if I do not and if I let the people of Ringwood down then I hope to do better as the years and months go on – or maybe in reverse order the months and years.
Nonetheless I want to pick up on a couple of points Mr McIntosh said in his speech as part of this debate. First of course he wanted to put out to the people of Victoria how great the Labor Party were doing at creating jobs. Well, this is great in theory, and I support it wholeheartedly, as Mr McIntosh knows. I love nothing more than creating jobs. That is what we are here to do in part – but in partnership as well. Unfortunately, Mr McIntosh, what your budget papers say runs contrary to what you have said – that is, your budget papers consistently predict that unemployment in the state of Victoria will get worse and worse and worse. That is what the Victorian Labor Party are dishing up to the people of Victoria – increased unemployment. Well, that is one hell of a gift. I tell you what, with budget papers like that, who needs enemies? That is just a tragedy that you can reconcile to yourselves that you can go out and sell this budget with a smile on your dial and pretend like it is a good thing for people of Victoria in the full knowledge that what you are doing is selling a pup. And it is not a pretty pup, it is a pretty ugly pup. This pup comes with more and more people on the dole queues. That is a terrible message for the people of Victoria.
Then Mr McIntosh transgressed. Then he went over to pay and how he is for people being well paid. I agree with Mr McIntosh on that point. I agree that people should be well paid for the jobs they do – I have no problem with that. However, where I have some concern is that probably neither the nurses nor the teachers of this state would agree with him, and I would agree with them. You have had ample opportunity in this state. You have had the better part of 20 – maybe even 30 – years to rectify that situation. You have failed to do so – not just you, but all of the previous Labor governments. Mr Bracks – we all remember him, boffin-like Bracks. He used to boffin around the place with a smile on his dial. Again –
Georgie Crozier: They just got everything from us.
Nick McGOWAN: They did. Exactly right. It is like this Minister for Planning and the one before that. Mr Guy in the other place did a hell of a lot of work. He opened up vast tracts of land so people could have affordable housing. Then Mr Wynne, again, in the other place, did absolutely nothing to ease the pressure for new home owners. As a consequence, we are where we are today, in confluence with all the other silly policies they put in place, including taxation, demonising the private sector and so on and so forth.
But while we are all in favour of people being paid a commensurate and a good wage, I would have to say that from my experience, from speaking with nurses and teachers right across the electorate of Ringwood – from Donvale to Heathmont to Nunawading to Ringwood East – time and again what is clear is they have been dudded by this government and dudded by previous Labor governments. Nurses should be paid more, and teachers should be paid more. I can only hope that we can offer them more as the election comes closer in just a couple of years time – 24, 25 months, maybe a little bit more than that.
Then Mr McIntosh transgressed even further. I really did think – and I had to interject at that point in time, and maybe it was not caught, so for the purposes of history let us go there again – that the Thatcher that he was referring to was a form of grass at Bunnings. I am more of a buffalo fan myself. But no, no, he was actually reaching back to ancient history. He even mentioned Kennett. I mean, poor Mr McIntosh. I do not think he was in nappies; I think he was even pre nappies. I think he was so young at that point he was probably just a sparkle in his father’s eye. He came into this place and talked about what life was like under Kennett, and then he refused to tell us his date of birth – Mr McIntosh, come on. This is a debate about transparency. I am not even going to ask you what your star sign is. I know that would be revealing a great amount of information, but at some point I will find out your date of birth and I will be able to intertwine that somehow, hopefully creatively, in some sort of speech in this place, because I think the people of Victoria deserve to know. The thing that Mr McIntosh’s speech was lacking was any reference to Caesar Augustus. Let us face it, if we are going to reach into ancient history, how far should we go? Let us keep going all the way back to him, shall we? That is not Caesar, the one in the current Planet of the Apes, no. This is Caesar Augustus in Rome. It surprises me that he did not choose to do that.
He then transgressed further into how proud he was when he finally got on to debate the subject, as I am doing, of transparency. This is his one example. In that diatribe that he gave to this place, he had one shining example of the effort of this government to tick the transparency box – and it is not a tick, it is more of a fudge; I do not know whether it got anywhere near the box. He was like a kid with crayons, or maybe me with crayons. Let me use myself as an example – I could not quite ever get it in the box at all. I just smudged around the paper, and it was just a complete mess. Well, that was Mr McIntosh’s contribution. He said gleefully that their attempt at transparency in this state was to ensure that anything over a million dollars had to be reported to a central body, which of course they would then never report to anyone. It begs the obvious question: what about anything below a million dollars? Are we that flush with money, like the federal Treasurer with his multibillion-dollar credit card? He can swipe that away, that is no problem: ‘I’ll just give you another Treasurer’s advance.’ That is the state Treasurer, I am sorry. It is the state Treasurer, that is right; silly me. The state Treasurer and his credit card and his Treasurer’s advance – I would like to see that credit card. In fact if Mr McIntosh has that credit card, I would happily borrow it from him, just for a couple of things I want locally in the electorate of Ringwood. I would like some improvements for my schools. I would like the Maroondah Hospital built faster. I would like it done in this term, as was promised. I would like some 40 kilometres per hour zones out of Antonio Park Primary School. I would like a toilet block, if I can too, at the Ringwood East train station. My list is quite exhaustive, and I would have many uses for that credit card. But the very fact that he says that their attempt at ticking that transparency box is to actually in some way make sure that any projects over a million dollars are somehow transparent begs the question: what about all that stuff that is $999,000 and therefore escapes any transparency whatsoever?
This motion by Mrs Deeming is a very sound one. When people ask me from all my experiences, both in opposition – sadly – and in government – more happily – what is the greatest single improvement we could make in this place, the unequivocal answer from all those experiences is increased transparency. It is the only thing that drives the behaviour of ministers, it is the only thing that drives the behaviour of premiers. I have seen it time and again on all sides of politics – and I will take the politics out of this for the moment; it is the great preserver of good decision-making, because if there is no transparency, there is no sound accountability. Unfortunately, what we have in Victoria – and it has been here now for some decades, plural – is an absence of accountability: because everyone is responsible, no-one is ever accountable. It goes back to the way that we actually have formed our departments – the way those departments, with their secretaries, answer to a number of ministers. It is a labyrinth. It ensures that poor decision-making is not reprimanded and there are no consequences for it whatsoever.
What Mrs Deeming is proposing here is sound. It talks about things like contracts. For too long in this state governments, plural, have been able to hide behind contracts and use ‘private’ and ‘commercial in confidence’ as a shield for transparency. Well, that is just nonsense. After 12 months the world has moved on. Because this is public money, let us not forget, we are spending – or misspending or misappropriating in some ridiculous way – we ought to be transparent with that. After 12 months, in my mind, any company ought to be able to put themselves out there and accept that when you spend the money of the people of Victoria, the light must shine through. It is absolutely imperative. It is like the great disinfectant. Unfortunately, that disinfectant is well and truly in that bottle; it has not seen the place of Victoria for quite some years, and it is not likely to see the place of Victoria, based on Mr McIntosh’s contribution today, for quite a long period of time.
I have got very little time and I must wrap up, because I have dedicated too much of that to my good colleague Mr McIntosh and his diatribe, but the other last comment here I will make about transparency: there seems to be a plague at the moment in respect to non-disclosure agreements. I take exception – and I know there are colleagues opposite and those on the crossbenches who have taken exception – to some of the non-disclosure agreements. I think they are an affront, to women in particular, and the unions have highlighted this very fact. I think they are an affront to everyday average Victorians. Successive governments have used them. I think they are disgusting. I think at some point in the future we all have to get together and actually stop the use of them. While it may advantage whoever is in government at that point in time, the truth is it shuts people down. It allows these backroom deals and these underhanded compensation deals, which I think are regrettable.
Lee TARLAMIS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:57): I move:
That debate on this motion be adjourned until the next day of meeting.
Motion agreed to and debate adjourned until next day of meeting.