Big integrity stick essential in modern government

Victoria has recently completed an extensive inquiry into branch-stacking by a once dominant faction in Victorian Labor politics. Stacking gave power over party pre-selections, positions in ministries, and created opportunities for party patronage, including putting mates and cronies into well-paid jobs. It can affect the placement of significant government contracts. It also allowed stackers to amass publicly paid staff who worked virtually full-time on party factional business, rather than the administration of the state. That included further branch stacking and any number of shenanigans by which those controlling factions were able to make deals with other players.

The inquiry focused on the activities of a particular factional chief, once a minister in the Victorian government. He is now disgraced but still seems keen to take a few enemies down with him. But any observer would realise immediately that similar rorts and plain misconduct occur in other Labor factions, as they do in the Liberal Party. Hardly anyone watching politics can pretend to be unaware of the extent of branch-stacking and the improper use of ministerial (and backbench staff) for frank political duties. They know of their fundamental impropriety, even if they are given to downplaying it, or excusing it on the basis that "everyone does it." Yes, nearly everybody does, and it is a disgrace.

Argument and struggle are incidental to contests of ideas between groups and factions within parties. Whether formed on ideological grounds, or around personalities, such groups want to win debates and exercise power and influence. There is nothing wrong with ambitious party members seeking to enlist like-minded people to their cause: that is how politics occurs.

But it is entirely wrong to suggest that branch stacking is simply an aspect of party democracy. It is in fact a subversion of it - an attempt to win debates and exercise control without having the numbers, or the legitimate numbers. The arts of branch-stacking are about enrolling members not genuinely engaged in the debates - in some cases not even able to understand the debates occurring because they do not care. Some stacking attempts involve ethnic groups whose votes or whose numbers are paid for. Other rorts are consequences of frank fraud in returns of members, the manipulation of meetings and minute books, and the abuse of party rules about eligibility, quorums, and attendance.

Abuses on both sides of politics seem to have become more common as party control has developed downwards rather than upwards, as party elders have come to exercise power by being representatives of groups such as trade unions rather than members. Faction leaders have sought to bypass democratic processes or the regular testing of membership opinion by deals and arrangements, including over pre-selections at state and federal level, and understandings about jobs and contracts for each other's nominees. Community organisations are wooed and rewarded - and often ultimately controlled -- by government grants and benefits.

Victorian Labor Premier Dan Andrews has accepted the description "disgraceful" and accepted responsibility for the improprieties. The prime perpetrator was not of Andrews' faction. It is far from the first example of systematic rorting in Victorian Labor, and Andrews capacity to survive is in major part a function of the weakness and ineptness of the Liberal opposition - ironically in part because of similar anti-democratic practices.

But it is not a matter of tut-tutting from a distance, pretending it is not happening all around the nation. It is happening in NSW, in Queensland, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia, and even, if to lesser extents, in the ACT and the Northern Territory. It is happening in both parties. Indeed, parties - chiefly Liberal - currently out of power have lost office because they have become by factional warfare debilitated to the point where they have forfeited popular support.

So, it is not a matter for reform in Victoria alone. Parties and interstate party leaders who pretend that getting party players to obey the law is not an urgent task for party reform will quickly find that the electorate, having once demonstrated some patience and tolerance, is now sick of it. At the Commonwealth level, it must be recognised that both parties have been too much under the influence of branch stackers and people who have abused the public resources elected officials have been given to carry out their public duties. The reach of the players in state branches extends to federal politics - indeed is often more about federal than state politics. Likewise federal officials are often players in local issues and should be accountable for what they do in one integrity jurisdiction or another. So far, they have been regarded as outside the purview of state bodies.

Those tainted by such abuse of power cannot excuse their conduct on the grounds of the supposed nobility of the ends in view, the claim that they are simply doing what their rivals do, or the fact that there has been a dearth of public regulation, an absence of police interest. Nor can the fact that even prime ministers have been players be allowed to excuse failures of leadership, public example and lack of respect for the public.

Commonwealth action against branch stacking should be as tough or tougher than what Victoria proposes. The federal government should have model legislation covering political parties which at the very least sets an example for the states and territories and does not lag behind them. It should also cover other aspects of party organisation. Parties get public funding, now running at tens of millions a year more than that coming in by donations. Backbenchers, whether in government or opposition, should be subject to integrity legislation over how they perform their public functions and spend public resources. But so too should be senior party officials involved in soliciting donations, negotiating favours for donors and friends of the organisation, and integrally involved in party government. Those who want to insist that a party is but a private society or association should not take public money or use public servants (including MOPs staff) to carry out their public functions of elected representatives.

Although the activities of politicians from minor parties and independents should fall under integrity legislation, we should mostly be grateful that they contain more enthusiasts for a tough and expansive system than within the government. Ministers and government backbenchers are all too familiar with systemic corruption within their own ranks, and with the inevitability that some of their colleagues will be caught out. Some will never recognise the impropriety of handing out jobs or contracts to mates. There will be others who, like John Barilaro in NSW, have a strong sense of entitlement about government appointments in their post-political career. Others on both sides of politics have no sense of shame about leaving public office and immediately selling for their personal private gain their contacts in politics, deep understanding of the thinking of particular players, and continuing entree into the system of organising the spending of public money.

Codes of conduct or appeals to honour appear to be almost useless in themselves in the modern day, except as standards an ethics commission might refer to in considering particular conduct. Likewise, prime ministerial standards, however lofty, have proven inadequate because few modern prime ministers have shown themselves willing to enforce them. Nor have recent examples of where the propriety of conduct has been referred to an outside, independent, or departmental official. First, even public servants have shown little instinct for independent investigations: the department of finance, for example, referred one case to a law firm of which the person whose conduct was in question had once been a partner. In some cases, there has not even been the appearance of independence, and sometimes people asked to give judgment have shown a marked preference for the political convenience of the government, rather than a detached and prompt investigation.

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Labor wants an integrity commission, and they want the legislation in place by Christmas. But some dreading the prospect of such a commission in operation are keen to be devoting more time to ruling matters out of the purview of the commission, as well as claiming that no (or no convincing) case has been made for extending the legislation to cover a particular class of conduct. The public, and the Greens and teals, should be wary of such grand pronouncements, whether they come from ministers or from the bureaucracy. Not a few public servants not long ago were arguing passionately (and from personal conviction) against any anti-corruption machinery at all, or insisting that, if there had to be one, there was no need for it to be conducted in public, or with a wide ambit, or with any real powers. It is sometimes forgotten that one of the primary reasons why the law enforcement integrity framework is weak, timid, and little known is because that was what was intended by all concerned, other than the public at large. It is hardly a surprise that this was the model put forward by officials for an integrity commission covering bureaucrats and politicians.

Members of the current opposition when in government under Morrison denied there was anything wrong with ministers interfering with bureaucratic allocation of grants to organisations. Apparently worthy causes were hijacked for partisan purposes, used for doling out money to mates and eccentric causes, with merit and process thrown out the window. Officials such as the Auditor-General protested. The department of finance failed in one of its primary duties. The prime minister, whose office was a key player in the rorts, dismissed any objection. Soon NSW ICAC will be coming down with a report on money thrown at a by-election by then premier, Gladys Berejiklian.

Those who won't be good of their own volition should expect they will be caught and exposed. And punished.

We have also had adverse reports on attempts, for private gain, to influence a council rezoning by a NSW MP. Three ministers in a former Labor government are soon to face the criminal courts over allegations of improper behaviour in allocating leases. There have been investigations into lobbying activities, and the close connections between party donations and government outsourcing decisions. In Queensland we have seen lobbyists working with governments during election campaigns, even as they have retained clients seeking to influence the same government in the getting of favours and contracts. There have been cases where senior officials seem to have placed the political interests of the government well ahead of the public interest and the law, particularly in relation to disclosure under the FOI Act.

And on both sides of politics, parties have received big donations in papers bags, often, via a circuitous route, from developers and others not supposed to be allowed to donate. Political parties actively manipulate laws they have themselves drawn up to circumvent rules about maximum donations, public disclosure, and forbidden classes of donor. The alcohol and gaming industries have undue power and access in the halls of government.

The calls for greater accountability, for controls over lobbying activities, for tighter control over donations and election funds, and the activities of political staff are not the consequence of a fad or a scandal overseas. They reflect increasing public discontent over the proclaimed standards, as well as the practical example, of politicians at all levels. The sense that there has been a deterioration of standards, and actual corruption, has been accentuated by the extension of the private into public space by contracting out, privatisation, far more government by discretion rather than rules, and, during the pandemic in particular, massive handouts with virtually no accountability. Rules and conventions have been discarded, old institutional restraints weakened, and some of those who should have stood against abuse have been politicised, defunded, or reduced. The new crop of independents should be foremost in setting the rules. They have cred Labor can never hope to have. Much better than a convocation of the insiders and the sinners determining the least they can get away with.

Many Australians have a healthy suspicion of politicians and bureaucrats and those who exercise public power. They are often cynical about the purity of motives and inclined to think "they are in it mostly for themselves." Such feelings have often seemed justified as politicians have eschewed moral leadership and good example and are obvious hypocrites in relation to their proclaimed values and beliefs. The murky activities of parties, and some of what were once described as factional Daleks also undermines a sense of government working to achieve the best for the most.

That said, many politicians have earned a grudging respect and admiration when they stand for and seem to do the right thing. When they listen and when they explain. When they appeal to the best in the community and promote unity rather than division. When they appreciate that political service is public service, and that power involves privilege, duty and obligation, not immunity, licence and personal advantage.