Victoria’s anti-corruption watchdog finally has teeth. These are its new powers

Victoria will finally have an anti-corruption watchdog with the authority and powers it needs to do its job after the parliament on its last sitting day before the state election agreed to the most substantial changes to IBAC since its inception.

The long-awaited reforms , supported by the government, the Greens and the opposition, give the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission a broader remit to investigate corruption across the public sector, greater use of public hearings to expose and deter wrongdoing, follow-the-dollar powers, and protection against politically motivated appointments.

Together, they represent the state’s most significant integrity reform since 2012, when IBAC was first established as a core election promise of the then Baillieu government.

“With the passage of these reforms, Victoria finally has a fit-for-purpose integrity commission,” Centre for Public Integrity chief executive Catherine Williams told The Age .

“The expansion of IBAC’s jurisdiction and its power to hold public hearings, as well as the conferral upon it of power to follow the money, are significant reforms that have been long-fought for. There of course remains more to do, but the significance of what has been achieved this week is momentous.”

These are changes that successive IBAC commissioners and integrity advocates have spent years arguing for. Greens MP Tim Read and Stephen Charles, KC, a judge, barrister and chair of an independent panel which advised the Baillieu government on how to set up IBAC and warned about the deficiencies in its design, died waiting to see reform.

Premier Ben Carroll called Read shortly before his death from cancer on Saturday to assure him the government would deliver the changes that Read helped usher in as chair of the parliament’s Integrity Oversight Committee (IOC), which last year recommended a substantial overhaul of IBAC’s legislative framework.

The numbers required to support the changes were clinched late on Wednesday night, when the government agreed to a list of further amendments proposed by the Greens.

“Today, long-overdue reforms to Victoria’s anti-corruption watchdog will pass the parliament,” Greens leader Ellen Sandell declared on Thursday morning, as MPs were filing into the building for the last session before the November 28 election. “This is in no small part due to the work of our beloved colleague.”

Under the consensus reached between the centre-left parties and ultimately supported by the Coalition, the new-look IBAC will:

The Coalition was incensed that one of its further proposed reforms – a bold idea to prevent current and former ministers from refusing to answer IBAC’s questions on the grounds of cabinet confidentiality – was left on the shelf by the agreement between the government and the Greens.

Victoria, had it taken this step, would have become the first jurisdiction in Australia to allow anti-corruption investigators to circumvent this age-old Westminister privilege.