People Planning & the obligation to integrity: Reflections on local government

This is a partial transcript of the presentation made at the VPELA State Planning Conference on 27 November 2020.

Firstly, thank you to the organisers for inviting me to speak at the conference today. Secondly, I would like to state that anything I say today should be understood to be comments made in a private capacity, for which I alone am responsible. I have not worked for Victoria’s anti-corruption agency IBAC for nearly a year now and I am conscious that my remarks come in the midst of public hearings, in IBAC’S Operation Sandon as it is known, which is examining allegations of corrupt conduct in relation to planning and property development decisions in the City of Casey. Neither do I speak in any capacity in my new role with the Federal Higher Education regulator known as Texa. Thirdly, I note that Harwood Andrews is sponsor of this segment. I should clarify that I have no relationship with Harwood Andrews, nor they with me.

I can now turn to matters of integrity in our system of urban planning and its interaction with local government in particular. Firstly, perhaps it is helpful to provide a context for IBAC. It commenced operation in 2013 and was the first independent statutory police oversight and anti-corruption body of its kind in the Victorian jurisdiction and it came years after other bodies such as ICAC in NSW, which was set up in the late 1980’s. In many respects the checks and balances in IBAC meant that it had weaker powers than other jurisdictions, with no real experience or acceptance of its function in in Victoria’s legal profession. or for that matter in the judiciary. That became quite relevant to the conduct of its work for the first few year of its existence. Moreover, and in my opinion, there was and remains a strong denial and exceptionalism here in Victoria. Public administration and policing here in Victoria is somehow “different”, and even superior, to other jurisdictions and it somehow hasn’t been tarnished by the cronyism, conflicts of interest and executive level interference, that have at least been perceived to have punctuated the history of other jurisdictions such as Queensland & NSW.

I remember being pulled aside by a very senior public servant, early on in my tenure at IBAC and being told “Alistair there is just one thing you need to remember, we’re not NSW and you’re not ICAC.” And Victoria Police kept reminding me that the Force had never been subject to a royal commission. Well hopefully some of those myths have been smashed in the last few years and of course Victoria Police is currently the subject of a royal commission. All of this in my view, was and is complete nonsense. To pretend that Victoria, which is part of the same federation and shares almost identical policies, systems, procedures and controls for public administration and policing as other jurisdictions, that it is somehow immune to corruption or other forms of misconduct, beggar’s belief. And in my experience, this sense of exceptionalism that dominated and

Alistair Maclean, former head, IBAC

characterised Victoria in 2013 has extended to local government as well, and our planning controls and in particular our systems and processes for permitting the built form in Melbourne and across the state. And with that has come some significant risk and we are seeing that very really in terms of the public hearings of Operation Sandon.

The business model for IBAC is built on two functions: exposing corrupt conduct and police misconduct mostly through investigations and preventing corrupt conduct through our education prevention campaigns. That is really about raising awareness of red flags for corrupt conduct and how to address and manage the risks. IBAC does this principally be receiving reports or complaints of suspected or actual misconduct, which it then triages to either dismiss, or refer whether it is to Police or back to council or to take up the matter itself for investigation.

Over time as we built the organisation and its capacity an intelligence picture of corruption risks in particular sectors, industries, and professions associated with the public sector built up. In our early years, local government rarely came across our radar, we were focussed on public transport, education and of course our police jurisdiction. The case load in local government for the first few years was restricted to fairly minor matters and they were mostly referred back to the councils for them to deal with. But we knew that there was likely to be a range of issues in local government associated with planning and we knew that the interface of local government and planning processes was likely to be a key area of high risk for corrupt conduct. Why did we know this? How did we know? Firstly, from the experience of our counterpart bodies in other states, in particular Qld, NSW & WA. And as I stated earlier, to pretend that Victoria, with very similar planning systems was immune was at best naïve in my view. Secondly, there was a slow burn of accumulated complaints and allegations most of which lacked substance and were plainly spurious, but some of which pointed to some significant problems that were very similar to other jurisdictions, which gave us the beginnings of a map of risks. I don’t think it will come as any surprise particularly in view of the current IBAC hearings, that planning processes and controls, or lack of them, emerged as a principal area of risk. The risks were characterised by things such as; a failure to declare and manage conflicts of interest, failure to manage the relationships between proponents and decision makers, failure to manage donations, gifts, pro- bono services, hospitality and the like, the misuse of information, often commercial in confidence, sometime inadvertent and sometimes deliberate, and poor cultures and systems for managing these risks at local councils… .

To hear the rest of Alistair Maclean’s presentation on integrity, as well as any other conference keynotes or sessions go to our website here where you will be able to purchase individual sessions or the whole conference to watch at your leisure.