The curse of anyone committed to transparency and integrity in politics is that partisans will cheer you on in opposition and turn and denounce you once their side is in power. And there are no fairer weather friends of integrity than supporters of Victorian Labor. Champions of accountability and sunlight at a federal level when the Coalition was in power in Canberra, Daniel Andrews fans regarded scrutiny of his government as only motivated by partisanship or ideology and an affront to the high standards of public conduct he and his team always displayed.
Was there partisanship and ideology driving media coverage of Andrews? Obviously. News Corp spent the entirety of Andrews’ premiership playing Weekend At Bernie’s with the rotting corpse of the Victorian Liberal Party, eventually succumbing to invective and vile conspiracy theories as Andrews, to their fury, notched up landslide win after landslide win.
But Victorian Labor also notched up scandal after scandal: red shirts, branch-stacking, the dodgy HWU contract, and the systemic politicisation of the Victorian public service that created a culture of fear and intimidation so intense that even former public servants were scared of talking to investigators because it could wreck their private sector careers.
Why relitigate such issues now months after Andrews has departed? The Victorian ombudsman Deborah Glass, the author of the scathing report into politicisation last December, has issued a final note on her departure from that role after a decade, giving a greater insight into the behaviour of the Andrews government and its supporters.
Glass, appointed in the last days of the Napthine government, has been routinely smeared by critics as anti-Labor, despite not even being in Australia for three decades prior to her appointment.
If I scroll through X, formerly known as Twitter, I learn that I am a political ‘operative’; about my ‘biased and consistent attacks on the Andrews [Labor] government since they cut her funding years ago’; ‘auditioning for [Liberal Party] preselection after she misses getting another contract’; and to add some balance, an ‘Andrews lapdog’. Such commentators have plainly not read my reports and I do not expect them to read this one. They are unlikely to be interested in facts: that my funding was not cut, my term is non-renewable; that I have tabled reports supportive of the government.
Most journalists, too, would be familiar with such sentiments. But Glass’s account of her role in investigating the “redshirts” scandal, in which Victorian Labor systematically misused taxpayer-funded staffing resources for partisan ends, shows how different things might have been. Glass says that the then-unusual reference from the Victorian upper house to investigate the scandal was one she would have preferred to avoid, especially after the Andrews government gave her legal advice that she didn’t have jurisdiction over MPs (even though her predecessor had undertaken a similar investigation).
“I was particularly annoyed that the solicitor-general’s advice had not been provided to me sooner, before I had publicly asserted jurisdiction. Had it been, the whole history of this matter may have been different.” But Glass elected to see what the courts said, and despite the Andrews government appealing the matter to try to block her investigation, ultimately the ombudsman was found to have jurisdiction.
That the Andrews government spent a million dollars bitterly fighting that issue all the way to the High Court in order to prevent an independent investigation of its abuse of public funding was a clear signal about Victorian Labor’s attitude towards taxpayers’ money and its hostility to accountability.
Institutions like the ombudsman, and the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC), along with actual Victorian media outlets like The Age, provided the crucial democratic role of opposition during the Andrews years, given the transformation of the Victorian Liberals into a clutch of religious bigots and conspiracy theorists more interested in shafting moderate colleagues than providing voters with a serious choice at elections.
With Andrews having exited politics a winner and Glass’ term coming to an end, maybe the “I Stand With Dan” crowd might take the opportunity to reflect on what traducing and smearing independent accountability mechanisms says about both them and the party they support (alas, more likely, the usual responses will apply — any criticism of Victorian Labor is heresy, what about the Liberals, why did you never criticise Scott Morrison, what about the Liberals, you’re just looking for a job with the Murdochs, what about the Liberals, I’m cancelling my subscription, what about the Liberals*).
If they don’t have the decency to think again about integrity in politics, at least they might wonder what will happen when — if — the Liberals ever get their act together and Victorian Labor finds itself in opposition — and on the side of transparency and accountability once more, provided by a set of institutions they’ve been denouncing for a decade.
*Each of those responses has been made to most, if not all, of my articles criticising the Andrews government.
