Complaints against Queensland police have increased by 25% so far this year, the state’s Crime and Corruption Commission told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday.
The CCC’s acting chair, Bruce Barbour, said the increase, which resulted in 1,426 complaints in total, was linked to “positive action” taken to review the handling of domestic violence investigations and the “failure of police staff to comply with the commissioner’s direction regarding Covid-19 vaccine and workplace health and safety”.
Barbour spoke of the figures during a hearing of the parliamentary Crime and Corruption Committee regarding the CCC’s activities from January to the end of March.
Opposition MPs used Tuesday’s hearing to continue the LNPs push for the equivalent of a royal commission into what it describes as the state’s “integrity crisis”.
Pressed on whether the CCC could deliver such a probe, Barbour said that the watchdog “doesn’t have a general or broad remit to do wide ranging inquiries” and that even if such an inquiry did fall within its jurisdiction, the CCC would require additional government funding.
Queensland’s integrity commissioner, Dr Nikola Stepanov, has also backed a commission of inquiry into a “multitude of integrity-related issues” involving the government and public service that would have the legal powers and protections of a royal commission.
Stepanov – whose office regulates lobbying in Queensland – has previously raised concerns about interference with her office by the Public Service Commission (PSC), which controls her agency’s budget and staffing.
Those concerns include allegations the PSC removed and wiped the contents of a laptop used by an employee, and complaints that the PSC had gradually stripped resources and key staff from the integrity commissioner’s office.
Barbour said that the CCC had recently finished a draft report investigating those allegations, dubbed “Operation Workshop”, which he anticipated would be completed over coming weeks before moving on to the procedural fairness stage.
Barbour also used the hearing to trumpet the body’s success in busting organised crime, highlighting a 13-month investigation which culminated last Friday in a sting which seized 9kg of methamphetamine – estimated to have a street value of approximately $1.73m – “substantial sums of cash” and the arrest of a 37-year-old man.
The Queensland police union last year called on the CCC to be stripped of its responsibilities for investigating major and organised crime, with civil libertarians also raising concerns that the CCC had become “a super police force” and that this role has overshadowed its function as a corruption watchdog.
Barbour has been acting CCC chair since Alan MacSporran resigned from the role in January, seven weeks after a parliamentary committee found he failed in his duty to ensure the watchdog “acted independently and impartially”.
