Media organisations have gained an unlikely ally in the Queensland police in arguing for their continued right to report complaints made to the state’s corruption watchdog.
But an overwhelming majority of other establishment bodies support criminal sanctions against the public airing of complaints, from the Liberal National party to the Council for Civil Liberties, the office of the information commissioner and even Queensland Rail.
The clashing views are contained in submissions to the Crime and Corruption Commission, which has flagged a possible push for laws to force those referring alleged corruption for investigation to remain silent until a probe is complete.
The CCC has raised the prospect of Queensland following South Australia – the only Australian jurisdiction that requires confidentiality from whistleblowers during corruption investigations – after it fielded a spike of complaints during this year’s local government elections.
A surge in complaints during every local government election campaign since 2004 has prompted questions about politically motivated abuse of the CCC’s corruption complaints system.
The CCC issued a discussion paper titled “Making allegations of corrupt conduct public: is it in the public interest?” and invited responses.
It will hold a public forum on 7 October to “help to identify a workable solution which addresses reputational damage as well as the protection of free speech, a fair trial, and the effectiveness of the CCC”.
Media organisations have argued the public airing of corruption complaints to the CCC is instrumental to transparency and the public interest.
The Queensland police commissioner, Ian Stewart, in one of the few other submissions backing the status quo, noted that it was a “complex issue … however, the Queensland police service holds the view current practices are appropriate”.
This was because they allowed for transparency and there were existing laws and policy around the release of information about complaints, “notably defamation and public interest disclosure legislation”, Stewart said.
He noted that “changes may impact on the number of complaints (with complainants able to remain anonymous)” and questioned the “impact of investigations and or enforcement of any breach of new legislation” for police and the CCC.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption in New South Wales – which has a history of holding many more public corruption inquiries than the CCC – said it had “no recent experience” of the problem of corruption complaints aired during election campaigns.
Past concerns about politically motivated complaints appeared to have been dealt with by Icac raising the issue directly with MPs and parties in 1999, and then issuing a brochure during local government elections in 2004.
“It does not appear from Icac records there has been a need to repeat these exercises for subsequent state or local government elections,” the commissioner, Megan Latham, said.
The LNP in its submission said similar efforts in Queensland had failed to prevent “repeated abuses of the corrupt conduct complaints and notification system in the pursuit of short-term political advantage”.
“Time and again persons and entities involved in the politics of Queensland have made complaints alleging corruption on the part of a political opponent for the purpose … of being able then to disseminate the fact that the complaint had been made, often without details or an analysis of its merits,” it said.
Media reporting of such cases “will usually lead to great reputational harm to the impugned person, and will often yield significant political advantage for the proponents of the complaint”.
The LNP argued changes to stop CCC complaints or investigations being publicised would not stifle public debate, as complainants could still make their allegations public, if not the fact of their complaint.
The referral of Campbell Newman to the corruption watchdog during the 2012 state election campaign by the then premier, Anna Bligh, was a bitter bone of contention for the LNP.
The watchdog, examining allegations about Newman’s dealings while Brisbane lord mayor with an office in a building linked to his family, ruled there was no evidence of official misconduct and he went on to become premier.
The Council for Civil Liberties said defamation laws were an expensive and time consuming remedy for targets of vexatious complaints. It supported a sanction similar to South Australia, where an individual faces a fine of up to $30,000 for breaching the confidentiality of official corruption complaints.
The secrecy obligation is waived once the South Australian corruption watchdog finishes investigations, holds public hearings, finds sufficient evidence to charge or discipline targets of complaints, or the supreme court or the targets themselves authorise disclosure.
The former LNP opposition leader Lawrence Springborg, in a submission as chair of the parliamentary crime and corruption committee, noted the “practical difficulties involved in enforcing an obligation of confidentiality, especially in relation to complaints made anonymously” had been highlighted previously by the committee and the CCC .
Springborg said if the proposal for binding secrecy was to be effective, changes needed to be considered to the Public Service Act and Local Government Act to put the same obligations on complainants.
“Unless this is done, the potential for abuse of the complaints system will remain,” he said.
The Queensland Law Society said publicity of corruption complaints “may result in irreversible damage to individuals’ reputations if the complaints are found to be baseless or vexatious”.
Requiring confidentiality in “the assessment stage of complaints will assist in deterring baseless or politically motivated complaints”, it said.
The office of the information commissioner said “in most cases” complaints to CCC or their investigation “should not be disclosed [as] it may unfairly impugn a person’s reputation and/or may compromise [an] investigation”.
But this secrecy would also require changes to the Right To Information Act around the notification of decisions “including reasons [for] refusal of access to documents” which would reveal investigations were under way, it said.
Cynthia Kardell, a solicitor and national president of Whistleblowers Australia, said it would be “a mistake to allow the potential for reputational damage to the subject of the allegations to constrain how the CCC operates because it would open it up to being manipulated by equally powerful players in private”.
“If the subsequent public debate wrongly tends to elevate the credibility of the complaint or the complainant, then that should not influence what the CCC does either. It should remain a bystander and get on with the job,” she said.
Such public debates were a lesson in the importance of “suspend[ing] judgment until all of the facts are known” and developing rigour in public discourse, which was “like a muscle [that] has to be exercised to get the best from it,” Kardell said.
