WATCHDOG AUTHORITIES

Corruption can become rife where the watchdog authorities made responsible for combating corruption and maladministration become ineffective or become captured (that is, act to protect the agencies involved in the alleged corruption).

The following are a list of examples of allegations made by whistleblowers of actions that may have been taken by watchdog authorities in Queensland and in the Federal jurisdiction. The practices are described as alleged practices, because in almost all instances the government entities have denied any wrongdoing in the actions taken or decisions made.

Thus the need to monitor the performances and tactics employed by watchdog authorities, and to be alerted where a watchdog authority may be genuinely attempting to meet their responsibilities and / or struggling with ineffective legislation.

STATE OF QUEENSLAND

Fitzgerald Commission of Inquiry

Alleged practices include:

1. Politicisation of the police investigation;
2. Failure to investigate allegations of corruption outside of gambling and prostitution;
3. Alleged improprieties in the preparation of evidence; and
4. Alleged reprisals against whistleblower police officers.

CJC/CMC/QCC/CCC – the Four Crime Commissions [4CCs]

Alleged practices include:

1. Alleged misrepresentation of the law regarding the destruction of evidence and the failure of authorities to enforce the law;
2. Allegations of failure to act on the destruction of evidence on multiple cases;
3. Alleged failure to investigate;
4. Alleged investigation of matters not alleged, in place of the matters actually alleged;
5. Allegedly employing police to investigate allegations against police;
6. Allegedly hostile comments in corridors and elevators outside Federal Inquiries blaming whistleblowers for the Federal Inquiries;
7. Allegedly closing an internal committee after the committee sought investigation of alleged corruption within government; and
8. Alleged failure to take action where agencies, obliged by law to report incidents involving suspected wrongdoing, had failed to have provided that information to the 4CCs.

Ombudsman

Alleged practices include:

1. Claim in annual report that disclosures of mistreatment of public servants in their employment was whistleblowing only in a technical sense and not intended by the legislation;
2. Alleged failures to report suspected official misconduct to the 4CCs;
3. Alleged failures to respond to allegations of breaches by agencies of grievance procedures;
4. Allegedly referring back to agencies disclosures of alleged systemic corruption within the same agency; and
5. Alleged refusal to investigate maladministration because it did not affect the whistleblower making the disclosure.

The 4CCs & Ombudsman acting in alleged combination

Alleged practices include:

1. The 4CCs allegedly may have refused an investigation because the 4CCs hold that the matter is not suspected official misconduct but might be maladministration, and the Ombudsman allegedly may have refused to investigate the same matter because the allegations of maladministration are associated with allegations of suspected official misconduct; and
2. Whistleblower research that assumed that Queensland watchdog authorities were meeting their responsibilities towards whistleblowers, rather than test this issue in the research; and research that excluded terminated whistleblowers from the research survey, and then reported that bad treatment of whistleblowers was a ‘myth’.

Information Commissioner

Alleged practices include:

1. Decision in an application by Kevin Lindeberg that FOI Act may prevent the Commissioner from referring suspected official misconduct uncovered in Cabinet papers to the CJC (See Lindeberg and Department of Families, Youth & Community Care (1997) 4 QAR 14 at paragraph 26.)
2. Alleged failure to act on the disclosed use by agencies of code-worded files to store documents on whistleblowers taken off their personnel files, and failure to act on the alleged failure by agencies to search such secret files during FOI applications; and
3. Alleged failures to report suspected official misconduct to the CMC/CJC.

Office of the Public Service

Alleged practices include:

1. Alleged failure to hear promotion and fair treatment appeals for periods well in excess of a year, during which time the appellant was made redundant and terminated, and then the appeals were dismissed because the appellant was no longer a public servant;
2. Allegedly hearing appeals that have not been lodged, and directing that appeals be heard before the Department had provided reasons for decisions that gave rise to an intent to appeal;
3. Alleged failure to require agencies to investigate grievances properly made by whistleblowers; 
4. Senior officer of the Office of the Public Service [OPS] met with a whistleblower and procured confidential correspondence between the whistleblower and the CMC. The officer then presented the correspondence to one of the senior OPS public servants reference to whom the whistleblower had included in his/her CMC whistleblower complaint. The CMC failed to investigate.

Justice

Alleged practices include:

1. Allegations of non-disclosure, during discovery, of documents requested for litigation against the State Government, and withholding what was known to have happened to those requested documents;
2. Alleged use of claims of "legal professional privilege" over documents to which the privilege did not apply; and
3. Alleged failure to refer suspected official misconduct regarding the disposal of documents requested for court proceedings.  

The 4CCs & Police & Justice

Alleged practices include:

1. The police attribute responsibility to the 4CCs to take action on alleged government corruption, the 4CCs held that the responsibility lay with the Justice agency, and the Justice agency allegedly stated that the Justice agency required a brief from the Police before the Justice agency could act.

Premiers

Alleged practices include:

1. Alleged offer from a particular Queensland Government agency to support WAGQ if WAGQ withdrew its support for named prominent whistleblowers.

Parliament

Alleged practices include:

1. Defamatory material against a whistleblower allegedly has been read out in Parliament under privilege.

Parliamentary Crime and Corruption Committee (PCCC)

Alleged practices include:

1. Alleged failure to act in a bipartisan way on allegations against the government of the day; and
2. Alleged white-out of the parts of a WAGQ submission making disclosures about the treatment of police whistleblower Inspector Col Dillon, and about the alleged failure of the CJC to act upon the report by a former CJC Chairman, Sir Max Bingham QC, of this alleged mistreatment.

Courts

Alleged practices include:

1. Allegedly allowing documents having the privilege of the Parliament as evidence into criminal proceedings against a whistleblower;
2. Allegedly threatening journalists with imprisonment if the journalist did not betray their sources regarding a published public interest disclosure, and successfully obtaining such sources from journalists under this threat;
3. The alleged inconsistencies in judicial decisions concerning the impact of the media on the ability to obtain a fair trial;
4. Alleged appointments of legal practitioners to the Court while subject to continuing unresolved allegations of wrongdoing or of actions against the public interest;
5. Allegedly allowing agencies to make submissions that are not shown to the whistleblower;
6. Allegedly appointing persons to hearings who are reasonably perceived to have a conflict of interest going to a perception of apprehended bias; and
7. Allegedly enabling entities to serve summons on whistleblowers late on the afternoon before surprise judicial proceedings to be conducted on the morning of the next day.

The aforesaid does not include other watchdogs such as the Departments (eg Police, Child Services, Mines, Health, Electricity & Water Supply, Environment, Archives, Auditor-General, Qld Industrial Relations Court, et al), or Universities or government corporations. The list is long.