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Rest assured, the lawyers are least likely to be among the scalps this time around

Tony Fitzgerald has been tempted back to Queensland to peek under the covers of public administration, particularly the Crime and Corruption Commission. Dennis Atkins wonders whether it will stop there.

 

Feb 01, 2022, updated Feb 01, 2022
Corruption commissioner Tony Fitzgerald Image: Image: Crikey

Corruption commissioner Tony Fitzgerald Image: Image: Crikey

In Shakespeare’s great historical drama Henry VI, Part 2, the popular uprising of anarchist Jack Cade – the “head of an army of rabble and a demagogue pandering to the ignorant” – includes a cast of characters typical of the brilliant playwright.

One is Dick the Butcher, a big, brutish fellow who enjoyed killing and fighting. He lives on for one phrase uttered while doing the work of Cade: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”

Down the centuries this has been taken literally when it was really an example of the short-sighted demagoguery Shakespeare was depicting.

The playwright was saying any tyrant goes after the protectors of justice – eliminate freedom by taking down the defenders of the rule of law.

History since the late 1500s when Shakespeare was writing proves the point. Despots from Joseph Stalin to Pol Pot and the Kim dynasty in North Korea have suppressed freedom and the rule of law to keep their grip on power.

Surveying the wasteland currently passing for “corruption busting”, integrity policing and the maintenance of administrative norms in Queensland, it’s hard not to think old Dick the Butcher might have been on to something.

Are the lawyers the problem? Or at least a big part of the problem?

Whatever the role of lawyers in this stinking mess, that’s one question to be left unanswered by the assignment of uber-lawyer Tony Fitzgerald QC to undertake an inquiry into the operation of the Crime and Corruption Commission, assisted by former Supreme Court Judge Alan Wilson.

Fitzgerald, who turned 80 late last year and has been a mediator based in Sydney since leaving Brisbane about 24 years ago, is not one for killing lawyers, or recommending they be defanged in any way.

However he is the kind of “take no prisoners” inquisitor we need. Whether his terms of service are going to be enough is another matter.

Going back to basics, there were three problems Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Cabinet faced on Monday: the policy, politics and perceptions of integrity and its administration, topped by the dysfunction of the CCC.

The CCC policy problem is clear. It hasn’t been an effective check on “crime and corruption” for a long time, as its record shows.

Any corruption busting outfit which has had at least 17 matters dropped, withdrawn or left gathering dust needed to take a good hard look at itself. Unable to recognise or admit any shortcomings that never happened.

Under now very-ex commission chairman Alan MacSporran, there was no problem. Even as he left just over a week ago, he admitted no failing or error, saying it was all about a breakdown in the relationship between the CCC and its parliamentary oversight committee.

“This saddens me deeply,” he complained.

The CCC has three basic flaws. It has expanded its remit to include policing morality, damning people for how behaviour might appear, regardless of the absence of any wrongdoing. This has to be jettisoned in the administrative architecture of the body.

Second, allowing the CCC to not just investigate but to pursue prosecutions is a dangerous way to run things. There’s a good reason similar bodies in Australia do not use this way of doing things.

Third, the CCC decided it would add some quite basic public service administrative issues to its functions. This mixed duties and roles that should be covered elsewhere within the public sector – mixing up Fitzgerald’s twin recommendations of a crime busting body and separate public sector oversight. Counting paper clips is not the work of corruption busters.

A lot of this amounted to chasing parked cars and the CCC, under MacSporran’s leadership, needed to be held to account.

The politics are down to how the new Fitzgerald inquiry operates in the wider world. The perceptions will flow from this.

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The topline consequence of announcing Fitzgerald’s inquisitorial reprise is a change in the conversation. While the political class will pick over whether this gambit goes far enough, addresses the “real issues” or will change broader problems, the public will see a quite decisive act and assume things are being handled. Low engagement is not a phrase used in political science for nothing.

Of course, the context of this new Fitzgerald inquiry is broader and more problematic because of the extraneous matters preceding it.

The CCC problem is central to the basket of integrity problems in the Palaszczuk Government’s lap and it demanded attention. However, we also have complaints and criticisms from a range of others in the broad group tending to public sector standards.

The Integrity Commissioner, Nikola Stepanov, had complaints, some specific, some vague. So did the former state archivist Mike Summerell, although he seems to be shaking out his old bottom drawer day by day.

Much of this might or might not amount to something. If we use the trusty maxim that smoke indicates fire, there’s something there. However, two things stand out and deserve comment and consideration.

In the public sector, just as in private businesses like the media, people can feel aggrieved for good reason or for not much of a reason at all. Egos can produce precious reactions to the rigours of daily life and a small cut to a budget is not always an existential threat.

There have certainly been plenty of eye-rolling examples of how Stepanov and Summerell have gone about their business – in often a well meaning although infuriating manner – to at least doubt what they say is about an existential threat to public life in Queensland.

Yes, this government does not have the best administrative arrangements for handling integrity issues and tries too hard to manage things politically and out of sight.

Also, the matey relationships between senior political figures – ministers, staffers and others – and lobbyists and trade unionists lead too easily to perception of back-scratching. These matters have always been regarded as “too difficult” or inconvenient

This new inquiry has no immediate function of looking at matters beyond how the CCC operates. There’s a strong case for it doing just that and someone like Fitzgerald knows how to navigate an investigation into choppy waters.

If that doesn’t work he could always cry havoc and release Dick the Butcher.

 

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