opinion
Paul Murray: No consequences for Labor in toothless CCC election probe

Medical students are often exhorted with the maxim that if you don’t seek, you won’t find. The same goes for corruption fighters examining the diseased body politic. The Corruption and Crime Commission’s report this week into the extensive rorting by the Labor Party of taxpayer-funded electorate offices for political gain is a case in point. While uncovering mountains of evidence of apparent misconduct and worse, our white knight was unable to hold anyone responsible. On one level, the report serviceably outlined a rotten political culture. On another, it declined to cauterise the cancer. It is peculiar that a scandal started by the disclosures of whistleblower Sanja Spasojevic about activities in Premier Roger Cook’s own electorate office did not even lead to him being interviewed. Nor, as it appears from the report, did any Labor MP. Not one. That’s despite the CCC saying “electorate officers were routinely undertaking political campaigning during working hours and were being trained to do so during those hours.” So could Labor MPs be culpable for the rorting? “A Member who knowingly allows an electorate officer to campaign politically, at the expense of legitimate constituent work, in order to gain a benefit for that Member runs a risk of committing serious misconduct,” the CCC says. Runs a risk? Then why didn’t the CCC interview MPs to investigate their involvement? “Around 190 full-time equivalent electorate officers are publicly funded by over $17 million annually to serve the constituency and if even some of their time is spent campaigning instead, it is a misuse of public funds and an unfair advantage to the sitting Member,” the report says. The value of the taxpayer resources stolen across the 74 Labor-held electorate offices with around 148 staff involved is potentially massive. The CCC doesn’t quantify it on the basis of insufficient time records, but notes it would “equate to hundreds of hours per week spent on persuading voters to vote for their MP.” However, it dwarfs the funds the CCC claims were misspent in the Craig Peacock affair, which involved three former Liberal MPs. Peacock, WA’s former trade commissioner in Japan, was relentlessly pursued, not only by the CCC, but also by the government’s legal officers at the insistence of Attorney-General John Quigley, over what was claimed to be about $500,000, but never proved in court. Using Quigley’s coarse lingo, Labor MPs are potentially “trousering” much more than that. The CCC’s report consistently returns to the excuse of whether electorate staff involved in political campaigning in office hours made up the time when they were working for Labor at taxpayer expense. That is a complete furphy. Any political campaigning by electorate officers in work hours is a breach of the public service code of conduct. The penalties include dismissal or a fine of two per cent of annual salary. The commission’s repeated resort to that hollow excuse brings into question its diligence to call to account those responsible for the rorting. The electorate officers doing Labor’s bidding are not the only culprits. Who was calling the shots? Footnotes sourcing evidence in the report indicate the CCC called only Labor Party officials, former bureaucrats and electorate officers for its inquiry. Any sign of MPs who might have directed their staff to undertake campaigning work is absent. Many people might suspect or even know why the CCC would behave in this fashion. However, without the legal protections afforded to the agency and the MPs involved, they are unable to discuss their misgivings publicly without facing unwanted legal action. An extraordinary leave pass is granted by the CCC towards the end of the report: “Although the Commission’s investigation found no evidence of MPs or other public officers directing, encouraging or allowing electorate officers to campaign, there are clear incentives for MPs to do so.” Anyone who read the report to that point could only be dumbfounded considering what evidence preceded it. The CCC instead made this limp-wristed direction: “… (the Department of Premier and Cabinet) must make it unmistakably clear that it does not permit party-political work, including campaigning and training to campaign, and that, during office hours, staff may only perform work relating to their duties.” Consider this section regarding a briefing given to regional Labor MPs by Mark Reed, the former strategic advisor to Premier Mark McGowan, about how to run their electorate office. It was, ironically, held in the DPC offices at Dumas House in September, 2021. Reed was a political operative for the United Voice union before becoming the Labor Party’s communications director in the months leading up to the 2017 election that installed the McGowan Government, when he became a term-of-office public servant. “In his evidence, Mr Reed noted that the employment relationship is complicated, and that as a result, MPs and electorate officers are at times not ‘clear on who is responsible for their employment, or who manages them’,” the CCC report said. But the CCC uncovered a slide Reed showed the MPs: “He reminded MPs not to ‘bullshit your staff (or yourself) about the employment relationship: They work for you’.” The CCC report confirmed that electorate officers breached the DPC’s code of conduct if they campaigned for Labor during office hours: “The Code of Conduct does not expressly prohibit electorate officers from campaigning. “Nonetheless, seeking votes for an MP during an electorate officer’s working hours is an example of a political activity that at least by perception interferes with the duty to assist all constituents, regardless of their voting intentions. “To use their time to persuade voters is the use of a DPC resource for a political party’s gain.” So back to Mark Reed and the training day, held with former Labor Party State secretary Tim Picton at the DPC. The report reproduces another graphic presented to the MPs under the heading, “electorate work v campaigning.” They were told that “everything we do in electorate offices is campaigning, every time we talk to voters, we are campaigning.” The CCC report notes that instruction to the MPs was given “despite the prohibition on campaigning during paid working hours.” But no consequences for anyone? The CCC interviewed some Labor Party officials, including State secretary Ellie Whiteaker, who tried to draw a distinction between “campaigning” and “electioneering”. It didn’t wash. “In the Commission’s opinion, distinguishing between electioneering and campaigning is semantics,” the report said. “During the hours that they are paid to work as electorate officers, electorate officers are not permitted to engage in activities specifically directed at encouraging or persuading voters to vote for a particular person or party.” The CCC uncovered a slide Picton showed the regional Labor MPs which said: “You will not get re-elected by resolving constituent issues.” How cynical is that? The message was that their electorate offices were for turning undecided voters into Labor voters. At taxpayer expense. The CCC also investigated a Labor computer system called Campaign Central which keeps tabs on constituents “in relation to voting preferences and issues of interest.” “As an electorate management tool, electorate officers are trained by WA Labor to record correspondence and any interaction with a constituent in Campaign Central,” the report says. So that software effectively converts a taxpayer-funded electorate office, designed to help the public, into a Labor Party electioneering operation. “Campaign Central poses a risk that public officers will corruptly take advantage of WA Labor’s incumbency to use public funds to populate Campaign Central for the purpose of heightening their electoral advantage,” the CCC concluded. But it is a risk the CCC declined to pursue fully to establish if it was also a prosecutable reality. There is much more damning detail in the 51-page report that points to potential corruption that is left unresolved. This is just as bad, if not worse, than Victoria’s notorious Red Shirts scandal which had former Premier Dan Andrews, Labor Ministers and MPs hauled before its CCC counterpart, IBAC, to be grilled. However, just as in Victoria, the CCC nails no-one as responsible for the massive rorting using the same worthless time-in-lieu furphy as a blind on the basis the hours of improper work were not recorded. The act of breaching the code is the issue, not the time spent in breach. That simple. We should all be alarmed when well-armed investigative bodies avoid nailing those responsible for misconduct that is staring them in the face.

opinionPaul Murray: No consequences for Labor in toothless CCC election probe

opinion
Paul Murray: No consequences for Labor in toothless CCC election probe