Ann Vanstone resigns as South Australia second ICAC commissioner in 2024 over the agency's loss of powers in 2021
Formerly crown prosecutor and supreme court justice, Ann Vanstone was appointed in 2015 to chair of the South Australian district electoral boundaries commission that set boundaries for the 2018 state election. She became South Australia's second Independent Commissioner Against Corruption in 2020.
Image courtesy ABC News
Ann Vanstone, South Australia's second Independent Commissioner Against Corruption, resigned in 2024, saying she had "run out of steam" after changes in 2021 had stripped the agency of many of its powers.
Vanstone said South Australia had the "weakest integrity agency in Australia", leaving corruption going "unchecked". She felt South Australian government attorney general Kyam Maher was "not interested" in the concerns she raisd. Maher said the government was "not opposed to making sensible changes" but two years was not enough tie to assess how the changes had worked..
A crown prosecutor and supreme court justice. Vanstone took over the ICAC role from first commissioner Bruce Lander in 2020.
A graduate of Walford Church of England Girls School (later Walford Anglican School for Girls), Vanstone studied law at Adelaide University and became a barrister in 1978. Vanstone was South Australia’s deputy crown prosecutor from 1989 and the associate director of public prosecutions in 1992.
Vanstone was appointed a Queen’s Counsel in 1994 and a district court judge in 1999. She was the third woman, after Roma Mitchell and Margaret Nyland, on the South Australian supreme court bench from 2003. With Nyland and the Robyn Layton (appointed 2015), Vanstone formed the first all-female court of criminal appeal in South Australia.
Vanstone was judge in many high-profile trials. In 2008, the high court In Australia held by 3-2 majority that Vanstone's directions to the jury in the trial of Jean Eric Gassy lacked neutrality. After Eric John Hooper’s trial for causing serious harm by dangerous driving to Robin Hay, Vanstone criticised the six-year delay between the crash in 2009 and charges brought in 2013. Vanstone sentenced Hooper to five years prison and disqualified him from driving for 10 years. She was also the judge for Dudley Davey’s trial for the murder of Gayle Woodford and in 2017 Vanstone sentenced Davey to life in prison with a non-parole 32 years.
In 2015, Vanstone was appointed to chair of the South Australian district electoral boundaries commission to set the boundaries so that the state government was formed by the party that received more than 50% of the vote. The electoral boundaries commission decision was upheld on appeal by the Labor party to the full bench of the supreme court. Vanstone retired from the supreme court in 2019.