South Australia's ICAC in 2021 stripped of powers to look into misconduct or maladministration
South Australian Legislative Council’s SA Best member Frank Pangallo, who introduced the private member's bill for changes to ICAC.
Image courtesy The Southern Cross
South Australia's Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) was no longer able to investigate misconduct or maladministration under changes by the South Australian parliament in 2021.
The bill, introduced by the Legislative Council’s SA Best member Frank Pangallo, reduced the powers of the commissioner Ann Vanstone to only investigating corruption. But Vanstone said the "extraordinary” rapid changes by parliament also had decimated her jurisdiction to investigate corruption: “That’s what I'm really worried about."
Vanstone said the changes to the role of ICAC (formerly called the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption) went beyond those recommended by a parliamentary committee and she was concerned about aspects that seemed designed to protect politicians. She was scathing of restrictions on her ability to speak publicly about investigations and some changes that would add big costs associated with keeping checks on corruption and maladministration.
Pangallo’s bill passed the lower House of Assembly within 24 hours of the first debate in the Legislative Council, with no member of parliament from any party voting against the changes. It then went back to the Legislative Council to be unanimously supported again.
Pangallo said in a statement that “after eight years of substantial expenditure, secret investigations, underwhelming results, controversy and criticism, changes to the way ICAC functions were needed. The new changes are designed to make ICAC a more streamlined, more effective corruption-busting tool – and critically, a more accountable integrity body than it has been”.
Pangallo’s bill emerged from a parliamentary inquiry into the ICAC that heard from people who said their lives were ruined by investigations that ultimately ended in acquittals or charges dropped. These included the wife of a senior South Australian police officer Doug Barr who took his own life during an investigation by ICAC whose report, clearing him of corruption, had been completed before he killed himself but only released after his death.
In June 2021, deception charges against two former executive of the state government’s Renewal SA, investigated by Renewal SA, were dismissed in the Adelaide Magistrates after prosecutors conceded they did not have enough evidence to prove "no work had been done" during two trips charged to taxpayers.
Vanstone said these effects from ICAC investigations was no different to police investigations and court hearings – an unfortunate but necessary cost of an open justice system. The matters raised in the committe were before her time as commissioner and she'd made changes to the way the office was run. Two South Australian members of parliament were being being prosecuted in 2021 after ICAC investigations relating to the country members accommodation allowances.
David Edwardson QC, who represented several ICAC defendants, including former Renewal SA boss John Hanlon, said the organisation had squandered millions of taxpayer dollars – and destroyed lives – by unwisely pursuing cases that should have been dropped.
