Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity, I present the committee’s report of the inquiry into the annual report of the Integrity Commissioner 2006-07, together with the evidence received by the committee.

Ordered that the report be made a parliamentary paper.

I am pleased to present the committee’s report on the first annual report by the Integrity Commissioner. The Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity, or ACLEI, was established on 30 December 2006 for the purpose of providing independent oversight of Commonwealth agencies that have a law enforcement function, and the Integrity Commissioner’s 2006-07 report covers the period from the commission’s inception to 30 June 2007. This first annual report provides a review of the process and history that led to the creation of the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity, which is of course the first Commonwealth integrity agency of its kind. In receiving the annual report, the committee was satisfied that it complied with all the reporting requirements. The inquiry has allowed the committee to satisfy itself that the development of the structures and processes that enable ACLEI to conduct its work is well advanced.

The committee noted the observations in the annual report on the staged implementation approach to developing ACLEI’s operation and determining its workload requirements and therefore to assessing the adequacy of its resources. ACLEI’s pressing need for additional resources to undertake its increasing workload has been recognised, I am pleased to say, by the provision in the 2008 budget of $7.5 million in additional funding over four years.

ACLEI is a significant addition to Australia’s anticorruption apparatus. It was established to strengthen this apparatus both at the structural level and at what could be described as a cultural level. The commissioner’s annual report makes the point that ACLEI was created to address the risk of corruption rather than in response to identified corruption practices. This pre-emptive health and maintenance approach to fighting corruption is to be commended. As they say, the best time to check your gutters is in summer.

Indeed, under section 15 of the relevant act, which sets out the functions of the Integrity Commissioner, one of the commissioner’s responsibilities is to ‘maintain and improve the integrity of staff members of law enforcement agencies’. From my experience of working to establish the Ethics Office within the United Nations, I am a strong believer in mainstreaming ethics and values into staff and management training and advice within the context of any relevant agency or institution as a necessary and effective part of anticorruption efforts. It is critical to recognise the crucial role of both people and processes in ensuring public confidence in the integrity of our public institutions and to remember that, without good institutions, good people will fail, and without good people good institutions are ineffective.

Looking forward, it is perhaps this creation of a culture of integrity aspect of ACLEI’s function that in time will be considered the best argument for extending ACLEI’s current jurisdiction to other Commonwealth agencies with a law enforcement function. Such an extension is contemplated by section 224 of the act and is noted in the committee’s report.

I also note the Integrity Commissioner’s comments with respect to the positive relationship that already exists between ACLEI and, on the one hand, those Commonwealth agencies under ACLEI’s jurisdiction—that is, the AFP and the ACC—and, on the other hand, the four state based law enforcement integrity agencies. It is to be anticipated that this Commonwealth-state interaction will benefit agencies at both levels.

I would like to take this opportunity to endorse the remarks made in the Senate by the chairman of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity, Senator George Campbell, and to thank my fellow committee members and the secretariat for their work. I thank the witnesses who appeared before the committee. I want to commend and congratulate the Integrity Commissioner, Mr Philip Moss, and his staff for their work and, of course, I recognise and value the important contribution made by Professor John McMillan, who was the acting Integrity Commissioner for the first six months of ACLEI’s existence. Finally, I would particularly like to acknowledge the fine work of Senator Campbell in leading the committee this year.

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