Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to congratulate Daniel Andrews, the hardworking frontbench and all the members of the Victorian Labor Party. Four years of hard work has paid off with the election of the Andrews government. One of the first acts of the Andrews government will be to resolve the long-running and unnecessary dispute with our paramedics, and to recall parliament to introduce the back to work act, helping to create 100,000 new jobs for retrenched workers and unemployed youth. Daniel Andrews and his new frontbench have a strong mandate to fix the problems in Victoria. They have a set of policies that were very popular in the community: fixing the worst 50 rail crossings, building the Metro Rail tunnel, fixing TAFE and making Victoria the education state to name but a few. I look forward to see these and other initiatives commenced or implemented over the next four years. There is little doubt in my mind that the Andrews government will be a hardworking and very competent government. Critically, they will need to address some key issues that have been left unresolved by the previous government.

Earlier this year, the body responsible for the oversight of the Victorian police force, the Independent Broad-Based Anti-Corruption Commission, or IBAC, asked the government for additional powers and resources so it could properly do its job. The legislation proposed by the previous government as a means to grant more powers to IBAC failed to make it to parliament before the election. This issue needs to be addressed by the Andrews government. IBAC is waiting for a response.

I have made a number of speeches in this chamber about the problems in the Victorian police force. In Victoria, we have a police force that undertakes its own internal investigations of complaints made against its own police. Time and time again, internal investigations of police by police have exonerated the actions of police, even in cases where the courts have found serious wrongdoing. We have a significant number of complaints about police, particularly in the case of police assaults. I believe we have a systemic problem in the Victorian police force. This is as a result of many police believing that they can act with impunity, and it appears that, in the vast majority of cases, they are right. The worst that will generally happen to them is some internal disciplinary charges. They can rely on their fellow officers to back up their version of events or indeed, as we know, concoct a completely new version of events to suit the circumstances.

On handing down a recent decision against police who had concocted a story to cover up an assault, Magistrate Charlie Rozencwajg said Victoria Police appeared to suffer from a similar culture of silence to that of the criminal world. He went on to say that, in the criminal underworld, informing on a colleague was known as being a 'dog'. 'A similar culture, for whatever reason, existed in the Victorian police force.' I want to work with the new Andrews government to ensure that, in Victoria, we have a truly independent body to investigate complaints made against police and, importantly, to instigate charges against police for their misconduct.

We still have no action taken against the police who assaulted Corinna Horvath close to 20 years ago. The Magistrates' Court found that the police assaulted Corinna. The United Nations Human Rights Committee found that the state of Victoria failed to provide proper redress for Corinna. And yet we have seen little more than an apology and an ex gratia payment. Three of the four police officers who assaulted Corinna still work in the Victorian police force. Police officers involved should face the criminal charges identified by the County Court's Judge Williams back in 2001, where he found police at fault of assault, unlawful arrest, false imprisonment and malicious prosecution, and found that the police told lies on matters of major significance.

The bodies responsible for police oversight in Victoria—IBAC and the Office of Police Integrity, or the OPI—have proved to be completely ineffectual in that role. The OPI dedicated two pages of its 2010-11 annual report to a police raid on a small bungalow in Williamstown, where three teenagers—all minors—were assaulted, pepper sprayed and arrested. The OPI conducted an independent review and found that the police used excessive force, and then referred the incident back to Victoria Police for action. After conducting their own internal review, the police found that many of the OPI's findings were not valid and took no action against the police involved. The body responsible for police oversight was just completely ignored by the Victorian police force command.

One possible solution to this systemic crisis is already in operation internationally. The Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland's office provides the public with an independent and impartial investigation of complaints made against police. Northern Ireland's police ombudsman has the power to refer charges to the Public Prosecution Service and seek disciplinary action against police. The office has a complement of around 150 people—about two-thirds of whom are employed within the office's investigative teams. In its 2011-12 annual report, the Northern Ireland's police ombudsman stated that it had received 3,336 new complaints against police that year. Nine hundred and eight recommendations were made to the Public Prosecution Service, including nine criminal charges against police. Four hundred and ninety-three recommendations were made to the police force command, including 19 cases where they recommended formal disciplinary proceedings. In comparison, IBAC received 2,567 complaints regarding police misconduct, which covered over 4,860 allegations in the 2013-14 year alone. In that year, IBAC conducted only 24 investigations. This is clearly inadequate 8by anyone's standard.

Not only did the Northern Ireland police ombudsman make close to a thousand recommendations to the public prosecution office but it also surveyed all complainants after the closure of their complaint. Fifty - two per cent of respondents responded that they were very satisfied or satisfied with the investigation, down from 59 per cent last year. I cannot imagine that we would get the same feedback if we were to ask those who had made a complaint about police in Victoria. This is just one of the working models of independent police oversight in operation overseas. Northern Ireland's police ombudsman is effective, it receives strong support from the public and from the police , who are in no way hindered in their work. In fact , the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland surveyed police after the conclusion of their investigation, and 72 per cent of the police were satisfied or very satisfied by the work of the police ombudsman.The people of Victoria should expect no less of a response to the long-term systemic issue of police assaults. 9No-one in our state should be above the law. Unfortunately, it appears that some members of the Victoria Police force feel that they can assault citizens without any fear of prosecution.

As well as having made a number of speeches on this matter, I have also raised the issue with both federal and state colleagues . I am confident that support for an independent body to investigate police in Victoria is growing. I will be doing what I can to ensure all Victorians get the changes we need to police o versight—a properly empowered and well-funded independent body that can fully investigate and, most important ly, have charges laid against police for this misconduct. To settle for anything less will not fix the problem. Police need to know that their actions are accountable, that they have a duty of care for every citizen and that our community will not accept that assaulting people is ever acceptable.

Policing is a tough job. It is why we pay our police very well. It is why we invest heavily in the training and professional conduct of our police. Police that then abuse that training and abuse the trust that Victorians give them need to be held accountable for their actions.

Policing can be done with integrity. Policing must be done with integrity. Those officers who conduct assaults against citizens of Victoria must be held accountable as if they were any other citizen for those breaches of the law. Victorians expect this. This is happening in many overseas jurisdictions. We must have an independent body that investigates police. We cannot have police investigating police. We know that that does not work. Case after case has demonstrated that that does not work. We need a truly independent body to conduct those investigations and have the ability to have charges laid against police for their misconduct.