Why Victoria needs a royal commission into the CFMEU

Premier Carroll’s commitment to ending Labor’s record of perceived corruption, will, as with all royal commissions, depend on the terms of reference that Carroll announces and whom he appoints to be its chair.

The first act of the new premier of Victoria, Ben Carroll, has been to announce a royal commission into the CFMEU and its alleged nefarious activities in relation to Victoria’s massive ‘Big Build’ infrastructure program.

In one quick, decisive move Carroll has drawn a clear line between his premiership and those of his immediate predecessor, Jacinta Allan and former premier Dan Andrews.

Royal commissions are usually appointed when there is a sense of crisis, when it is an issue of significant public – and hence political – interest, when existing institutions are deemed inadequate, lacking powers or compromised, and when an arm’s length, open, independent review is essential. Certainly, Victoria has been wracked by scandals and corruption for years now, and a royal commission is the “institution of last resort” to address these problems.

Carroll’s actions partly expose the inadequacies of the state’s anti-corruption commission, the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC). Despite its requests to previous Labor administrations, IBAC does not have the powers or resources to investigate the CFMEU and to follow its “money trails” to both government and private sector companies. It has also long been constrained by high threshold definitions of “corruption” in its legislation.

Nevertheless, some doubt IBAC’s effectiveness and independence. Its report concerning the Andrews government’s dealings with the United Firefighters’ Union, has, after seven years, just been released after being held up by court action.

Ad hoc royal commissions with their high-profile, coercive powers of investigation, considerable resources and prestigious membership are less constrained by being a permanent part of the public service and thus can overcome some of the limitations of these permanent commissions. They have shown a willingness to cut across institutional boundaries and – with innovative techniques – get the whole picture about systemic corruption that individual agencies cannot achieve.

Let’s remember the achievements of the 1980 Royal Commission into the Activities of the Federated Ship Painters’ and Dockers’ Union – the Costigan royal commission.

Although it was appointed by the Fraser federal government and Victorian Liberal administration into real issues of trade union abuse, many initially thought it was mainly to embarrass the Labor Party.

After all, it was established just before the 1980 federal election and was chaired by Frank Costigan, a Queen’s Counsel, rather than a current or former judge, had narrow terms of reference only on the union and was to last just twelve months.

As Frank Costigan himself later acknowledged, “When the commission commenced there was no clearly expressed objective other than to investigate the union,” which had been “notorious for its violence over many years”. Certainly, the Costigan royal commission soon confirmed the union’s criminality, involvement in murders and support by hardened criminals, but its focus soon changed.

As prime minister Bob Hawke stated in his government’s 1984 response to the Costigan royal commission, the commission underwent a “remarkable evolution” from just being focused on the activities of a single union to wider issues of “tax fraud … related tax evasion schemes” and identifying “6206 companies involved in bottom of the harbour schemes” along with “social security fraud, compensation fraud, theft of a grand scale, importation of drugs and shipment of arms”.