Achi news desk-
The curse of anyone committed to transparency and integrity in politics is that partisans will support you in opposition and turn and deny you once their side is in power. And there are no more fair-weather friends of integrity than Victorian Labor supporters. Champions of accountability and sunshine at the federal level when the Coalition was in power in Canberra, Daniel Andrews’ supporters saw scrutiny of his government as motivated solely by partisanship or ideology and an affront to the high standards of public behavior that he and his team always displayed.
Was there partisanship and ideology driving the media attention to Andrews? Obviously. News Corp spent all of Andrews premiership play Weekend At Bernie’s with the rotting body of the Victorian Liberal Party, eventually succumbing to invective and vile conspiracy theories as Andrews, to his fury, won landslide after landslide.
But Victorian Labor also won scandal after scandal: red shirts, branch stacking, the dubious HWU contract, and the systemic politicization of the Victorian public service which created a culture of fear and intimidation so intense that even former public servants were terrified of speaking. for researchers because it could destroy their careers in the private sector.
Why should such matters be resumed months after Andrews’ departure? The Victorian ombudsman Deborah Glass, author of the scathing report on politicization last December, has published a final note on her departure from that role after a decade, giving more insight into the behavior of the Andrews government and its supporters.
Glass, who was appointed in the final days of the Napthine government, has been regularly smeared by critics as anti-Labor, despite not even having been in Australia for three decades before her appointment.
If I scroll through X, formerly known as Twitter, I learn that I am a political ‘activist’; for my biased and constant attacks on the Andrews [Labor] government since they cut its funding years ago’; ‘ audition for [Liberal Party] pre-selected after she failed to get another contract’; and to add some balance, ‘clapdog Andrew’. Such commenters have clearly not read my reports and I don’t expect them to read this. They are unlikely to be interested in facts: that my finances were not cut, my term is not renewable; that I have submitted reports that support the government.
Most journalists, too, would be familiar with such feelings. But Glass’s account of his role investigating the “red shirts” scandal, where Victorian Labor systematically misused taxpayer-funded staffing resources for partisan purposes, shows how differently things could have been. being Glass says the then-unusual direction by the Victorian upper house to investigate the scandal was one she would have preferred to avoid, especially after the Andrews government gave her legal advice that it had no jurisdiction over MPs ( although her predecessor had carried out a similar investigation).
“I was particularly annoyed that the advice of the solicitor general had not been provided to me earlier, before I demanded public jurisdiction. If it had been, the whole history of this matter might have been different.” But Glass elected to see what the courts said, and although the Andrews government appealed against the matter to try to block its investigation, eventually the ombudsman was found to have jurisdiction.
The fact that the Andrews government spent a million dollars bitterly fighting that issue all the way to the High Court to prevent an independent inquiry into its misuse of public funds was a clear indication of Victorian Labor’s attitude towards taxpayers’ money and its hostility to accountability.
Organizations such as the ombudsman, and the Independent Broad Anti-Corruption Commission (IBAC), along with genuine Victorian media outlets such as The Ageprovided the crucial democratic role of opposition parties during the Andrews years, given the transformation of the Victorian Liberals into a cluster of religious bigots and conspiracy theorists more interested in fooling moderate colleagues than giving voters a serious choice in elections.
With Andrews having left politics the winner and Glass’ term winding down, perhaps the “I Stand With Dan” crowd could take the opportunity to reflect on what the trading processes and smearing of independent accountability mechanisms say about them and the party they support (worse). , more likely the usual responses will apply — any criticism of Victorian Labor is heresy, what about the Liberals, why did you never criticize Scott Morrison, what about the Liberals, you’re just looking for a job with the Murdochs, what about the Liberals, I am canceling my subscription, what about the Liberals*).
If they don’t have the decency to think about integrity in politics yet, at least they might wonder what will happen when — if — the Liberals ever get their act together and Victorian Labor finds itself in opposition. —and on the side of transparency and accountability once again, provided by a set of institutions that they have been denying for a decade.
*All of those responses have been made to most, if not all, of my articles criticizing the Andrews government.
