After 10 years as the Victorian Ombudsman, Deborah Glass will finish up on March 30th and hand over to new Ombudsman, Marlo Baragnawath.
Now, putting aside the obvious concern that Baragnawath allegedly breached legal professional privilege by handing over documents regarding the Ventnor rezoning decision made by Matthew Guy, the fact remains that Baragnawath has a tough task ahead to emulate Glass.
Glass' final report was tabled on Monday 25th March and was essentially a summary of her 10 years as Ombudsman.
Appointed by then-premier Denis Napthine in 2014, Glass achieved a lot over the last 10 years. She had 99 reports tabled in Parliament which contained a total of 608 recommendations. Out of those 608 recommendations, 578 of them were adopted which gives her an outstanding strike rate of 95%. Many of these recommendations concerned the justice system and ways to improve it however some of her more contentious reports concerned the conduct (or lack thereof) of the Andrews/Allan government.
One contentious report was the one surrounding the snap decision by the government to lock down housing towers with barely any notice given to the residents at all. The first they knew something was happening was when uniformed cops were approaching. It wasn't contentious in the sense that the government had breached the human rights of all the residents in those towers in both Flemington and North Melbourne; it was contentious in that the government refused to apologise for breaching their human rights in such a way. The fact they refuse to apologise even today just shows their arrogance and disdain. Indeed their initial response was "We make no apologies for trying to save lives." The reality is they breached human rights and should've been held to account more than they were.
Another one was an Ombudsman/IBAC collaboration, Operation Watts, which was designed to look at the misuse of public funds for party purposes courtesy of branch stacking in the Victorian Labor Party. While people who were involved in that, mainly led by the likes of Adem Somyurek paid a heavy price, what cannot be denied is that the Victorian Labor Party once again should've paid a heavier price than they did.
Then we had the mother of all reports concerning "Red Shirts." This was the one that fundamentally convinced me that the Andrews government were crooked and needed to be turfed beyond reckoning. The quotes from Glass' Reflections on 10 Years report are very instructive and should be studied carefully. "I had no great desire to investigate the referral, which had all the hallmarks of a political hot potato" (this is an understandable position for an independent office to take) "but I had a greater aversion to the Government telling me I couldn't" (this shows the Andrews' government's attitude towards accountability - they don't want anyone holding them accountable) "This had now become a battle for my independence, with gender overtones" (The Government thought they could bully Glass out of investigating this and took it to the High Court where thankfully they failed).
While Glass' report described the conduct that occurred as "wrong, although not criminal," again there is one very instructive quote from her report that should be noted "In particular, the definition of corruption, which hangs on the requirement for an indictable criminal offence to have been committed, is plainly out of keeping with public opinion. While I do not subscribe to the notion that all wrongdoing must be defined as corrupt, we should be concerned about wrongdoing short of the criminal: the ‘grey corruption’"
The damning thing about Red Shirts is that the architects of this scheme were never held accountable and, the only people ever targeted, were the staffers who filled out their time sheets. Given the power imbalance between staffers and MPs, the MPs who participated should've been turfed for engineering what was a fraudulent scheme. None of them were ever held accountable.
Then there was her last referral from the Victorian Legislative Council which concerned the politicisation of the public service. The reason this was so contentious was because of the government's response which said "There's nothing to see here." Here's the problem. The public service is supposed to be apolitical, dispensing frank and fearless advice to the government of the day. It is clear that the public service has been neutered in some way and despite Glass finding that it wasn't as politicised as people feared, there was a possible "Culture of Fear." To explain how that started, Glass' Reflections report again shows the reality of how this government operates "Nine years later, just after I tabled my report into the alleged politicisation of the public service, I learned what happened on that day, via a podcast interview with recently retired Premier Andrews. On it, he described Andrew Tongue providing him ‘frank and fearless’ advice about the cost of axing the East-West Link.
Both the public servant and the unbuilt road were axed. The latter cost a billion dollars; the former, a legacy of fear." Just to be clear. The person who appointed Deborah Glass to be Victorian Ombudsman in March 2014, Andrew Tongue, was sacked on the first day of the Andrews government by Daniel Andrews himself for the crime of "providing frank and fearless advice about the cost of axing East-West Link." He was sacked for doing his job properly and being apolitical.
This is shocking and is quite frankly a scandal in itself but what this shows is the attitude the Andrews/Allan government has had towards accountability and being told things they didn't like. This is how this government has operated for the last 9 years.
Irrespective of all the contentiousness, Glass has done great work in trying to hold the government and our relevant structures to account. Her 10 years as Ombudsman have seen the modernisation of the Ombudsman's role and have provided education on what her role entails to give the public an insight into accountability mechanisms.
As she hands over in 3 days, I for one thank Deborah Glass for the work she did in highlighting the government's bad behaviour, especially with some of the more contentious issues. I wish her all the best with whatever she chooses to do. To read a copy of Glass' Reflections on 10 Years, click here
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