Paul Murray: Why is State Government silent amid questions over integrity of Corruption and Crime Commission?

A damning review of WA’s awesomely-empowered Corruption and Crime Commission which makes highly critical evaluations of the agency’s culture and leadership has strangely slipped quietly from public view.

Any other government operation would be shaken to the core by such findings of internal misconduct and dysfunction over a four-year period.

The relevant ministers would have been hounded to provide accountability. Public service heads would be hauled over the coals, in the media and privately.

But all we get from the Cook Labor Government are the sounds of silence.

Has the CCC become WA’s version of The Untouchables?

The CCC’s parliamentary oversight committee two weeks ago released details of the review that pose crucial questions about who was responsible for the entrenched bad culture and whether another agency with such problems would be treated similarly.

Coming hard on the heels of the CCC’s inability to find anyone responsible for the exposed widespread rorting of Labor MPs’ taxpayer-funded electorate offices for political gain, this new controversy needs a full public airing.

After a scandal broke surrounding a senior CCC officer’s longstanding “intimate” relationship with a protected informant — who was a maximum-security prisoner — the agency was obliged to engage an independent external reviewer to investigate further.

“The culture of the commission’s Operations Directorate at the time of the compromised relationship was one in which dissenting opinions were discouraged, a strict chain of command was enforced within the (human source team), and officers were afraid of losing their jobs due to the commission’s reliance on short-term employment contracts,” the review found.

CCC head John McKechnie initially refused to show the damning review to the oversight committee, claiming it was “not necessary in the public interest” to disclose sensitive operational information.

In early October, the CCC provided a redacted copy, then finally relented after a further request and weeks later allowed committee members to read the full document at its offices.

The committee says the abridged version is a “reasonable summary” of the report, but it is understood the fuller document is much more damning.

“As may be expected, the abridged version of the review report does not detail and emphasise inadequacies that formed the basis of the findings,” the committee said.

The redacted review says of the prolonged misconduct that “the culture of the human source team and the broader commission was likely a significant contributing factor”.

That reference to “the broader commission” nails the failure as not isolated to one unit, but across the agency.

“Failures of leadership within the commission meant that executives in the (HST’s) management line did not effectively monitor (the officer’s) performance as the human source co-ordinator, clearly establish performance expectations and performance measurement indicators for the (HST), or strategic direction for the human source program,” the review found.

This is no trifling matter. Handling its confidential informants is a critical CCC function. In an anti-corruption agency, the review found managers routinely “ignored red flags” signalling misconduct.

“The review report is damning,” the committee said two weeks ago. “It exposes glaring deficiencies in the commission’s risk management systems and culture over many years.

“The six key findings outline the range of reasons why the officer’s conduct continued over many years. The committee was disappointed and surprised by these findings.”

So why has the public heard little or nothing about the deeper ramifications of this scandal?

Some background first. Early last month the parliamentary committee put out a report under the catchy title Who Guards The Guardians?

It was aimed at the office of WA’s Ombudsman after a damning CCC report accused the incumbent of 17 years, Christopher Field, of serious misconduct.

Field resigned after a string of disclosures about alleged lavish spending on overseas travel and abuse of his independence by going to his office on just 36 days in one year.

The investigation of the ombudsman was potentially difficult for the CCC because the office is responsible to the Parliament, not the executive government, something Labor often seemed to forget during the saga.

“The commission observed that Mr Field ‘has faced little scrutiny over the years’, and the independence of the office of the ombudsman ‘can only be assured if there is appropriate accountability’,” the oversight committee noted.

Ironically, the committee’s next effort, a few weeks later in November, was to revisit the scandal within the CCC itself which raised very similar issues of accountability and scrutiny.

But the CCC treated its internal scandal very differently to the ombudsman’s sustained misconduct. And shunned accountability.

The committee’s later report followed an investigation by the CCC’s Parliamentary Inspector, Matt Zilko, that exposed serious weaknesses in how the commission managed its misconduct risks from 2018 to early last year.

Zilko’s report said the commission’s human source co-ordinator “corruptly used her position to obtain a personal benefit, namely, an extensive and intimate relationship with a human source”.

So that was pretty embarrassing for the CCC, which has been under the leadership of McKechnie since 2015 and who was controversially reappointed in June 2021, right in the middle of this scandal.

In March this year, the oversight committee released its report entitled Going Rogue: serious misconduct by a commission officer, and directed the CCC to clean up its act.

But as 2024 draws to a close, the committee is not very happy with how the CCC is going about that task. Only four of the review’s 10 recommendations have begun to be addressed.

The further report by the oversight committee tabled in the Parliament on November 28 got virtually no coverage in the local media despite its “damning” conclusions on the CCC’s culture and leadership.

The Liberal deputy chair of the oversight committee, Steve Thomas, made a series of very cogent observations that departed from the overall findings when tabling its latest report in the Legislative Council.

“It is also important to examine whether the commission has indeed been held to the same standards that other agencies and departments within government are expected to meet,” Thomas said.

“Had this level of corruption occurred in another agency, I suspect we would have seen a fuller and more complete disclosure of the issues that are not in this report as they concern operational issues.

“The question will be raised about whether a different standard has been applied in this case.”

Thomas has apparently broken ranks with the committee to question how the CCC responded to demands for accountability. His tabling statement diverges significantly from the preface to the report by the committee chair, Labor’s Matt Hughes.

That deeply concerning reflection on how the CCC’s dysfunction has been dealt with has not been officially answered by either McKechnie nor Attorney-General John Quigley. True accountability demands more.

The oversight committee’s latest report obviously poses serious questions about McKechnie’s leadership of the CCC. The long abuse by the officer took place well into his watch and continued for four years.

The committee says it was “surprised and concerned” about the “level of dysfunction” the review uncovered. The female officer “had a reputation for removing team members who questioned her decision making”.

As a result of the dysfunction, the reviewer found “the commission’s ability to safely and securely manage human source operations was limited”.

Noting the CCC had only moved on four of the review’s 10 recommendations so far, the oversight committee says it is “clearly too early” to evaluate the remedial action.

When asked this week about his comments on the CCC being treated differently, Thomas raised the North Metropolitan Health Service, which had a similar “misconduct risk” scandal in the late 2010s.

As a result, the agency was turned upside down, six board members resigned, the CEO quit and the Director-General was hauled over the coals. Roger Cook was health minister at the time.

Thomas notes that if a similar scandal occurred in a sensitive part of the police force it would not be shrouded in such secrecy.

Everyone in the Labor Government seems to have forgotten their election commitment to gold standard accountability.

John Quigley trashed the longstanding legislative safeguards around the CCC head’s selection process to reappoint McKechnie in 2021 after the oversight committee twice rejected the nomination, failing to reach “a bipartisan or a majority decision” as required.

Quigley and Premier Mark McGowan confected an excuse that “the Liberals” had blocked the appointment because the CCC was investigating some of its members when they knew only one was on the committee and that a Greens MP also voted against McKechnie.

We still don’t know why both MPs wanted McKechnie out.

Labor was warned at the time it would compromise not only McKechnie’s independence, but also its own ability to manage the CCC.

That day now appears to have arrived.

“Public confidence in the integrity of the peak integrity agency in this State is critical,” the bipartisan committee’s report warns.