If you’re an Australian of a certain age, you’ll remember when Queensland was a byword for corruption and police brutality. But the “Moonlight State” has long been left in the shade by Dandrewstan, Victoria. As we saw during the anti-lockdown protests, Victoria Police have got the whole brutality thing nailed harder than a pepper-sprayed granny’s head getting smashed into the bitumen. As for corruption: Russ Hinze and Joh Bjelke-Petersen look like amateurs, compared to Dictator Dan.
How corrupt is the whole political culture in Victoria? So corrupt that even corruption reports are corrupted.
Two references to Premier Daniel Andrews in the Victorian corruption watchdog’s draft Operation Sandon report – flagging concerns about political donors and lobbyists buying “privileged access” to senior politicians – were cut from the final findings.
This is, remember, after the Premier’s evidence was carefully kept from the public eye for years.
The Australian can reveal the final paragraph in the section covering the Premier’s secret evidence to the five-year investigation was watered down between IBAC’s draft and final reports to remove any specific mention of the Premier.
Which is odd, because Andrews was knee-deep in the report’s findings.
Operation Sandon found property developer John Woodman and his associates “lobbied, cultivated, or financially supported state political candidates, political staff, MPs, and ministers” including the Premier, making hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to each major party in pursuit of favourable treatment.
The watchdog presented evidence that Mr Woodman also funnelled more than $1m in secret payments to two Casey mayors – Labor-turned-Liberal-affiliated Sam Aziz and Liberal former VFL player Geoff Ablett – in return for favourable planning decisions in Melbourne’s outer southeast.
Responding to the tabling of the report on Thursday, Mr Andrews said he had acted “appropriately at all times”.
But Andrews also claims that he had no relationship with Woodman. The report begs to differ:
The pair had met repeatedly at Labor fundraisers over many years, and even attended an intimate lunch in 2017 for which the property developer paid $10,000 to the ALP […]
In an interview last year, Mr Woodman said he had known the Premier “since he had pimples on his face”.
Andrews was also allegedly willing to go great lengths for someone he says he had no relationship with.
The report goes to a tapped phone call between Mr Woodman and his lobbyist Phil Staindl in which the pair discussed a conversation Mr Staindl had conducted with Mr Andrews days earlier, at a February 2019 Labor Party function. Mr Staindl told Mr Woodman that Mr Andrews had described a journalist pursuing the developer over corruption allegations as an “arsehole” and asked him to apologise to Mr Woodman for the planning minister’s deferral of the government’s decision over an amendment that stood to make Mr Woodman millions.
Maybe Andrews just attends so many meetings where developers pay huge amounts of cash for access to the government that they all become a bit of a blur.
The draft paragraph states: “Mr Andrews and Mr Woodman’s attendance at such functions provides another illustration of the opportunities for privileged access at a ministerial level that Mr Woodman and his lobbyists were able to gain. It also reflects the importance of the substantial donations that Mr Woodman had made over time. The conversation between Mr Staindl (a Labor-aligned lobbyist) and Mr Andrews also illustrates the significant role that a lobbyist may play and the appearance of a sense of obligation from Mr Woodman’s financial contribution to the party.”
But in the final report, released on Thursday by the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission, the paragraph was significantly altered to read: “Mr Woodman and his associates’ engagements with senior members of the Victorian government” […]
[Acting IBAC Commissioner Stephen Farrow] defended the watchdog’s decision to examine Mr Andrews in private, despite conducting 40 days of public examinations of more than 20 other witnesses.
The Australian
As an old doggerel from the days of notoriously corrupt Victorian Premiers, the aptly-named Tommy Bent, went: “Victoria is a lovely place, it’s full of shady nooks…”
Still, at least Tommy Bent’s ghost can take comfort in knowing that, finally, he’s not the most corrupt Victorian premier.