“Real reform was, and is still, needed in the wider justice sector,” according to outgoing Victorian Ombudsman Deborah Glass, who presented her final report to Parliament on March 25 after 10 years overseeing the integrity of the state’s public sector.
She was particularly critical of the government’s tough-on-crime approach to the justice system, after it last week reneged on its pledge to institute a presumption of bail for children.
However, reform, she said, “requires a government not driven by headlines that all too often have triggered a knee-jerk tightening of bail, parole and sentencing laws.
“The kind of tightening that swept up troubled, non-violent people like Veronica Nelson who should never have been in a prison cell when she died, tragically, in January 2020.”
Noting that “history is full of examples of enlightened governments taking brave steps and leading public opinion,” Ms. Glass mused that “without them we would still have public hangings, Dickensian prisons and sweatshops, not to mention institutionalised discrimination against women and minorities.
“Victoria was once a leader in justice reform. Perhaps one day we will be one again,” she wrote.
Uneasy Relationship With Labor After ‘Red Shirts’ Scandal
Ms. Glass also revealed that she had had an uneasy relationship with the government after her investigation of the “red shirts” scheme found Labor misused $388,000 of taxpayer funds during the 2014 election campaign.While she initially had no great desire to investigate the referral, she took umbrage at being told by the government she didn’t have jurisdiction to investigate MPs.
“This had now become a battle for my independence, with gender overtones,” she wrote.
“How would it look if I simply bowed to the government, when my male predecessor had stared them down, and other legal arguments had been made, including in parliament, that I did have jurisdiction?”
The government ultimately lost the argument in court, but Ms. Glass said the litigation affected her relationship with key Labor figures for the rest of her term.
She had, for instance, met with Daniel Andrews when he was opposition leader but never over his almost nine years as premier.
She was not the only public servant to incur the government’s wrath, and she said she was shocked at the “speed and suddenness” of the sacking of the state’s top public servant Andrew Tongue, which she said created a “legacy of fear” among bureaucrats.
In her first meeting with his replacement Chris Eccles, Ms. Glass said it was made clear that funding for the ombudsman’s office was not on the government’s list of priorities.
Similarly, the government’s playing down of last year’s report into the alleged politicisation of the Victorian public service was predictable but disappointing.
“I have done what I can ... to expose the subtle but dangerous impact of creeping politicisation ... it is now up to others to hold the government to account,” she wrote.
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan took issue with the ombudsman’s justice reform critiques, declaring internal policy processes “rigorous.”
Ms. Glass will step down as ombudsman later this week, with Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission CEO Marlo Baragwanath taking her place.
