[Peetwo]

It amused me that while watching the repeats of the Senates 'Greatest Hits Vol 3' on the Houseboat big screen TV with the Ferryman, Minnie, and Lookleft (strangely Looky chose to sit butt naked in a steaming pile of elephant dung, vigorously smearing it over his aging body while singing his favourite Liberace tune), I recalled how ridiculous CAsA's memory is. For example, nobody could answer 'who in the organisation was A380 endorsed', even though Terry was sitting right there!! Also, nobody could recall whether 'a certain CP who worked for a certain organisation that ditched a Westwind was still employed at CAsA as an FOI'!! Seriously, nobody at the table could recall? Now, I inderstand old age can cause side effects such as partial memory loss, brewers droop, periodic  toilet visits at 2300, 0200 and 0430, and hypertension but the lineup of Silvertails on these occasions couldn't recall such basic information?? Christ, these same people are responsible for aviation safety on a national scale?? I bet they remember to check-in business class for their trips to Montreal? I bet they remember to claim their TIL payments for each travel jolly? I bet they remember the processes and procedures of how to fly an A380 so they can receive their endorsement?

Hmmm, not sure about you lot but I think I can smell the fresh pungent aroma of pony pooh mixed in with the smell of Tezza's mothballed luggage and pensioner cologne!!

Tick tock

Classic Iron Ring geriatrics with STM loss...  

Reminds me of the 22 October 2012 PelAir inquiry public hearing??- err hang on a second..ahh here we are... :

Senator XENOPHON: No, no, no! I am sorry, Mr McCormick—there was a role for CASA to take:


… the Civil Aviation Safety Authority has commenced a project to review the fuel requirements for flights to remote islands.
Can anyone at this table please tell me what the review involved? When was that review concluded?

Mr McCormick : Sorry, Senator, we were not involved in this. We were not in these positions in the year 2000. I do not know what has happened to that report; I will find it out on notice.

Senator FAWCETT: There is actually a broader issue, though, Mr McCormick. There is no closed-loop system so that recommendations that are made by ATSB, that CASA agrees—particularly we have seen a number where, in a coroner's court, the coroner has said, 'We'll close out this issue, because ATSB made a recommendation and CASA said they will do it,' and then a decade later there is has been no action. Is that an issue for the travelling public? I hear you that you were not there for that whole 10 years, but we are talking about a system now, not personalities. Is the system not working as it should?

Mr McCormick : I cannot speak for what happened in 2000. I only got here in 2009. But we have in place now a system where we do track all the recommendations—since 2009 and on-hand at the moment there are 121 recommendations that were made by coroners. There are 16 of those outstanding. Some of them are unfortunately beyond our ability to do, where the coroner may have made quite a reasonable finding but it is impossible for us to implement. Some others we have under review as well. We do have the safety recommendations of the ATSB. We do track those; we have been doing that since I have been here, and we know exactly how many of those are outstanding as well.

Senator NASH: Was anybody at the table employed by CASA in 2000?
 
Senator FAWCETT: Mr Boyd, were you around?

Mr Boyd : Yes, but not in that position.

Senator NASH: Anybody else? Mr Farquharson? Dr Aleck?

Dr Aleck : I was in Montreal.

Senator FAWCETT: You've got an alibi!..

 
Murky Mandarins & accountability - TICK..TOCK!

Maybe the PelAir inquiry was a watershed moment in the way Senate Committees began to realise how the bureaucracy - in particular it's Mandarins - were taking the Mickey Bliss out of the whole House of Review/Senate process??

After all Senator Fawcett had prior experience with dealing & lobbying the Cantberra versions of Sir Humphrey within the Defence Department - Minister, mandarins and the military

Who is really in charge of the Defence Department? Many would guess the military chiefs, which is logical enough. Some would even say the Minister—civil control and all that. Or perhaps, given the recent discussion about the influence of Ministerial advisers over the public service, others would suggest we should be looking to the Secretary—Sir Humprey always did seem to get his way.

 Anyway be it merely coincidence or the worm is truly turning, it would appear that in recent times Senators of all political persuasions are less inclined to toe the bureaucratic line, that somehow Mandarins are a protected species and therefore immune from Parliamentary scrutiny.

The classic example of this is the recent condemnation by the Senate Privileges Committee (160th report) of (now former) Parliamentary Services Secretary Carol Mills, who just last week was given the bullet.

The following article is from the Mandarin and describes the downfall of Carol Mills. 

A breakdown of trust: accountability the key to Carol Mills sacking

---

by
Stephen Easton
28.04.2015



Accountability mechanisms like Senate committees may be onerous and seemingly unfair at times, but the dismissal of Parliamentary Services secretary Carol Mills demonstrates they must be respected.

If any more explanation is required for the dismissal of Parliamentary Services secretary Carol Mills last week, it was provided today in yet another unfavourable report from yet another inquiry into the troubled department.

Carol Mills (photo: Canberra CityNews)

The dismissal, which went un-explained by those behind it on Friday, likely has multiple causes. But chief among them seems to be the view that Mills has been less than forthcoming when called to account, giving evidence to multiple inquires over several years that was seen as variously incomplete, contradictory, evasive, dismissive and even deliberately misleading.

Having completed three public hearings and two Estimates hearings, and seeing as the Senate Privileges Committee and the auditor-general have now both tabled DPS-related inquiry reports, the Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee felt today was the “opportune” time to add their own PDF to the pile.

In part, the committee wanted to follow up on the implementation of recommendations it made in 2012, but it also re-hashed the various other controversies that have taken place since then.

Today’s report pulls out highlights from auditor-general Ian McPhee’s review, which in the committee’s interpretation, demonstrated little had changed since 2012. The senators concluded that McPhee had been “generous” in saying the implementation of the 2012 prescriptions was “at the slower end”.

The committee notes the department’s poor reputation made it difficult to recruit senior staff and that general morale is low. It savages Mills over her explanations for the lack of progress:

“DPS has had two-and-a-half years in which to address the recommendations and effect some change. Frankly, the complete lack of progress is unacceptable.”

The committee also went over the commissioning of $30,000 worth of photographic art — including the photo above — for the 25th anniversary of Parliament House from Anne Zahalka, who lived near Mills and knew her personally. Although the former secretary denied she knew her very well, the lack of documentation and fuzzy memories of staff regarding the process made it difficult to investigate the matter:

“In the committee’s opinion, the commissioning of the photographs to mark the 25th Anniversary of Parliament House epitomises the failings that still exist within DPS. Crucially, DPS are unable to produce documents for a three-month period during the commissioning process.”

The interim report then provides a blow-by-blow summary of the scandal surrounding the use of security cameras in the investigation of a DPS employee potentially breaching the code of conduct by providing information to former senator John Faulkner. It was Mills’ attempts to explain and defend her department’s actions in this controversial series of events that perhaps did her career the most damage.

The Privileges Committee found Mills an evasive and unhelpful witness whose testimony was contradicted by her own department, and when she responded to its December 2014 report, she only dug herself deeper. The Clerk of the Senate Rosemary Laing took issue with Mills’ response and wrote to the committee to say so.

The Finance and Public Administration Committee’s latest investigations gave it even less confidence in Mills’ past statements, and it concluded that:

“Overall, the evidence to the committee so far demonstrates that DPS, as currently managed, is deeply dysfunctional.”

The committee also “holds little hope” of DPS being able to address the issues highlighted by McPhee’s audit, given its failure to take the medicine prescribed in 2012, although it prepared today’s report before it found out Mills no longer worked there.

Based on the dire warnings of the politicians and the auditor-general, the task of turning things around will not be an easy one.

Top photo by Anne Zahalka, part of the Parliament House at Work exhibition scrutinised by the Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee.

{Comment: If you swap around some names, titles etc. here'n' there and picture old pumpkin head & perhaps Beaker, there are some passing strange similarities don't you reckon?? }

"Accountability mechanisms like Senate committees may be onerous and seemingly unfair at times, but the dismissal of Parliamentary Services secretary Carol Mills demonstrates they must be respected."

    
Hmm...bring on the 161st Privileges Committee report...

Possible imposition of a penalty on a witness before the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee or a person providing information to the committee


In the context of an inquiry by the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee into aviation accident investigations and Budget estimates hearings of the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee in May 2013:

(a) whether disciplinary action was taken against either a witness before the committee or a person providing information to the committee; and
(b) if so, whether any contempt was committed in respect of those matters

Committee Secretariat contact:
Committee Secretary
Senate Standing Committee of Privileges
PO Box 6100
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

Phone: +61 2 62773360
Fax: +61 2 62773199
priv.sen@aph.gov.au

& bring on a Federal ICAC I say...

Federal ICAC case strong, despite anti-bribery measures

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by
Stephen Easton
27.04.2015



Anti-corruption processes across key federal entities, led by the Australian Federal Police, have been enhanced in recent years in response to major foreign bribery cases. But no matter how good these measures are, they do little to weaken the case for a federal ICAC.

Last week saw a flurry of new reports of public servants caught doing the wrong thing.
On Thursday the country’s newest independent corruption fighter, South Australia’s independent commissioner against corruption Bruce Lander, announced six charges against the former manager of the state’s Interpreting and Translating Centre, who is alleged to have profited from inside information. Lander also revealed a woman faces an abuse of public office charge as well as 233 counts of theft and 114 counts of dishonest dealing with documents, after a separate investigation.

Meanwhile in Sydney, a former Department of Agriculture employee was charged with two corruption offences in relation to a consultancy he established, only a few hours after a very remorseful Canberra public servant was sentenced by a local magistrate for using his employer’s credit card improperly.

It continued on Friday, although the theme changed to public officials indulging in criminality on their own time. A senior executive from the Australian Government Solicitor’s office pled guilty to drug dealing charges and a Defence employee was sentenced for possessing child pornography, while the ACT Supreme Court dealt with a senior manager from Airservices Australia who used fake businesses to defraud $380,000 from the tax office.

Just today, Victoria’s Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) claimed its first major scalp, that of the allegedly corrupt former education department official Nino Napoli, on the first day of a series of hearings expected to run for the next six weeks or so.

“It is a proactive recognition that the current arrangements are in many ways insufficient … but it’s not a replacement for an ICAC.”
 
Wrongdoing happens everywhere, but when it happens in government often, at a high level or when the normal procedure in some part of the public sector is seen to be crooked, public confidence in the whole institutional framework takes a hit. It’s much easier to trust an independent statutory body, empowered to unearth corruption through investigation and interrogation than an agency of the government — with good reason — which is why such entities are now one of the standard accountability mechanisms at state level.

Both major parties and plenty of federal mandarins oppose the establishment of such a corruption watchdog for the Commonwealth, but that hasn’t stopped cross-benchers and experts from outside government continuing to prosecute the case.

Gabrielle Appleby

UNSW associate professor of law Dr Gabrielle Appleby supports the creation of a federal ICAC, but says it must be appropriately designed, adequately funded and sit within “a web of accountability mechanisms that can all check and balance each other”.
“It performs an important inquisitorial role, a role that OK, yes, sometimes royal commissions can also perform, but they’re so hard to get off the ground, particularly when it’s about investigating corruption within government,” Appleby told The Mandarin. “[Standing anti-corruption commissions are] an important part of that accountability framework but they’re not the only part, and they shouldn’t be an unmonitored part of the accountability framework.”

The week before last, a long list of tweaks and improvements to the Commonwealth’s anti-corruption mechanisms aimed at enhancing guidance, professional education and cross-agency collaboration were detailed in a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Working Group on Bribery.

The report also revealed the number of foreign bribery investigations undertaken by the Australian Federal Police increased from seven in October 2012 to 17 — possibly a consequence of one of the key enhancements it refers to, the establishment of the Fraud and Anti-Corruption Centre in 2013.

“I think you have to take [the establishment of the FAC Centre] as a positive move by the government,” says Appleby. “It is a proactive recognition that the current arrangements are in many ways insufficient … but whilst it seems to be part of a general strengthening of the system of checks and balances at the federal level, it’s not a replacement for an ICAC.”

The measures taken over the past several years represent Australia’s progress towards implementing 33 recommendations made by the OECD working group in October, 2012. Among them was the suggestion:

“…that the AFP take sufficient steps to ensure that foreign bribery allegations are not prematurely closed, and be more proactive in gathering information from diverse sources at the pre-investigative stage.”

A few months earlier, compelling allegations had surfaced in a joint ABC-Fairfax journalism investigation, made by the former acting co-ordinator of the AFP taskforce looking into how much public officials knew about the Australian Wheat Board illegally paying kickbacks to the Iraqi government. The claims, backed up by other members of the taskforce, suggested it encountered mysterious resistance from above and was shut down prematurely to avoid embarrassing the government.

That affair then became the subject of a senate inquiry, which reported in late March. Unsurprisingly, the Labor and Coalition members of the committee agreed on only one recommendation:

“… that this matter should not further exercise the resources of the federal parliament.”

The far longer and more detailed minority report by the committee’s chair, Greens senator Penny Wright, contained four recommendations including another call for a federal ICAC.

“One of the main purposes of these types of bodies is to promote public confidence in the integrity of government administration,” said Appleby. “The establishment, in and of itself, is one way of demonstrating that.”

Another role for a federal ICAC would be “to tell the public service and elected officials that the government is serious about corruption” in order to promote a stronger anti-corruption culture, she adds. “So, it is not necessarily just the high profile investigations that make a standing commission necessary, it’s also that educative role, in changing and shifting the culture.”

“You have to be careful about publicity of corruption investigations … can have these perverse consequences where you see resignations, and pre-emptive resignations over relatively minor matters.”

“You have to be careful about publicity of corruption investigations … can have these perverse consequences where you see resignations, and pre-emptive resignations over relatively minor matters.”

Two reports published in February and March by Western Australia’s Corruption and Crime Commission, which looked broadly at misconduct risk, demonstrated a role that goes beyond catching crooks in specific cases.

As well as financial and legislative independence from government, a federal ICAC would need sufficient powers to peer into the inner workings of government, but it must be designed carefully to make sure it is not too powerful, according to Appleby.

“I think that you have to be careful about publicity of corruption investigations,” she said. “I think that sometimes public investigations are a really important part of an ICAC’s functions, but sometimes, particularly in relation to less serious and systemic matters, the public investigations can have these perverse consequences where you see resignations, and pre-emptive resignations over relatively minor matters. And that, I think, is again a matter of institutional design.”

Appleby points out that just because it was first, the powerful, public and very aggressive NSW ICAC is not necessarily the best model. Bruce Lander’s office in SA, for example, does not do its work in the public eye. Another unique aspect is that it was not set up in the wake of a major scandal, as was the case in other states.

“The former Labor premier Mike Rann had always been opposed to the introduction of a commission against corruption. He had always indicated that he didn’t think corruption was a problem in South Australia and that the mechanisms that were in place were sufficient — so very similar arguments to that you see at the Commonwealth level — but then with a change in leader, you’ve got a change in approach.

“I think now that we’ve got anti-corruption commissions in all of the states … it will become increasingly strange that there’s no standing anti-corruption commission at the Commonwealth level. So just through generational change, maybe we will see that eventually.”

TICK...TICK...TICK M&M, Beaker, A380 endorsed Deputy (Sentinel) Dog & others...    

MTF...P2