Saturday 23 November 2013

Campbell Newman government sacks parliamentary committee.

Extract from The Guardian website:

Committee overseeing Crime and Misconduct Commission sacked after members question independence of chairman.

  • Australian Associated Press
  • theguardian.com,

The Newman government has sacked an entire parliamentary committee for bias against a corruption watchdog chief who praised its anti-bikie laws.
The government used its massive majority to sack the cross-party committee that oversees the Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC).
Griffith University political analyst Paul Williams says the mass sacking is a remarkable event, unprecedented in Australian political history.
"I think most Australians would find this shocking," he told AAP. It really is testing the boundaries of democracy."
The opposition said the Liberal National party government had put Queensland on a fast track back to the corrupt days that spawned the Fitzgerald inquiry.
"In a few years' time, what we are going to see is a judicial inquiry ... by another generation of Tony Fitzgeralds who will come through and have to clean up the mess and the corruption that this LNP government are institutionally putting in place," opposition MP Jo-Ann Miller told parliament overnight.
The government will appoint the majority of members on the replacement committee. Williams said the move was an attack on the architecture put in place after the landmark Fitzgerald inquiry.
"Sacking the committee that oversees not just the government, but an instrument of justice, calls into question the purpose of checks and balances in a democratic government," he told AAP. It also called into question the Newman government's understanding of those checks and balances, he said.
The committee was sacked after some members, including independent MPs, publicly questioned the independence of CMC acting chairman Ken Levy. At the heart of the concerns was an opinion piece he wrote for the Courier-Mail, praising the government's new laws for criminal bikies and sex offenders.
Earlier this week, the committee decided to release evidence that undermined what Levy had previously said about his level of contact with the government before he wrote the article.
The evidence revealed the head of the government's media unit, Lee Anderson, met with Levy before he wrote the piece, which was published at the height of public debate about the controversial laws. That level of contact was well beyond what had previously been disclosed by Levy.
Attorney-general Jarrod Bleijie said the government was left with no choice but to sack the entire committee because it was hopelessly biased against the CMC boss. He said several committee members had even called on him to quit before its investigations were complete.
"What the parliament has done is sensible," Bleijie said.
On Thursday, the premier refused to say if he knew about the meeting between his top media advisor and Levy, which happened in the government's executive building. But Newman said his government did not tell Levy to write the piece supporting its laws.
In a statement to parliament overnight, Levy accused the committee of holding aggressive and partisan hearings as it examined what he'd said about his contacts with the government.
He said the committee appeared to have "determined its view before it had heard from me".
"I was of the view that I was being subjected to a biased and procedurally unsound process," Levy said. He said not a single MP, including the premier and the attorney-general, had contacted him about the article before it was published.
"From the beginning the article was my idea alone, and its composition was my work alone," he said.
Labor is demanding a judicial inquiry into the government's actions. The sacked chair of the committee, independent MP Liz Cunningham, said the dismissal of the entire body was upsetting.
"It's disappointing that the politics of the last few weeks has led to this parliament now considering a motion that I believe reflects poorly on what is a unicameral system reliant heavily on the committee process," she said.

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