A four-month probe into the Queensland government’s integrity and culture is poised to deliver its final report.
Queensland academic Peter Coaldrake is on Tuesday due to hand down his final report with recommendations to untangle the “congested and complex web” of anti-corruption bodies.
It follows Professor Coaldrake’s interim report in April which found lobbying was widespread, escalating and lacked proper regulation.
It said final recommendations would be aimed at “improving synergies and bringing clarity” to Queensland’s integrity system, particularly from the taxpayer’s perspective.
“The review has a strong disposition against adding to the already congested and complex web of integrity bodies,” the interim report said.
“The creation of additional agencies does not guarantee better accountability and would quite likely add to constipation.”
Recommendations could include set processes for appointing watchdog bosses, and rules for reporting wrongdoing.
Prof Coaldrake has also reviewed the local government watchdog and information commissioner.
He said the lobbyist register was “not doing the job which was intended”, and cited evidence of public service politicisation and ministerial staffer “overreach”.
The interim report noted 988 recorded meetings between registered lobbyists and ministers or officials in 2020/21, four times the average annual number over the previous nine years.
Prof Coaldrake warned actual lobbying contacts could be five times higher due to a rise in undocumented lobbying.
He said his final recommendations would ensure the ministerial code of conduct in relation to lobbying “has teeth and is observed”.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk on Monday moved to tighten lobbying rules ahead of the report’s release.
She said anyone working for a lobbying firm would be deemed a lobbyist, and lobbyists would only be allowed to contact a minister’s chief of staff and must request all meetings in writing.
Ms Palaszczuk said lobbyists would not be allowed to write “other” as the subject of meetings with ministers in the official register.
Instead, they will have to include more detail, while a minister must to include the same detail in their ministerial diary.
The premier expects those changes to be bedded in within a month, but promised to enforce Prof Coaldrake’s recommendations.
Ms Palaszczuk has previously pledged to order a royal commission into government integrity if he recommends it.
“I commissioned that review, and of course we want to see the results of that, and as I have said I will implement the recommendations of that review as well,” she told reporters on Monday.
© AAP 2022
