Exclusive : Former attorney general Dean Wells says state needs a new inquiry to address creeping problems with police and public sector oversight

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Systemic corruption remains rife in Queensland, according to the former attorney general who implemented many of the recommendations of the landmark Fitzgerald inquiry.

Dean Wells spoke to Guardian Australia to mark 30 years since Tony Fitzgerald handed down the most wide-ranging and significant anti-corruption findings in Australian history. Fitzgerald’s inquiry and report, which built upon work by journalists to expose graft and misconduct among police and politicians, also marked a coming of age for Queensland.

Wells became attorney general when Labor won the 1989 election, five months after Fitzgerald tabled his report. With his eventual successor, Matt Foley, Wells helped to implement many of the inquiry’s recommendations, including tabling legislation to allow for freedom of information and judicial review.

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Wells has worked as a barrister since leaving politics. Having watched the evolution of the state’s corruption watchdog, now the Crime and Corruption Commission, over 30 years, he told Guardian Australia he believes the state needs a new inquiry to address creeping problems with oversight of police and the public sector.

“The Criminal Justice Commission (now the CCC), did ... have some success in cleaning up the police service for a period of time, but eventually the germs mutated to defeat the antibiotic. And the disease came back in a new form,” Wells said.

“Process corruption is still rife in Queensland.”

Today, the Fitzgerald inquiry report exists like a founding document of a modern state; the one formed at the end of the Joh Bjelke-Petersen era, which had been marked by the restriction of civil liberties, increased police power and a gerrymandered electoral system.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dean Wells, pictured here in 2003, became attorney general five months after Fitzgerald tabled his report. Photograph: Gillian Ballard/AAP

Political actions in Queensland are often measured by how they live up to the legacy of Fitzgerald’s report. Such is the strength of that legacy, the 30-year anniversary is being marked by various retrospectives, events and panel discussions in Brisbane.

Wells is particularly critical of the of the way the CCC operates based on what it calls “the devolution principle”, which means the vast majority of complaints about public sector agencies are ultimately handed back to those same agencies to investigate and act.

“It’s not just Caesar judging Caesar, it’s Caesar judging Caesar very benignly,” he said.

“What we’ve got is a commission that over the years been captured by the interest groups that it is supposed to be regulating. And that doesn’t work really well.

“Of course it’s not what [Fitzgerald] had in mind. Institutions change. You won’t find brown paper bags like in the old days of the Fitzgerald inquiry, but you’ll find quite a bit of people accommodating other people.

“We didn’t go wrong. All law reform is a dynamic process. You’re building on the shifting sands of a social system that’s constantly changing.

“You need a Fitzgerald inquiry every generation. You need a Fitzgerald inquiry in every jurisdiction every 25 years. Society is dynamic. They change, they adapt. You need to change the antibiotic.”