IBAC Insights (newsletter)

At the end of June, IBAC tabled its Annual Plan for 2023/24 outlining its priorities for the next twelve months, which will have a strong emphasis on our oversight role of Victoria Police and continued focus on high-risk agencies within the public sector.

We will focus on Victoria Police’s high-risk police units, divisions, and regions; excessive use of force and predatory behaviour; and police responses to family violence incidents. In the public sector we look at high-risk agencies, including those managing high value matters and improper influence.

In our police oversight role, we have identified high-risk regions, divisions and work units, where we will look at ways to reduce misconduct. We will continue our efforts to expose and prevent excessive use of force by police, corrections, and other public sector officers against Victorians, including those experiencing vulnerability.

In May, IBAC released a review of allegations of predatory behaviour by Victoria Police officers and found that evidence of predatory behaviour within Victoria Police persists and that many cases went unreported. In our Annual Plan 2023/24 we commit to continuing to investigate instances of predatory behaviour incidents involving police personnel. Also high on our agenda for the coming year is preventing and exposing inappropriate Victoria Police responses to family violence.

In the public sector we have our sights set on high-risk agencies, especially those managing high-value matters. We are focusing on agencies that are more likely to be vulnerable to corruption because they hold valuable information that could be misused or because they are responsible for high value investments, planning, outsourcing of public services delivery or allocation of funding.

We will continue to prevent and expose improper influence on decision-making in the public sector, with a focus on the influence of lobbyists, donors, government-aligned stakeholders and third-party facilitators. This includes reporting on investigations that highlight the corruption risks presented by improper influence and proposing reforms to strengthen accountability and transparency.

IBAC also plans to pilot a maturity rating scale for selected Victorian Government departments so they can objectively and consistently measure their integrity maturity to support them to build their corruption resistance.

IBAC’s Annual Plan 2023/24 provides a budget overview and commits to new and ongoing initiatives to deliver the third year of its five-year strategic plan.