As a prominent member of the Australian, Greek, and Cypriot communities I feel I should explain some of the events that led to a report by IBAC, Victoria’s integrity body, that made adverse findings about me.

I have no idea why in the hundreds of people involved in legitimate lobbying in the state that I was targeted by IBAC.

Two people apparently made allegations in testimony to IBAC, but they remain unnamed and none of their testimony is quoted in the report. I sought assurances from IBAC that these persons did not have personal or political agendas, but IBAC refused.

My IBAC experience as a citizen was one of being ‘hunted’ by a well-resourced and essentially unaccountable bureaucracy over a two-year period. During this time, my laptop and documents were seized, and their contents were meticulously combed over and cherry-picked for information. The intention was to impute nefarious intentions to me, in an attempt to construct an improbable case

My family and I will survive IBAC’s attack because people who know me know that I have passionately devoted my life to public service. I have always acted in the best interests of the governments I served, the boards that I was privileged to be on, the Greek and Cypriot communities that I have assisted, and indeed the people of Victoria.

My experience with IBAC means that I am uniquely placed and indeed have a responsibility to bring to public attention serious problems with the Victorian Government’s Integrity body, including the way it engages with parliament and the public.

We are entitled to expect three things from IBAC: 1. that it will look at the evidence impartially without seeking to make it fit their own predetermined agendas; 2. that it will treat citizens equally in its investigations; and 3. that it is itself subject to scrutiny.

There is cause for concern in each of these areas. Impartiality is crucial because IBAC acts as prosecutor judge and jury in preparing its reports. In my case it produced a report that was self-serving and ignored contrary evidence. It’s important to note that almost the only protection afforded to citizens is that IBAC are supposed to adhere to the High Court’s Briginshaw test, which demands high probative proof and testing of alternative explanations.

IBAC found that I was involved in “unpaid lobbying” for a private company without registering it on the lobbyist register and had encouraged that company to buy four tickets totalling $10,000 to an ALP fundraiser allegedly in exchange for such lobbying. I rejected IBAC’s allegations of misconduct. My contention here is that IBAC should have asked those who I was alleged to have improperly lobbied whether they thought that I was lobbying them, or whether they thought I was expressing a view as I am, (perhaps unfortunately), prone to do. They did not. I am sure that such ministers would have called in departmental officers if they thought I was actually lobbying them, as they are required to do. They did not.

I think that most of the officers in IBAC have a narrow cultural world view. It’s based on the belief that Ministers’ only sources of information should be official documented advice. There is little understanding that in the political world and especially within diverse cultural communities, frank discussions occur all the time that are helpful to our democracy.

Deputy Commissioner, David Wolf, who conducted the investigation found it difficult to see that someone like me, would talk up a project in informal settings to colleagues that I believed would create thousands of jobs, investment, and educational opportunities for the Western suburbs, without labelling it as lobbying.

I cannot escape the feeling that IBAC had a predetermined view of my motivations based on conscious or subconscious ethno-cultural and political stereotyping.

IBAC does not seem to treat all citizens equally in its reporting. Its recent report to parliament, Operation Daintree, investigated a decision by the Victorian government to award contracts of $1.2 million to the Health Services Union without a proper tender. Ministers including Jenny Mikakos and Jill Hennessy were named, but ministerial advisors who had allegedly improperly pressured officers to grant the contracts were not named, and their reputations and careers have been protected.

I have no issue with protection to these advisors. But, contrast the severity of the adverse findings in Operation Daintree involving political interference and misconduct in relation to $1.2 million of public money to the rather benign allegations about lobbying and political fundraising for which I was put through the public wringer.

I think that the reason for this differential treatment was that I had enough of a public profile to make headlines which allowed IBAC to pressure government to adopt its anti-lobbying agenda.

It worked.

The Victorian government immediately issued a statement describing my alleged actions as “damaging” and accepted all IBAC’s recommendations. But the Daintree report into alleged government actions was described by the Premier Dan Andrews as “educational” and its recommendations are still being considered.

In relation to scrutiny of its own operations, IBAC has shown contempt for the Parliamentary Committee and the Victorian Inspectorate charged with this task.

Following an unfortunate suicide resulting from an IBAC investigation, IBAC attacked the Victorian Inspectorate, for daring to criticise it. More recently, the Ombudsman, Deborah Glass entered the fray calling for limitations on the Inspectorate’s powers.

Despite this, the Victorian Opposition, and the Greens, following political intervention by former IBAC Commissioner, Robert Redlich, have propped up IBAC, calling for it to have more powers, funding, and scope to pursue so called “soft corruption”. Redlich’s intervention also resulted in a reshaping of the parliamentary committee making it more IBAC friendly.

By contrast, serious overreach by the South Australian ICAC, which led to a suicide and the destruction of the careers of several public servants, led the SA Parliament to unanimously vote to restrict its ICAC to examining serious corruption. The President of the Bar Council of South Australia Marie Shaw KC and two of her colleagues strongly argued that South Australia’s corruption body experience is a warning against providing excessive powers without accountability to such bodies.

My hope in writing this is that politicians will step up who believe that IBAC should treat citizens equally, irrespective of their political or ethnic backgrounds; that they should not twist or ignore evidence to fit their agendas and that they should be held accountable in line with the standards they expect in others.

Courageous politicians should defend the Victorian Inspector and review IBAC’s operations and priorities as happened in South Australia – for all our sakes.

Theo Theophanous is a Commentator and Former Victorian Labor Minister