Crikey

The Haneef fiasco should be the catalyst for a larger review of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Speaking during the infamous joint press conference with AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty last Friday, where he announced the charges against Mohamed Haneef had been dropped, Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions Damian Bugg QC said in response to calls for his resignation:

No, because I don’t think that I have done anything wrong. I have put in safeguards, I am still confident about those safeguards and for me to resign when the task I’ve just performed was still open would have been stupid. I would rather stay around and make the decision and stay in for the hard yards.

Stay in for the hard yards? Perhaps Mr Bugg had forgotten he would be only sticking around for another week because his term expires on Thursday after eight years as CDPP.

The government is set to announce Bugg’s replacement this week. The Liberal Party likes Bugg. He was appointed as Tasmanian DPP by the Gray Liberal government in 1986 and later by the Howard government in 1999 to the CDPP role. This should ensure a cosy ride to the judiciary like his predecessors.

The shadow Attorney-General Joe Ludwig has called for an independent judicial review into the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions’ handling of the Dr Mohamed Haneef matter.  However, if the government is contemplating a review it should not stop with Haneef.

It should encompass the modus-operandi of the DPP after glaring weaknesses have been exposed during the Bugg era. Here are some suggested starting points:

• The Glenn Wheatley saga after it was revealed in Crikey that the DPP welshed on a deal to seek a suspended sentence.
• The DPP were accused of chasing “soft targets” at the expense of white-collar criminals after it was revealed that Bugg had churned out 4,000 small-time welfare fraud cases while only 300 cases involved tax cheats or corporate crooks.
• The DPP’s failure to prosecute alleged tax cheat, former Reserve Bank Board member and big Liberal Party donor, Robert Gerard.
• The non-criminal prosecution of inside trader Steve Vizard.
• Big corporate tax cheats continue not to be prosecuted — as I revealed in Crikey a couple of weeks ago, of 437 cases referred to the DPP in 2006 only one was a big company despite raising $2.5 billion from company audits during that year.

Mr Bugg has consistently told his masters that the DPP is not an investigation agency and that he has no control over what is sent to him to be prosecuted.

The new DPP should be more proactive in ensuring the Commonwealth’s Prosecution Policy is administered evenly, without fear or favour. For example he should ask Commissioner of Taxation Michael D’Ascenzo why more big companies were not referred to the DPP.

At the moment the DPP is big on the small fish but small on the big whales. A proper review will set new parameters for the Office.