Pip: Thestealingofemily.co.uk — where procedural accountability meets the kind of institutional logic that only makes sense if you never have to live inside it.
Mara: Today we’re following Martin Newbold’s detailed submission to IBAC — Victoria’s anti-corruption watchdog — covering adverse inferences, what counts as unreasonable correspondence, and a statutory oversight obligation that has real precedent behind it.
Pip: Let’s start with the submission itself and what it’s actually asking IBAC to confront.
Submission, Adverse Inferences, and Section 71
Mara: The submission addresses a specific tension: IBAC appears to be treating the volume of correspondence as evidence of unreasonableness — without first asking whether that correspondence exists because substantive questions remain unanswered.
Pip: The post draws a clean line here. The submission states directly: “IBAC’s continued failure to answer clearly identified outstanding questions may reasonably give rise to an adverse inference, unless IBAC provides a full explanation.”
Mara: And that framing is deliberate. The submission is careful to say an adverse inference is not proof — it’s an invitation for IBAC to respond. The offer is explicit: answer the outstanding matters, and the inference dissolves.
Pip: What gives this real traction is the precedent. IBAC previously argued — in the Victorian Inspectorate’s investigation of the Emma complaints — that absence of recorded information didn’t automatically establish that something hadn’t been considered.
Mara: The submission turns that argument around. As the post puts it: “IBAC cannot sensibly say ‘absence isn’t evidence’ when defending itself while simultaneously treating repeated correspondence as evidence that you are unreasonable without considering whether their own unanswered matters generated that correspondence.”
Pip: That’s the kind of logical consistency IBAC apparently reserves for its own benefit.
Mara: The Emma matter — involving Dr Jana Katerinskaja, a family violence victim whose confidential escape plan was leaked, and whose complaints IBAC referred back to Victoria Police — became a landmark case. The Victorian Inspectorate found IBAC’s handling seriously deficient, and IBAC later issued a public apology in 2026.
Pip: And the Inspectorate’s findings on section 71 are what make this submission’s third point legally distinct from the first two.
Mara: Exactly. Section 71 of the IBAC Act requires IBAC to notify Integrity Oversight Victoria whenever correspondence constitutes a complaint about IBAC’s own conduct. The Inspectorate criticised IBAC in the Emma matter for delays in doing so. The submission now asks IBAC to confirm whether that notification has been made, the date it occurred, and if not, the legal basis for that conclusion.
Pip: Three separate issues — the inference against the correspondent, the inference arising from IBAC’s own silence, and a hard statutory notification obligation — kept distinct precisely so IBAC cannot collapse them into one dismissal.
Mara: The submission closes by noting that characterising correspondence as excessive does not remove the substantive questions inside it, nor does it extinguish any obligation that arises because the correspondence is now, in part, a complaint about IBAC itself.
Pip: Oversight bodies overseeing oversight bodies — it’s accountability all the way down, until someone actually has to answer.
Mara: The submission makes the stakes plain: unanswered questions generate more correspondence, and that correspondence may now carry statutory weight. The next step is IBAC’s response.
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