Uncertainty clouds the parameters of Victoria’s pending Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission (IBAC) and legal rights advocates are concerned the new body will be limited to investigating police matters of corruption but not misconduct.

Victorian Anti-corruption Commission Minister Andrew McIntosh will release a final report on IBAC — a delayed election promise that will replace Victoria’s Office of Police Integrity unit and act independently of the police force — in three to four weeks. But advocacy groups are worried their submissions to McIntosh, outlining the need for the independent body to conduct investigations into police-related deaths or shootings, will be unaddressed in the review.

“The police are currently in a hopeless position of conflict when a death in custody occurs,” said Human Rights Law Resource Centre advocacy director Emily Howie.

Advocacy groups have been pushing to kick police units out of investigations into police matters for almost 20 years.

In a submission to the Anti-Corruption Commission Consultation Panel last month, the Federation Community Legal Centres (FCLC) flagged its concerns about the Victorian system, saying the lack of independent bodies investigating police force and misconduct issues had jeopardised police integrity.

“The police are really too close,” FCLC policy officer Michelle McDonnell told Crikey. “You can’t have police investigating police. It’s just not effective … On the one hand [police divisions] must protect their own members from criticism, whilst at the same time acting as impartial investigators of the facts.”

Following the police shooting of a 17-year-old boy at Maffra in south-east Victoria, advocacy groups question how Victoria Police’s Ethical Standards Department and armed crime taskforce can investigate such matters impartiality.

“Victoria’s really lagging behind the other states,” McDonnell said.

Advocacy groups agree that Queensland has progressed above the other states in moving towards creating an independent body following the 1989 Fitzgerald Inquiry, which was prompted by years of unexposed police misconduct and corruption.

“It isn’t perfect but it is a great leap forward compared with the rest of Australia,” Howie said. “Victoria needs an independent body to conduct investigations of deaths in police custody — it is a matter of commonsense as well as the human rights obligations of the state of Victoria under our Charter of Human Rights.”

Victoria has been deemed the worst of the states by human rights advocates, with its Charter of Human Rights and Responsibility Act which came into full effect in 2008. The charter calls for bodies, independent of the members of state in question, to investigate complaints.

In a submission written in May to Victorian ministers and Attorney-General Robert Clark, the HRLRC condemned police-involved investigations into two police shootings — one ending in death. Police were looking into the matter while the Ethical Standards Department oversaw the investigation.

The submission also highlighted biases that could arise in the investigation, particularly when former Chief Police Commissioner Simon Overland told media he believed the police officers in question “acted appropriately” within the law.

New Zealand, the UK and Canada have introduced independent investigative units to investigate disputed matters of police conduct and, according to Howie, “the sky hasn’t fallen in” in these countries.

“The lack of independent investigations of deaths in police custody is a national issue. There is currently no state or territory in Australia that has a properly independent system,” he said.

Western Australia’s anti-corruption unit Corruption and Crime Commission has been accused of ignoring and concealing evidence in a police misconduct claim that was made 20 years ago. Last Thursday, the CCC sheepishly agreed to apologise to 40-year-old Ian Quartermaine, who was shot in the leg three times in 1990 by police who claimed they acted in self-defence.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported: “KRC investigator Brian Smith found the shooting was probably unjustified, evidence police gave was flawed or deliberately false, and there was a ‘contrived cover-up’.”