'Poor culture' rife in justice department, investigation finds
Poor governance and a "clearly inappropriate" culture within the justice department was uncovered during an investigation into a cyber attack on the road safety camera system last year, according to Police Minister Lisa Neville.
The Road Safety Camera Commissioner John Voyage will on Thursday release a government-comissioned report into a malware infection which infected dozens of Victoria's road safety cameras.
The report found that the virus did not affect the network's integrity, however Ms Neville confirmed to 3AW that it had cost the government about $20 million in revenue due to 70,000 fines which were not issued while the cameras were being checked.
Ms Neville said a subsequent lack of cooperation by the Infringement Management and Enforcement Services, which sits within the Department of Justice and Regulation, had left her "stunned".
"[Mr Voyage] would say he would struggle to get information despite the fact I had made it clear to the secretary — in writing and verbally a number of times — [that] people needed to cooperate fully with the Road Safety Commissioner," she said.
"The culture in there was clearly inappropriate," she told 3AW's Neil Mitchell. "There was not so much a deliberate cover-up, but it was, 'We are not really answerable to anyone. This is our system'."
The government will now legislate to give more powers to the Road Safety Camera Commissioner, and will set up a new unit under a different director for the road safety camera program.
"There was a disrespect for the process and his role. I wish we didn't have to do this but I committed to him [that] we will make it clear in his legislation that he can compel this information in the future," Ms Neville said.
She also said she was confident no motorist had been mistakenly fined.
"It's about the overall culture and governance," she said.
"What's come to light is a systemic issue in there that has led to a really poor culture and poor security measures. We have been lucky we haven't had something worse than this."
Mr Voyage told 3AW he had been shocked by the difficulty he had faced dealing with the department.
"There's been an absence of cooperation I expected from people I thought were colleagues," he said.
The government on Thursday announced an overhaul of the network's security protocols, including tightening its security so external viruses could not spread through the network, and an independent specialist body which will oversee the changes.
"We do sort of know [why it occurred]. The security protocols that weren't in place that are now in place. There was no requirement for contractors, for the providers Jenoptik and Redflex, to keep their systems separate. So anything they are giving to the department could be on their operational systems," said Ms Neville.
"There was no requirement on their laptops... to not use Wi-Fi or Bluetooth or USBs. All those protocols led to this occurrence.
"A new auditing system has been put in place where they have to show evidence they are doing all of this so we prevent this in the future.
"One of the big things we have to do... is we need to separate each camera. At the moment they are linked to each other — that's how the virus spread. They have to be independently-operated cameras."
It was revealed last year that camera operator Redflex, which has held contracts with the government since the early 2000s, was subject to an Australian Federal Police investigation in 2016 and its former North American chief executive was jailed for her role in a bribery scheme in the US.