When the Watchdog Fails
The Victorian Ombudsman (VO) is the office of last resort for citizens failed by the bureaucracy. Its duty is to provide diligent and impartial oversight. In our case, the VO's office has profoundly failed in that duty.
As detailed in our previous update, the VO dismissed our three interconnected complaints against our local council, Agriculture Victoria (AV), and Local Government Victoria (LGV). The official reasoning provided for these dismissals was not just inadequate; it was a demonstration of superficial assessment, flawed legal opinion, and a willful refusal to engage with the substance of our complaints.
This is not a failure we can accept. When the watchdog itself fails, the only remaining path is to appeal to the body that oversees it. We have now lodged a formal complaint with Integrity Oversight Victoria (IOV).
The Basis of Our Appeal
Our submission to the IOV is not about the original dog attack. It is about the profound failure of due process by the Ombudsman's office. Our key arguments are:
- Failure to Address the Actual Complaints: In each case, the VO's office ignored the high-level administrative complaint we lodged. Instead of investigating the council's flawed review process, they offered an irrelevant opinion on the Domestic Animals Act. Instead of investigating LGV's failure to govern, they misrepresented our request as a simple query.
- Uncritical Acceptance of Flawed Excuses: The VO uncritically accepted the "resourcing" excuse from AV for its obstructive "phone only" policy, a clear tactic to avoid on-the-record accountability. They also accepted information that had already been refuted and abandoned in our direct correspondence with the departments.
- Use of Fabricated and Incorrect Information: The VO's response was littered with factual errors and fabrications. They invented a "desired outcome" for us—public access to the dangerous dogs register—that we never requested and, in fact, had argued was a useless distraction. They also made a factually incorrect claim about the law regarding dangerous vs. restricted breeds, a point on which we had already received written clarification from AV.
A Failure of Basic Competence
This pattern of behavior is not a simple disagreement over a decision. It demonstrates a profound failure of the most basic administrative competence. To dismiss a series of detailed, evidence-based complaints by misrepresenting them, ignoring the core arguments, and using factually incorrect information is an abdication of the Ombudsman's statutory duty.
We now place our trust in Integrity Oversight Victoria to conduct a genuine and thorough investigation into this failure of oversight. The integrity of the entire system of public accountability is at stake.
We will provide further updates as the IOV's investigation progresses.