Analysis: New inquiry is not what is being called for

It’s a clever move to pull out the corruption-busting Tony Fitzgerald when you’re facing mounting integrity questions but this isn’t the inquiry that’s being called for, writes Jessica Marszalek.

It’s a clever move to pull out the corruption-busting Tony Fitzgerald when you’re facing mounting integrity questions.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk will hope announcing the famed and esteemed QC to head an inquiry into the Crime and Corruption Commission now will dampen media and public interest into the things she doesn’t want to talk about.

But the public should not be tricked into conflating two issues into one.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: NCA NewsWire / John Gass

This inquiry will do important and timely work in considering questions raised around the culture, powers and actions of the CCC in laying charges, but it hasn’t been set up to do anything wider than that.

It is not, in fact, a broad, corruption-busting, integrity-focused inquiry.

It is not the inquiry that’s being called for by outgoing Integrity Commissioner Nikola Stepanov, former state archivist Mike Summerell, the man who the Premier asked to review her public service in 2020, Peter Bridgman, author of the Integrity Act Howard Whitton, or others.

Tony Fitzgerald.

It won’t look at whether the public service is behaving in the public interest and whether there is interference in important bodies that are meant to hold MPs and senior bureaucrats to account, like the Office of the Integrity Commissioner.

The government is hell bent on keeping its hands on its ears when it comes to any problems.

And that’s exactly what will stop it acting to address them.

Because if there’s nothing there to improve, then we don’t need improvements, right.

What a shame.

It would be interesting to know what Fitzgerald thinks of that.