Reasons for delaying an integrity commission are blatant nonsense

It is nonsense to keep on delaying the introduction of a well-resourced Commonwealth Integrity Commission with the appropriate structure and processes required to be a truly effective accountability institution.

Attorney-General and Minister for Industrial Relations Christian Porter during Question Time at Parliament House.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

It is also nonsense to suggest that the reason why the government has delayed introducing legislation to establish one is because the Attorney-General’s Department has been preoccupied with COVID-19 and industrial relations matters, and therefore could not devote resources to a CIC.

This excuse is not credible — it is asking the Australian people to accept that a department as large as the Attorney-General’s is unable to deal with more than a couple of policy issues at any one time.

It is also a questionable excuse, because a draft model was released in December 2018 and several accountability experts attended a meeting, hosted by senior members of the Attorney-General’s Department toward the end of January 2019, to provide informed feedback on the proposed model. The invitation was in the guise of a consultation process but during that meeting, attendees were told that the model’s structure was “firm” and that legislation to establish a CIC would be introduced into Parliament in February 2019.

February 2019 came and went, as has February 2020. At this rate, so too might February 2021.

The promise made by the government in the lead-up to the 2019 election to establish a CIC has been lingering in the “fringe issue” ether for far too long. One cannot help but wonder if it will still be dwelling there after the next election.

Despite public feedback on a CIC by learned experts in the anti-corruption field, the saga, which began in 2018, drags on. Not one independent person with expertise in anti-corruption models supports the CIC’s proposed structure.

In all good conscience, it is impossible to do so because it is blatantly designed to shield the conduct of politicians and many public servants from public hearings. The shield is impregnable — the CIC explicitly excludes them from such a process.

Despite experts’ repeated condemnation of the model, it appears that the Attorney-General is determined to proceed with the defective “dual structure”: defective at least to those dedicated to ensuring that democratically elected governments deliver openness, transparency and accountability to the people who grant them the privilege of representing them.

In return for this privilege, the electorate expects that the public interest will always be placed before personal and party interests. The National Integrity Commission structure and other aspects of the model cannot deliver such an outcome.

In addition to its fundamental structural flaw, the CIC fails, among other things, to facilitate courageous whistle-blowing; deliberately defines corruption so narrowly as to prevent investigations into malfeasance, which history shows is often the pathway to serious corruption; and bizarrely prevents the public from complaining directly to the CIC.

The government’s proposal to incorporate an expanded Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity into the CIC model must be scrapped; since its inception in 2006, ACLEI has not delivered effective accountability.

The suggested budget for the CIC is yet another serious barrier to effectiveness.

One of the oldest tricks by governments in the anti-corruption space is to establish an anti-corruption body, boast to the people about how good the government is to have created one, but then underfund it. They do so because the budget is a way for governments to exercise indirect control over such independent bodies.

This is not an unfounded statement. There have been several examples of this happening in Australia and beyond by governments who understand, only too well, that powers without the necessary budget to exercise them translates into no powers.

Properties near site of Sydney's new airport at Badgerys Creek.Credit: Wolter Peeters

While the Attorney-General’s Department may be incapable of dealing with several matters at the one time, the Australian people are not. They have been calling for an effective national anti-corruption body for years. Why has the government assumed it is not a priority for them today, especially given the revelations surrounding matters such as the sports rorts affair and the Badgerys Creek land deal?

The government claims that the delay in establishing a National Integrity Commission relates, in part, to retrospectivity issues. An easy way to solve this supposed problem is to look at how other effective anti-corruption bodies have addressed the matter.

The Attorney-General has told Australians that draft legislation will be made public in the next few weeks and will be subject to a public consultation process. One can only hope that what is released has been significantly modified to take into account the well-founded criticisms by anti-corruption experts, and that a revised model adopts many of the positive aspects of anti-corruption legislation already put forward by independent parliamentarians.

To stubbornly ignore the views of experts and enlightened parliamentarians is to place personal and party interests before the public interest. The electorate will remember such an approach — there is only so much nonsense it is prepared to tolerate in relation to the establishment of an anti-corruption commission.

Dr Colleen Lewis is Honorary Professor at the Australian Studies Institute, ANU.

Get our Morning & Evening Edition newsletters

The most important news, analysis and insights delivered to your inbox at the start and end of each day. Sign up here.