Everything about the national corruption watchdog is secret – even the names of the corrupt

National Anti-Corruption Commission commissioner Paul Brereton. Picture: Martin Ollman / NewsWire

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On Friday, my email pinged with two messages about corruption investigations.

One was from the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption advising that a public corruption hearing was scheduled for Monday and it would be live-streamed on the commission’s website.

The other was from the National Anti-Corruption Commission with a none-too-subtle warning that if I revealed the identity of a government official it had just found to be corrupt, I could go to jail for two years.

The difference between these two bodies in their approach to corruption-busting – and transparency – could not be more stark.

The NSW ICAC has survived through 35 years of robust – some would say over-zealous – investigations, but it has runs on the board.

The NACC is limping into its third year under the watch of a damaged commissioner who would be lucky to see the year out if either side of politics had a real appetite for hunting down corruption. Luckily for Paul Brereton, neither does.

The Labor government’s over-hyped but seriously under-done anti-corruption watchdog has failed to deliver in the two years since it was established.

The NACC has been mired in scandal since it declined to investigate six public officials identified by the Robodebt royal commission for possible corruption, a decision that led to a finding of “officer misconduct” against Brereton over a conflict of interest in the case.

As barrister Geoffrey Watson observes, it is ironic that “the first finding of misconduct about the NACC was a finding against the NACC”.

Barrister Geoffrey Watson SC. Picture: Supplied

Brittany Higgins. Picture: Gary Ramage / NewsWire

In June, the NACC announced it was abandoning any further investigation of the Albanese government’s $2.4m compensation payout to Brittany Higgins, stating it had “conducted an extensive preliminary investigation into the settlement and found no corruption issue”.

Of course, there may well have been no corruption, but we’ll never know because the NACC didn’t do a full investigation, the kind where you put witnesses under oath … the only way, in this case, to arrive at the truth.

As former Queensland Court of Appeal judge Margaret White says: “A lot of people think corruption is money in a brown paper bag. But what we saw in the public evidence in Robodebt was there were many public servants who second-guessed, or didn’t have to second-guess … what it was that the ministers wanted, and so they did what they wanted.”

The NACC doesn’t lack power to investigate. It lacks grit. As the commission’s first (and only) misconduct finding has shown, even a blatantly corrupt official – a senior executive who abused her position to get her sister’s fiance a job – won’t be exposed to the public eye.

Brereton gave her a pseudonym because she “did not occupy high-profile positions that would ordinarily justify greater public accountability”.

But it’s hard to see how the woman – who was in a very senior role at Home Affairs – could be said not to have occupied a position requiring a high level of accountability.

Or why a low-profile position should afford her greater protection.

On Friday, The Australian asked the NACC if we would be in breach of any order imposed by the commission if we published the official’s real name. As it turned out, Commissioner Brereton had made an order at the conclusion of each “private” hearing that, pursuant to section 100 of the NACC Act, any information that might reveal the official’s identity could not be disclosed.

Section 101 of the act makes very clear the penalty for breach of the order: two years’ imprisonment.

The NACC’s spokesperson helpfully noted: “The commission does not provide advice to third parties as to whether any particular publication would or would not contravene those directions.”

So, reveal the identity of a corrupt public official at your peril. If only Brereton would apply that kind of blowtorch to the people he’s supposed to be investigating.