NSW ICAC critics branded ‘buffoons’

A NSW anti-corruption commissioner has attacked critics who have called the watchdog a kangaroo court – among them Scott Morrison – labelling them ‘buffoons’.

ICAC Commissioner Stephen Rushton SC. Picture: AAP

A NSW anti-corruption commissioner has attacked critics who have called the watchdog a kangaroo court – among them Scott Morrison – labelling them “buffoons”.

Independent Commission Against Corruption commissioner Stephen Rushton SC told a NSW parliamentary review on Monday that claims the body was a “kangaroo court” were misleading and untrue.

“To those buffoons who have repeatedly described this commission as a kangaroo court, I would say three things,” he said in his opening statement.

“First, it is deeply offensive to the hard-working staff of the commission. It undermines the institution. Second, there are vast differences between the functions of the commission and a court.

“Those differences are readily accessible, and there has been much written about those vast differences. To describe us as a kangaroo court is not just misleading, but untrue.”

Mr Rushton said such “uninformed comment” had a real ­capacity to undermine the commission’s work, and just as importantly, public confidence in public administration.

The Prime Minister has ­repeatedly slammed ICAC as a kangaroo court while resisting calls to commit to a federal integrity commission, claiming the agency had mounted “a most shameful attack” on former premier Gladys Berejiklian.

“What was done to Gladys Berejiklian, the people of NSW know, was an absolute disgrace,” Mr Morrison told parliament last year. “I’m not going to have a kangaroo court taken into this parliament.”

Mr Morrison was scathing of ICAC’s model of holding public hearings.

“These matters should be looking at criminal conduct, not who your boyfriend is,” he said. “The Australian people know that Gladys Berejiklian was done over by a bad process and an abuse.”

Ms Berejiklian resigned after ICAC announced it would investigate whether she breached public trust in the course of her secret relationship with disgraced former Wagga Wagga MP Daryl Maguire.

On Monday ICAC chief commissioner Peter Hall QC also condemned attacks on the anti-corruption body, noting that corruption involved acts performed in great secrecy and with no witnesses, that required painstaking investigations.

“Occasionally, there is misguided and unfounded criticism of one or more in our community, of the commission’s powers and its work,” he said.

“Whatever the motive or the purpose behind such criticism may be, a proper understanding of the legal conditions, processes of the oversight safeguards, will reveal to the misguided critic that he or she is simply wrong.”