We need a tough integrity body, not a soft one

Chief Minister Andrew Barr is attempting to negotiate with Scott Morrison about arrangements – which would include amendments to the ACT’s constitutional documents – to make the local AFP accountable to Canberra. But he has not even received a reply yet, and one can expect that the ACT AFP, in their other guise as Commonwealth public servants will be lobbying the prime minister hard to reject the approaches. And he probably will. If so, this ACAC will be only half a bee.

Whether Bill Shorten is of the same view, assuming he is elected in May, is not so clear. Federal Labor has pronounced itself in favour of a national anti-corruption body, and can be expected to take deliberate, if by no means hasty steps towards that goal.

Federal Labor, like ACT Labor, was a late convert to the idea of a commission, saying for years (as did the Liberal Party) that it was not persuaded that the Commonwealth had a major corruption problem, and that, in any event, there were already more than a dozen federal agencies with a brief against corruption.

Labor’s conversion did not come with a change of mind about the size of the problem, or the ineptness of institutional arrangements designed to stop it. It came instead from opinion polls, which show that perceptions of political and bureaucratic corruption have accompanied a collapse of faith in many of the old institutions once regarded as upright and sound.

The public might have no clear idea about whether ministers or politicians are now more or less likely to take a bribe, whether cops are corrupt, or bureaucrats are susceptible to sweeteners. But they can hardly be blamed for their perceptions as there has been scandal after scandal of rorting of allowances by politicians and evidence that some of them, particularly in the National Party regard the spending of taxpayers’ money on their favourite boondoggles as a matter not needing integrity scrutiny.

It might seem unfair on politicians to blame them for the misconduct of banks or financial advisers, were it not for the fact that politicians took campaign donations, changed policies to meet the improper agendas of the banks, and resisted, ultimately unavailing, calls for an inquiry into abuse of power. Scott Morrison, who led the resistance to a royal commission now claims credit for having ultimately caved in, but is unlikely that many voters, even of coalition inclination, see him as covered with honour over the episode.

The public’s doubts about the essential integrity of the great institutions of the nation have extended to organised religion, particularly after the child sexual abuse inquiry, and to many of the professions, particularly those collecting handsome sums, on the honour system, from government and widely suspected, and occasionally shown to be, abusing trust.

State-level corruption inquiries have sapped faith in the integrity of some tender operations for major government projects, with widespread suspicions of favouritism, cronyism and, unequal access to power. Just recently, an annual Australian public service survey of staff has shown that many public servants are cynical about corruption in the service.

This week saw lower house independents combine to put forward legislation for a National Integrity Commission. Just before the bill was read for a first time, the House had adopted, on the voices, a resolution pressed on it by the senate for just such a measure.

It was the first time that the Morrison government had seemed to commit itself to such a goal; hitherto its approach had been to say that it was open-minded about such a matter, and certainly willing to consider improvement to existing protections against corruption, though unaware that any substantial corruption was slipping between the existing cracks.

But the decision to let the vote go by default may not have represented a conversion so much as a fear of demonstrating coalition disunity had the matter gone to a division. Some politicians are flatly opposed, particularly if such legislation restricts the absolute discretion of ministers to spend infrastructure money where it will achieve maximum political benefit, without regard to whether it makes economic or equitable sense.

The bill, proposed by Cathy McGowan, recognised existing checks and balances, though effectively making all subject to the overall powers of the NIC. There was theological argument about whether it had adopted NSW ICAC definitions of corruption – NSW is said to have the most expansive legislation – but in fact the definition was borrowed from the Australian Commissioner for Law Enforcement Integrity, the mysterious and deeply secretive body which is supposed to prevent corruption among law enforcement bodies, including the Australian Federal Police and Border Force.

The general structure and authorised workings of ACLEI may be fine, as well as being adapted to Commonwealth, rather than state or territorial level problems. But the ordinary public has very little idea of what it does, whether it does it well, and how we are better off as a result.

It certainly costs a lot of money without much in the way of results by way of public identification of corruption, or corrupt cops. It is authorised to hold public hearings but has never done so. It occasionally issues very brief reports – some on matters of very little account – but neither these, nor its annual reports do much in the way of explaining what they are doing.

I suppose ACLEI’s biggest catch, if catch it was, was in preparing the brief which, after a game of pass the parcel, led to the dismissal of Roman Quaedvlieg from his position as head of Border Force after he was accused of trying to secure favourable treatment of a girlfriend, a junior Border Force officer.

Mr Quaedvlieg has denied any wrongdoing and has previously refused to comment on ACLEI’s handling of the matter, saying, “Others can be the judge of that”.

Perhaps any sense of ACLEI triumph was reduced by the extraordinary delay in anyone doing anything about the report, as the matter passed from secretary to secretary and ultimately to minister.

But some of the delay could have been puzzlement. After all, on earlier occasions ACLEI is said to have found no problems with similar sorts of workplaces relationships, even when there has been great disparity of rank involved. I say “said to have” because ACLEI has never officially made a ruling on the matter; my authority for ACLEI’s attitude is one of those who told me he had been investigated and cleared on such a matter.

One expects that a body focused on police corruption might have to use sophisticated methods of extracting information, but I have heard reports of coercive interrogations that have raised eyebrows, and which would not, I expect, find much approval were they ever to come before the courts.

One involved a person already in jail for corruption, if not corruption that seems to have been detected by ACLEI. But with or without official authority, ACLEI officers seemed to have control over the jail in which the man was placed, and confinement conditions (solitary confinement, access to visitors, communications etc) as well as over the question of whether the disgraced officer, or his family, was to have access to his pensions.

All of these matters, I have been told, depended on his cooperation, especially whether he named names. Other disgraced officers are said to have had much more sympathetic treatment.

I have never known ACLEI to manifest any curiosity about the mysterious incapacity of the AFP to bring to any sort of head inquiries with the capacity to embarrass politicians, the practice of giving ministers a “heads-up” if anything, such as a raid, was planned that had the power to attract headlines, or past histories of politicians in trying to secure promotions, or positions, for their favourites by refusing to deal with AFP correspondence.

Such behaviour could, on occasion, be corrupt or corrupting, but even when, or if, innocuous, have the capacity to undermine perceptions that the AFP or Border Force carry out their functions independent of political directions, and not as public servants in a department.

Some of the other accountability agencies, in and out of law enforcement, include folk such as Inspectors-General, ombudsmen, and some of the regulatory agencies. Some of these do a good job, but few report directly to the public, or will answer questions about cases.

There are, of course, matters touching the privacy of accusers or the accused, or matters that must be secret on national security grounds. The public understands that, but will not necessarily readily accept that one should simply trust the guardians, or assume that some superficial parliamentary scrutiny, by members chosen for already being in the club, is a substitute for accountability.

All the more so when the state is vesting secretive agencies with more and more power, under more and more centralised control. That some ministers, or top bureaucrats, are themselves hostile to ideas of accountability only increases the fear and distrust.

Attorney-General Christian Porter did the deed on the McGowan bill. It simply would not do, even as a starting point, he said. The legislation had to do more to deal with the existing agencies. The definition of corruption was impossibly wide. It might, he said, very unconvincingly, even sweep up journalists ultimately on a public payroll (such as the ABC or SBS), or some public servant merely guilty of some slight deviation from the routine. He was massively overstating the problem, but he was also effectively closing the door.

By his model, a cooperative effort on a top anti-corruption body, if we are to have one, begins when cabinet adopts a proposal and then circulates it for comment. He has been working on ideas since he became attorney, for about 11 months, but it is plain that nothing will be emerging from cabinet soon. Anyway, the prime minister said, it was not a priority concern, for him at least.

With very restricted parliamentary sittings before (and, at least until August, after) the election next year, and with all the focus on the budget and political grandstanding, it seems like the time for an integrity body before the election has passed. With that has gone perhaps the best opportunity the independents, now bolstered by one with the defection from the Liberals of Julia Banks, to have a place in the sun, a lasting achievement, and, perhaps an enhanced profile to help them at the election if they are standing.

If the Labor victory is on the scale the polls suggest, Labor won’t need support from the independents to get the sort of integrity body it wants. (I wouldn’t expect that it would be hyperactive.) Although each of the independents (bar Banks, who has said she is not standing) has a good chance of selection, their best hope for maintaining public attention now is by keeping the government on constant tenterhooks about defeat on some procedural motion, or non-confidence matter such as over the health of refugees in our Nauruan and Manus concentration camps.

That is a matter they could be agitating even more loudly, given the shameful silence of the major parties, and the prospect that Labor, under Shorten, will be as mean and consciously cruel, if only to disprove Peter Dutton’s accusation that they will be wimps.

A day will come when there will not only be parliamentary and royal commission hearings – along the lines of the inquiry into sexual abuse of children – into what ministers and officials did to people who sought our help and protection, in part from wars of our making.

It will be a narrative still searching for heroes with the strength to maintain their humanity. The children, and grandchildren of about 140 of 150 of our present representatives will wonder why we couldn’t rely on them – ostensibly decent people – to do the right thing. If we can’t expect that on a matter of simple humanity, how, or why, should we be expecting it with common honesty, sense of public duty or good stewardship? We need a tough integrity body, not a soft one.

Jack Waterford is a former editor of The Canberra Times.

jwaterfordcanberra@gmail.com