The Home Affairs Department will support plans to extend the integrity watchdog's oversight to include contractors who work at its border and immigration detention facilities.
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Under existing rules, the Law Enforcement Integrity Commissioner Jaala Hinchcliffe can only look into contractors declared as "officers" by the top Australian Border Force role.
But the department's incoming government briefing, released last Monday, has thrown its support behind an expansion that would extend Ms Hinchcliffe's powers to cover all departmental contractors.
It follows weeks after Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus announced the federal government's broad anti-corruption commission would be expanded to include private contractors within the public service, who take up to 40 per cent of some departments' workforces.
The department's briefing to Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil noted the current framework meant not all contractors met the definition of a "staff member" under the law enforcement integrity law.
A Parliamentary committee inquiry into the watchdog's black spot was established in August last year but elapsed once the federal election was called in April.
Departments subject to ACLEI, including Home Affairs and the former Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, both provided submissions calling on the committee to broaden the integrity body's scope.
The Agriculture Department's submission recommended the inquiry consider how existing definitions of external and contracted service providers were investigated for corruption and how it could change under ACLEI's jurisdiction.
Meanwhile, the Home Affairs Department said it dealt with possible corrupt and criminal behaviour by external providers by referring it to police or administrative punishment.
"The contracting of services or functions to external parties may give rise to additional corruption risks, for example where personnel employment screening processes differ to that of the department's standards," the submission read.
"In the event that the department identifies a non-IBP [immigration and border protection] worker engaging in corrupt activity or inappropriate behaviour, the department currently deals with the matter under the contractual arrangements governing that individual's engagement and/or by referring the matter to police."
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Mr Dreyfus confirmed last month private contractors within the public service would also fall within the purview of the Albanese government's national anti-corruption commission.
"The commission will operate independently from government and will have broad jurisdiction to investigate serious and systemic corruption across the Commonwealth public sector, including parliamentarians and staff, public officials, and contracted service providers," the country's first law officer told a human rights law conference.
"The commission will be a long overdue addition to our integrity frameworks."
It's expected the federal government will introduce a federal integrity commission before the end of the year.