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Corruption

Dear Gladys

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Dear Gladys,

Our relationship has curdled, and I am concerned about your mixed messages. Despite maintaining it was finished between us (The voters, not Daryl), you remain in the house. Using our joint account to pay $10,000 a day for your expensive addiction to lawyers. When lovers tell each other it is over, they separate as soon as possible. We have moved on to Dom “Opus Dei” Perrottet. Our heart has changed allegiances; once we realised you were representing Daryl, and not us.

Obviously, we need to rethink this, adding a little candour to how our relationship has transpired. Yes, we (NSW) voted for you in high hopes you would be better for our economy (as you always promise but don’t deliver). You’d think we’d learn that, but like Charlie Brown, we want to hope Lucy isn’t lying to us, and we have another punt at that ball. Your words were beguiling, and we always fell for it. Some friends warned us, but we are all too forgiving in 2019. Just look at how heartbroken we were in 2021 when you said you were leaving us.   Then you didn’t leave, toying with our feelings.

Deep down, we know it hasn’t been working well for years. Some of us had misgivings only a year ago. Both Bernard Keane and I expressed our doubts in October last year, three days apart from one another.  OK, I admit I was a lot harsher than Bernard, as he seemed to think your most prominent sin was cheating on us with Daryl Maguire.  But, even lately, Bernard has not been as tough or honest with you as he should be.  Instead, Bernard sugarcoats it as “two remarkable misjudgments” as though they were your only ones, which “until 2020, was a glittering career”.

Are we dating the same woman?

#Koalakiller tag burnt into our memory.
#Koalakiller tag burnt into our memory.

Bernard and I must be “dating” different women named “Gladys”. I don’t want to dwell too long on matters raised before, so I will be quick. I thought we both loved koalas, but instead, others gave you the tag #koalakiller because of your environmental policies on logging forests. You promised me public transport but gave us tragically built ferries not designed for our bridges and Trains not made fit for our tunnels. You said you valued our cousins in the public service. But you spent all our money on pay rises for 65 coalition politicians and a police commissioner and refused to fund public service workers. You said you were good with money, but there were overpayments for some properties and underpayments for others. Was it just empty promises when light rails, stadiums and museums were under-costed or facing undisclosed financial discrepancies?

Your cuts to Rural and Urban fire services and de-staffing fire management officers and National Parkes and Wildlife, all before the most extensive bushfire in NSW. All despite having been predicted a decade earlier. The dodgy water trading, fracking and conservation failures, all while you hid MP’s water interests and were not straight with us. You switched on the desalination plant in Kurnell when water ran out in country towns and Dams were contaminated and then made us pay the subsequent price rises.  Westconnex did well, while we saw the prospect of rising toll road costs and lost properties to compulsory acquisition. So, Gladys, you just needed to do a little planning. Then you put our lives at risk via the Ruby Princess and Aged care deaths under the management of Aspen Medical despite the fraud associated with them. But Bernard thinks you made only “two remarkable misjudgments”. Really Bernard, how could you overlook all this?  Love, really is blind!

Her “glittering career”!

Climate Chaos is now unavoidable, but NSW corruption, unnecessary!
Climate Chaos is now unavoidable, but NSW corruption, unnecessary!

Look, Gladys, I was really hoping we could all move on to “a glittering career”. But the end of 2020 and 2021 hasn’t been covered in glory, have they?  Barely had I finished talking about our relationship concerns in October 2020, then the “Stronger Communities Fund” pork-barrelling to coalition local councils showed up. You tried to hide your infidelity by shredding documents relating to those councils’ $252 million grants scheme. Even Scotty from Marketing could have told you that you don’t go on TV and refer to pork barrelling as the “common parlance” and at least try to look a little contrite.

Before the month was out, we discovered you’d previously given Wagga Wagga $40K worth of Grants out of a discretionary fund and to nobody’s surprise, it was Daryl’s electorate. (You’re our representative, not his.) True, the Premier’s fund was at your sole discretion, but you were not very discrete (as ICAC has the tapes). Daryl got millions for projects without business plans or discussions of substance.  You seemed to “just throw money at Wagga” to benefit him. In November, the Upper house voted to refer you to ICAC for failing to disclose your relationship with Maguire.

By December, the ABC was reporting your involvement in the project for new headquarters for the Australian Clay Target Association Daryl Maguire championed. You have to admit Gladys he always one with an eye for a profit which ICAC tapes revealed you knew, despite seeking to maintain plausible deniability coyly with, “I don’t need to know about that bit“.

In March 2021, ICAC confirmed they were still investigating Daryl. The highway running past his properties in his electorate came under scrutiny, as did your meeting over it with him. His Airbnb plans for his Ivanhoe properties didn’t strike you as a conflict of interest issue?  Really, Gladys, really?

While the NSW government defunded it, the people clamoured for it.
While the NSW government defunded it, the people clamoured for it.

By May, when the upper house voted to provide for ICAC’s $7.2 million budget shortfall due to their declaration that its annual funding had been below inflation for most of the 30 years since its inception, but your friends in the lower house voted it down.  It doesn’t help sell the image of integrity for someone for whom “all proper processes were followed” to underfund the very organisation that could establish that.  If you have done “nothing wrong”, why undermine the one organisation that could prove it?

Daryl resigned from the party in July of 2018 over those scandals, and despite this entire sordid history, he remained on the crossbench.  Does either of you understand the concept of “resignation”? Despite “quitting”, he stayed till August of 2018.  Despite that, did it never occur to you to break it off with him and serve your constituents? Why wait till September of 2020 when the further announcement of ICAC investigations transpired?

Meanwhile, Wagga Wagga was doing very well, from their $12m cycling complex to their Australian Clay Target Association. Wagga Wagga seems to be the epicentre of sport in NSW. No surprise that more people in Wagga Wagga voted for the Liberal Candidate than for the Independent that won via preferences. Pork Barrelling works because the public is gullible and shallow.

Corrosive Covid

But enough of corruption charges, let’s look to your handling the pandemic and how you developed your competencies following the early mistakes of the “Ruby Princess”.

By June 2021, our attention moved on, as had yours. Your new beau, Arthur Moses, stepped up, being one of many who offered support. The AMA advised you to lock Sydney down when the Delta Variant made its way to Sydney.  But you didn’t take the help they prescribed and relied on “business advice” for matters related to a virulent disease that had killed millions in India by June. Your own report coinciding with the Bondi cluster starting June 16 mentions “business” 21 times and “health” three times. Although “businesses” were still upset! You knew what happened when Dan delayed locking down the first time, yet you waited for School holidays to start a soft lockdown? Afterwards, you listened to medical advice. Who suggested that was a great idea, given you locked down the Northern Beaches during the previous Christmas over similar numbers? You waited another four weeks after the school holidays to get serious about a lockdown for what reason? How did this demonstrate your competence? Indeed, the 408 people who died from the virus before you resigned will never know.

So our infection rate rose over 1500 a day, Nurses and Doctors ran themselves ragged, and even though Morrison offered you the lion’s share of vaccines, NSW struggled to serve communities from the beginning.

The legacy of Gladys.
The legacy of Gladys.

The other Eastern States provided their resources for contact tracing because you weren’t coping independently, but the public was told your State was the “Gold Standard”. You even needed help from the military to enforce lockdowns.   Still, some people believed you were better than a Premier that had to break his back before he stopped doing public briefings. Whereas you stopped doing so because you needed time to run the State? To do what exactly? To open up around August/October when we still had hundreds of cases which seems a little contrary to the idea you expressed that “the number of positive coronavirus cases infectious in the community must drop to “as close to zero as possible” for the shutdown to be lifted”. But, of course, our new Premier, Dominic Perrottet, disagreed with that as a policy as the State recorded 477 new COVID-19 infections and six deaths on the weekend before restrictions were eased the following Monday.  That was October 11, and you had resigned nearly two weeks before but were (and are, as of writing this) still a fully paid member of Parliament.

When are you leaving us?

So now I am writing the letter we should have written earlier if only we’d had the gumption and realised just how dysfunctional this relationship was.  Instead, the media and public mourned your departure like it was a Shakespearian tragedy.  I have never witnessed so significant a case of Stockholm Syndrome.  Like the victimised battered wife who excused everything he did, outsiders are left wondering, why we didn’t leave long ago? All the indicators were there even from a year ago, yet too few remembered or noted.

Onset of Memory Loss upon exposure to ICAC.
Onset of Memory Loss upon exposure to ICAC.

But you are still in Parliament, you are still charging the State taxpayer for your legal fees, and you haven’t left yet. As a result, most days lately, we hear about your memory loss, despite a previous reputation for maintaining a detailed memory with “meticulous focus on every minor policy detail “.

You said you were going, Gladys.  Put the money back you have taken from the State coffers and leave!  There is only so much corruption, pork barrelling and taking advantage of us that we can stomach.

Curiously wondering for how much longer before you pick up your toothbrush and go!

Regretfully,

The NSW Public.

 

Why alternative truths?

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Much is made of the 21st century being a post-truth world. Many identified it when presidential spokesperson Kellyanne Conway defended White House Press secretary Sean Spicer’s fallacious claim about attendance numbers at Donald Trump’s inauguration. Kellyanne Conway infamously referred to Spicer’s assertions as “Alternative facts“. This became a catch cry of satirists, comedians and news broadcasters reflecting the absurdity of presidential lies and fallacious propaganda. However, political manipulations of the “truth” are older than the writings of the ancient Chinese military treatise of “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu.

Populist lies

Post-truth world equals Pre-Fascist realm
Post-truth world equals Pre-Fascist realm

What does mark the 21st century is not the strategic lie of clever politicians but the blatant lie of the Populist. The blatant lie has replaced clever self-serving lies that take time and nuance to unravel. It’s an appeal to a demographic wanting the smallest of justifications to rise in the insurrection at the Capital or organise a packed, mask-less protest rally during a pandemic.

Great swathes of humanity descend into the 21st-century rabbit hole, emerging catatonic and confused into a world of irrationality, conspiracy theories, and QANON. Framed by shameless populist’s admonition, whose goal is greed, popularity and personal gain/power at any cost to society. However, the political class has always been tarred with the brush of falsehoods by the public. Those goals aim to serve ideological or personal ends, but for the population, the falsehoods of this century have more dire consequences.  These blatant lies blind us from the existential threats to us all, such as Covid-19 pandemics, climate change and biodiversity collapse.

We should ask ourselves both why and how “alternative facts” (or, to put it bluntly, “mendacious lies”) dominate and hamper the cultures of the modern world and warp our perspective of the truth.

Here are my ten reasons why “alternative truths” hold sway.

  1. Political advantage.

Manipulating the populous through algorithms
Manipulating the populous through algorithms

Contemporary manipulations of the public for political gain are outsourced to the private capital of organisations such as Cambridge Analytica that resulted in the election of Trump and other populists. The data mining and psychological manipulation on behalf of Trump were detailed in the whistleblower’s book, “Mindf*ck” by Christopher Wylie. The broader European perspective of “This is Not Propaganda” by Peter Pomerantsev explores the dark world of influence operations run amok. It is a world of dark ads, psy-ops, hacks, bots and alternative fact propagation. This would include Firecrest technologies, Emerdata and SCL Group companies and even i360. The latter aided the conservative political gains in the South Australian elections but were abandoned despite protests from state branches by the evident lack of digital nous exhibited by federal Liberal Party operators. Nevertheless, it is a global phenomenon with many agents producing propaganda in social and mainstream media.

  1. Media Power and control.

The dominance by organisations like the Murdock press, OAN, and Fox News engage us in divisive propaganda instead of news and accurate journalism. Instead of holding power to account, the Fourth Estate is more frequently complicity with power. This is not merely an opinion but the legal defence used by Fox News to defend their hosts. Legal complications over the lack of veracity in reporting have long plagued the Murdoch press, but its power over parties and electoral influence is also a matter of record.

  1. Cultural complacency.

Cogitative progressions and the death of reasoning
Cogitative progressions and the death of reasoning

There is a culture of acceptability for political lies and even allowing the lies to slide by with populist politicians. Manipulative social media posts that appeal to emotional or perceptual biases are propagated. “People feel free to make unsupported claims, assertions, and accusations in online media,” said Vint Cerf. As Dan York also notes, “The ‘mob mentality’ can be easily fed, and there is little fact-checking or source-checking these days before people spread information and links through social media.”

Not only do we disparage fact-checking and frequently could not be bothered to check political veracity, but partisan “fact-checkers” also have weaponised “fact-checking”.

  1. Experiential evaluation.

There is a cultural belief in the fluidity of truth in which opinion and anecdotal expressions are given identical or greater weight than fact-checking and well developed & robust methods of statistical analysis.  Cognitive Research states, “People are also more persuaded by low-quality scientific claims that are accompanied by anecdotes and endorsement cues, such as a greater number of Facebook ‘likes’ as well as prior exposure to misinformation. In particular, the presence of anecdotal evidence can serve as a powerful barrier for scientific reasoning and evidence-based decision-making.”

  1. Underfunding education.

The defunding and elimination of free university education has resulted in an inferior quality of education for the Australian/American/British populations. As John Biggs and Richard Davis’s paper on “The Subversion of Australian Universities” concludes, “Today, our tertiary system is no longer able to fulfil its proper function in the community.” The deteriorating quality standards in Australian Universities leaves many graduates unequipped for the working world.  Academic bodies have for years petitioned against the cuts to higher education to increasingly deaf ears in parliament.

It is not just tertiary education in Australia that is suffering a decline. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) reports that high school test scores have been plummeting for years.

The deteriorating education results in a plummeting of quality standards in Australian Universities.  Access is based on economic capacity to afford education and the resultant financial pressure to pass mediocre students. Instead of passing students based on individual intellectual demonstrations of academic quality, a culture of grading on a curve is the acceptable standard.

  1. Irresponsibility.

A list of Rabbit-holes to dive down
A list of Rabbit-holes to dive down

People have not been held accountable for the results of their inane opinions, whether they range from:

These people have largely been able to get away with their foolish choices and claims that have generated destructive results for Australian society and civil liberties as a whole.

  1. Poverty.

The paucity of resources available for adequate discernment or investigation of the truth is underscored by the crushing weight of surviving poverty. Ill-equipped communities, schools, and teachers have to scale inter-generational poverty and abuse that impact brain development, breadth of opportunity, material resourcing, and starting education at an expected time and age. Economic disadvantage is linked to chronic tardiness, lack of motivation, and inappropriate behaviour in school children and follows them into adulthood. Eric Jensen documents this in his book “Teaching with Poverty in Mind: What Being Poor Does to Kids’ Brains and What Schools Can Do About It.” This is before we even contemplate the issues of remote and regional education in the vastness of Australia. Underfunding public schools and TAFE and tertiary education have a long history in Australia. Extracurricular activities such as music, languages, travel/excursions, and etc are only available to children of wealthy parents or private education as public education has suffered multiple ongoing budget cuts that date back decades.

  1. The “Means” of Production.

Beyond poverty, the working class and the demands of their labour, of time and energy in terms of excessive working hours and inadequate wages and working conditions limit their socio-political awareness.  One’s financial needs for personal and family obligations leave little time or energy for contemplation into the truth of State propaganda and media bias. Moreover, juggling more than one job to meet the financial demands of survival depletes time and resources for contemplative thinking. The ABS reported recently, “Filled jobs increased by 73,700 in the March quarter, 56,100 of which were jobs worked by people as a secondary job.”

  1. Dismantling opposition.

Diminishing critical public resources results in the inadequate assessment of proposals and developing ideas. The data necessary to evaluate deteriorating social and economic business concerns vanishes. This has been exemplified by defunding and closure of legal advice, research facilities and a raft of labour market monitoring (specifically during Abbott’s reign) along with compromising formerly independent bodies  such as:

The result is that critically based research becomes more inaccessible. Misinformation is easier to find, and the partisan media spoon-feeds that to the masses by the bucketful.

  1. Illiteracy.

Literacy is a surprisingly large issue in Australia; as Benjamin Law wrote some years ago, “…an OECD study surveyed Australians aged between 15 and 74 and rated them on their literacy skills. The results were shocking: 43.7 per cent had below-proficiency-level literacy.” Some indicators since then have seen improvement but as Helena Burke in the Australian noted: “According to the OECD, one in eight Australian adults are functionally illiterate, reading at an OECD Level 1 or below.” Unfortunately, though, she continued to say, “At present, there is no national adult literacy policy within Australia.”

Infotainment or Knowledge

Broadsheets to Youtube how conditions have worsened
Broadsheets to Youtube how conditions have worsened

Criticism of relative illiteracy notes how many in the community get their knowledge base from YouTube videos rather than reading and comprehension. Short podcasts and videos provide a superficial education with little by way of citations to follow up. In pursuit of easy to digest snippets of short-form, educational content (infotainment) provides an ephemeral intellectual reward and a diminished perspicacity. As a freelance journalist, I am aware this article exceeds the Guardian’s word limit of 800 words and Independent Australia’s at 1200. Long read articles are a small specialist market for a limited audience as the response of the larger public is usually conveyed by the acronym “TL;DR”. So even for the literate, reading can be viewed as onerous. Ask yourself when did you last read a non-fiction book? While the Australian Council for the Arts determined that 92% of Australians self-identify as ‘readers,’ the time spent doing so averages 6 hours and 18 minutes a week. That put our country in 15th place in the world.

These ten factors contribute to the ongoing undermining of truth in society.  We often seek simplistic answers to complex questions. Too many of us will not spend the time reading and examining the nuance and subtleties of issues. (Especially when they can be breezed over in a five-minute video.)

Too Long; Didn't Read!
Too Long; Didn’t Read!

Still, you are here reading this article. Did you just scan it quickly out of idle curiosity? Did you click on even one embedded link out of that curiosity to further your knowledge of something herein written? Perhaps, I got something wrong, but would you know from reading the link’s contents? Was that “reading”, or did you skim over what was written quickly because it was a bit long and … hell … who has the time, education, or philosophical inclination for in-depth understanding?

 

Ruby-faced Gladys

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Satire, Sarcasm or Irony warning
Satire, Sarcasm or Irony warning

Poor old gullible Gladys #koalakiller Berejiklian has all the emotional desires, so many of us have, and the demands of a taxing job that exacerbates her needs. She has always known she might have a lot to deal with, which explains why she has consolidated so many public departments. She just had to silence so many disparate voices making weekly demands of her, to lessen her obligations so that she could focus on matters of the heart. I mean, how many of us have not made the perfect choice of partners, that in later years reflectively ask, “WTF was I thinking?” Give her a break; it was a one-off mistake. “Princess” Gladys’s ruby complexion is a reflection of her private embarrassment. Her handling of public matters, although, has been exemplary – according to her liberal colleagues. I mean, it’s not like she makes a lot of mistakes as a public servant.

So she spent too much money on ferries built overseas with asbestos and too tall to fit under bridges in Parramatta River. But who could have predicted that? So her trains don’t fit the rail lines or go through the tunnels in the Blue Mountains. But who else could have built those trains? Bejesus, who goes to those places by ferry or train anyhow! So she allowed state forests to be logged and Koala habitats to be destroyed. So she approved the expansion of a quarry in the Hunter which will eliminate 52 hectares of prime koala habitat. So she asserted that those lazy public service bludgers (aka “essential workers“) were not worthy of a mere 2.5% wage rise during a recession. Besides the coffers were depleted after the extravagant pay rises awarded to all 65 coalition politicians in Macquarie St earlier in 2019. Still, some public servants were rewarded, such as the $87K rise to our Police Commissioner. You know him, Mick, the fellow who defended the laws Gladys brought in to strip search our kids. A sentiment echoed by the NSW Police Minister, David Elliott.

She is so good with money, though. She got one million dollars for Vales Point Station. Not her fault that it was valued at $730M. Yeah, OK, there were a couple of over-runs. I mean, who doesn’t overrun a budget on the light rail by $3B and Stadiums by $100M?  Sadly the modern revamp to replace that old “dump” of a Museum at Ultimo which they were very keen to give to their donor property developers, will be retained after protests by all those caffe-latte-drinking leftist protestors. Moving the Powerhouse Museum to a flood plain was a mistake anyone could make when it was such a dry season, that bushfires were all the rage.

Blackened Home of Ash
Blackened Home of Ash

Speaking of the worst bushfires in NSW, wasn’t that a confusing time? Not helped by allegations that Gladys refused assistance by the Navy for fire-threatened south coast towns. Berejiklian pulled up short of suggesting our honourable prime minister was lying. Eliminating public service bloat is important – achieved by cutting rural fire service capital expenditure by 75% ($49.9M). These were efficiency dividends, and besides, they still had 25% of their funds. Such unneeded bloat was presumably why she needed to get rid of 26 out of the 36 specialist fire management officers responsible for doing hazard reduction? Ten officers are more than enough for a State area of over 80M hectares. Slashing 500 full-time positions from National Parks and Wildlife was just being economically rational, surely? She was just clearing the bush her own way, and who could have predicted climate change would result in more significant fires? Probably why she thought cutting $12.9M from the state’s Urban fire fighting budget was an act of foresight.

Think of all the generous help she gave the federal government and irrigators by supporting the water trading of the Murray Darling Water Plan designed in 2012 whose Authority acted unlawfully when it “completely ignored” climate change projections for the determination of water allocations. Gladys did later begin to recant by considering new water-sharing plans for the Namoi River and water registries. This didn’t include the water registries of Helen Dalton’s Bill which would have listed MP’s water interests.  That unsuitable Bill was allowed to lapse. Unlike the Broken Hill pipeline or profitable fracking at Narrabri that threatened water security, as they’d already been approved and one doesn’t want to antagonise donors by reversing decisions! So country towns in NSW ran out of water, Warragamba Dam got polluted, and we had to resort to the desalination plant in Kurnell that relies heavily on fossil fuels to run, making Sydney resident’s water bills to rise. Gladys Berejiklian’s degrees were in Arts and Commerce, so it is unfair to expect her to understand climate science and the causality of events that lead to droughts. It is no wonder she refused to meet with representatives of the Menindee Lakes. I mean, what did they expect her to do, raise the fish from the dead? Folks just expect too much from our Premiers who are far too busy meeting reputable donors or partaking in $950/ticket luncheons (a price just under the $1K disclosure guidelines) with dignitaries.

Westconnex Protest issues list
Westconnex Protest issues list

Gladys is good for business. She is raising so much money for her donors from the public and transport industry, via Sydney’s nine toll roads with a locked-in 4% rise in tolls per year till 2060. That donor, Transurban (Westconnex), may have struggled with the planning to get NSW’s road infrastructure built, but Berejiklian’s support did not waver. She not only supports her generous donor, but her ongoing support to the legal industry has been commendable. NSW will be tied up in litigation for decades because of the compulsory acquisitions of houses and the structural damages to still-standing homes wrought by Westconnex’s construction activity.

Let’s not forget the prescience she exhibited when she hired Aspen Medical (whose director hid $15M in the British Virgin Islands) for $57m for Covid-19 work in Newmarch House (which had 19 Aged Care deaths) and for that lovely cruise ship, the Ruby Princess! She seeks out the “best quality” advice when she needs it.  But these errors are past us, and now our business-focused Premier has this Covid-19 infection all under control, almost!

Fine wines & good times.
Fine wines & good times.

The implications of corruption implicit in this ICAC investigation are over the top, surely?  It’s not like someone gave Gladys a bottle of Grange Hermitage that she forgot.  Although memory failures featured significantly in her testimony to ICAC, but then who needs an excellent memory to run a State? It’s not like she was accustomed to maintaining a detailed memory with “meticulous focus on every minor policy detail“.


I mean has the shock, horror, scandal news rags of Murdoch said anything critical of Gladys other she had been “falling for a bloke called Daryl“? Of course not, so honestly, there isn’t anything to be seen here. Just move along and don’t forget to vote them back in, on March 2023! Besides, who will remember any of her government’s small foibles by then?

 

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Donation Transparency

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The Australian government’s increasing corruption is both measurable and comparable with other sovereign states. Trends in fluctuating Transparency International score for Australia in the last 25 years and international comparisons on political donations rules, are revelatory.

Failing perception of Transparency for Australia
Failing perception of Transparency for Australia

In 2013, Australia was amongst the top 10 countries on the Transparency International Index. Now in 2019, it has fallen to 13th in the world. There are many avenues through which the national ranking of transparency can deteriorate. What is clear is that the form of government and the quality of that government plays a significant role in determining transparency. Transparency rankings are highest in countries where democracy is most robust. Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark are all in the top ten countries on the Transparency International Index. The same modelling also indicates that dictatorships are the next least corrupt form of government (Page 2) and that corruption is most likely to occur in partial democracies, where the state is weakened. Could Australia’s comparatively quick slide between 2013 to 2019, be associated with a process that is undermining the state? This period coincides with the advent of the Coalition Government, and Australia’s slide out of the top 10 has happened before. The Transparency International Index only goes back to 1995 and has only been operating in its current form since 1998. But an examination of the years from 1998 to 2007, which coincides with the four terms of the Howard Government, indicates that Australia had fallen entirely out of the top 10, tending to hover around 11th to 13th place. Australia’s score hovered between 7 to 9 from 2007 to 2013, a period which coincided with the Rudd/Gillard Federal Labor Governments. It is not possible to say precisely why these shifts in Australia’s standing occurred based on which party was in power Federally. But it does suggest that there are underlying phenomena to be explored.

Donations or Bribery?
Donations or Bribery?

It should also be noted that the Transparency Index only measures perceptions of corruption, rather than actual corruption. Political donations are amongst the most direct means of State capture, or which weakens democratic purpose. This awareness was born out in a 2003 World Economic Forum survey of 102 countries, where 89% of surveyed countries estimated that the influence of political donations on policy changes was moderate to high.  Is there something unique to Australia’s political donations rules, that differentiates Australia from the top ten countries on the Transparency International Index, but which has also been a point of difference between the Federal Liberal and Labor Governments? Referring to the IDEA (Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance) database can clarify the first part of this question. The IDEA database compares 180 countries, on 74 different aspects of political donations. The database draws a distinction between donations to individual candidates versus parties. Specific questions are listed about rules around foreign contributions, corporate contributions, trade union contributions and contributions from other sources. Limits on monetary, in-kind and candidate-funded contributions, access to media, restrictions on online advertising, as well as gender equity in candidate funding, are explored. Prohibitions on vote-buying, spending limits for candidates and political parties, requirements for regular reporting on party finances and candidate expenses, public availability of reports, as well as disclosure of donor and lobbyist identities, are listed items.

On the matter of restricting contribution sources, Australia appears to be more rigorous than some of the ten countries on the transparency index. Australia, along with Singapore, Finland and Norway have specifically restricted foreign contributions to elections. Australia (along with eight of the ten top countries) permits contributions from corporations and trade unions (in fact only Canada and Luxembourg expressly prohibit corporate contributions). Canada, Finland and Luxembourg explicitly prohibit donations from corporations with government contracts to parties or candidates, but Australia and the six remaining countries of the top ten, do not have such a prohibition. Only Finland and Canada have explicit limits for individual donations outside of election periods to candidates and parties. Finland, Sweden, Norway and Luxembourg explicitly prohibit the use of state resources in elections, but there are seven top ten countries, which do not. Data is not available for Canada and the Netherlands, but no such limit exists for Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Denmark. In fact, there is remarkably little difference between Australia and any of the top ten countries with respect to 73 of the political donations indications listed on the IDEA index.

Countries that ban corporate donations
Countries that ban corporate donations

There is only one stark difference between Australia and the top ten countries, and this is in the realm of anonymous donations. Luxembourg, Sweden, Denmark and Norway expressly prohibit anonymous donations. The other countries require disclosure of donor identity for donations ranging between $20 for Canada to $5000 for Singapore. The Australian cap on anonymous donations is twice as high as that permitted in Singapore. In Australia, the cap on anonymous donations is set at $10,000 per year and is indexed by the consumer price index each year. Also, Australian political parties are only required to do an annual disclosure, unlike other top TI countries, which require more frequent and more timely disclosure.

Further anonymous donations of up to $10000 can be treated as separate items at Federal, State and Territory levels. In theory, this means that up to $90000 could be contributed each year anonymously to a given party. No other country in the top ten has such a loose and generous relationship with anonymous donations.

In Australia, the financial disclosure scheme was amended on the 8th December 2005 to increase the threshold for anonymous donations to more than $10,000 per the calendar year as a result of its being linked to the CPI. What was the background for this? According to the Federal Joint Select Committee on Electoral Reform (JSCER), the public was already concerned about political donations back in 1983. This lead to recommendations for fully funded public elections, disclosures and public funding for first preference votes. In 1995, the Keating Labor Government removed the obligation for parties to lodge a claim with the AEC for reimbursement of electoral expenses, weakening institutional oversight of donations. However, it was the Howard Coalition Government, which amended the Electoral Act in 2005, increasing the prescribed anonymous disclosure threshold to $10,000, and making it CPI Indexed. By 2017, the disclosure threshold was $13, 500. Before 2005, the disclosure threshold was $200 for candidates, $1000 for senate groups and $1500 for political parties. The changes reflected a diminishing pool of private donors for both major political parties, and it was a concern at least for Labor Senator John Faulkener that this would open the way for buying and selling access.

In 2008, the Rudd Labor Government tried to reduce the anonymous disclosure threshold to $1000 through the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Political Donations and Other Measures) Bill 2008. That bill prohibited the receipt of gifts of foreign property limit public funding to the lesser amount of either actual campaign expenditure or the amount awarded per eligible vote received. The 2008 bill stalled in the Senate, as did the two subsequent efforts by the Rudd Government. The Gillard Government tried and failed to reduce the disclosure threshold in 2011. Coalition representatives on the JSCER dissented against the reduced disclosure threshold. They also resisted having the definition of ‘gifts’ being amended to include fundraising. In 2013, a deal was struck between the Gillard Government and then opposition leader Tony Abbott, which would have resulted in the anonymous disclosure threshold being reduced to $5000. However, Abbott faced a party revolt, once details of the deal leaked.

After his loss to Malcolm Turnbull, Abbott spoke out again about the need for transparency in political donations in 2016. The Australian Labor Party introduced the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Donation Reform and Transparency) Bill 2016 in November 2016. The bill again tried to reduce the disclosure threshold to $1,000, prohibit the gift of foreign property and anonymous gifts; and restrict public funding of election campaigning to declared expenditure incurred or reimbursed based on first preference votes. The Australian Greens also attempted to introduce a similar bill in 2016, which would reduce the threshold for anonymous donations, and prohibit contributions from specific industries. It failed, although foreign donations have been prohibited, corporate, trade union donations remain. To date, the extraordinarily high anonymous donations cap is still in place, and it is clear that it is both a point of distinction between Australia and the top ten TI countries and between the Coalition and other parties.

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Anti-corruption models

by Leave a Comment

Transparency international’s official assessment released in January 2019, indicated that corruption grew in Australia.

Australia corruption Index at it's lowest point in 2019
Australia corruption Index at it’s the lowest point in 2019

During the current term of the Federal Coalition Government, Australia fell from 7th place to 13th place in 2015 and has not shifted since on Transparency International’s index. This relative stability is illusory. The indexed gap United Kingdom (80) and Austria (76) is the widest available for the top 20 least corrupt countries. The width of this gap has obscured Australia’s actual fall from 79 to 77.  The latest review by TI was completed by September 2018, after which time new Federal Government scandals emerged:

  • Paladin corruption allegations,
  • Royal Commission findings on Banks,
  • No charges laid over questionable tip-offs on AFP’s union raid from Michaelia Cash’s office.
  • Northern Territory’s public service corruption charges

Federal ICAC proposals

This prompting renewed calls from the media and public for a federal ICAC to be established. Previously submitted by Sen Bob Brown in 2010, Adam Brant in 2012 & 2017, Christine Milne in 2013 and lately Cathy McGowan in 2018.  None of which have come to fruition.

In early 2018, the Australia Institute convened a panel of experts on the subject of the different forms of anti-corruption commissions, generating diverse political and legal reactions. The report’s recommendations remain unenacted despite growing corruption in our governance.

Apart from Tony Abbot begging the government not to create an integrity commission, both major political parties were at least considering such a commission. The Federal Labour party has promised to implement an anti-corruption agency based on the Australia Institute research. In the meantime, Cathy McGowen delivered her National Integrity Commission (NIC) legislation in the last week of November and the second bill for National Integrity Bill in early December. Despite a motion in support in Parliament, it was referred to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee for a report due April 5th.  Morrison was initially dismissing it as a “fringe issue”, rejected the McGowen model, offering the coalition’s version, which was neither retrospective, public nor able to make findings of corruption.

The debate has since become what model of Anti-corruption enforcement might actually be useful and agreed upon federally.

Corruption fight as a threat to democracy

How we structure and manage anticorruption commissions, matters.

Transparency International’s anti-corruption conference in Denmark in 2018 made a predictive and correct analysis of Brazil’s presidential elections based on what many saw as the failure of anti-corruption measures.  I attended a workshop in Copenhagen titled “The fight against corruption as a threat to democracy” predominately concerned with achieving increased transparency without political radicalisation. Jair Bolsonaro’s rise to power was a cautionary example.

 

The workshop concluded that an improperly managed anti-corruption body could be both ineffective and harmful to civil society, engendering populist movements and anti-establishment radicalism as manifested in Brazil. Corruption prevention by itself would not strengthen democracy and scandals could lead to:

  1. A power vacuum to be filled by even worse governance,
  2. Fuel cynicism towards politics,
  3. Entrench the idea that corruption is inevitable.

So we need to ask of any commission:

  • What should the characteristics of it be?
  • Is it a court or an investigative body
  • Does it secure prosecutions?
  • Should it raise community expectations of a transparent clean society?
  • To whom does it report?
  • Who is covered by this legislation?

In Singapore, the CPIB reports directly to the Prime Minister’s office, but in the era of Donald Trump, is a direct line to the top a good idea?  Does it cover civilian public servants, the private sector, the police? Should elected officials, including our Prime Minister, to be classed as public servants and answerable to this commission?

At this point, we come to the conflict that occurs between lawyers versus political/civil objectives. Legal experts have argued that public hearings risk reputational damage, but interestingly, even the Australian’s Mark Coultan noted that “ICAC routinely conducts priv­ate hearings before proceeding to a public inquiry.”  He went on to remind us that:

“Mr Sturgess, head of the cab­inet office in the Greiner government when ICAC was established, warned that making all hearings private would radically alter the nature of the organisation.”

When you consider that it was Ian Macdonald, found guilty of corruption, who said making hearings private was long overdue, it may be mindful to ask who seeks to gain the most from secret hearings? A lack of transparency will always hide corruption.

Lawyers also express concerns around the lack of the usual rules of evidence that exist around admissibility of evidence to these commissions.  For example, lack of available admissible evidence was why in the case of Bankstown and Strathfield councils in November of 2007 resulted in findings of corrupt conduct, but did not result in a referral to the Director of Public Prosecutions. This case essentially represented a tussle between criminal standards of evidence versus a civil good.

Conversely, it has been argued that public hearings play an essential role in engaging the public in democratic processes, and this is clear through regular community surveys. Transparency builds confidence in public institutions and giving whistleblowers a line of sight between their actions and consequences. Whistleblower Rebecca Connor’s mining corruption allegations could have been buried with parliamentary debate and committees. Although, parliamentary committees have upheld the principle of public hearings on several occasions. Assertions of unfair reputational damage overlook the detailed pre-investigative processes that preceded public hearings.

Positive perceptions of ICAC for the people of NSW over time.
Positive perceptions of ICAC for the people of NSW over time.

NSW ICAC regularly receives approval levels above 85% in community surveys. In states where hearings are conducted in secrecy such as Victoria’s IBAC or South Australia’s ICAC, there is little community awareness, and consequently has no role in building community confidence. The vast majority of the public perceives most, if not all, politicians are corrupt.

 

The next important consideration is that operational legislation specifies the right to investigate, recommend charges, present reports to parliament, and pursue parliamentarians. The early successes of NSW ICAC from 1989 to 1993, and then later from 2011 to 2015 were facilitated by strong political will and commitment to transparency. A commission thrives or withers depending on the level of political favour. The first few years of an agency being established are marked by many legal challenges to its jurisdiction. Therefore, a dynamically supportive legislature is a must in addressing weaknesses exposed by legal challenges.

Does the commission have funding for a dedicated unit to provide advice around legislative reforms? One of the reasons for NSW ICAC’s success under Ian Temby QC was the existence of such a department which was able to provide advice on matters of legislative reform. [NSW ICAC Annual report 1991 pg 66]  There also needs to be a mechanism for independent evaluation of the ICAC’s budgetary needs, as investigations and public hearings are costly.

McGowan or Morrison’s model?

So how do the respective models offered by McGowan versus Morrison stack up? On 13th December 2018, Morrison announced a Commonwealth Integrity Commissioner (CIC), who would have oversight over a Law Enforcement Integrity Commissioner and a Public Sector Integrity Commissioner. The new commission will have the power to investigate politicians and their staff but is not allowed to act on complaints raised by the public or reported in the media. It will not have public hearings and is designed to respond to allegations of criminal conduct. Criminal conduct represents a much narrower standard than what has been applicable for other state-level anti-corruption agencies, which had a broad mandate of investigating misconduct. Grey instances such as Susan Ley’s use of tax-payer funded travel to coincidentally inspect an investment property; Barnaby Joyce created a position for his partner or Peter Dutton’s profiting from Childcare facilities, or the lack of tendering for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority funding scandal would not be referred. Can the status quo be challenged as we sanction misconduct by directing it to internal review?

The CIC cannot make findings of corruption, misconduct or criminal matters. This stands in contrast to NSW ICAC which is allowed to make findings of contempt, corrupt conduct and report on recommendations for criminal charges.

Funding is estimated to be between $100 to $125 million and is considered inadequate. There is a proposal around mandatory reporting of corrupt conduct by public servants, but this does not include mandatory reporting by parliamentarians. It is not clear whom this commission will report to, or whether it would present publicly available reports to parliament. Not surprisingly, former NSW ICAC Commissioner David Ipp described the CIC as the “kind of integrity commission that you would have when you don’t want to have an integrity commission“.

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P.S. This article is based on the research by Dr Martha Knox-Haly in researchgate.