Anti-Corruption Commissions: Lessons In Transparency And Accountability For Australia And India

For many years, the Australian Government (of the left and right of politics) has refused to countenance a Commonwealth Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC).

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Instead, the Commonwealth had a patchwork of largely unknown organizations that reviewed the conduct of a limited number of Commonwealth agencies. Accountability within the Commonwealth public service was the provenance of the Australian Public Service Commission. Importantly, Commonwealth politicians and their staff resolutely refused to be subjected to any form of independent accountability.

It was as if the mantra was “there is no corruption in Canberra (the capital)” or if there was, it was being managed perfectly well. The public response to this and increasing pressure in the media and from leading commentators was highly sceptical, particularly as the Australian States all have robust ACCs with varying degrees of public activity (the most pronounced being the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in New South Wales.

Something had to give and it did. The Commonwealth Government became a minority government, relying for its survival on independent parliamentarians who increasingly called for an ACC, supported by a large number of retired judges, anti-corruption commissioners (who had sat on State ACCs) and the media. Once the Commonwealth opposition party (Labor) had thrown its weight behind a Commonwealth ACC, the writing was on the wall.