Hopes that the federal anti-corruption watch puppy might be resuscitated by a change of leadership have been dashed, writes Michael Pascoe. The NACC is only capable of embarrassing itself.
The National Anti-Corruption Commission is now making the case itself that it is useless. On a bang-for-buck basis, any marginal difference the NACC might be making to corruption at the federal level simply isn’t worth the candle.
In quick succession, the Albanese government is trying a poacher-turned-gamekeeper act by appointing a former Labor minister, Robert McClelland, as commissioner. Mind you, the government is unlikely to want too much trying – it has never wanted a strong NACC and certainly doesn’t want its fingers kept out of the vote-buying barrel.
And then the acting commissioner played a senate inquiry for mugs this week, running lines that would do the Yes, Minister scriptwriters proud.
For those of us with knowledge of the NACC’s track record of running dead on the corruption euphemistically called “pork barrelling”, Acting Commissioner Kylie Kilgour’s statement that her interest had been “piqued” by Labor’s version of Morrison’s billion-dollar Community Development Grants rort is just an increasingly unfunny joke.
Prosecuting corruption, que?
As repeatedly reported here, the NACC has officially declared it has no interest in prosecuting such corruption, even when it admits it was wrong to find there was no corruption in examples served up to it.
This would not be news to Ms Kilgour. She has been a NACC deputy commissioner for the better part of three years.
The hollowness of his “piqued” interest in Labor’s grants corruption was displayed in what she said next, as reported by the SMAge.
Addressing senators on Thursday, acting NACC commissioner Kylie Kilgour said it was “impossible” to express an opinion at this time over whether corrupt conduct had occurred in the grant program, but a number of aspects had “piqued” her interest, including alterations regarding its constitutionality.
“We would not [make a determination] unless we conducted a thorough, proper investigation under the NACC Act,” Kilgour told the inquiry…
Kilgour said she had yet to hear evidence that would suggest the program should fall under the jurisdiction of the NACC and, until such point, would defer to a potential investigation by the Australian National Audit Office.
Get it? The NACC has no opinion on even potential “pork barrel” corruption unless somebody else does all the work to force them to look at it and then the NACC will take several years to find it doesn’t matter anyway.
That is not conjecture. That is the NACC’s track record.
A masterclass in dithering
The commission was served up chapter and verse on a corrupt grants scheme, took a year to decide it wasn’t corrupt in its way of thinking, took another two years to conduct a review of that decision when it was appealed, find “the Commission has concluded that your referral does raise a corruption issue, which could involve serious or systemic corrupt conduct”, but ““we have decided not to open a corruption investigation into that issue, but to address it, in conjunction with other related issues, in our prevention and education work”.
Ah, corruption as “education work”. That’ll pique interest.
It would be naïve to think Brereton’s replacement as commissioner will approach the past decade’s billions of dollars (no exaggeration) of grants corruption with any more fire in his belly and steel in his intent. After all, he’s been there and done that.
Robert McClelland was one of ten Rudd government ministers found to have breached anti-pork-barrelling policy to award grants in their own electorates. No surprise that Anthony Albanese was another. So were Tony Burke and Tanya Plibersek.
In the sorry history of both sides doing it and performing charades about not doing it, then Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner established grant reporting rules in 2008 in reaction to claims the previous coalition government rorted the Regional Partnerships Program.
You’d think it was a reasonable minimum for ministers to not award grants in their own electorates but, hey, “they all do it” and there are no repercussions, right? What’s the point of being in government if you can’t raid the Treasury for vote buying like your predecessors?
Uniparty lack of integrity
But they don’t all do it. Reaction against the major parties’ lack of integrity was and is one of the three key platforms of the community independents movement.
It is a measure of Albanese’s integrity that he has attempted to equate Helen Haines pushing for funding for her electorate with his mob’s invite-only grants to reward/buy voters.
One is a member representing her community. The other is structural corruption.
That the NACC has any potential to do its job is thanks to the pressure brought to bear by Dr Haines and her fellow independents. Neither Labor or the Coalition have any interest in a corruption watchdog with teeth, one prepared to declare the same standards as New South Wales’ ICAC.
Rising above the expensive, conflicted, useless lame-duck reputation NACC has earned itself over its first three years would require brave activist leadership happy to make lots of enemies and preserve no friendships.
There’s no sign of that happening.
Michael Pascoe is an independent journalist and commentator with five decades of experience here and abroad in print, broadcast and online journalism. His book, The Summertime of Our Dreams, is published by Ultimo Press.