Making Public Sector Integrity Systems Work: An Assessment of Reactive and Proactive Strategies to Combat Public Sector Corruption in Three Australian States

Abstract

The last two decades have witnessed increased attention on the preservation of public sector integrity. The introduction by Transparency International (TI) during the 1990s of the National Integrity System’s (NIS) Greek temple, comprising a number of main pillars for an integrity system as a holistic approach against corruption, sparked global efforts to introduce or strengthen these elements within different jurisdictions. One of the main pillars of the TI Greek temple is the ‘Watchdog Agency’. The idea behind establishing an independent Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA) is that conventional law enforcement procedures and agencies are not capable of dealing with corruption or the promotion of integrity. Corruption has become more sophisticated to the point where conventional law enforcement organisations and legislation cannot keep up and the police are increasingly unable to detect or prosecute complicated corruption matters. This is more apparent in places with ‘endemic’ corruption, where law enforcement organisations are themselves corrupted and ethically defective. Australia is not distanced from these developments; in fact, it has had its own share of government and public sector misconduct. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s and until recently, numerous cases of corruption have surfaced and been investigated, specifically those of police corruption. The standard Australian response was to establish inquisitorial royal commissions to investigate these incidents. The success of these special commissions was not always guaranteed, although they tended to give the impression of governments being serious in investigating such wrongdoings. However, in many cases these commissions found themselves under-resourced or, in some cases, stripped of adequate powers to conduct their investigations or to appropriately execute the investigations. The governments of the day either hesitated to implement or ignored their findings. There were some exceptions where the findings of these inquiries came to be the driving force for reforms in their jurisdictions. While Australia has had its share of corruption, it has also come to be renowned for its strong commitment to developing and maintaining robust public sector integrity systems. In most recent global corruption reports it has been ranked in the top ten countries for having superior integrity systems. One part of this strong integrity system is the creation of specialised corruption and misconduct commissions, in most cases well-funded and resourced and given adequate extraordinary coercive powers that are usually not provided to conventional law enforcement agencies. The commissions are designed to deal comprehensively with corruption through a number of both reactive and proactive strategies. My study looks at three of these special anti-corruption commissions, the Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC), the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) and the Western Australian Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC). The purpose of my examination was to explore what kind of strategies they use in combating corruption, to examine the generally shared themes and characteristics that have shaped the way they function and to recognise any shortfalls within the applied strategies. I came to identify that, (i) all three anti-corruption commissions use similar reactive and proactive strategies, (ii) they all share a number of general characteristics of being part of broader State integrity systems, (iii) all three are organised and function holistically in dealing with misconduct, (iv) they all experience difficulties when investigating their political masters, (v) they all lack a formal mechanism for coordinating with other agencies involved in dealing with misconduct in their jurisdictions, (vi) they all suffer from a low prosecution rate of their cases and, (vii) they are all in the process of devolution and in giving public sector organisations greater responsibility for dealing with their own misconduct, although whether public sector agencies are yet ready to take up such a challenge remains uncertain.